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Full text of "The Open Society And Its Enemies Popper, Karl Sir"
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The Open Society and Its Enemies 



' . . . a work of first-class importance which ought to be widely read for its 
masterly criticism of the enemies of democracy, ancient and modem. . . . 
The book is a vigorous and profound defence of democracy, timely, very 
interesting, and very well written. ' 

Bertrand Russell 

'One of the great books of the century' 

The Times 

' . . . a modern classic' 

The Independent 

'Few philosophers. . . have combined such a vast width of knowledge with 
the capacity to produce important original ideas as he did. ' 

The Guardian 

' . . . a powerful and important book. Dr Popper writes with extreme clarity 
and vigour. His studies in Greek history and Greek thought have 
obviously been profound and original. Platonic exegesis will never be the 
same again. Nor, I think, will Marxist exegesis.' 

Gilbert Ryle 

'... a brilliant polemic... It remains the best intellectual defence of 



liberal democracy against know-it-all totalitarianism.' 

The Economist 




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Karl 
Popper 



The Open Society and Its Enemies 



With a preface by Vaclav Havel 



as 




" London and New York 



First published in two volumes in 1945 
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd 

Second edition 1952 
Third edition 1957 
Fourth edition 1962 

Both volumes pubhshed in paperback 1962 by Routledge 
Fifth edition 1966 

One-volume hardback edition published 2002 

First pubhshed in Routledge Classics 201 1 
by Routledge 

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN 

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 

© 1994 The Estate of Karl Popper 

Preface © 2002 Vaclav Havel 

'Personal Recollections' © 2002 E. H. Gombrich 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utihsed in any form 
or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including 
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without 
permission in writing from the pubhshers. 

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and 
are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. 

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data 

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 



ISBN: 978-0-415-61021-6 (pbk) 
Typeset in Joanna 

by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk 



Contents 



FOREWORD 

PREFACE: ^KARL POPPERS S THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES 
IN THE CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL WORLD^ BY VACLAV 
HAVEL 

TERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE 

OPEN SOCIETY BY E. H. GOMBRICH 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
INTRODUCTION 



VOLUME I: THE SPELL OF PLATO 
The Myth of Origin and Destiny 

1 Historicism and the Myth of Destiny 

2 Heraclitus 

3 Plato's Theory of Forms or Ideas 
Plato's Descriptive Sociology 

4 Change and Rest 

5 Nature and Convention 



Plato's Political Programme 



6 Totalitarian Justice 

7 The Principle of Leadership 

8 The Philosopher King 

9 Aestheticism. Perfectionism. Utopianism 

The Background of Plato's Attack 

10 The Open Society and Its Enemies 
Addenda (1957. 1961, 1965) 

VOLUME II: THE HIGH TIDE OF PROPHECY 
The Rise of Oracular Philosophy 

1 1 The Aristotelian Roots of Hegelianism 

12 Hegel and the New Tribalism 

Marx's Method 

13 Marx's Sociological Determinism 

14 The Autonomy of Sociology 

15 Economic Historicism 

16 The Classes 

17 The Legal and the Social System 
Marx's Prophecy 

18 The Coming of Socialism 

19 The Social Revolution 

20 Capitalism and its Fate 

2 1 An Evaluation of the Prophecy 



Marx's Ethics 



22 The Moral Theory of Historicism 
The Aftermath 

23 The Sociology of Knowledge 

24 Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason 

Conclusion 

25 Has History any Meaning? 
Addenda (1961, 1965) 

NOTES 

NOTES TO VOLUME I 
NOTES TO VOLUME II 
INDEX 



Foreword 



Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994) was born in Vienna, and was a student 
at the University there throughout the 1920s. His early thinking was 
influenced by the activities of the communists and the Social Democratic 
party, by his work with the psychoanalyst Alfred Adler, by Eddington's 
eclipse experiment to test Einstein's general theory of relativity, and later 
by his acquaintance with members of the Vienna Circle. Though never a 
member of the Circle, and usually in sharp disagreement with their main 
doctrines, he shared their enthusiasm for science and for logic. Replacing 
their verifiability criterion of meaning with the falsifiability criterion of 
demarcation of empirical science, he put forward a solution to Hume's 
problem of induction. More generally, he proposed an anti-authoritarian 
approach to human knowledge, in which criticism is stressed and 
justification abandoned. 

The application of these ideas from the theory of knowledge to 
political thought resulted in the two volumes of The Open Society and Its 
Enemies. The book was completed while Popper was a Senior Lecturer at 
Canterbury University College in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he 
had taken up a post in 1937 in order to escape National Socialism, soon to 
overpower not only Austria but most of Europe. 

The Open Society and Its Enemies champions the cause of democracy, 
which it shows to be the only form of government in which human reason 
can prevail and non-violent reform can take place. Popper launched a 
merciless attack on those he saw as the greatest enemies of democracy: 
Plato, Marx and Hegel. 



Volume I is concerned with The Spell of Plato. Popper vigorously 
argued that Plato was guilty of the 'dangerous habit of historical 
prophecy' and that his political thought was totalitarian in nature. 
Volume II critiques Marx and Hegel. By analysing their work, Popper 
was able to expand his theory of the connection between historicism and 
totalitarianism which he found equally repugnant as obstacles both to the 
rule of democracy and of reason. 

Popper later called this book his 'war work'. It was published in 1945 
just as the Marxist regimes of Eastern Europe were being installed. Its 
author became something of a hero to dissidents in the communist 
countries, and despite his forceful rejection of the idea that the course of 
human history can be foretold, his work was hailed as prophetic when the 
communist regimes collapsed in the early 1990s. A Russian translation 
was published in 1992 and became a best-seller. The political stance of 
the book, though fundamentally in the social democratic tradition, has 
been endorsed by many conservative politicians in Britain and Europe. 
Popper himself steadfastly refused identification with any political party. 

In his later work. Popper returned to problems in the theory of 
knowledge, the philosophy of science and many other areas. Up until his 
death he continued to reflect on the Greek philosophers from the 
PreSocratics onwards; the treatment of Plato (as also of Hegel and Marx) 
sprang from the deepest roots of his thinking. 

Karl Popper received many academic and other honours; he was 
knighted in 1965 and created Companion of Honour in 1982. His books 
have been translated into over thirty languages. Many of his papers, 
lectures and correspondence are being prepared for publication through 
Routledge. 



Preface 

Karl Popper's The Open Society and 
Its Enemies in the contemporary 

global world- 

Vdclav Havel 



Some time ago a wise old man came to see me in Prague and I listened to 
him with admiration. Shortly afterwards I heard that this man had died. 
His name was Karl Popper. He was a world traveller who followed the 
biggest war ever waged by humankind - the war unleashed by the tribal 
fury of Nazi ideology - from this country, from New Zealand. It was here 
that he thought about the state of the world, and it was here that he wrote 
his most important books. Undoubtedly influenced by the harmonious co- 
existence of people of different cultures on these islands, he posed the 
question why it was so difficult for the idea of an open society to prevail 
against wave after wave of tribalism, and inquired into the spiritual 
background of all enemies of open society and into the patterns of their 
thinking. 

One of the targets of Popper's profound criticism - which he supported 
by ample evidence - was a phenomenon he called holistic social 
engineering. He used this term to describe human attempts to change the 



world for the better completely and globally, on the basis of some 
preconceived ideology that purported to understand all the laws of 
historical development and to describe inclusively, comprehensively and 
holistically a state of affairs that would be the ultimate realization of 
these laws. Popper clearly demonstrated that this pattern of human 
thinking and behaviour can only lead to a totalitarian system. 

I come from a country that lived under a Communist regime for 
several decades. On the basis of my own experience, I can therefore 
confirm that Sir Karl Popper was right. In the beginning was an allegedly 
scientific theory of historical laws; that Marxist theory subsequently gave 
rise to the Communist Utopia, the vision of a paradise on Earth, and the 
latter eventually produced the gulags, the endless suffering of many 
nations, the endless violation of the human being. Anything that in any 
way opposed the vision of the world offered by Communism, thus calling 
that vision into question or actually proving it wrong, was mercilessly 
crushed. Needless to say, life, with its unfathomable diversity and 
unpredictability, never allowed itself to be squeezed into the crude 
Marxist cage. All that the guardians of the cage could do was to suppress 
and destroy whatever they could not make fit into it. Ultimately, war had 
to be declared on life itself and its innermost essence. I could give you 
thousands of concrete examples of how all the natural manifestations of 
life were stifled in the name of an abstract, theoretical vision of a better 
world. It was not just that there were what we call human rights abuses. 
This enforced vision led to the moral, political and economic devastation 
of all of society. 

Instead of such holistic engineering. Popper argued for a gradual 
approach, an effort to improve incrementally the institutions, 
mechanisms and techniques of human coexistence, to improve them by 
remaining constantly in touch with life and constantly enriching our 
experience. Improvements and changes must be made according to 



whatever has proved to be good, practical, desirable and meaningful, 
without the arrogant presumption that we have understood ever)^hing 
about this world, and thus know everything there is to know about how to 
change it for the better. 

In my country, one of the understandable reactions to the tragic 
experience of Communism is the opinion we sometimes encounter that 
man should, if possible, refrain altogether from changing or ameliorating 
the world, from devising long-range concepts, strategic plans or visions. 
All this is seen as part of the armoury of holistic social engineering. This 
opinion, of course, is a grave error. Paradoxically, it has much in 
common with the fatalism Popper finds in those who believe they have 
grasped the laws of history and that they serve those laws. This fatalism 
takes the form of the peculiar idea that society is no more than a machine 
that, once properly set in motion, can then run on its own, automatically 
and permanently. 

I am opposed to holistic social engineering. I refuse, however, to pour 
out the baby with the bath water and I am a long way from thinking that 
people should give up altogether on a constant search for ways of 
improving the world in which they must live together. It must be done 
even though they may never achieve more than partial improvements in 
particular areas, will always have to wait to see whether the change was 
the right thing to do, and must always be prepared to rectify whatever life 
has shown to be wrong. 

Recently I expressed this opinion in the presence of a philosopher 
friend of mine. He looked somewhat puzzled at first, and then began 
trying to persuade me of something I have never denied, that the world, in 
its very essence, is a holistic entity; that everything in it is 
interconnected; that whatever we do in any one place has an 
unfathomable impact everywhere, though we may not see the whole of it; 
that even the post-modern science of these days supplies evidence of that. 



With this remark, my friend has compelled me to supplement what I 
said, and perhaps even what Popper wrote. Yes, it is true that society - 
the world, the universe, being itself - is a deeply mysterious 
phenomenon, held together by billions of mysterious interconnections. 
Knowing all this and humbly accepting it is one thing; the arrogant belief 
that humanity, or the human spirit or reason, can grasp and describe the 
world in its entirety and derive from this description a vision of its 
improvement is something else altogether. It is one thing to be aware of 
the interconnection of all events; believing that we have fully understood 
this is something completely different. 

In other words: I believe, as Popper does, that neither politicians, nor 
scientists, nor entrepreneurs, nor anyone else should fall for the vain 
belief that they can grasp the world as a whole and change it as a whole 
by one single action. Seeking to improve it, people should proceed with 
utmost caution and sensitivity, on a step-by-step basis, always paying 
attention to what each change actually brings about. At the same time, 
however, I believe - possibly differing from Popper's views to some 
extent - that as they do so, they should constantly bear in mind all the 
global interrelations that they are aware of, and know that beyond their 
knowledge there exists an infinitely wider range of interrelations. My 
relatively brief sojourn in the realm of so-called high politics convinces 
me time and again of the need to take this very approach: most of the 
threats hanging over the world now, as well as many of the problems 
confronting it, could be handled much more effectively if we were able to 
see past the ends of our noses and take into consideration, to some extent 
at least, the broader interconnections that go beyond the scope of our 
immediate or group interests. This awareness, of course, should never 
become an arrogant Utopian conviction that we alone possess the whole 
truth about these interconnections. On the contrary, it should emanate 
from a deep and humble respect for them and for their mysterious order. 



My country is now witnessing a debate about the role of intellectuals: 
about how important or how dangerous they are, about the degree to 
which they can be independent, about how much or in what ways they 
should become engaged in politics. At times, the debate has been 
confused, partly because the word 'intellectual' means different things to 
different people. This is closely related to what I have just said here. 

Let me try - just for the moment - to define an intellectual. To me, an 
intellectual is a person who has devoted his or her life to thinking in more 
general terms about the affairs of this world and the broader context of 
things. Of course, it is not only intellectuals who do this. Intellectuals, 
however, do it - if I may use the word - professionally. That is, their 
principal occupation is studying, reading, teaching, writing, publishing, 
addressing the public. Often - though certainly not always! - this makes 
them more receptive toward more general issues; often - though by far 
not always! - it leads them to embrace a broader sense of responsibility 
for the state of the world and its future. 

If we accept this definition of an intellectual, then it will come as no 
surprise that many an intellectual has done a great deal of harm to the 
world. Taking an interest in the world as a whole and feeling an increased 
sense of responsibility for it, intellectuals often yield to the temptation to 
attempt grasping the world as a whole, explaining it entirely and offering 
universal solutions to its problems. An impatience of mind and a variety 
of mental short-cuts are the usual reasons why intellectuals tend to devise 
holistic ideologies and succumb to the seductive power of holistic social 
engineering. For that matter - were not the forerunners of Nazi ideology, 
the founders of Marxism, and the first Communist leaders intellectuals 
par excellence? Did not a number of dictators, and even some terrorists - 
from the leaders of the former German Red Brigades to Pol Pot start off 
as intellectuals? Not to mention the many intellectuals who, though they 
neither created nor introduced dictatorships, time and again failed to 



stand up to them because they were more than others prone to accept the 
delusion that there was a universal key to eliminating human woes. It was 
to describe this phenomenon that the expression trahison des clercs - 'the 
betrayal of the intellectuals' - was coined. The many different anti- 
intellectual campaigns in my country have always supported their case 
with reference to this type of intellectual. And it is from there that they 
derive their belief that an intellectual is a biological species dangerous to 
humankind. 

Those who claim this are committing an error very similar to the one 
committed by those whose utter rejection of socialist planning leads them 
to reject any conceptual thinking whatsoever. 

It would be nonsense to believe that all intellectuals have succumbed 
to utopianism or holistic engineering. A great number of intellectuals 
both past and present have done precisely what I think should be done: 
they have perceived the broader context, seen things in more global 
terms, recognized the mysterious nature of globality and humbly deferred 
to it. Their increased sense of responsibility for this world has not made 
such intellectuals identify with an ideology; it has made them identify 
with humanity, its dignity and its prospects. These intellectuals build 
people-to-people solidarity. They foster tolerance, struggle against evil 
and violence, promote human rights and argue for their indivisibility. In a 
word, they represent what has been called 'the conscience of society'. 
They are not indifferent when people in an unknown country on the other 
side of the planet are annihilated, or when children starve there, nor are 
they unconcerned about global warming and whether future generations 
will be able to lead an endurable life. They care about the fate of virgin 
forests in faraway places, about whether or not humankind will soon 
destroy all its non-renewable resources or whether a global dictatorship 
of advertisement, consumerism and blood-and-thunder stories on TV will 
ultimately lead the human race to a state of complete idiocy. 



And where do intellectuals stand in relation to politics? There have 
been many misunderstandings about that, too. My opinion is simple: 
when meeting with Utopian intellectuals, we should make every effort not 
to give in to their siren calls. If they enter politics, we should believe 
them even less. The other type of intellectuals - those who know about 
the ties that link everything in this world together, who approach the 
world with humility, but also with an increased sense of responsibility, 
who wage a struggle for every good thing - should be listened to with the 
greatest attention, regardless of whether they work as independent critics, 
holding up a much needed mirror to politics and power, or are directly 
involved in politics. These two roles are very different from each other. 
But while this is clearly so, it does not follow that we should bar such 
intellectuals from the realm of politics on the pretext that they only 
belong at universities or in the media. On the contrary: I am deeply 
convinced that the more such people engage directly in practical politics, 
the better our world will fare. By its very essence, politics induces those 
who work in it to focus their attention on short-term issues that have a 
direct bearing on the next elections instead of on what will happen a 
hundred years from now. It compels them to pursue group interests rather 
than the interests of the human community as a whole, to say things that 
please everyone and not those which people are not so happy to hear, to 
treat even truth itself with caution. But this is not a sign that intellectuals 
have no place in politics. It is instead a challenge to draw into it as many 
of them as possible. After all, who is better equipped to decide about the 
fate of this globally interconnected civilization than someone who is 
most keenly aware of these interconnections, who pays the greatest 
regard to them, who takes the most responsible attitude toward the world 
as a whole? 



Note 



The Chancellor's Lecture for 1995, Stout Research Centre, Victoria University of 
Wellington, New Zealand. Given on the occasion of the visit of Vaclav Havel, the former 
President of the Czech Republic, to the University to receive an Honorary Doctorate of 
Literature. 1995 was the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Open Society and Its 
Enemies. 



Personal Recollections of the 
Publication of The Open Society- 

E. H. Gombrich 



Karl Popper's two- volume work The Open Society and Its Enemies was 
published fifty years ago. It stands to reason that this happy event was 
preceded by a long period of preparation and uncertainty. In fact the 
publication took two-and-a-half years from the moment that he sent the 
manuscript from New Zealand to wartime England, and by that time, he 
and his wife were on the boat taking them to London to start a new life 
here at the LSE. 

Though all this is by now very long ago, fortunately I need not rely on 
my memory of these events, because I was personally much involved, and 
hence the recipient of any number of letters which I naturally kept. 
During most of the war such air letters from overseas were miniaturized 
to save space and weight, and I have no less than ninety-five such 
aerogramme forms in addition to other communications relating to his 
job here at the LSE. They make fascinating reading, and all I can try is to 
give you samples of these surviving documents. 

But first a few words about the background. Popper was seven years 
my senior, and though I had heard of him in my native Vienna, we only 
met very fleetingly. It so happened that my father, who was a solicitor, 
had spent the statutory years of his apprenticeship with Karl's father, who 



was also a lawyer, and they must have kept in touch, for Karl mentioned 
in one of his letters how helpful my father had been at the time after 
Karl's father had died. 

In any case, our friendship only dates from the spring of 1936 when I 
was a junior research fellow at the Warburg Institute, and he came to this 
country at the invitation of Susan Stebbing. One of our joint 
acquaintances must have given him my address. We both lived in horrible 
bedsitters in the Paddington area, and we met with increasing frequency. I 
still remember having been incautious enough to mention that I had read 
a pamphlet by Rudolf Carnap on the question of other minds, and found it 
interesting. Karl was visibly distressed. "I am greatly disappointed that 
you found that interesting," he said, and from then on I remained a little 
selective in what I told him. 

In 1936 I was twenty-seven and Popper thirty-four. My wife and I 
visited him and his wife Hennie during a stay in Vienna, and we also saw 
them during the few days they again spent in London in 1937, before 
sailing to New Zealand, which was then, as Hennie once wrote "halfway 
to the moon." 

After the outbreak of the war in 1939, I joined the Listening Post, or 
Monitoring Service, of the BBC. I remember writing to Karl, possibly 
before that date, but I do not think I received an answer. 

Then in May 1943, when the BBC had moved to Reading, I got a letter 
from him dated 16 April, the first of the ninety- five; it turned out later 
that Karl had had no idea where I lived, and only got my address almost 
fortuitously, thanks to a common acquaintance. And so begins the saga of 
the book, intertwined with that of his Readership here for which Hayek 
had asked him to apply. 

"Dear Ernst" the letter began: 

I have not heard from you for a long time and I was very glad to get your cable. I very much 
hope that all is well with you and your family. The reason why you have not heard from us 



is that I have been writing a book. The manuscript is finished; its title is "A Social 
Philosophy for Everyman." (It has about 700 pages i.e. about 280.000 words.) I believe that 
the book is topical and its publication urgent - if one can say such a thing at a time when 
only one thing is really important, the winning of the war. The book is a new philosophy of 
politics and of history, and an examination of the principles of democratic reconstruction. It 
also tries to contribute to an understanding of the totalitarian revolt against civilization, and 
to show that this is as old as our democratic civilization itself. 

Let me pause here for a moment to allow Popper's own description of his 
book to sink in: that the totalitarian revolt against civilization is as old as 
our democratic civilization itself. 

I feel that too many readers of the book were either dazzled or irritated 
by its lengthy polemics and all but missed the central point of the 
argument. The book offers an explanatory hypothesis for the persistent 
hostility to the open society. Totalitarian ideologies are interpreted as 
reactions to what is described as the strain of civilization, or the sense of 
drift which is associated with the transition from the closed tribal 
societies of the past to the individualistic civilization that originated in 
Athens in the fifth century B.C. 

You may call it a psychological diagnosis, though Karl might not have 
accepted this description without qualification. In any case, I must return 
to his letter: 

In view of the immense postal and other difficulties it is absolutely impossible to send the 
book from here to a publisher and have it sent back if it is rejected; for that would mean 
anything up to one year's delay in case of one rejection. This is why I need somebody in 
England who sends the MS to the various publishers . . . 

On 28 April, having received my consent, he sent me the manuscript, 
together with a letter and other material. 

I am ashamed that I have not written to you for such a long time ... I cannot tell you how 
much it means to me that you are there and will look after the manuscript. You have no idea 
how completely hopeless and isolated one often feels in my situation . . . But I must tell you 
what happened so far to the book since I finished it in October [1942]. I had heard that the 



paper shortage was less pressing in USA; also, the distance is smaller. For these reasons I 
sent a copy to the USA branch of Macmillan (which, I gather, is quite independent of the 
English Macmillan). At the same time I wrote to the only friend I had in the USA of whose 
address I was sure, asking him to act on my behalf. Macmillan turned the book down 
without even having read it. And this is more or less all I know after 6 months! My friend 
unfortunately seems to have done absolutely nothing although he had very full instructions. 
He did not even bother to write before February 16th, acknowledging the receipt of the MS 
which he got in December! And in this acknowledgment he wrote nothing about what he 
had done (because he had done nothing and obviously he is not going to do anything); he 
only congratulates me to [sic] my effort in writing such a big book. I don't blame him much, 
after all, it isn't his book, but you can understand what it means to get such a completely 
empty letter after waiting for six months! 

The situation is really rather dreadfiil. I feel that if one has written a book one ought not to 
be forced to go begging to have it read, and printed. 

From later conversations I know, of course, who that unreliable friend 
was, but I am not going to reveal his name. It turns out not to have been 
quite true that he did absolutely nothing. Feeling quite helpless with such 
a work which was far removed from his field, he sent it to a well-known 
professor of Political Science, at one of the ivy league universities. After 
a time the manuscript was returned to him, with a note saying that it was 
impossible to advocate the publication of a book which speaks so 
disrespectfully of Plato. 

In the parcel which I received I found a carefully drafted letter which 
Karl wanted me to send to publishers, together with the manuscript. 
There were another formidable three pages with the heading: "What 1 
should like you to do,'' giving a list of seventeen publishers with their 
addresses in the order of desirability. There are eighteen points of 
instructions, some with sub-headings a) b) c), but let me just quote item 
five: "I enclose two different title pages: 'A Social Philosophy For 
Everyman' and 'A Critique of Political Philosophy' . . . The reason why I 
have two different titles is that I am not quite satisfied with either. What 
would you say to 'A Social Philosophy For Our Time'? (Too 
pretentious?)" 



On 4 May, Karl wrote another lengthy letter revising the order of 
publishers. Up to that point we had very little idea of how the Poppers 
were actually living in New Zealand, but on 29 July Hennie sent us a very 
lively three-page letter from which I want to quote a few passages: 

We live in a suburb on the hills with a very beautiful view across Christchurch and the 
Canterbury plains. The climate is as nearly perfect as things in this world can be, very long 
summers with an abundance of sunshine; ... It gets frightfully dry ... and the raising of 
vegetables is not quite easy. I try hard in the little time I have and from October till March 
we eat only "homegrown" vegetables, mainly peas, beans, potatoes, carrots, spinach, 
silverbeet, lettuce and tomatoes. It is really never quite sufficient, but we have to make the 
best of it. The rest of the year we live chiefly on a carrot and rice diet, for economy's sake. 
Karl's salary was never adequate and is now less so than ever . . . During term-time Karl can 
only work at the week ends, but during the summer holidays he worked literally 24 hours a 
day. For the last three or four months he was in a state of almost complete exhaustion; he 
hardly went to bed because he could not sleep . . . Karl finished just two days before College 
started again. On both days which remained from our "holiday" we went to the sea and ate 
as many icecreams as we could (I had planned it long ago that we would celebrate the end 
with eating as many icecreams as we wanted). 

Poor Hennie! - What she does not say in this letter is how hard she had 
to work on the book and the correspondence, almost day and night. At a 
much later date [24 October 1944], she wrote to us: "This isn't a proper 
letter at all, I'm just rattling it off on the typewriter ... of course, 'rattling 
it off is terribly exaggerated - I'm the worst possible typist, and the 
more distance I gain from the last nightmare years of typing, the less I 
can understand how on earth I managed it." Let me add, by way of 
explanation, that Karl always wrote by hand, in the fluent, lucid script of 
a former schoolteacher. I could not but smile when I saw an item in 
Sotheby's catalogue photographed and described as "Popper's 
typewriter." I very much doubt that Karl ever touched its keyboard. He 
left it to Hennie, in what she described as the nightmare years, to type and 
retype countless versions and revisions. Not that Karl was not utterly 
devoted to her. He suffered agonies when she was ill. But he was 



convinced that the importance of his work had always to override his own 
comfort, that of Hennie, and possibly also my own, as the future was to 
show. 

Meanwhile, on 19 August I received a long letter dealing with some 
critical remarks which he had encouraged me to make on reading the 
book, for instance: "I fully agree with your remark that the humanitarian 
democratic creed of the West is historically and emotionally based on 
Christianity. But this fact has no bearing on my theory, as far as I can see. 
Or has it?" I must have expostulated to him that he ridiculed Hegel, but 
did not say a word about Schopenhauer, and he replied: 

Although Schopenhauer was a reactionary, egoistically concerned only with the safety of his 
investments (he openly acknowledges this), his absolute intellectual integrity is beyond 
doubt. To be sure, his "Will" is not better than Hegel's "Spirit." But what Schopenhauer 
says, and how he says it, sufficiently proves that he was an honest thinker; he did all he 
could to make himself understood. Hegel did not intend to be understood; he wanted to 
impress, to dazzle his readers. Schopenhauer always wrote sense, and sometimes excellent 
sense; his Critique of Kant's philosophy is one of the most lucid and worthwhile 
philosophical writings ever published in the German language. A reactionary may be 
perfectly honest. But Hegel was dishonest. 

I must not give the impression, however, that this correspondence 
frequently turned on philosophical issues. Perhaps there was only one 
other occasion, when I sent him Arthur Waley's Three Ways of Thought 
in Ancient China, because I had been struck by certain similarities 
between his analysis of the Greek situation and that described by Waley. 
Popper responded by writing that he "had always been much attracted by 
the Chinese, but always felt diffident concerning the possibility of a 
proper interpretation, considering how much Plato, for example, has been 
misinterpreted in spite of the fact that his thought and language has 
immediately influenced our own." This remained his attitude. It was 
never easy to interest him in the ideas of other civilizations because he 
felt he lacked their context. 



And now for the other theme of this symphony. On 9 December 1943 
he wrote: "A few days ago I got a truly overpowering airgraph from 
Hayek, whose indefatigable kindness to me promises no less than to 
change the whole course of my life." Hayek had been asked to find out 
whether Karl would accept a Readership at the LSE. Since the post had to 
be advertised, Hayek advised Karl "to instruct your friend who is acting 
for you over here, to apply in your name when such an advertisement is 
published, and to supply him for that purpose with all the usual 
information "- Now my poor dear friend who is acting for me over 
there," Karl continued, "you see that I have, indeed, no choice: I must 
trouble you again, much as I should like to spare you." Four days later 
Karl wrote: 

We are of course terribly excited, and shaken up in consequence of Hayek's airgraph 
concerning the LSE readership. I do not think that I shall get it, owing to the fact that I have 
so few publications; but if I don't get it, we shall be, of course, disappointed, much as we try 
to fortify ourselves against such a development. I was so nicely working along with a new 
paper on probability, and now: "My peace is gone, my heart is heavy." Don't think that I am 
ungrateful. Nobody can feel more strongly than I feel about Hayek. He must have worked 
for me like anything. And the moral effect of this on me is, of course, tremendous. 

In consequence I received more instructions from Karl, his CV, a list 
of references, and texts and testimonials he had previously had. I also 
received, then or a little later, two and a half folio pages with comments 
on the notes of the book. Karl realized, of course, that the notes seemed 
excessively long and complex, and I had also made certain suggestions. 
Needless to say he tried to prove that the arrangement he had chosen was 
the only possible one: 

I have most carefully constructed the text in such a way that it is absolutely self-contained 
for a reader who simply belongs to the educated public, and who has no scientific axe to 
grind. There is nothing in the text that is hard to understand without the notes. I have spent 
immense labour on this point. 



His comments, in fact, revealed, if that is the word, the importance 
Karl attached to his book: 

I am ... definitely against cuts. I believe that the book is of sufficient value to be sometimes 
a trifle less brief than it might be possible to make it. / do not know any work of which one 
could not say the same, often in a much higher degree. The book is written with unusual 
care; I know hardly anybody who is so scrupulous and conscientious in all details as I am; 
with the effect that, as everybody admits at once, the book achieves a rare degree of lucidity 
and simplicity; and this in a book which is, as you will admit, thronged with thoughts on 
every single page. I entirely reject the contention that there is the slightest intrinsic reason for 
cuts. The extrinsic reason that the book is a very long book, I admit. But since ordinary 
intelligent people have read through the text in one week-end, it cannot be too long. And 
regarding the prospect of selling a long book: the ordinary intelligent man does not like to 
be treated as illiterate or as an imbecile. He is ready, and even proud, to buy a thick book ... 
I know there is no page in the book which is not full with worthwhile thoughts. This cannot 
be said of so very many books. 

He was surely right. And now the period began when he kept sending 
me revisions and changes to be made to his manuscript. He was still very 
uncertain about the best title, and asked, on the 22nd: "What do you think 
of 'The Open Society and its Enemies' or of 'A Social Philosophy for our 
Time'? which latter title is of course, very pretentious." 

The winter and spring of 1943 and 1944 I had to report to him many 
disappointments, and a number of publishers who had rejected the book. I 
believe that is a story that can be told of many important books, but here I 
can document it. However, in February 1944, I got a letter from Herbert 
Read, then a director of Routledge, reporting that Hayek had sent him 
Karl's manuscript. "I am enormously impressed by it, but before 
presenting a case to my colleagues I should be glad if you would kindly 
give me a little more information about the author." This I did, and 
Herbert Read acknowledged it gratefully. 

Karl received the contract from Routledge in April 1944, but he 
instantly began to worry about the US copyright. And now he began to 
rewrite the book, and I was charged with applying these corrections to the 



manuscript. It is true that I had his approval to engage somebody to help, 
an approval which was very necessary, because, after all, I had to do my 
own work. For instance, on 30 April, he announced that he was sending 
"by the same mail eleven other airgraphs containing the corrections. 
They look more than they are," writes Karl, but to me they seemed quite 
sufficient. He expressed the hope that nobody would touch his text, 
confirming what I have also experienced: "I have only too often found 
that corrections made matters worse. To be sure, any suggestion for a 
correction proves that something is not quite in order; but only too often 
the remedy turns out to be worse than the original mistake." On 4 
September he announced in addition that he had completely rewritten 
chapter 17, which duly arrived. I hope I may quote a fuller sample of the 
type of letters which arrived so frequently: 

In my typed airgraph of today, I mentioned that, as far as Ch. 12 is concerned, only the 
Section Number Corrections have first priority. I now wish to amend this: there is also a 
false quotation which is important to replace. It is the quotation on MS p.281, from "Hence" 
in line 5 to the end of paragraph in line 7. - I suggest to correct these lines in accordance 
with my "Corr. to Ch. 12", Airgraph 4. This however would imply that the passage on p. 
281 is replaced by one that is about 2 lines longer. If this creates difficulties, then I suggest 
to replace the "Hence ..." passage by the following of about equal length: + + States may 
enter into agreements, but they are superior to agreements (i.e., they may break them). + + In 
this case, it would suffice to amend the corresponding Note 72 simply by replacing, in line 3 
of this note, "336" by + + 330 + +. If, however, there was room enough for using my 
original correction to p.281, the "336" should be replaced by + + 330 + + and 333 + +. - Of 
course, if the full corrections of Airgraphs 1 to 11(?) can be used, then Note 72 should be 
corrected in accordance with Airgraph 9. 

No wonder he wrote: "it will be a colossal job for everybody concerned. 
It was a colossal job here and I was (and am) very ill while doing it. The 
doctor has strictly forbidden any work, and I am, of course, now 
absolutely down again." 

Around that time there occurred an episode which is not recorded in 
the correspondence, and for which I shall have to rely on my memory. It 



happened when Routledge decided to publish the book in two volumes, an 
idea which, of course, much agitated Karl; all the more as it was mooted 
that paper shortage might necessitate publishing the second volume after 
a time interval. It was during these discussions that I sent a cable to Karl 
from our village post office: "Routledges [sic] want division after 
Chapter 10." A few hours later I was summoned to the post office and 
asked to explain what it all meant. The word "division" had alerted a 
censor who thought, of course, of army divisions. Luckily I was believed. 

Another complication was that Karl received a number of offers from 
other universities in New Zealand and Australia, and naturally did not 
want to give up the chance of London, but needed badly to get a decision. 
In October he reports on 

two important articles ... "Private and Public Values," the other "The Refutation of 
Determinism." A third one, under the title "The Logic of Freedom" is probably too long for 
being tackled during the vacations. When these three articles are finished, I intend to give up 
political philosophy, and to return to practical methodology, especially of the natural 
sciences. Last year I finished some papers on mathematical logic which I did not try to 
publish so far because of their length. If possible, I should like to cut them now. This is my 
working programme. Apart from that, I want to do some music. We have not been able to 
afford a piano here; I had a beautiful Boesendorfer in Vienna, and I could not bring myself 
to buying a very bad piano; besides, even the worst ones cost more than we could afford. So 
I bought a harmonium for £3-10-0; I repaired it, and it is not so bad, but I am getting 
hungry for a piano. I have had very little time for playing. 

Meanwhile he was even more impatient to receive a binding promise 
of a publication date from Routledge. All this was mixed up with the 
worries about the various offers of a post. In one of his letters he wrote: 

You kindly advise me to prefer Otago to Perth, in spite of the Cangeroos [sic]. But I think 
you don't really know enough of Australia by far: the nicest animal there (and perhaps the 
loveliest animal that exists) is the Koala bear. Cangeroos may be nice, but the opportunity of 
seeing a Koala bear is worth putting up with anything, and it is without reservation my 
strongest motive in wishing to go to Australia. 



In April 1945 another cloud appeared on the horizon. I had to write to 
him that Hayek was going to the United States for a period, and Karl 
wrote, characteristically, "As you say yourself, the whole affair is pretty 
awful; and so is the fact that 18 days after you sent your letter, the 
registrar of London University has not yet answered you." He was eager 
to leave Canterbury, for though he had many admirers and friends among 
his colleagues, the head of his department had all but persecuted him. It 
was reported to Karl that he had once said: "We know that he is too good 
for this place. This we cannot help; and nobody will hold him if he goes 
elsewhere." "The main fact", Karl explained, in a letter of 9 April, 

is the presence of somebody who works hard and endangers certain accepted standards. I 
mean standards of relaxation (all chairs are easy chairs). These difficulties have much 
increased by the writing of a book, and still more, of course, by the delay in its publication. 
- I am terribly sorry to hear that you feel so exhausted. But I can well understand it. I long to 
hear you speak of your experiences, and of what you have learned during these years. (Will 
it ever be? I am nearly 43 now, and if I don't manage to see you before I am 45, I may 
never have the opportunity: I don't think that anybody would import to England a lecturer 
over the age of 45 . . .). 

Though I know the time is getting on, I really must quote for you the 
whole story of how Karl received the news of his appointment, as he told 
in his letter of 12 June 1945: 

During the whole of April I was ill again. I am now always getting such terrible colds - 
starting with a very sore throat, and developing in all directions. I was very weak. My doctor 
insisted that I should go to the mountains during the May vacations and we went both to the 
Hermitage, at the foot of Mt Cook (the highest mountain here). I was first pretty miserable 
there, but after two days I had a marvellous recovery; we went up to a hut (the Ball Hut - 
see pictures in "Mt Cook and the Glaciers") where we were very happy. On the bus journey 
back from the Hermitage, on May 21st, in the first village (called Fairlie), the Postmistress 
came with a cable to the bus. It was addressed to "Karl Popper c/o Bus from Hermitage to 
Fairlie" and said "Congratulations on London appointment and thanks for excellent article 
enquiring about permits Frederick Hayek." It was from Cambridge, May 16th. This was the 
first we heard about it. I had given up the idea of going to London - though subconsciously 
I still beheved in it. - We were both somewhat frightened, mainly in view of my rather bad 



health, and especially the silly way in which my corpse reacts to bad weather I am sick of 
being sick, you will think me a terrible hypochonder [sic]. So do I, but my doctor (a very 
nice and kind person and an excellent doctor) says that it is unfortunately all true. Anyway, 
it cannot be helped. 

And Hennie added: "I am frightfully scared by the prospect of going to 
London: I hate meeting new people, and tea parties. I can only hope that 
tea is so rare and precious that parties have gone out of fashion!" 

The new worry arose that Hayek had offered to write a preface to the 
book. "I need not tell you that I could not accept this under any 
circumstances (1) because I am too proud to accept such an offer (even if 
it came from President Truman or John Dewey or Shirley Temple), (2) 
because it would brand the book and myself." Our correspondence had by 
then switched to the prospect of their arrival in England, and they kindly 
inquired how much they should take with them to wartime England, and 
what presents they might possibly bring. We suggested that it would be 
lovely if they could bring a cricket bat for our son, and Karl "enlisted the 
help of the very nice son of a friend of ours and now he knows all about 
cricket and bats." Not that the complaints stopped. On 25 August he 
wrote: 

Our departure problems are appalling and (but don't tell that to Routledges!) we probably 
won't be in England before the beginning of December: we have still no permits to enter 
Great Britain and I begin to fear that we won't get any. I am, of course, in continuous 
contact about this with Hayek who says that London University administration has 
completely broken down. 

So let me only quote the last letter of the sequence in full. It came from 
Auckland, and was dated 16 November: 

Dear Ernst, This time we are really off, I think. We have been allotted berths - in two 
different four-berths cabins, though - on the M.V. "New Zealand Star", sailing from 
Auckland between Nov. 28th and December 5th (according to the strike situation). It is a 
frighter [sic]. Blue Star Line, carrying normally 12 passengers, and at present (in the same 
cabins) 30. We are not terribly pleased to pay £320 for the pleasure of spending 5 or 6 very 



rough weeks in the company of strangers. I am particularly concerned about the fact that I 
cannot endure the smell of cigarets [sic] at sea without getting sick - still, I shall have to get 
used to it. The passage will be very rough since we sail via Cape Horn - perhaps the 
roughest spot in all the Seven Seas. Our corpses are expected to arrive, by the New Zealand 
Star, on January 8th or thereabouts. Please receive them kindly. If there is important news it 
can, I suppose, be wirelessed to the ship. I shall let you know more precisely when they 
arrive, and if you could find them a room in a Boarding house or Hotel (where they might 
perhaps be brought to life again), it would be very nice indeed. But I know this is practically 
impossible: so don't waste your time, if you don't happen to hear about such a room: burry 
[sic] them. To be serious, I am really cheered up by the prospect of seeing you in less than 
two months - a very short time (at my age). Yours ever, K. 

When they arrived we met them at the docks, and I was happy to be able 
to bring him the first copy of The Open Society and Its Enemies, which he 
eagerly scrutinized on the train and bus to our little semi-detached house 
in Brent. Who of us would have dared to hope on that day that despite his 
fragile health the new life he had just started would extend over nearly 
half a century, let alone predict how immensely we would all be enriched 
during these years by his ever active mind? 



Note 

* Appeared in Popper's Open Society After Fifty Years: The Continuing Relevance of Karl 
Popper, edited by Ian Jarvie and Sandra Pralong, Routledge, 1999. 



Acknowledgements 



I wish to express my gratitude to all my friends who have made it 
possible for me to write this book. Professor C. G. F. Simkin has not only 
helped me with an earlier version, but has given me the opportunity of 
clarifying many problems in detailed discussions over a period of nearly 
four years. Dr. Margaret Dalziel has assisted me in the preparation of 
various drafts and of the final manuscript. Her untiring help has been 
invaluable. Dr. H. Larsen's interest in the problem of historicism was a 
great encouragement. Professor T. K. Ewer has read the manuscript and 
has made many suggestions for its improvement. 

I am deeply indebted to Professor F. A. von Hayek. Without his 
interest and support the book would not have been published. Professor E. 
Gombrich has undertaken to see the book through the press, a burden to 
which was added the strain of an exacting correspondence between 
England and New Zealand. He has been so helpful that I can hardly say 
how much I owe to him. 

Christchurch, N.Z., April 1944. 

In preparing the revised edition, I have received great help from detailed 
critical annotations to the first edition kindly put at my disposal by 
Professor Jacob Viner and by Mr. J. D. Mabbott. 

London, August 1951. 



In the third edition an Index of Subjects and an Index of Platonic 
Passages have been added, both prepared by Dr. J. Agassi. He has also 
drawn my attention to a number of mistakes which I have corrected. I am 
very grateful for his help. In six places I have tried to improve and 
correct quotations from Plato, or references to his text, in the light of Mr. 
Richard Robinson's stimulating and most welcome criticism {The 
Philosophical Review, vol. 60) of the American edition of this book. 

Stanford, California, May 1957 

Most of the improvements in the fourth edition I owe to Dr. William W. 
Bartley and to Mr. Bryan Magee. 

Penn, Buckinghamshire, May 1961 

The fifth edition contains some new historical material (especially on 
page 3 12 of volume I and in the Addenda) and also a brief new Addendum 
in each volume. Additional material will be found in my Conjectures and 
Refutations, especially in the second edition (1965). Mr. David Miller has 
discovered, and corrected, many mistakes. 



Penn, Buckesighamshire, July 1965 



K. R. p. 



Preface to the First Edition 



If in this book harsh words are spoken about some of the greatest among 
the intellectual leaders of mankind, my motive is not, I hope, the wish to 
belittle them. It springs rather from my conviction that, if our civilization 
is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men. 
Great men may make great mistakes; and as the book tries to show, some 
of the greatest leaders of the past supported the perennial attack on 
freedom and reason. Their influence, too rarely challenged, continues to 
mislead those on whose defence civilization depends, and to divide them. 
The responsibility for this tragic and possibly fatal division becomes ours 
if we hesitate to be outspoken in our criticism of what admittedly is a part 
of our intellectual heritage. By our reluctance to criticize some of it, we 
may help to destroy it all. 

The book is a critical introduction to the philosophy of politics and of 
history, and an examination of some of the principles of social 
reconstruction. Its aim and the line of approach are indicated in the 
Introduction. Even where it looks back into the past, its problems are the 
problems of our own time; and I have tried hard to state them as simply 
as I could, in the hope of clarifying matters which concern us all. 

Although the book presupposes nothing but open-mindedness in the 
reader, its object is not so much to popularize the questions treated as to 
solve them. In an attempt, however, to serve both of these purposes, I 
have confined all matters of more specialized interest to Notes which 
have been collected at the end of the book. 



1943 



Preface to the Second Edition 



Although much of what is contained in this book took shape at an earlier 
date, the final decision to write it was made in March 1938, on the day I 
received the news of the invasion of Austria. The writing extended into 
1943; and the fact that most of the book was written during the grave 
years when the outcome of the war was uncertain may help to explain 
why some of its criticism strikes me to-day as more emotional and 
harsher in tone than I could wish. But it was not the time to mince words 
— or at least, this was what I then felt. Neither the war nor any other 
contemporary event was explicitly mentioned in the book; but it was an 
attempt to understand those events and their background, and some of the 
issues which were likely to arise after the war was won. The expectation 
that Marxism would become a major problem was the reason for treating 
it at some length. 

Seen in the darkness of the present world situation, the criticism of 
Marxism which it attempts is liable to stand out as the main point of the 
book. This view of it is not wholly wrong and perhaps unavoidable, 
although the aims of the book are much wider. Marxism is only an 
episode — one of the many mistakes we have made in the perennial and 
dangerous struggle for building a better and freer world. 

Not unexpectedly, I have been blamed by some for being too severe in 
my treatment of Marx, while others contrasted my leniency towards him 
with the violence of my attack upon Plato. But I still feel the need for 
looking at Plato with highly critical eyes, just because the general 
adoration of the 'divine philosopher' has a real foundation in his 



overwhelming intellectual achievement. Marx, on the other hand, has too 
often been attacked on personal and moral grounds, so that here the need 
is, rather, for a severe rational criticism of his theories combined with a 
sympathetic understanding of their astonishing moral and intellectual 
appeal. Rightly or wrongly, I felt that my criticism was devastating, and 
that I could therefore afford to search for Marx's real contributions, and 
to give his motives the benefit of the doubt. In any case, it is obvious that 
we must try to appreciate the strength of an opponent if we wish to fight 
him successfully. (I have added in 1965 a new note on this subject as 
Addendum II to my second volume.) 

No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just 
enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it. As to my 
criticism of Plato and Marx, this inevitable experience was not more 
disturbing than usual. But most of my positive suggestions and, above all, 
the strong feeling of optimism which pervades the whole book struck me 
more and more as naive, as the years after the war went by. My own voice 
began to sound to me as if it came from the distant past — like the voice 
of one of the hopeful social reformers of the eighteenth or even the 
seventeenth century. 

But my mood of depression has passed, largely as the result of a visit 
to the United States; and I am now glad that, in revising the book, I 
confined myself to the addition of new material and to the correction of 
mistakes of matter and style, and that I resisted the temptation to subdue 
its tenor. For in spite of the present world situation I feel as hopeful as I 
ever did. 

I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles 
spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous 
— from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows. For these troubles 
are the by-products of what is perhaps the greatest of all moral and 
spiritual revolutions of history, a movement which began three centuries 



ago. It is the longing of uncounted unknown men to free themselves and 
their minds from the tutelage of authority and prejudice. It is their 
attempt to build up an open society which rejects the absolute authority 
of the merely established and the merely traditional while trying to 
preserve, to develop, and to establish traditions, old or new, that measure 
up to their standards of freedom, of humaneness, and of rational 
criticism. It is their unwillingness to sit back and leave the entire 
responsibility for ruling the world to human or superhuman authority, and 
their readiness to share the burden of responsibility for avoidable 
suffering, and to work for its avoidance. This revolution has created 
powers of appalling destructiveness; but they may yet be conquered. 



1950 



Introduction 



I do not wish to hide the fact that I can only look with repugnance . . . upon the puffed-up 
pretentiousness of all these volumes filled with wisdom, such as are fashionable nowadays. 
For I am fully satisfied that ... the accepted methods must endlessly increase these follies 
and blunders, and that even the complete annihilation of all these fanciful achievements 
could not possibly be as harmful as this fictitious science with its accursed fertility. 

Kant. 

This book raises issues which may not be apparent from the table of 
contents. 

It sketches some of the difficulties faced by our civilization — a 
civilization which might be perhaps described as aiming at humaneness 
and reasonableness, at equality and freedom; a civilization which is still 
in its infancy, as it were, and which continues to grow in spite of the fact 
that it has been so often betrayed by so many of the intellectual leaders of 
mankind. It attempts to show that this civilization has not yet fully 
recovered from the shock of its birth — the transition from the tribal or 
'closed society', with its submission to magical forces, to the 'open 
society' which sets free the critical powers of man. It attempts to show 
that the shock of this transition is one of the factors that have made 
possible the rise of those reactionary movements which have tried, and 
still try, to overthrow civilization and to return to tribalism. And it 
suggests that what we call nowadays totalitarianism belongs to a tradition 
which is just as old or just as young as our civilization itself. 

It tries thereby to contribute to our understanding of totalitarianism, 
and of the significance of the perennial fight against it. 



It further tries to examine the application of the critical and rational 
methods of science to the problems of the open society. It analyses the 
principles of democratic social reconstruction, the principles of what I 
may term 'piecemeal social engineering' in opposition to 'Utopian social 
engineering' (as explained in Chapter 9). And it tries to clear away some 
of the obstacles impeding a rational approach to the problems of social 
reconstruction. It does so by criticizing those social philosophies which 
are responsible for the widespread prejudice against the possibilities of 
democratic reform. The most powerful of these philosophies is one which 
I have callQd historicism. The story of the rise and influence of some 
important forms of historicism is one of the main topics of the book, 
which might even be described as a collection of marginal notes on the 
development of certain historicist philosophies. A few remarks on the 
origin of the book will indicate what is meant by historicism and how it is 
connected with the other issues mentioned. 

Although I am mainly interested in the methods of physics (and 
consequently in certain technical problems which are far removed from 
those treated in this book), I have also been interested for many years in 
the problem of the somewhat unsatisfactory state of some of the social 
sciences and especially of social philosophy. This, of course, raises the 
problem of their methods. My interest in this problem was greatly 
stimulated by the rise of totalitarianism, and by the failure of the various 
social sciences and social philosophies to make sense of it. 

In this connection, one point appeared to me particularly urgent. 

One hears too often the suggestion that some form or other of 
totalitarianism is inevitable. Many who because of their intelligence and 
training should be held responsible for what they say, announce that there 
is no escape from it. They ask us whether we are really naive enough to 
believe that democracy can be permanent; whether we do not see that it is 
just one of the many forms of government that come and go in the course 



of history. They argue that democracy, in order to fight totalitarianism, is 
forced to copy its methods and thus to become totalitarian itself. Or they 
assert that our industrial system cannot continue to function without 
adopting the methods of coUectivist planning, and they infer from the 
inevitability of a collectivist economic system that the adoption of 
totalitarian forms of social life is also inevitable. 

Such arguments may sound plausible enough. But plausibility is not a 
reliable guide in such matters. In fact, one should not enter into a 
discussion of these specious arguments before having considered the 
following question of method: Is it within the power of any social science 
to make such sweeping historical prophecies? Can we expect to get more 
than the irresponsible reply of the soothsayer if we ask a man what the 
future has in store for mankind? 

This is a question of the method of the social sciences. It is clearly 
more fundamental than any criticism of any particular argument offered 
in support of any historical prophecy. 

A careful examination of this question has led me to the conviction 
that such sweeping historical prophecies are entirely beyond the scope of 
scientific method. The future depends on ourselves, and we do not depend 
on any historical necessity. There are, however, influential social 
philosophies which hold the opposite view. They claim that everybody 
tries to use his brains to predict impending events; that it is certainly 
legitimate for a strategist to try to foresee the outcome of a battle; and 
that the boundaries between such a prediction and more sweeping 
historical prophecies are fluid. They assert that it is the task of science in 
general to make predictions, or rather, to improve upon our everyday 
predictions, and to put them upon a more secure basis; and that it is, in 
particular, the task of the social sciences to furnish us with long-term 
historical prophecies. They also believe that they have discovered laws of 
history which enable them to prophesy the course of historical events. 



The various social philosophies which raise claims of this kind, I have 
grouped together under the name historicism. Elsewhere, in The Poverty 
of Historicism, I have tried to argue against these claims, and to show that 
in spite of their plausibility they are based on a gross misunderstanding 
of the method of science, and especially on the neglect of the distinction 
hQtsNQQn scientific prediction dind historical prophecy. While engaged in 
the systematic analysis and criticism of the claims of historicism, I also 
tried to collect some material to illustrate its development. The notes 
collected for that purpose became the basis of this book. 

The systematic analysis of historicism aims at something like 
scientific status. This book does not. Many of the opinions expressed are 
personal. What it owes to scientific method is largely the awareness of its 
limitations: it does not offer proofs where nothing can be proved, nor 
does it pretend to be scientific where it cannot give more than a personal 
point of view. It does not try to replace the old systems of philosophy by 
a new system. It does not try to add to all these volumes filled with 
wisdom, to the metaphysics of history and destiny, such as are 
fashionable nowadays. It rather tries to show that this prophetic wisdom 
is harmful, that the metaphysics of history impede the application of the 
piecemeal methods of science to the problems of social reform. And it 
further tries to show that we may become the makers of our fate when we 
have ceased to pose as its prophets. 

In tracing the development of historicism, I found that the dangerous 
habit of historical prophecy, so widespread among our intellectual 
leaders, has various functions. It is always flattering to belong to the 
inner circle of the initiated, and to possess the unusual power of 
predicting the course of history. Besides, there is a tradition that 
intellectual leaders are gifted with such powers, and not to possess them 
may lead to loss of caste. The danger, on the other hand, of their being 
unmasked as charlatans is very small, since they can always point out that 



it is certainly permissible to make less sweeping predictions; and the 
boundaries between these and augury are fluid. 

But there are sometimes further and perhaps deeper motives for 
holding historicist beliefs. The prophets who prophesy the coming of a 
millennium may give expression to a deep-seated feeling of 
dissatisfaction; and their dreams may indeed give hope and 
encouragement to some who can hardly do without them. But we must 
also realize that their influence is liable to prevent us from facing the 
daily tasks of social life. And those minor prophets who announce that 
certain events, such as a lapse into totalitarianism (or perhaps into 
'managerialism'), are bound to happen may, whether they like it or not, 
be instrumental in bringing these events about. Their story that 
democracy is not to last for ever is as true, and as little to the point, as the 
assertion that human reason is not to last for ever, since only democracy 
provides an institutional framework that permits reform without violence, 
and so the use of reason in political matters. But their story tends to 
discourage those who fight totalitarianism; its motive is to support the 
revolt against civilization. A further motive, it seems, can be found if we 
consider that historicist metaphysics are apt to relieve men from the 
strain of their responsibilities. If you know that things are bound to 
happen whatever you do, then you may feel free to give up the fight 
against them. You may, more especially, give up the attempt to control 
those things which most people agree to be social evils, such as war; or, 
to mention a smaller but nevertheless important thing, the tyranny of the 
petty official. 

I do not wish to suggest that historicism must always have such effects. 
There are historicists — especially the Marxists — ^who do not wish to 
relieve men from the strain of their responsibilities. On the other hand, 
there are some social philosophies which may or may not be historicistic 
but which preach the impotence of reason in social life, and which, by 



this anti-rationalism, propagate the attitude: 'either follow the Leader, the 
Great Statesman, or become a Leader yourself; an attitude which for 
most people must mean passive submission to the forces, personal or 
anonymous, that rule society. 

Now it is interesting to see that some of those who denounce reason, 
and even blame it for the social evils of our time, do so on the one hand 
because they realize the fact that historical prophecy goes beyond the 
power of reason, and on the other hand because they cannot conceive of a 
social science, or of reason in society, having another function but that of 
historical prophecy. In other words, they are disappointed historicists; 
they are men who, in spite of realizing the poverty of historicism, are 
unaware that they retain the fundamental historicistic prejudice — the 
doctrine that the social sciences, if they are to be of any use at all, must 
be prophetic. It is clear that this attitude must lead to a rejection of the 
applicability of science or of reason to the problems of social life — and 
ultimately, to a doctrine of power, of domination and submission. 

Why do all these social philosophies support the revolt against 
civilization? And what is the secret of their popularity? Why do they 
attract and seduce so many intellectuals? I am inclined to think that the 
reason is that they give expression to a deepfelt dissatisfaction with a 
world which does not, and cannot, live up to our moral ideals and to our 
dreams of perfection. The tendency of historicism (and of related views) 
to support the revolt against civilization may be due to the fact that 
historicism itself is, largely, a reaction against the strain of our 
civilization and its demand for personal responsibility. 

These last allusions are somewhat vague, but they must suffice for this 
introduction. They will later be substantiated by historical material, 
especially in the chapter 'The Open Society and Its Enemies'. I was 
tempted to place this chapter at the beginning of the book; with its topical 
interest it would certainly have made a more inviting introduction. But I 



found that the full weight of this historical interpretation cannot be felt 
unless it is preceded by the material discussed earlier in the book. It 
seems that one has first to be disturbed by the similarity between the 
Platonic theory of justice and the theory and practice of modem 
totalitarianism before one can feel how urgent it is to interpret these 
matters. 



Volume I 

The Spell of Plato 



It will be seen ... that the Erewhonians are a meek and long-suffering 
people, easily led by the nose, and quick to offer up common sense at the 
shrine of logic, when a philosopher arises among them who carries them 
away ... by convincing them that their existing institutions are not based 
on the strictest principles of morality. 

SAMUEL BUTLER. 

In my course I have known and, according to my measure, have co- 
operated with great men; and I have never yet seen any plan which has 
not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in 
understanding to the person who took the lead in the business. 

EDMUND BURKE. 



The Spell of Plato 



For the Open Society {about 430 B.C.): 

Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it. 

PERICLES OF ATHENS. 

Against the Open Society {about 80 years later): 

The greatest principle of all is that nobody, whether male or female, 
should be without a leader. Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated 
to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative; neither out of zeal, 
nor even playfully. But in war and in the midst of peace — ^to his leader he 
shall direct his eye and follow him faithfully. And even in the smallest 
matter he should stand under leadership. For example, he should get up, 
or move, or wash, or take his meals . . . only if he has been told to do so. 
In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of 
acting independently, and to become utterly incapable of it. 

PLATO OF ATHENS. 



The Myth of Origin and Destiny 



1 

Historicism and the Myth of Destiny 



It is widely believed that a truly scientific or philosophical attitude 
towards politics, and a deeper understanding of social life in general, 
must be based upon a contemplation and interpretation of human history. 
While the ordinary man takes the setting of his life and the importance of 
his personal experiences and petty struggles for granted, it is said that the 
social scientist or philosopher has to survey things from a higher plane. 
He sees the individual as a pawn, as a somewhat insignificant instrument 
in the general development of mankind. And he finds that the really 
important actors on the Stage of History are either the Great Nations and 
their Great Leaders, or perhaps the Great Classes, or the Great Ideas. 
However this may be, he will try to understand the meaning of the play 
which is performed on the Historical Stage; he will try to understand the 
laws of historical development. If he succeeds in this, he will, of course, 
be able to predict future developments. He might then put politics upon a 
solid basis, and give us practical advice by telling us which political 
actions are likely to succeed or likely to fail. 

This is a brief description of an attitude which I call historicism. It is 
an old idea, or rather, a loosely connected set of ideas which have 
become, unfortunately, so much a part of our spiritual atmosphere that 
they are usually taken for granted, and hardly ever questioned. 

I have tried elsewhere to show that the historicist approach to the 
social sciences gives poor results. I have also tried to outline a method 



which, I believe, would yield better results. 

But if historicism is a faulty method that produces worthless results, 
then it may be useful to see how it originated, and how it succeeded in 
entrenching itself so successfully. An historical sketch undertaken with 
this aim can, at the same time, serve to analyse the variety of ideas which 
have gradually accumulated around the central historicist doctrine — the 
doctrine that history is controlled by specific historical or evolutionary 
laws whose discovery would enable us to prophesy the destiny of man. 

Historicism, which I have so far characterized only in a rather abstract 
way, can be well illustrated by one of the simplest and oldest of its forms, 
the doctrine of the chosen people. This doctrine is one of the attempts to 
make history understandable by a theistic interpretation, i.e. by 
recognizing God as the author of the play performed on the Historical 
Stage. The theory of the chosen people, more specifically, assumes that 
God has chosen one people to function as the selected instrument of His 
will, and that this people will inherit the earth. 

In this doctrine, the law of historical development is laid down by the 
Will of God. This is the specific difference which distinguishes the 
theistic form from other forms of historicism. A naturalistic historicism, 
for instance, might treat the developmental law as a law of nature; a 
spiritual historicism would treat it as a law of spiritual development; an 
economic historicism, again, as a law of economic development. Theistic 
historicism shares with these other forms the doctrine that there are 
specific historical laws which can be discovered, and upon which 
predictions regarding the future of mankind can be based. 

There is no doubt that the doctrine of the chosen people grew out of the 
tribal form of social life. Tribalism, i.e. the emphasis on the supreme 
importance of the tribe without which the individual is nothing at all, is 
an element which we shall find in many forms of historicist theories. 
Other forms which are no longer tribalist may still retain an element of 



collectivism-, they may still emphasize the significance of some group or 
collective — for example, a class — without which the individual is nothing 
at all. Another aspect of the doctrine of the chosen people is the 
remoteness of what it proffers as the end of history. For although it may 
describe this end with some degree of definiteness, we have to go a long 
way before we reach it. And the way is not only long, but winding, 
leading up and down, right and left. Accordingly, it will be possible to 
bring every conceivable historical event well within the scheme of the 
interpretation. No conceivable experience can refute it.- But to those who 
believe in it, it gives certainty regarding the ultimate outcome of human 
history. 

A criticism of the theistic interpretation of history will be attempted in 
the last chapter of this book, where it will also be shown that some of the 
greatest Christian thinkers have repudiated this theory as idolatry. An 
attack upon this form of historicism should therefore not be interpreted as 
an attack upon religion. In the present chapter, the doctrine of the chosen 
people serves only as an illustration. Its value as such can be seen from 
the fact that its chief characteristics- are shared by the two most 
important modern versions of historicism, whose analysis will form the 
major part of this book — the historical philosophy of racialism or fascism 
on the one (the right) hand and the Marxian historical philosophy on the 
other (the left). For the chosen people racialism substitutes the chosen 
race (of Gobineau's choice), selected as the instrument of destiny, 
ultimately to inherit the earth. Marx's historical philosophy substitutes 
for it the chosen class, the instrument for the creation of the classless 
society, and at the same time, the class destined to inherit the earth. Both 
theories base their historical forecasts on an interpretation of history 
which leads to the discovery of a law of its development. In the case of 
racialism, this is thought of as a kind of natural law; the biological 
superiority of the blood of the chosen race explains the course of history. 



past, present, and future; it is nothing but the struggle of races for 
mastery. In the case of Marx's philosophy of history, the law is 
economic; all history has to be interpreted as a struggle of classes for 
economic supremacy. 

The historicist character of these two movements makes our 
investigation topical. We shall return to them in later parts of this book. 
Each of them goes back directly to the philosophy of Hegel. We must, 
therefore, deal with that philosophy as well. And since Hegel- in the main 
follows certain ancient philosophers, it will be necessary to discuss the 
theories of Heraclitus, Plato and Aristotle, before returning to the more 
modern forms of historicism. 



2 

Heraclitus 



It is not until Heraclitus that we find in Greece theories which could be 
compared in their historicist character with the doctrine of the chosen 
people. In Homer's theistic or rather polytheistic interpretation, history is 
the product of divine will. But the Homeric gods do not lay down general 
laws for its development. What Homer tries to stress and to explain is not 
the unity of history, but rather its lack of unity. The author of the play on 
the Stage of History is not one God; a whole variety of gods dabble in it. 
What the Homeric interpretation shares with the Jewish is a certain vague 
feeling of destiny, and the idea of powers behind the scenes. But ultimate 
destiny, according to Homer, is not disclosed; unlike its Jewish 
counterpart, it remains mysterious. 

The first Greek to introduce a more markedly historicist doctrine was 
Hesiod, who was probably influenced by oriental sources. He made use of 
the idea of a general trend or tendency in historical development. His 
interpretation of history is pessimistic. He believes that mankind, in their 
development down from the Golden Age, are destined to degenerate, both 
physically and morally. The culmination of the various historicist ideas 
proffered by the early Greek philosophers came with Plato, who, in an 
attempt to interpret the history and social life of the Greek tribes, and 
especially of the Athenians, painted a grandiose philosophical picture of 
the world. He was strongly influenced in his historicism by various 
forerunners, especially by Hesiod; but the most important influence came 



from Heraclitus. 

Heraclitus was the philosopher who discovered the idea of change. 
Down to this time, the Greek philosophers, influenced by oriental ideas, 
had viewed the world as a huge edifice of which the material things were 
the building material.- It was the totality of things — the cosmos (which 
originally seems to have been an oriental tent or mantle). The questions 
which the philosophers asked themselves were, 'What stuff is the world 
made of?' or 'How is it constructed, what is its true ground-plan?'. They 
considered philosophy, or physics (the two were indistinguishable for a 
long time), as the investigation of 'nature', i.e. of the original material 
out of which this edifice, the world, had been built. As far as any 
processes were considered, they were thought of either as going on within 
the edifice, or else as constructing or maintaining it, disturbing and 
restoring the stability or balance of a structure which was considered to 
be fundamentally static. They were cyclic processes (apart from the 
processes connected with the origin of the edifice; the question 'Who has 
made it?' was discussed by the orientals, by Hesiod, and by others). This 
very natural approach, natural even to many of us to-day, was superseded 
by the genius of Heraclitus. The view he introduced was that there was no 
such edifice, no stable structure, no cosmos. 'The cosmos, at best, is like 
a rubbish heap scattered at random', is one of his sayings.- He visualized 
the world not as an edifice, but rather as one colossal process; not as the 
sum-total of all things, but rather as the totality of all events, or changes, 
or facts. 'Everything is in flux and nothing is at rest', is the motto of his 
philosophy. 

Heraclitus' discovery influenced the development of Greek philosophy 
for a long time. The philosophies of Parmenides, Democritus, Plato, and 
Aristotle can all be appropriately described as attempts to solve the 
problems of that changing world which Heraclitus had discovered. The 
greatness of this discovery can hardly be overrated. It has been described 



as a terrifying one, and its effect has been compared with that of 'an 
earthquake, in which everything ... seems to sway'-. And I do not doubt 
that this discovery was impressed upon Heraclitus by terrifying personal 
experiences suffered as a result of the social and political disturbances of 
his day. Heraclitus, the first philosopher to deal not only with 'nature' but 
even more with ethico-political problems, lived in an age of social 
revolution. It was in his time that the Greek tribal aristocracies were 
beginning to yield to the new force of democracy. 

In order to understand the effect of this revolution, we must remember 
the stability and rigidity of social life in a tribal aristocracy. Social life is 
determined by social and religious taboos; everybody has his assigned 
place within the whole of the social structure; everyone feels that his 
place is the proper, the 'natural' place, assigned to him by the forces 
which rule the world; everyone 'knows his place'. 

According to tradition, Heraclitus' own place was that of heir to the 
royal family of priest kings of Ephesus, but he resigned his claims in 
favour of his brother. In spite of his proud refusal to take part in the 
political life of his city, he supported the cause of the aristocrats who 
tried in vain to stem the rising tide of the new revolutionary forces. These 
experiences, in the social or political field are reflected in the remaining 
fragments of his work.- 'The Ephesians ought to hang themselves man by 
man, all the adults, and leave the city to be ruled by infants ...'is one of 
his outbursts, occasioned by the people's decision to banish Hermodorus, 
one of Heraclitus 's aristocratic friends. His interpretation of the people's 
motives is most interesting, for it shows that the stock-in-trade of anti- 
democratic argument has not changed much since the earliest days of 
democracy. 'They said: nobody shall be the best among us; and if 
someone is outstanding, then let him be so elsewhere, and among others.' 
This hostility towards democracy breaks through everywhere in the 
fragments: '... the mob fill their bellies like the beasts ... They take the 



bards and popular belief as their guides, unaware that the many are bad 
and that only the few are good ... In Priene lived Bias, son of Teutames, 
whose word counts more than that of other men. (He said: "Most men are 
wicked.") ... The mob does not care, not even about the things they 
stumble upon; nor can they grasp a lesson — though they think they do.' In 
the same vein he says: 'The law can demand, too, that the will of One 
Man must be obeyed.' Another expression of Heraclitus' conservative 
and anti-democratic outlook is, incidentally, quite acceptable to 
democrats in its wording, though probably not in its intention: 'A people 
ought to fight for the laws of the city as if they were its walls.' 

But Heraclitus' fight for the ancient laws of his city was in vain, and 
the transitoriness of all things impressed itself strongly upon him. His 
theory of change gives expression to this feeling-: 'Everything is in flux', 
he said; and 'You cannot step twice into the same river.' Disillusioned, he 
argued against the belief that the existing social order would remain for 
ever: 'We must not act like children reared with the narrow outlook "As 
it has been handed down to us".' 

This emphasis on change, and especially on change in social life, is an 
important characteristic not only of Heraclitus' philosophy but of 
historicism in general. That things, and even kings, change, is a truth 
which needs to be impressed especially upon those who take their social 
environment for granted. So much is to be admitted. But in the 
Heraclitean philosophy one of the less commendable characteristics of 
historicism manifests itself, namely, an over-emphasis upon change, 
combined with the complementary belief in an inexorable and immutable 
law of destiny. 

In this belief we are confronted with an attitude which, although at first 
sight contradictory to the historicist's over-emphasis upon change, is 
characteristic of most, if not all, historicists. We can explain this attitude, 
perhaps, if we interpret the historicist's over-emphasis on change as a 



symptom of an effort needed to overcome his unconscious resistance to 
the idea of change. This would also explain the emotional tension which 
leads so many historicists (even in our day) to stress the novelty of the 
unheard-of revelation which they have to make. Such considerations 
suggest the possibility that these historicists are afraid of change, and that 
they cannot accept the idea of change without serious inward struggle. It 
often seems as if they were trying to comfort themselves for the loss of a 
stable world by clinging to the view that change is ruled by an 
unchanging law. (In Parmenides and in Plato, we shall even find the 
theory that the changing world in which we live is an illusion and that 
there exists a more real world which does not change.) 

In the case of Heraclitus, the emphasis upon change leads him to the 
theory that all material things, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, are like 
flames — that they are processes rather than things, and that they are all 
transformations of fire; the apparently solid earth (which consists of 
ashes) is only a fire in a state of transformation, and even liquids (water, 
the sea) are transformed fire (and may become fuel, perhaps in the form 
of oil). 'The first transformation of fire is the sea; but of the sea, half is 
earth, and half hot air.' - Thus all the other 'elements' — earth, water, and 
air — are transformed fire: 'Everything is an exchange for fire, and fire for 
everything; just as gold for wares, and wares for gold.' 

But having reduced all things to flames, to processes, like combustion, 
Heraclitus discerns in the processes a law, a measure, a reason, a wisdom; 
and having destroyed the cosmos as an edifice, and declared it to be a 
rubbish heap, he re-introduces it as the destined order of events in the 
world-process. 

Every process in the world, and especially fire itself, develops 
according to a definite law, its 'measure'-. It is an inexorable and 
irresistible law, and to this extent it resembles our modern conception of 
natural law as well as the conception of historical or evolutionary laws of 



modern historicists. But it differs from these conceptions in so far as it is 
the decree of reason, enforced by punishment, just as is the law imposed 
by the state. This failure to distinguish between legal laws or norms on 
the one hand and natural laws or regularities on the other is characteristic 
of tribal tabooism: both kinds of law alike are treated as magical, which 
makes a rational criticism of the man-made taboos as inconceivable as an 
attempt to improve upon the ultimate wisdom and reason of the laws or 
regularities of the natural world: 'All events proceed with the necessity of 
fate . . . The sun will not outstep the measure of his path; or else the 
goddesses of Fate, the handmaids of Justice, will know how to find him.' 
But the sun does not only obey the law; the Fire, in the shape of the sun 
and (as we shall see) of Zeus' thunderbolt, watches over the law, and 
gives judgement according to it. 'The sun is the keeper and guardian of 
the periods, limiting and judging and heralding and manifesting the 
changes and seasons which bring forth all things ... This cosmic order 
which is the same for all things has not been created, neither by gods nor 
by men; it always was, and is, and will be, an ever living Fire, flaring up 
according to measure, and dying down according to measure ... In its 
advance, the Fire will seize, judge, and execute, everything.' 

Combined with the historicist idea of a relentless destiny we frequently 
find an element of mysticism. A critical analysis of mysticism will be 
given in chapter 24. Here I wish only to show the role of anti-rationalism 
and mysticism in Heraclitus' philosophy-: 'Nature loves to hide', he 
writes, and 'The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither reveals nor 
conceals, but he indicates his meaning through hints.' Heraclitus' 
contempt of the more empirically minded scientists is typical of those 
who adopt this attitude: 'Who knows many things need not have many 
brains; for otherwise Hesiod and Pythagoras would have had more, and 
also Xenophanes ... Pythagoras is the grandfather of all impostors.' 
Along with this scorn of scientists goes the mystical theory of an intuitive 



understanding. Heraclitus' theory of reason takes as its starting point the 
fact that, if we are awake, we live in a common world. We can 
communicate, control, and check one another; and herein lies the 
assurance that we are not victims of illusion. But this theory is given a 
second, a symbolic, a mystical meaning. It is the theory of a mystical 
intuition which is given to the chosen, to those who are awake, who have 
the power to see, hear, and speak: 'One must not act and talk as if asleep 
. . . Those who are awake have One common world; those who are asleep, 
turn to their private worlds . . . They are incapable both of listening and of 
talking . . . Even if they do hear they are like the deaf. The saying applies 
to them: They are present yet they are not present ... One thing alone is 
wisdom: to understand the thought which steers everything through 
everything.' The world whose experience is common to those who are 
awake is the mystical unity, the oneness of all things which can be 
apprehended only by reason: 'One must follow what is common to all ... 
Reason is common to all ... All becomes One and One becomes All . . . 
The One which alone is wisdom wishes and does not wish to be called by 
the name of Zeus ... It is the thunderbolt which steers all things.' 

So much for the more general features of the Heraclitean philosophy of 
universal change and hidden destiny. From this philosophy springs a 
theory of the driving force behind all change; a theory which exhibits its 
historicist character by its emphasis upon the importance of 'social 
dynamics' as opposed to 'social statics'. Heraclitus' dynamics of nature 
in general and especially of social life confirms the view that his 
philosophy was inspired by the social and political disturbances he had 
experienced. For he declares that strife or war is the dynamic as well as 
the creative principle of all change, and especially of all differences 
between men. And being a typical historicist, he accepts the judgement of 
history as a moral one-; for he holds that the outcome of war is always 
just—: 'War is the father and the king of all things. It proves some to be 



gods and others to be mere men, turning these into slaves and the former 
into masters . . . One must know that war is universal, and that justice — 
the lawsuit — is strife, and that all things develop through strife and by 
necessity.' 

But if justice is strife or war; if 'the goddesses of Fate' are at the same 
time 'the handmaids of Justice' if history, or more precisely, if success, 
i.e. success in war, is the criterion of merit, then the standard of merit 
must itself be 'in flux'. Heraclitus meets this problem by his relativism, 
and by his doctrine of the identity of opposites. This springs from his 
theory of change (which remains the basis of Plato's and even more of 
Aristotle's theory). A changing thing must give up some property and 
acquire the opposite property. It is not so much a thing as a process of 
transition from one state to an opposite state, and thereby a unification of 
the opposite states—: 'Cold things become warm and warm things 
become cold; what is moist becomes dry and what is dry becomes moist 
. . . Disease enables us to appreciate health . . . Life and death, being awake 
and being asleep, youth and old age, all this is identical; for the one turns 
into the other and the other turns into the one ... What struggles with 
itself becomes committed to itself: there is a link or harmony due to 
recoil and tension, as in the bow or the lyre . . . The opposites belong to 
each other, the best harmony results from discord, and everything 
develops by strife . . . The path that leads up and the path that leads down 
are identical . . . The straight path and the crooked path are one and the 
same ... For gods, all things are beautiful and good and just; men, 
however, have adopted some things as just, others as unjust . . . The good 
and the bad are identical.' 

But the relativism of values (it might even be described as an ethical 
relativism) expressed in the last fragment does not prevent Heraclitus 
from developing upon the background of his theory of the justice of war 
and the verdict of history a tribalist and romantic ethic of Fame, Fate, and 



the superiority of the Great Man, all strangely similar to some very 
modern ideas—: 'Who falls fighting will be glorified by gods and by men 
. . . The greater the fall the more glorious the fate . . . The best seek one 
thing above all others: eternal fame ... One man is worth more than ten 
thousand, if he is Great.' 

It is surprising to find in these early fragments, dating from about 500 
B.C., so much that is characteristic of modern historicist and anti- 
democratic tendencies. But apart from the fact that Heraclitus was a 
thinker of unsurpassed power and originality, and that, in consequence, 
many of his ideas have (through the medium of Plato) become part of the 
main body of philosophic tradition, the similarity of doctrine can perhaps 
be explained, to some extent, by the similarity of social conditions in the 
relevant periods. It seems as if historicist ideas easily become prominent 
in times of great social change. They appeared when Greek tribal life 
broke up, as well as when that of the Jews was shattered by the impact of 
the Babylonian conquest—. There can be little doubt, I believe, that 
Heraclitus' philosophy is an expression of a feeling of drift; a feeling 
which seems to be a typical reaction to the dissolution of the ancient 
tribal forms of social life. In modern Europe, historicist ideas were 
revived during the industrial revolution, and especially through the 
impact of the political revolutions in America and France—. It appears to 
be more than a mere coincidence that Hegel, who adopted so much of 
Heraclitus' thought and passed it on to all modern historicist movements, 
was a mouthpiece of the reaction against the French Revolution. 



3 

Plato's Theory of Forms or Ideas 



I 



Plato lived in a period of wars and of political strife which was, for all we 
know, even more unsettled than that which had troubled Heraclitus. 
While he grew up, the breakdown of the tribal life of the Greeks had led 
in Athens, his native city, to a period of tyranny, and later to the 
establishment of a democracy which tried jealously to guard itself against 
any attempts to reintroduce either a tyranny or an oligarchy, i.e. a rule of 
the leading aristocratic families-. During his youth, democratic Athens 
was involved in a deadly war against Sparta, the leading city-state of the 
Peloponnese, which had preserved many of the laws and customs of the 
ancient tribal aristocracy. The Peloponnesian war lasted, with an 
interruption, for twenty-eight years. (In chapter 10, where the historical 
background is reviewed in more detail, it will be shown that the war did 
not end with the fall of Athens in 404 B.C., as is sometimes asserted-.) 
Plato was born during the war, and he was about twenty-four when it 
ended. It brought terrible epidemics, and, in its last year, famine, the fall 
of the city of Athens, civil war, and a rule of terror, usually called the rule 
of the Thirty Tyrants; these were led by two of Plato's uncles, who both 
lost their lives in the unsuccessful attempt to uphold their regime against 
the democrats. The re-establishment of the democracy and of peace 



meant no respite for Plato. His beloved teacher Socrates, whom he later 
made the main speaker of most of his dialogues, was tried and executed. 
Plato himself seems to have been in danger; together with other 
companions of Socrates he left Athens. 

Later, on the occasion of his first visit to Sicily, Plato became 
entangled in the political intrigues which were spun at the court of the 
older Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, and even after his return to Athens 
and the foundation of the Academy, Plato continued, along with some of 
his pupils, to take an active and ultimately fateful part in the conspiracies 
and revolutions- that constituted Syracusan politics. 

This brief outline of political events may help to explain why we find 
in the work of Plato, as in that of Heraclitus, indications that he suffered 
desperately under the political instability and insecurity of his time. Like 
Heraclitus, Plato was of royal blood; at least, the tradition claims that his 
father's family traced its descent from Codrus, the last of the tribal kings 
of Attica-. Plato was very proud of his mother's family which, as he 
explains in his dialogues (in the Charmides and the Timaeus), was related 
to that of Solon, the lawgiver of Athens. His uncles, Critias and 
Charmides, the leading men of the Thirty Tyrants, also belonged to his 
mother's family. With such a family tradition, Plato could be expected to 
take a deep interest in public affairs; and indeed, most of his works fulfil 
this expectation. He himself relates (if the Seventh Letter is genuine) that 
he was- 'from the beginning most anxious for political activity', but that 
he was deterred by the stirring experiences of his youth. 'Seeing that 
everything swayed and shifted aimlessly, I felt giddy and desperate.' 
From the feeling that society, and indeed 'everything', was in flux, arose, 
I believe, the fundamental impulse of his philosophy as well as of the 
philosophy of Heraclitus; and Plato summed up his social experience, 
exactly as his historicist predecessor had done, by proffering a law of 
historical development. According to this law, which will be more fully 



discussed in the next chapter, all social change is corruption or decay or 
degeneration. 

This fundamental historical law forms, in Plato's view, part of a 
cosmic law — of a law which holds for all created or generated things. All 
things in flux, all generated things, are destined to decay. Plato, like 
Heraclitus, felt that the forces which are at work in history are cosmic 
forces. 

It is nearly certain, however, that Plato believed that this law of 
degeneration was not the whole story. We have found, in Heraclitus, a 
tendency to visualize the laws of development as cyclic laws; they are 
conceived after the law which determines the cyclic succession of the 
seasons. Similarly we can find, in some of Plato's works, the suggestion 
of a Great Year (its length appears to be 36,000 ordinary years), with a 
period of improvement or generation, presumably corresponding to 
Spring and Summer, and one of degeneration and decay, corresponding to 
Autumn and Winter. According to one of Plato's dialogues (the 
Statesman), a. Golden Age, the age of Cronos — an age in which Cronos 
himself rules the world, and in which men spring from the earth — is 
followed by our own age, the age of Zeus, an age in which the world is 
abandoned by the gods and left to its own resources, and which 
consequently is one of increasing corruption. And in the story of the 
Statesman there is also a suggestion that, after the lowest point of 
complete corruption has been reached, the god will again take the helm of 
the cosmic ship, and things will start to improve. 

It is not certain how far Plato believed in the story of the Statesman. He 
made it quite clear that he did not believe that all of it was literally true. 
On the other hand, there can be little doubt that he visualized human 
history in a cosmic setting; that he believed his own age to be one of deep 
depravity — possibly of the deepest that can be reached — and the whole 
preceding historical period to be governed by an inherent tendency 



toward decay, a tendency shared by both the historical and the cosmic 
development.- Whether or not he also believed that this tendency must 
necessarily come to an end once the point of extreme depravity has been 
reached seems to me uncertain. But he certainly believed that it is 
possible for us, by a human, or rather by a superhuman effort, to break 
through the fatal historical trend, and to put an end to the process of 
decay. 

II 

Great as the similarities are between Plato and Heraclitus, we have struck 
here an important difference. Plato believed that the law of historical 
destiny, the law of decay, can be broken by the moral will of man, 
supported by the power of human reason. 

It is not quite clear how Plato reconciled this view with his belief in a 
law of destiny. But there are some indications which may explain the 
matter. 

Plato believed that the law of degeneration involved moral 
degeneration. Political degeneration at any rate depends in his view 
mainly upon moral degeneration (and lack of knowledge); and moral 
degeneration, in its turn, is due mainly to racial degeneration. This is the 
way in which the general cosmic law of decay manifests itself in the field 
of human affairs. 

It is therefore understandable that the great cosmic turning-point may 
coincide with a turning-point in the field of human affairs — the moral 
and intellectual field — and that it may, therefore, appear to us to be 
brought about by a moral and intellectual human effort. Plato may well 
have believed that, just as the general law of decay did manifest itself in 



moral decay leading to political decay, so the advent of the cosmic 
turning-point would manifest itself in the coming of a great law-giver 
whose powers of reasoning and whose moral will are capable of bringing 
this period of political decay to a close. It seems likely that the prophecy, 
in the Statesman, of the return of the Golden Age, of a new millennium, is 
the expression of such a belief in the form of a myth. However this may 
be, he certainly believed in both — in a general historical tendency 
towards corruption, and in the possibility that we may stop further 
corruption in the political field hy arresting all political change. This, 
accordingly, is the aim he strives for.- He tries to realize it by the 
establishment of a state which is free from the evils of all other states 
because it does not degenerate, because it does not change. The state 
which is free from the evil of change and corruption is the best, the 
perfect state. It is the state of the Golden Age which knew no change. It is 
the arrested state. 



Ill 

In believing in such an ideal state which does not change, Plato deviates 
radically from the tenets of historicism which we found in Heraclitus. But 
important as this difference is, it gives rise to further points of similarity 
between Plato and Heraclitus. 

Heraclitus, despite the boldness of his reasoning, seems to have shrunk 
from the idea of replacing the cosmos by chaos. He seems to have 
comforted himself, we said, for the loss of a stable world by clinging to 
the view that change is ruled by an unchanging law. This tendency to 
shrink back from the last consequences of historicism is characteristic of 
many historicists. 



In Plato, this tendency becomes paramount. (He was here under the 
influence of the philosophy of Parmenides, the great critic of Heraclitus.) 
Heraclitus had generalized his experience of social flux by extending it to 
the world of 'all things', and Plato, I have hinted, did the same. But Plato 
also extended his belief in a perfect state that does not change to the 
realm of 'all things'. He believed that to every kind of ordinary or 
decaying thing there corresponds also a perfect thing that does not decay. 
This belief in perfect and unchanging things, usually called the Theory oj 
Forms or Ideas-, became the central doctrine of his philosophy. 

Plato's belief that it is possible for us to break the iron law of destiny, 
and to avoid decay by arresting all change, shows that his historicist 
tendencies had definite limitations. An uncompromising and fully 
developed historicism would hesitate to admit that man, by any effort, 
can alter the laws of historical destiny even after he has discovered them. 
It would hold that he cannot work against them, since all his plans and 
actions are means by which the inexorable laws of development realize 
his historical destiny; just as Oedipus met his fate because of the 
prophecy, and the measures taken by his father for avoiding it, and not in 
spite of them. In order to gain a better understanding of this out-and-out 
historicist attitude, and to analyse the opposite tendency inherent in 
Plato's belief that he could influence fate, I shall contrast historicism, as 
we find it in Plato, with a diametrically opposite approach, also to be 
found in Plato, which may be called the attitude of social engineering-. 



IV 



The social engineer does not ask any questions about historical 
tendencies or the destiny of man. He believes that man is the master of 



his own destiny and that, in accordance with our aims, we can influence 
or change the history of man just as we have changed the face of the 
earth. He does not believe that these ends are imposed upon us by our 
historical background or by the trends of history, but rather that they are 
chosen, or even created, by ourselves, just as we create new thoughts or 
new works of art or new houses or new machinery. As opposed to the 
historicist who believes that intelligent political action is possible only if 
the future course of history is first determined, the social engineer 
believes that a scientific basis of politics would be a very different thing; 
it would consist of the factual information necessary for the construction 
or alteration of social institutions, in accordance with our wishes and 
aims. Such a science would have to tell us what steps we must take if we 
wish, for instance, to avoid depressions, or else to produce depressions; 
or if we wish to make the distribution of wealth more even, or less even. 
In other words, the social engineer conceives as the scientific basis of 
politics something like ?i social technology (Plato, as we shall see, 
compares it with the scientific background of medicine), as opposed to 
the historicist who understands it as a science of immutable historical 
tendencies. 

From what I have said about the attitude of the social engineer, it must 
not be inferred that there are no important differences within the camp of 
the social engineers. On the contrary, the difference between what I call 
'piecemeal social engineering' and 'Utopian social engineering' is one of 
the main themes of this book. (Cp. especially chapter 9, where I shall 
give my reasons for advocating the former and rejecting the latter.) But 
for the time being, I am concerned only with the opposition between 
historicism and social engineering. This opposition can perhaps be 
further clarified if we consider the attitudes taken up by the historicist 
and by the social engineer towards social institutions, i.e. such things as 
an insurance company, or a police force, or a government, or perhaps a 



grocer's shop. 

The historicist is inclined to look upon social institutions mainly from 
the point of view of their history, i.e. their origin, their development, and 
their present and future significance. He may perhaps insist that their 
origin is due to a definite plan or design and to the pursuit of definite 
ends, either human or divine; or he may assert that they are not designed 
to serve any clearly conceived ends, but are rather the immediate 
expression of certain instincts and passions; or he may assert that they 
have once served as means to definite ends, but that they have lost this 
character. The social engineer and technologist, on the other hand, will 
hardly take much interest in the origin of institutions, or in the original 
intentions of their founders (although there is no reason why he should 
not recognize the fact that 'only a minority of social institutions are 
consciously designed, while the vast majority have just "grown", as the 
undesigned results of human actions'—). Rather, he will put his problem 
like this. If such and such are our aims, is this institution well designed 
and organized to serve them? As an example we may consider the 
institution of insurance. The social engineer or technologist will not 
worry much about the question whether insurance originated as a profit- 
seeking business; or whether its historical mission is to serve the 
common weal. But he may offer a criticism of certain institutions of 
insurances, showing, perhaps, how to increase their profits, or, which is a 
very different thing, how to increase the benefit they render to the public; 
and he will suggest ways in which they could be made more efficient in 
serving the one end or the other. As another example of a social 
institution, we may consider a police force. Some historicists may 
describe it as an instrument for the protection of freedom and security, 
others as an instrument of class rule and oppression. The social engineer 
or technologist, however, would perhaps suggest measures that would 
make it a suitable instrument for the protection of freedom and security. 



and he might also devise measures by which it could be turned into a 
powerful weapon of class rule. (In his function as a citizen who pursues 
certain ends in which he believes, he may demand that these ends, and the 
appropriate measures, should be adopted. But as a technologist, he would 
carefully distinguish between the question of the ends and their choice 
and questions concerning the facts, i.e. the social effects of any measure 
which might be taken—.) 

Speaking more generally, we can say that the engineer or the 
technologist approaches institutions rationally as means that serve certain 
ends, and that as a technologist he judges them wholly according to their 
appropriateness, efficiency, simplicity, etc. The historicist, on the other 
hand, would rather attempt to find out the origin and destiny of these 
institutions in order to assess the 'true role' played by them in the 
development of history — evaluating them, for instance, as 'willed by 
God', or as 'willed by Fate', or as 'serving important historical trends', 
etc. All this does not mean that the social engineer or technologist will be 
committed to the assertion that institutions are means to ends, or 
instruments; he may be well aware of the fact that they are, in many 
important respects, very different from mechanical instruments or 
machines. He will not forget, for example, that they 'grow' in a way 
which is similar (although by no means equal) to the growth of 
organisms, and that this fact is of great importance for social engineering. 
He is not committed to an 'instrumentalist' philosophy of social 
institutions. (Nobody will say that an orange is din instrument, or a means 
to an end; but we often look upon oranges as means to ends, for example, 
if we wish to eat them, or, perhaps, to make our living by selling them.) 

The two attitudes, historicism and social engineering, occur sometimes 
in typical combinations. The earliest and probably the most influential 
example of these is the social and political philosophy of Plato. It 
combines, as it were, some fairly obvious technological elements in the 



foreground, with a background dominated by an elaborate display of 
typically historicist features. The combination is representative of quite a 
number of social and political philosophers who produced what have been 
later described as Utopian systems. All these systems recommend some 
kind of social engineering, since they demand the adoption of certain 
institutional means, though not always very realistic ones, for the 
achievement of their ends. But when we proceed to a consideration of 
these ends, then we frequently find that they are determined by 
historicism. Plato's political ends, especially, depend to a considerable 
extent on his historicist doctrines. First, it is his aim to escape the 
Heraclitean flux, manifested in social revolution and historical decay. 
Secondly, he believes that this can be done by establishing a state which 
is so perfect that it does not participate in the general trend of historical 
development. Thirdly, he believes that the model or original of his 
perfect state can be found in the distant past, in a Golden Age which 
existed in the dawn of history; for if the world decays in time, then we 
must find increasing perfection the further we go back into the past. The 
perfect state is something like the first ancestor, the primogenitor, of the 
later states, which are, as it were, the degenerate offspring of this perfect, 
or best, or 'ideal' state—; an ideal state which is not a mere phantasm, nor 
a dream, nor an 'idea in our mind', but which is, in view of its stability, 
more real than all those decaying societies which are in flux, and liable to 
pass away at any moment. 

Thus even Plato's political end, the best state, is largely dependent on 
his historicism; and what is true of his philosophy of the state can be 
extended, as already indicated, to his general philosophy of 'all things', 
to his Theory of Forms or Ideas. 



V 



The things in flux, the degenerate and decaying things, are (like the state) 
the offspring, the children, as it were, of perfect things. And like children, 
they are copies of their original primogenitors. The father or original of a 
thing in flux is what Plato calls its 'Form' or its 'Pattern' or its 'Idea'. As 
before, we must insist that the Form or Idea, in spite of its name, is no 
'idea in our mind'; it is not a phantasm, nor a dream, but a real thing. It 
is, indeed, more real than all the ordinary things which are in flux, and 
which, in spite of their apparent solidity, are doomed to decay; for the 
Form or Idea is a thing that is perfect, and does not perish. 

The Forms or Ideas must not be thought to dwell, like perishable 
things, in space and time. They are outside space, and also outside time 
(because they are eternal). But they are in contact with space and time; 
for since they are the primogenitors or models of the things which are 
generated, and which develop and decay in space and time, they must 
have been in contact with space, at the beginning of time. Since they are 
not with us in our space and time, they cannot be perceived by our senses, 
as can the ordinary changing things which interact with our senses and 
are therefore called 'sensible things'. Those sensible things, which are 
copies or children of the same model or original, resemble not only this 
original, their Form or Idea, but also one another, as do children of the 
same family; and as children are called by the name of their father, so are 
the sensible things, which bear the name of their Forms or Ideas; 'They 
are all called after them', as Aristotle says—. 

As a child may look upon his father, seeing in him an ideal, a unique 
model, a god-like personification of his own aspiration; the embodiment 
of perfection, of wisdom, of stability, glory, and virtue; the power which 
created him before his world began; which now preserves and sustains 
him; and in 'virtue' of which he exists; so Plato looks upon the Forms or 



Ideas. The Platonic Idea is the original and the origin of the thing; it is 
the rationale of the thing, the reason of its existence — the stable, 
sustaining principle in 'virtue' of which it exists. It is the virtue of the 
thing, its ideal, its perfection. 

The comparison between the Form or Idea of a class of sensible things 
and the father of a family of children is developed by Plato in the 
Timaeus, one of his latest dialogues. It is in close agreement— with much 
of his earlier writing, on which it throws considerable light. But in the 
Timaeus, Plato goes one step beyond his earlier teaching when he 
represents the contact of the Form or Idea with the world of space and 
time by an extension of his simile. He describes the abstract 'space' in 
which the sensible things move (originally the space or gap between 
heaven and earth) as a receptacle, and compares it with the mother of 
things, in which at the beginning of time the sensible things are created 
by the Forms which stamp or impress themselves upon pure space, and 
thereby give the offspring their shape. 'We must conceive', writes Plato, 
'three kinds of things: first, those which undergo generation; secondly, 
that in which generation takes place; and thirdly, the model in whose 
likeness the generated things are born. And we may compare the 
receiving principle to a mother, and the model to a father, and their 
product to a child.' And he goes on to describe first more fully the 
models — the fathers, the unchanging Forms or Ideas: 'There is first the 
unchanging Form which is uncreated and indestructible, . . . invisible and 
imperceptible by any sense, and which can be contemplated only by pure 
thought.' To any single one of these Forms or Ideas belongs its offspring 
or race of sensible things, 'another kind of things, bearing the name of 
their Form and resembling it, but perceptible to sense, created, always in 
flux, generated in a place and again vanishing from that place, and 
apprehended by opinion based upon perception'. And the abstract space, 
which is likened to the mother, is described thus: 'There is a third kind. 



which is space, and is eternal, and cannot be destroyed, and which 
provides a home for all generated things . . . '— 

It may contribute to the understanding of Plato's theory of Forms or 
Ideas if we compare it with certain Greek religious beliefs. As in many 
primitive religions, some at least of the Greek gods are nothing but 
idealized tribal primogenitors and heroes — ^personifications of the 
'virtue' or 'perfection' of the tribe. Accordingly, certain tribes and 
families traced their ancestry to one or other of the gods. (Plato's own 
family is reported to have traced its descent from the god Poseidon—.) 
We have only to consider that these gods are immortal or eternal, and 
perfect — or very nearly so — while ordinary men are involved in the flux 
of all things, and subject to decay (which indeed is the ultimate destiny of 
every human individual), in order to see that these gods are related to 
ordinary men in the same way as Plato's Forms or Ideas are related to 
those sensible things which are their copies— (or his perfect state to the 
various states now existing). There is, however, an important difference 
between Greek mythology and Plato's Theory of Forms or Ideas. While 
the Greeks venerated many gods as the ancestors of various tribes or 
families, the Theory of Ideas demands that there should be only one Form 
or Idea of man—; for it is one of the central doctrines of the Theory of 
Forms that there is only one Form of every 'race' or 'kind' of things. The 
uniqueness of the Form which corresponds to the uniqueness of the 
primogenitor is a necessary element of the theory if it is to perform one 
of its most important functions, namely, to explain the similarity of 
sensible things, by proposing that the similar things are copies or 
imprints of one Form. Thus if there were two equal or similar Forms, 
their similarity would force us to assume that both are copies of a third 
original which thereby would turn out to be the only true and single 
Form. Or, as Plato puts it in the Timaeus: 'The resemblance would thus 
be explained, more precisely, not as one between these two things, but in 



reference to that superior thing which is their prototype.'— In the 
Republic, which is earlier than the Timaeus, Plato had explained his point 
even more clearly, using as his example the 'essential bed', i.e. the Form 
or Idea of a bed: 'God ... has made one essential bed, and only one; two 
or more he did not produce, and never will . . . For . . . even if God were to 
make two, and no more, then another would be brought to light, namely 
the Form exhibited by those two; this, and not those two, would then be 
the essential bed.'— 

This argument shows that the Forms or Ideas provide Plato not only 
with an origin or starting point for all developments in space and time 
(and especially for human history) but also with an explanation of the 
similarities between sensible things of the same kind. If things are 
similar because of some virtue or property which they share, for instance, 
whiteness, or hardness, or goodness, then this virtue or property must be 
one and the same in all of them; otherwise it would not make them 
similar. According to Plato, they all participate in the one Form or Idea of 
whiteness, if they are white; of hardness, if they are hard. They 
participate in the sense in which children participate in their father's 
possessions and gifts; just as the many particular reproductions of an 
etching which are all impressions from one and the same plate, and hence 
similar to one another, may participate in the beauty of the original. 

The fact that this theory is designed to explain the similarities in 
sensible things does not seem at first sight to be in any way connected 
with historicism. But it is; and as Aristotle tells us, it was just this 
connection which induced Plato to develop the Theory of Ideas. I shall 
attempt to give an outline of this development, using Aristotle's account 
together with some indications in Plato's own writings. 

If all things are in continuous flux, then it is impossible to say anything 
definite about them. We can have no real knowledge of them, but, at the 
best, vague and delusive 'opinions'. This point, as we know from Plato 



and Aristotle—, worried many followers of Heraclitus. Parmenides, one 
of Plato's predecessors who influenced him greatly, had taught that the 
pure knowledge of reason, as opposed to the delusive opinion of 
experience, could have as its object only a world which did not change, 
and that the pure knowledge of reason did in fact reveal such a world. But 
the unchanging and undivided reality which Parmenides thought he had 
discovered behind the world of perishable things— was entirely unrelated 
to this world in which we live and die. It was therefore incapable of 
explaining it. 

With this, Plato could not be satisfied. Much as he disliked and 
despised this empirical world of flux, he was, at bottom, most deeply 
interested in it. He wanted to unveil the secret of its decay, of its violent 
changes, and of its unhappiness. He hoped to discover the means of its 
salvation. He was deeply impressed by Parmenides' doctrine of an 
unchanging, real, solid, and perfect world behind this ghostly world in 
which he suffered; but this conception did not solve his problems as long 
as it remained unrelated to the world of sensible things. What he was 
looking for was knowledge, not opinion; the pure rational knowledge of a 
world that does not change; but, at the same time, knowledge that could 
be used to investigate this changing world, and especially, this changing 
society; political change, with its strange historical laws. Plato aimed at 
discovering the secret of the royal knowledge of politics, of the art of 
ruling men. 

But an exact science of politics seemed as impossible as any exact 
knowledge of a world in flux; there were no fixed objects in the political 
field. How could one discuss any political questions when the meaning of 
words like 'government' or 'state' or 'city' changed with every new 
phase in the historical development? Political theory must have seemed 
to Plato in his Heraclitean period to be just as elusive, fluctuating, and 
unfathomable as political practice. 



In this situation Plato obtained, as Aristotle tells us, a most important 
hint from Socrates. Socrates was interested in ethical matters; he was an 
ethical reformer, a moralist who pestered all kinds of people, forcing 
them to think, to explain, and to account for the principles of their 
actions. He used to question them and was not easily satisfied by their 
answers. The typical reply which he received — that we act in a certain 
way because it is 'wise' to act in this way or perhaps 'efficient', or 'just', 
or 'pious', etc. — only incited him to continue his questions by asking 
what is wisdom; or efficiency; or justice; or piety. In other words, he was 
led to enquire into the 'virtue' of a thing. So he discussed, for instance, 
the wisdom displayed in various trades and professions, in order to find 
out what is common to all these various and changing 'wise' ways of 
behaviour, and so to find out what wisdom really is, or what 'wisdom' 
really means, or (using Aristotle's way of putting it) what its essence is. 
'It was natural', says Aristotle, 'that Socrates should search for the 
essence'—, i.e. for the virtue or rationale of a thing and for the real, the 
unchanging or essential meanings of the terms. 'In this connection he 
became the first to raise the problem of universal definitions.' 

These attempts of Socrates to discuss ethical terms like 'justice' or 
'modesty' or 'piety' have been rightly compared with modern discussions 
on Liberty (by Mill—, for instance), or on Authority, or on the Individual 
and Society (by Catlin, for instance). There is no need to assume that 
Socrates, in his search for the unchanging or essential meaning of such 
terms, personified them, or that he treated them like things. Aristotle's 
report at least suggests that he did not, and that it was Plato who 
developed Socrates' method of searching for the meaning or essence into 
a method of determining the real nature, the Form or Idea of a thing. 
Plato retained 'the Heraclitean doctrines that all sensible things are ever 
in a state of flux, and that there is no knowledge about them', but he 
found in Socrates' method a way out of these difficulties. Though there 



'could be no definition of any sensible thing, as they were always 
changing', there could be definitions and true knowledge of things of a 
different kind — of the virtues of the sensible things. 'If knowledge or 
thought were to have an object, there would have to be some different, 
some unchanging entities, apart from those which are sensible', says 
Aristotle—, and he reports of Plato that 'things of this other sort, then, he 
called Forms or Ideas, and the sensible things, he said, were distinct from 
them, and all called after them. And the many things which have the same 
name as a certain Form or Idea exist by participating in it'. 

This account of Aristotle's corresponds closely to Plato's own 
arguments proffered in the Timaeus—, and it shows that Plato's 
fundamental problem was to find a scientific method of dealing with 
sensible things. He wanted to obtain purely rational knowledge, and not 
merely opinion; and since pure knowledge of sensible things could not be 
obtained, he insisted, as mentioned before, on obtaining at least such pure 
knowledge as was in some way related, and applicable, to sensible things. 
Knowledge of the Forms or Ideas fulfilled this demand, since the Form 
was related to its sensible things like a father to his children who are 
under age. The Form was the accountable representative of the sensible 
things, and could therefore be consulted in important questions 
concerning the world of flux. 

According to our analysis, the theory of Forms or Ideas has at least 
three different functions in Plato's philosophy. (1) It is a most important 
methodological device, for it makes possible pure scientific knowledge, 
and even knowledge which could be applied to the world of changing 
things of which we cannot immediately obtain any knowledge, but only 
opinion. Thus it becomes possible to enquire into the problems of a 
changing society, and to build up a political science. (2) It provides the 
clue to the urgently needed theory of change, and of decay, to a theory of 
generation and degeneration, and especially, the clue to history. (3) It 



opens a way, in the social realm, towards some kind of social 
engineering; and it makes possible the forging of instruments for 
arresting social change, since it suggests designing a 'best state' which so 
closely resembles the Form or Idea of a state that it cannot decay. 

Problem (2), the theory of change and of history, will be dealt with in 
the next two chapters, 4 and 5, where Plato's descriptive sociology is 
treated, i.e. his description and explanation of the changing social world 
in which he lived. Problem (3), the arresting of social change, will be 
dealt with in chapters 6 to 9, treating Plato's political programme. 
Problem (1), that of Plato's methodology, has with the help of Aristotle's 
account of the history of Plato's theory been briefly outlined in the 
present chapter. To this discussion, I wish to add here a few more 
remarks. 



VI 

I use the name methodological essentialism to characterize the view, held 
by Plato and many of his followers, that it is the task of pure knowledge 
or 'science' to discover and to describe the true nature of things, i.e. their 
hidden reality or essence. It was Plato's peculiar belief that the essence of 
sensible things can be found in other and more real things — in their 
primogenitors or Forms. Many of the later methodological essentialists, 
for instance Aristotle, did not altogether follow him in this; but they all 
agreed with him in determining the task of pure knowledge as the 
discovery of the hidden nature or Form or essence of things. All these 
methodological essentialists also agreed with Plato in holding that these 
essences may be discovered and discerned with the help of intellectual 
intuition; that every essence has a name proper to it, the name after which 



the sensible things are called; and that it may be described in words. And 
a description of the essence of a thing they all called a 'definition'. 
According to methodological essentialism, there can be three ways of 
knowing a thing: 'I mean that we can know its unchanging reality or 
essence; and that we can know the definition of the essence; and that we 
can know its name. Accordingly, two questions may be formulated about 
any real thing . . . : A person may give the name and ask for the definition; 
or he may give the definition and ask for the name.' As an example of 
this method, Plato uses the essence of 'even' (as opposed to 'odd'): 
'Number . . . may be a thing capable of division into equal parts. If it is so 
divisible, number is named "even"; and the definition of the name "even" 
is "a number divisible into equal parts"... And when we are given the 
name and asked about the definition, or when we are given the definition 
and asked about the name, we speak, in both cases, of one and the same 
essence, whether we call it now "even" or "a number divisible into equal 
parts".' After this example, Plato proceeds to apply this method to a 
'proof concerning the real nature of the soul, about which we shall hear 
more later—. 

Methodological essentialism, i.e. the theory that it is the aim of science 
to reveal essences and to describe them by means of definitions, can be 
better understood when contrasted with its opposite, methodological 
nominalism. Instead of aiming at finding out what a thing really is, and at 
defining its true nature, methodological nominalism aims at describing 
how a thing behaves in various circumstances, and especially, whether 
there are any regularities in its behaviour. In other words, methodological 
nominalism sees the aim of science in the description of the things and 
events of our experience, and in an 'explanation' of these events, i.e. their 
description with the help of universal laws—. And it sees in our language, 
and especially in those of its rules which distinguish properly constructed 
sentences and inferences from a mere heap of words, the great instrument 



of scientific description—; words it considers rather as subsidiary tools 
for this task, and not as names of essences. The methodological 
nominalist will never think that a question like 'What is energy?' or 
'What is movement?' or ' What is an atom?' is an important question for 
physics; but he will attach importance to a question like: 'How can the 
energy of the sun be made useful?' or 'How does a planet move?' or 
'Under what condition does an atom radiate light?' And to those 
philosophers who tell him that before having answered the 'what is' 
question he cannot hope to give exact answers to any of the 'how' 
questions, he will reply, if at all, by pointing out that he much prefers that 
modest degree of exactness which he can achieve by his methods to the 
pretentious muddle which they have achieved by theirs. 

As indicated by our example, methodological nominalism is nowadays 
fairly generally accepted in the natural sciences. The problems of the 
social sciences, on the other hand, are still for the most part treated by 
essentialist methods. This is, in my opinion, one of the main reasons for 
their backwardness. But many who have noticed this situation— judge it 
differently. They believe that the difference in method is necessary, and 
that it reflects an 'essential' difference between the 'natures' of these two 
fields of research. 

The arguments usually offered in support of this view emphasize the 
importance of change in society, and exhibit other aspects of historicism. 
The physicist, so runs a typical argument, deals with objects like energy 
or atoms which, though changing, retain a certain degree of constancy. He 
can describe the changes encountered by these relatively unchanging 
entities, and does not have to construct or detect essences or Forms or 
similar unchanging entities in order to obtain something permanent on 
which he can make definite pronouncements. The social scientist, 
however, is in a very different position. His whole field of interest is 
changing. There are no permanent entities in the social realm, where 



everything is under the sway of historical flux. How, for instance, can we 
study government? How could we identify it in the diversity of 
governmental institutions, found in different states at different historical 
periods, without assuming that they have somQthing essentially in 
common? We call an institution a government if we think that it is 
essentially a government, i.e. if it complies with our intuition of what a 
government is, an intuition which we can formulate in a definition. The 
same would hold good for other sociological entities, such as 
'civilization'. We must grasp their essence, so the historicist argument 
concludes, and lay it down in the form of a definition. 

These modem arguments are, I think, very similar to those reported 
above which, according to Aristotle, led Plato to his doctrine of Forms or 
Ideas. The only difference is that Plato (who did not accept the atomic 
theory and knew nothing about energy) applied his doctrine to the realm 
of physics also, and thus to the world as a whole. We have here an 
indication of the fact that, in the social sciences, a discussion of Plato's 
methods may be topical even to-day. 

Before proceeding to Plato's sociology and to the use he made of his 
methodological essentialism in that field, I wish to make it quite clear 
that I am confining my treatment of Plato to his historicism, and to his 
'best state'. I must therefore warn the reader not to expect a 
representation of the whole of Plato's philosophy, or what may be called 
a 'fair and just' treatment of Platonism. My attitude towards historicism 
is one of frank hostility, based upon the conviction that historicism is 
futile, and worse than that. My survey of the historicist features of 
Platonism is therefore strongly critical. Although I admire much in 
Plato's philosophy, far beyond those parts which I believe to be Socratic, 
I do not take it as my task to add to the countless tributes to his genius. I 
am, rather, bent on destroying what is in my opinion mischievous in this 
philosophy. It is the totalitarian tendency of Plato's political philosophy 



which I shall try to analyse, and to criticize.— 



Plato's Descriptive Sociology 



4 

Change and Rest 



Plato was one of the first social scientists and undoubtedly by far the 
most influential. In the sense in which the term 'sociology' was 
understood by Comte, Mill, and Spencer, he was a sociologist; that is to 
say, he successfully applied his idealist method to an analysis of the 
social life of man, and of the laws of its development as well as the laws 
and conditions of its stability. In spite of Plato's great influence, this side 
of his teaching has been little noticed. This seems to be due to two 
factors. First of all, much of Plato's sociology is presented by him in such 
close connection with his ethical and political demands that the 
descriptive elements have been largely overlooked. Secondly, many of 
his thoughts were taken so much for granted that they were simply 
absorbed unconsciously and therefore uncritically. It is mainly in this 
way that his sociological theories became so influential. 

Plato's sociology is an ingenious blend of speculation with acute 
observation of facts. Its speculative setting is, of course, the theory of 
Forms and of universal flux and decay, of generation and degeneration. 
But on this idealist foundation Plato constructs an astonishingly realistic 
theory of society, capable of explaining the main trends in the historical 
development of the Greek city-states as well as the social and political 
forces at work in his own day. 



I 



The speculative or metaphysical setting of Plato's theory of social change 
has already been sketched. It is the world of unchanging Forms or Ideas, 
of which the world of changing things in space and time is the offspring. 
The Forms or Ideas are not only unchanging, indestructible, and 
incorruptible, but also perfect, true, real, and good; in fact, 'good' is 
once, in thQ Republic-, explained as 'everything that preserves', and 
'evil' as 'everything that destroys or corrupts'. The perfect and good 
Forms or Ideas are prior to the copies, the sensible things, and they are 
something like primogenitors or starting points- of all the changes in the 
world of flux. This view is used for evaluating the general trend and main 
direction of all changes in the world of sensible things. For if the starting 
point of all change is perfect and good, then change can only be a 
movement that leads away from the perfect and good; it must be directed 
towards the imperfect and the evil, towards corruption. 

This theory can be developed in detail. The more closely a sensible 
thing resembles its Form or Idea, the less corruptible it must be, since the 
Forms themselves are incorruptible. But sensible or generated things are 
not perfect copies; indeed, no copy can be perfect, since it is only an 
imitation of the true reality, only appearance and illusion, not the truth. 
Accordingly, no sensible things (except perhaps the most excellent ones) 
resemble their Forms sufficiently closely to be unchangeable. 'Absolute 
and eternal immutability is assigned only to the most divine of all things, 
and bodies do not belong to this order'-, says Plato. A sensible or 
generated thing — such as a physical body, or a human soul — if it is a 
good copy, may change only very little at first; and the most ancient 
change or motion — the motion of the soul — is still 'divine' (as opposed 
to secondary and tertiary changes). But every change, however small. 



must make it different, and thus less perfect, by reducing its resemblance 
to its Form. In this way, the thing becomes more changeable with every 
change, and more corruptible, since it becomes further removed from its 
Form which is its 'cause of immobility and of being at rest', as Aristotle 
says, who paraphrases Plato's doctrine as follows: 'Things are generated 
by participating in the Form, and they decay by losing the Form.' This 
process of degeneration, slow at first and more rapid afterwards — ^this 
law of decline and fall — is dramatically described by Plato in the Laws, 
the last of his great dialogues. The passage deals primarily with the 
destiny of the human soul, but Plato makes it clear that it holds for all 
things that 'share in soul', by which he means all living things. 'AH 
things that share in soul change', he writes, '... and while they change, 
they are carried along by the order and law of destiny. The smaller the 
change in their character, the less significant is the beginning decline in 
their level of rank. But when the change increases, and with it the 
iniquity, then they fall — down into the abyss and what is known as the 
infernal regions.' (In the continuation of the passage, Plato mentions the 
possibility that 'soul gifted with an exceptionally large share of virtue 
can, by force of its own will if it is in communion with the divine 
virtue, become supremely virtuous and move to an exalted region'. The 
problem of the exceptional soul which can save itself — and perhaps 
others — from the general law of destiny will be discussed in chapter 8.) 
Earlier in the Laws, Plato summarizes his doctrine of change: 'Any 
change whatever, except the change of an evil thing, is the gravest of all 
the treacherous dangers that can befall a thing — ^whether it is now a 
change of season, or of wind, or of the diet of the body, or of the 
character of the soul.' And he adds, for the sake of emphasis: 'This 
statement applies to everything, with the sole exception, as I said just 
now, of something evil.' In brief, Plato teaches that change is evil, and 
that rest is divine. 



We see now that Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas implies a certain 
trend in the development of the world in flux. It leads to the law that the 
corruptibility of all things in that world must continually increase. It is 
not so much a rigid law of universally increasing corruption, but rather a 
law of increasing corruptibility; that is to say, the danger or the 
likelihood of corruption increases, but exceptional developments in the 
other direction are not excluded. Thus it is possible, as the last quotations 
indicate, that a very good soul may defy change and decay, and that a 
very evil thing, for instance a very evil city, may be improved by 
changing it. (In order that such an improvement should be of any value, 
we would have to try to make it permanent, i.e. to arrest all further 
change.) 

In full accordance with this general theory is Plato's story, in the 
Timaeus, of the origin of species. According to this story, man, the 
highest of animals, is generated by the gods; the other species originate 
from him by a process of corruption and degeneration. First, certain men 
— the cowards and villains — degenerate into women. Those who are 
lacking wisdom degenerate step by step into the lower animals. Birds, we 
hear, came into being through the transformation of harmless but too 
easy-going people who would trust their senses too much; 'land animals 
came from men who had no interest in philosophy' ; and fishes, including 
shell-fish, 'degenerated from the most foolish, stupid, and ... unworthy' 
of all men-. 

It is clear that this theory can be applied to human society, and to its 
history. It then explains Hesiod's- pessimistic law of development, the 
law of historical decay. If we are to believe Aristotle's report (outlined in 
the last chapter), then the theory of Forms or Ideas was originally 
introduced in order to meet a methodological demand, the demand for 
pure or rational knowledge which is impossible in the case of sensible 
things in flux. We now see that the theory does more than that. Over and 



above meeting these methodological demands, it provides a theory oj 
change. It explains the general direction of the flux of all sensible things, 
and thereby the historical tendency to degenerate shown by man and 
human society. (And it does still more; as we shall see in chapter 6, the 
theory of Forms determines the trend of Plato's political demands also, 
and even the means for their realization.) If, as I believe, the philosophies 
of Plato as well as Heraclitus sprang from their social experience, 
especially from the experience of class war and from the abject feeling 
that their social world was going to pieces, then we can understand why 
the theory of Forms came to play such an important part in Plato's 
philosophy when he found that it was capable of explaining the trend 
towards degeneration. He must have welcomed it as the solution of a 
most mystifying riddle. While Heraclitus had been unable to pass a direct 
ethical condemnation upon the trend of the political development, Plato 
found, in his theory of Forms, the theoretical basis for a pessimistic 
judgement in Hesiod's vein. 

But Plato's greatness as a sociologist does not lie in his general and 
abstract speculations about the law of social decay. It lies rather in the 
wealth and detail of his observations, and in the amazing acuteness of his 
sociological intuition. He saw things which had not been seen before him, 
and which were rediscovered only in our own time. As an example I may 
mention his theory of the primitive beginnings of society, of tribal 
patriarchy, and, in general, his attempt to outline the typical periods in 
the development of social life. Another example is Plato's sociological 
and economic historicism, his emphasis upon the economic background 
of the political life and the historical development; a theory revived by 
Marx under the name 'historical materialism'. A third example is Plato's 
most interesting law of political revolutions, according to which all 
revolutions presuppose a disunited ruling class (or 'elite'); a law which 
forms the basis of his analysis of the means of arresting political change 



and creating a social equilibrium, and which has been recently 
rediscovered by the theoreticians of totalitarianism, especially by Pareto. 

I shall now proceed to a more detailed discussion of these points, 
especially the third, the theory of revolution and of equilibrium. 



II 

The dialogues in which Plato discusses these questions are, in 
chronological order, the Republic, a dialogue of much later date called 
the Statesman (or the Politicus), and the Laws, the latest and longest of 
his works. In spite of certain minor differences, there is much agreement 
between these dialogues, which are in some respects parallel, in others 
complementary, to one another. The Laws-, for instance, present the story 
of the decline and fall of human society as an account of Greek prehistory 
merging without any break into history; while the parallel passages of the 
Republic give, in a more abstract way, a systematic outline of the 
development of government; the Statesman, still more abstract, gives a 
logical classification of types of government, with only a few allusions to 
historical events. Similarly, the Laws formulate the historicist aspect of 
the investigation very clearly. 'What is the archetype or origin of a 
state?' asks Plato there, linking this question with the other: 'Is not the 
best method of looking for an answer to this question ... that of 
contemplating the growth of states as they change either towards the good 
or towards the evil?' But within the sociological doctrines, the only major 
difference appears to be due to a purely speculative difficulty which 
seems to have worried Plato. Assuming as the starting point of the 
development a perfect and therefore incorruptible state, he found it 
difficult to explain the first change, the Fall of Man, as it were, which 



sets everything going-. We shall hear, in the next chapter, of Plato's 
attempt to solve this problem; but first I shall give a general survey of his 
theory of social development. 

According to the Republic, the original or primitive form of society, 
and at the same time, the one that resembles the Form or Idea of a state 
most closely, the 'best state', is a kingship of the wisest and most godlike 
of men. This ideal city-state is so near perfection that it is hard to 
understand how it can ever change. Still, a change does take place; and 
with it enters Heraclitus' strife, the driving force of all movement. 
According to Plato, internal strife, class war, fomented by self-interest 
and especially material or economic self-interest, is the main force of 
'social dynamics'. The Marxian formula 'The history of all hitherto 
existing societies is a history of class struggle'- fits Plato's historicism 
nearly as well as that of Marx. The four most conspicuous periods or 
'landmarks in the history of political degeneration', and, at the same 
time, 'the most important ... varieties of existing states'-, are described 
by Plato in the following order. First after the perfect state comes 
'timarchy' or 'timocracy', the rule of the noble who seek honour and 
fame; secondly, oligarchy, the rule of the rich families; 'next in order, 
democracy is born', the rule of liberty which means lawlessness; and last 
comes 'tyranny . . . the fourth and final sickness of the city'—. 

As can be seen from the last remark, Plato looks upon history, which to 
him is a history of social decay, as if it were the history of an illness: the 
patient is society; and, as we shall see later, the statesman ought to be a 
physician (and vice versa) — a healer, a saviour. Just as the description of 
the typical course of an illness is not always applicable to every 
individual patient, so is Plato's historical theory of social decay not 
intended to apply to the development of every individual city. But it is 
intended to describe both the original course of development by which 
the main forms of constitutional decay were first generated, and the 



typical course of social change—. We see that Plato aimed at setting out a 
system of historical periods, governed by a law of evolution; in other 
words, he aimed at a historicist theory of society. This attempt was 
revived by Rousseau, and was made fashionable by Comte and Mill, and 
by Hegel and Marx; but considering the historical evidence then 
available, Plato's system of historical periods was just as good as that of 
any of these modern historicists. (The main difference lies in the 
evaluation of the course taken by history. While the aristocrat Plato 
condemned the development he described, these modern authors 
applauded it, believing as they did in a law of historical progress.) 

Before discussing Plato's perfect state in any detail, I shall give a brief 
sketch of his analysis of the role played by economic motives and the 
class struggle in the process of transition between the four decaying 
forms of the state. The first form into which the perfect state degenerates, 
timocracy, the rule of the ambitious noblemen, is said to be in nearly all 
respects similar to the perfect state itself. It is important to note that 
Plato explicitly identified this best and oldest among the existing states 
with the Dorian constitution of Sparta and Crete, and that these two tribal 
aristocracies did in fact represent the oldest existing forms of political 
life within Greece. Most of Plato's excellent description of their 
institutions is given in certain parts of his description of the best or 
perfect state, to which timocracy is so similar. (Through his doctrine of 
the similarity between Sparta and the perfect state, Plato became one of 
the most successful propagators of what I should like to call 'the Great 
Myth of Sparta' — the perennial and influential myth of the supremacy of 
the Spartan constitution and way of life.) 

The main difference between the best or ideal state and timocracy is 
that the latter contains an element of instability; the once united 
patriarchal ruling class is now disunited, and it is this disunity which 
leads to the next step, to its degeneration into oligarchy. Disunion is 



brought about by ambition. 'First', says Plato, speaking of the young 
timocrat, 'he hears his mother complaining that her husband is not one of 
the rulers Thus he becomes ambitious and longs for distinction. But 
decisive in bringing about the next change are competitive and 
acquisitive social tendencies. 'We must describe', says Plato, 'how 
timocracy changes into oligarchy . . . Even a blind man must see how it 
changes ... It is the treasure house that ruins this constitution. They' (the 
timocrats) 'begin by creating opportunities for showing off and spending 
money, and to this end they twist the laws, and they and their wives 
disobey them and they try to outrival one another.' In this way arises 
the first class conflict: that between virtue and money, or between the 
old-established ways of feudal simplicity and the new ways of wealth. 
The transition to oligarchy is completed when the rich establish a law that 
'disqualifies from public office all those whose means do not reach the 
stipulated amount. This change is imposed by force of arms, should 
threats and blackmail not succeed . . . ' 

With the establishment of the oligarchy, a state of potential civil war 
between the oligarchs and the poorer classes is reached: 'just as a sick 
body ... is sometimes at strife with itself . . ., so is this sick city. It falls ill 
and makes war on itself on the slightest pretext, whenever the one party 
or the other manages to obtain help from outside, the one from an 
oligarchic city, or the other from a democracy. And does not this sick 
state break out at times into civil war, even without any such help from 
outside?'— This civil war begets democracy: 'Democracy is born ... 
when the poor win the day, killing some . . ., banishing others, and sharing 
with the rest the rights of citizenship and of public offices, on terms of 
equality . . . ' 

Plato's description of democracy is a vivid but intensely hostile and 
unjust parody of the political life of Athens, and of the democratic creed 
which Pericles had formulated in a manner which has never been 



surpassed, about three years before Plato was born. (Pericles' programme 
is discussed in chapter 10, below—.) Plato's description is a brilliant 
piece of political propaganda, and we can appreciate what harm it must 
have done if we consider, for instance, that a man like Adam, an excellent 
scholar and editor of thQ Republic, is unable to resist the rhetoric of 
Plato's denunciation of his native city. 'Plato's description of the genesis 
of the democratic man', Adam— writes, 'is one of the most royal and 
magnificent pieces of writing in the whole range of literature, whether 
ancient or modern.' And when the same writer continues: 'the description 
of the democratic man as the chameleon of the human society paints him 
for all time\ then we see that Plato has succeeded at least in turning this 
thinker against democracy, and we may wonder how much damage his 
poisonous writing has done when presented, unopposed, to lesser minds. 

It seems that often when Plato's style, to use a phrase of Adam's—, 
becomes a 'full tide of lofty thoughts and images and words', he is in 
urgent need of a cloak to cover up the rags and tatters of his 
argumentation, or even, as in the present case, the complete absence of 
rational arguments. In their stead he uses invective, identifying liberty 
with lawlessness, freedom with licence, and equality before the law with 
disorder. Democrats are described as profligate and niggardly, as 
insolent, lawless, and shameless, as fierce and as terrible beasts of prey, 
as gratifying every whim, as living solely for pleasure, and for 
unnecessary and unclean desires. ('They fill their bellies like the beasts', 
was Heraclitus' way of putting it.) They are accused of calling 'reverence 
a folly temperance they call cowardice moderation and orderly 
expenditure they call meanness and boorishness'— , etc. 'And there are 
more trifles of this kind', says Plato, when the flood of his rhetorical 
abuse begins to abate, 'the schoolmaster fears and flatters his pupils 
and old men condescend to the young ... in order to avoid the appearance 
of being sour and despotic' (It is Plato the Master of the Academy who 



puts this into the mouth of Socrates, forgetting that the latter had never 
been a schoolmaster, and that even as an old man he had never appeared 
to be sour or despotic. He had always loved, not to 'condescend' to the 
young, but to treat them, for instance the young Plato, as his companions 
and friends. Plato himself, we have reason to believe, was less ready to 
'condescend', and to discuss matters with his pupils.) 'But the height of 
all this abundance of freedom ... is reached', Plato continues, 'when 
slaves, male as well as female, who have been bought on the market, are 
every whit as free as those whose property they are . . . And what is the 
cumulative effect of all this? That the citizens' hearts become so very 
tender that they get irritated at the mere sight of anything like slavery and 
do not suffer anybody to submit to its presence ... so that they may have 
no master over them.' Here, after all, Plato pays homage to his native 
city, even though he does it unwittingly. It will for ever remain one of the 
greatest triumphs of Athenian democracy that it treated slaves humanely, 
and that in spite of the inhuman propaganda of philosophers like Plato 
himself and Aristotle it came, as he witnesses, very close to abolishing 
slavery.— 

Of much greater merit, although it too is inspired by hatred, is Plato's 
description of tyranny and especially of the transition to it. He insists that 
he describes things which he has seen himself—; no doubt, the allusion is 
to his experiences at the court of the older Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse. 
The transition from democracy to tyranny, Plato says, is most easily 
brought about by a popular leader who knows how to exploit the class 
antagonism between the rich and the poor within the democratic state, 
and who succeeds in building up a bodyguard or a private army of his 
own. The people who have hailed him first as the champion of freedom 
are soon enslaved; and then they must fight for him, in 'one war after 
another which he must stir up . . . because he must make the people feel 



the need of a general'—. With tyranny, the most abject state is reached. 

A very similar survey of the various forms of government can be found 
in the Statesman, where Plato discusses 'the origin of the tyrant and king, 
o f oligarchies and aristocracies, and of democracies'—. Again we find 
that the various forms of existing governments are explained as debased 
copies of the true model or Form of the state, of the perfect state, the 
standard of all imitations, which is said to have existed in the ancient 
times of Cronos, father of Zeus. One difference is that Plato here 
distinguishes six types of debased states; but this difference is 
unimportant, especially if we remember that Plato says in the Republic— 
that the four types discussed are not exhaustive, and that there are some 
intermediate stages. The six types are arrived at, in the Statesman, by first 
distinguishing between three forms of government, the rule of one man, 
of a few, and of the many. Each of these is then subdivided into two 
types, of which one is comparatively good and the other bad, according to 
whether or not they imitate 'the only true original' by copying and 
preserving its ancient laws—. In this way, three conservative or lawful 
and three utterly depraved or lawless forms are distinguished; monarchy, 
aristocracy, and a conservative form of democracy are the lawful 
imitations, in order of merit. But democracy changes into its lawless 
form, and deteriorates further, through oligarchy, the lawless rule of the 
few, into a lawless rule of the one, tyranny, which, just as Plato has said 
in the Republic, is the worst of all. 

That tyranny, the most evil state, need not be the end of the 
development is indicated in a passage in the Laws which partly repeats, 
and partly— connects with, the story of the Statesman. 'Give me a state 
governed by a young tyrant', exclaims Plato there, '... who has the good 
fortune to be the contemporary of a great legislator, and to meet him by 
some happy accident. What more could a god do for a city which he 
wants to make happy?' Tyranny, the most evil state, may be reformed in 



this way. (This agrees with the remark in the Laws, quoted above, that all 
change is evil, 'except the change of an evil thing'. There is little doubt 
that Plato, when speaking of the great lawgiver and the young tyrant, 
must have been thinking of himself and his various experiments with 
young tyrants, and especially of his attempts at reforming the younger 
Dionysius' tyranny over Syracuse. These ill-fated experiments will be 
discussed later.) 

One of the main objects of Plato's analysis of political developments is 
to ascertain the driving force of all historical change. In theZaw^, the 
historical survey is explicitly undertaken with this aim in view: 'Have not 
uncounted thousands of cities been born during this time . . . and has not 
each of them been under all kinds of government? . . . Let us, if we can, 
get hold of the cause of so much change. I hope that we may thus reveal 
the secret both of the birth of constitutions, and also of their changes.'— 
As the result of these investigations he discovers the sociological law that 
internal disunion, class war fomented by the antagonism of economic 
class interests, is the driving force of all political revolutions. But Plato's 
formulation of this fundamental law goes even further. He insists that 
only internal sedition within the ruling class itself can weaken it so much 
that its rule can be overthrown. 'Changes in any constitution originate, 
without exception, within the ruling class itself, and only when this class 
becomes the seat of disunion'—, is his formula in the Republic, and in the 
Laws he says (possibly referring to this passage of \hQ Republic): 'How 
can a kingship, or any other form of government, ever be destroyed by 
anybody but the rulers themselves? Have we forgotten what we said a 
while ago, when dealing with this subject, as we did the other day?' This 
sociological law, together with the observation that economic interests 
are the most likely causes of disunion, is Plato's clue to history. But it is 
more. It is also the clue to his analysis of the conditions necessary for the 
establishment of political equilibrium, i.e. for arresting political change. 



He assumes that these conditions were realized in the best or perfect state 
of ancient times. 



Ill 



Plato's description of the perfect or best state has usually been 
interpreted as the Utopian programme of a progressivist. In spite of his 
repeated assertions, in the Republic, Timaeus, and Critias, that he is 
describing the distant past, and in spite of the parallel passages in the 
Laws whose historical intention is manifest, it is often assumed that it 
was his intention to give a veiled description of the future. But I think 
that Plato meant what he said, and that many characteristics of his best 
state, especially as described in Books Two to Four of the Republic, are 
intended (like his accounts of primitive society in the Statesman and the 
Laws) to be historical—, or perhaps prehistorical. This may not apply to 
all characteristics of the best state. Concerning, for example, the kingship 
of the philosophers (described in Books Five to Seven of the Republic), 
Plato indicates himself that it may be a characteristic only of the timeless 
world of Forms or Ideas, of the 'City in Heaven'. These intentionally 
unhistorical elements of his description will be discussed later, together 
with Plato's ethico-political demands. It must, of course, be admitted that 
he did not intend, in his description of the primitive or ancient 
constitutions, to give an exact historical account; he certainly knew that 
he did not possess the necessary data for achieving anything like that. I 
believe, however, that he made a serious attempt to reconstruct the 
ancient tribal forms of social life as well as he could. There is no reason 
to doubt this, especially since the attempt was, in a good number of its 
details, very successful. It could hardly be otherwise, since Plato arrived 



at his picture by an idealized description of the ancient tribal 
aristocracies of Crete and Sparta. With his acute sociological intuition he 
had seen that these forms were not only old, but petrified, arrested; that 
they were relics of a still older form. And he concluded that this still 
older form had been even more stable, more securely arrested. This very 
ancient and accordingly very good and very stable state he tried to 
reconstruct in such a way as to make clear how it had been kept free from 
disunion; how class war had been avoided, and how the influence of 
economic interests had been reduced to a minimum, and kept well under 
control. These are the main problems of Plato's reconstruction of the best 
state. 

How does Plato solve the problem of avoiding class war? Had he been 
a progressivist, he might have hit on the idea of a classless, equalitarian 
society; for, as we can see for instance from his own parody of Athenian 
democracy, there were strong equalitarian tendencies at work in Athens. 
But he was not out to construct a state that might come, but a state that 
had been — the father of the Spartan state, which was certainly not a 
classless society. It was a slave state, and accordingly Plato's best state is 
based on the most rigid class distinctions. It is a caste state. The problem 
of avoiding class war is solved, not by abolishing classes, but by giving 
the ruling class a superiority which cannot be challenged. As in Sparta, 
the ruling class alone is permitted to carry arms, it alone has any political 
or other rights, and it alone receives education, i.e. a specialized training 
in the art of keeping down its human sheep or its human cattle. (In fact, 
its overwhelming superiority disturbs Plato a little; he fears that its 
members 'may worry the sheep', instead of merely shearing them, and 
'act as wolves rather than dogs'—. This problem is considered later in the 
chapter.) As long as the ruling class is united, there can be no challenge 
to their authority, and consequently no class war. 

Plato distinguishes three classes in his best state, the guardians, their 



armed auxiliaries or warriors, and the working class. But actually there 
are only two castes, the military caste — the armed and educated rulers — 
and the unarmed and uneducated ruled, the human sheep; for the 
guardians are no separate caste, but merely old and wise warriors who 
have been promoted from the ranks of the auxiliaries. That Plato divides 
his ruling caste into two classes, the guardians and the auxiliaries, 
without elaborating similar subdivisions within the working class, is 
largely due to the fact that he is interested only in the rulers. The workers, 
tradesmen, etc., do not interest him at all, they are only human cattle 
whose sole function is to provide for the material needs of the ruling 
class. Plato even goes so far as to forbid his rulers to legislate for people 
of this class, and for their petty problems.— This is why our information 
about the lower classes is so scanty. But Plato's silence is not wholly 
uninterrupted. 'Are there not drudges', he asks once, 'who do not possess 
a spark of intelligence and are unworthy to be admitted into the 
community, but who have strong bodies for hard labour?' Since this nasty 
remark has given rise to the soothing comment that Plato does not admit 
slaves into his city, I may here point out that this view is mistaken. It is 
true that Plato discusses nowhere explicitly the status of slaves in his best 
state, and it is even true that he says that the name 'slave' should better 
be avoided, and that we shoulder// the workers 'supporters' or even 
'employers'. But this is done for propagandist reasons. Nowhere is the 
slightest suggestion to be found that the institution of slavery is to be 
abolished, or to be mitigated. On the contrary, Plato has only scorn for 
those 'tenderhearted' Athenian democrats who supported the abolitionist 
movement. And he makes his view quite clear, for example, in his 
description of timocracy, the second-best state, and the one directly 
following the best. There he says of the timocratic man: 'He will be 
inclined to treat slaves cruelly, for he does not despise them as much as a 
well-educated man would.' But since only in the best city can education 



be found which is superior to that of timocracy, we are bound to conclude 
that there are slaves in Plato's best city, and that they are not treated with 
cruelty, but are properly despised. In his righteous contempt for them, 
Plato does not elaborate the point. This conclusion is fully corroborated 
by the fact that a passage in thQ Republic which criticizes the current 
practice of Greeks enslaving Greeks ends up with the explicit 
endorsement of the enslaving of barbarians, and even with a 
recommendation to 'our citizens' — i.e. those of the best city — to 'do unto 
barbarians as Greeks now do unto Greeks'. And it is further corroborated 
by the contents of the Laws, and the most inhuman attitude towards 
slaves adopted there. 

Since the ruling class alone has political power, including the power of 
keeping the number of the human cattle within such limits as to prevent 
them from becoming a danger, the whole problem of preserving the state 
is reduced to that of preserving the internal unity of the master class. 
How is this unity of the rulers preserved? By training and other 
psychological influences, but otherwise mainly by the elimination of 
economic interests which may lead to disunion. This economic 
abstinence is achieved and controlled by the introduction of communism, 
i.e. by the abolition of private property, especially of precious metals. 
(The possession of precious metals was forbidden in Sparta.) This 
communism is confined to the ruling class, which alone must be kept free 
from disunion; quarrels among the ruled are not worthy of consideration. 
Since all property is common property, there must also be a common 
ownership of women and children. No member of the ruling class must be 
able to identify his children, or his parents. The family must be 
destroyed, or rather, extended to cover the whole warrior class. Family 
loyalties might otherwise become a possible source of disunion; therefore 
'each should look upon all as if belonging to one family'—. (This 
suggestion was neither so novel nor so revolutionary as it sounds; we 



must remember such Spartan restrictions on the privacy of family life as 
the ban on private meals, constantly referred to by Plato as the institution 
of 'common meals'.) But even the common ownership of women and 
children is not quite sufficient to guard the ruling class from all economic 
dangers. It is important to avoid prosperity as well as poverty. Both are 
dangers to unity: poverty, because it drives people to adopt desperate 
means to satisfy their needs; prosperity, because most change arises from 
abundance, from an accumulation of wealth which makes dangerous 
experiments possible. Only a communist system which has room neither 
for great want nor for great wealth can reduce economic interests to a 
minimum, and guarantee the unity of the ruling class. 

The communism of the ruling caste of his best city can thus be derived 
from Plato's fundamental sociological law of change; it is a necessary 
condition of the political stability which is its fundamental characteristic. 
But although an important condition, it is not a sufficient one. In order 
that the ruling class may feel really united, that it should feel like one 
tribe, i.e. like one big family, pressure from without the class is as 
necessary as are the ties between the members of the class. This pressure 
can be secured by emphasizing and widening the gulf between the rulers 
and the ruled. The stronger the feeling that the ruled are a different and an 
altogether inferior race, the stronger will be the sense of unity among the 
rulers. We arrive in this way at the fundamental principle, announced 
only after some hesitation, that there must be no mingling between the 
classes—: 'Any meddling or changing over from one class to another', 
says Plato, 'is a great crime against the city and may rightly be 
denounced as the basest wickedness.' But such a rigid division of the 
classes must be justified, and an attempt to justify it can only proceed 
from the claim that the rulers are superior to the ruled. Accordingly, Plato 
tries to justify his class division by the threefold claim that the rulers are 
vastly superior in three respects — in race, in education, and in their scale 



of values. Plato's moral valuations, which are, of course, identical with 
those of the rulers of his best state, will be discussed in chapters 6 to 8; I 
may therefore confine myself here to describing some of his ideas 
concerning the origin, the breeding, and the education of his ruling class. 
(Before proceeding to this description, I wish to express my belief that 
personal superiority, whether racial or intellectual or moral or 
educational, can never establish a claim to political prerogatives, even if 
such superiority could be ascertained. Most people in civilized countries 
nowadays admit racial superiority to be a myth; but even if it were an 
established fact, it should not create special political rights, though it 
might create special moral responsibilities for the superior persons. 
Analogous demands should be made of those who are intellectually and 
morally and educationally superior; and I cannot help feeling that the 
opposite claims of certain intellectualists and moralists only show how 
little successful their education has been, since it failed to make them 
aware of their own limitations, and of their Pharisaism.) 



IV 



If we want to understand Plato's views about the origin, breeding, and 
education of his ruling class, we must not lose sight of the two main 
points of our analysis. We must keep in mind, first of all, that Plato is 
reconstructing a city of the past, although one connected with the present 
in such a way that certain of its features are still discernible in existing 
states, for instance, in Sparta; and secondly, that he is reconstructing his 
city with a view to the conditions of its stability, and that he seeks the 
guarantees for this stability solely within the ruling class itself, and more 
especially, in its unity and strength. 



Regarding the origin of the ruling class, it may be mentioned that Plato 
speaks in the Statesman of a time, prior even to that of his best state, 
when 'God himself was the shepherd of men, ruling over them exactly as 
man ... still rules over the beasts. There was ... no ownership of women 
and children'—. This is not merely the simile of the good shepherd; in the 
light of what Plato says in the Laws, it must be interpreted more literally 
than that. For there we are told that this primitive society, which is prior 
even to the first and best city, is one of nomad hill shepherds under a 
patriarch: 'Government originated', says Plato there of the period prior to 
the first settlement, '... as the rule of the eldest who inherited his 
authority from his father or mother; all the others followed him like a 
flock of birds, thus forming one single horde ruled by that patriarchal 
authority and kingship which of all kingships is the most just.' These 
nomad tribes, we hear, settled in the cities of the Peloponnese, especially 
in Sparta, under the name of 'Dorians'. How this happened is not very 
clearly explained, but we understand Plato's reluctance when we get a 
hint that the 'settlement' was in fact a violent subjugation. This, for all 
we know, is the true story of the Dorian settlement in the Peloponnese. 
We therefore have every reason to believe that Plato intended his story as 
a serious description of prehistoric events; as a description not only of the 
origin of the Dorian master race but also of the origin of their human 
cattle, i.e. the original inhabitants. In a parallel passage in ihQ Republic, 
Plato gives us a mythological yet very pointed description of the conquest 
itself, when dealing with the origin of the 'earthborn', the ruling class of 
the best city. (The Myth of the Earthborn will be discussed from a 
different point of view in chapter 8.) Their victorious march into the city, 
previously founded by the tradesmen and workers, is described as 
follows: 'After having armed and trained the earthborn, let us now make 
them advance, under the command of the guardians, till they arrive in the 
city. Then let them look round to find out the best place for their camp — 



the spot that is most suitable for keeping down the inhabitants, should 
anyone show unwillingness to obey the law, and for holding back external 
enemies who may come down like wolves on the fold.' This short but 
triumphant tale of the subjugation of a sedentary population by a 
conquering war horde (who are identified, in the Statesman, with the 
nomad hill shepherds of the period before the settlement) must be kept in 
mind when we interpret Plato's reiterated insistence that good rulers, 
whether gods or demigods or guardians, are patriarchal shepherds of men, 
and that the true political art, the art of ruling, is a kind of herdsmanship, 
i.e. the art of managing and keeping down the human cattle. And it is in 
this light that we must consider his description of the breeding and 
training of 'the auxiliaries who are subject to the rulers like sheep-dogs to 
the shepherds of the state'. 

The breeding and the education of the auxiliaries and thereby of the 
ruling class of Plato's best state is, like their carrying of arms, a class 
symbol and therefore a class prerogative—. And breeding and education 
are not empty symbols but, like arms, instruments of class rule, and 
necessary for ensuring the stability of this rule. They are treated by Plato 
solely from this point of view, i.e. as powerful political weapons, as 
means which are useful for herding the human cattle, and for unifying the 
ruling class. 

To this end, it is important that the master class should feel as one 
superior master race. 'The race of the guardians must be kept pure'—, 
says Plato (in defence of infanticide), when developing the racialist 
argument that we breed animals with great care while neglecting our own 
race, an argument which has been repeated ever since. (Infanticide was 
not an Athenian institution; Plato, seeing that it was practised at Sparta 
for eugenic reasons, concluded that it must be ancient and therefore 
good.) He demands that the same principles be applied to the breeding of 
the master race as are applied, by an experienced breeder, to dogs, horses. 



or birds. 'If you did not breed them in this way, don't you think that the 
race of your birds or dogs would quickly degenerate?' Plato argues; and 
he draws the conclusion that 'the same principles apply to the race of 
men'. The racial qualities demanded from a guardian or from an auxiliary 
are, more specifically, those of a sheep-dog. 'Our warrior- athletes ... 
must be vigilant like watch-dogs', demands Plato, and he asks: 'Surely, 
there is no difference, so far as their natural fitness for keeping guard is 
concerned, between a gallant youth and a well-bred dog?' In his 
enthusiasm and admiration for the dog, Plato goes so far as to discern in 
him a 'genuine philosophical nature'; for 'is not the love of learning 
identical with the philosophical attitude?' 

The main difficulty which besets Plato is that guardians and auxiliaries 
must be endowed with a character that is fierce and gentle at the same 
time. It is clear that they must be bred to be fierce, since they must 'meet 
any danger in a fearless and unconquerable spirit'. Yet 'if their nature is 
to be like that, how are they to be kept from being violent against one 
another, or against the rest of the citizens?' — Indeed, it would be 'simply 
monstrous if the shepherds should keep dogs ... who would worry the 
sheep, behaving like wolves rather than dogs'. The problem is important 
from the point of view of the political equilibrium, or rather, of the 
stability of the state, for Plato does not rely on an equilibrium of the 
forces of the various classes, since that would be unstable. A control of 
the master class, its arbitrary powers, and its fierceness, through the 
opposing force of the ruled, is out of the question, for the superiority of 
the master class must remain unchallenged. The only admissible control 
of the master class is therefore self-control. Just as the ruling class must 
exercise economic abstinence, i.e. refrain from an excessive economic 
exploitation of the ruled, so it must also be able to refrain from too much 
fierceness in its dealings with the ruled. But this can only be achieved if 
the fierceness of its nature is balanced by its gentleness. Plato finds this a 



very serious problem, since 'the fierce nature is the exact opposite of the 
gentle nature'. His speaker, Socrates, reports that he is perplexed, until he 
remembers the dog again. 'Well-bred dogs are by nature most gentle to 
their friends and acquaintances, but the very opposite to strangers', he 
says. It is therefore proved 'that the character we try to give our 
guardians is not contrary to nature'. The aim of breeding the master race 
is thus established, and shown to be attainable. It has been derived from 
an analysis of the conditions which are necessary for keeping the state 
stable. 

Plato's educational aim is exactly the same. It is the purely political 
aim of stabilizing the state by blending a fierce and a gentle element in 
the character of the rulers. The two disciplines in which children of the 
Greek upper class were educated, gymnastics and music (the latter, in the 
wider sense of the word, included all literary studies), are correlated by 
Plato with the two elements of character, fierceness and gentleness. 
'Have you not observed', asks Plato—, 'how the character is affected by 
an exclusive training in gymnastics without music, and how it is affected 
by the opposite training? ... Exclusive preoccupation with gymnastics 
produces men who are fiercer than they ought to be, while an analogous 
preoccupation with music makes them too soft . . . But we maintain that 
our guardians must combine both of these natures ... This is why I say 
that some god must have given man these two arts, music and 
gymnastics; and their purpose is not so much to serve soul and body 
respectively, but rather to tune properly the two main strings', i.e. to 
bring into harmony the two elements of the soul, gentleness and 
fierceness. 'These are the outlines of our system of education and 
training', Plato concludes in his analysis. 

In spite of the fact that Plato identifies the gentle element of the soul 
with her philosophic disposition, and in spite of the fact that philosophy 
is going to play such a dominant role in the later parts of the Republic, he 



is not at all biased in favour of the gentle element of the soul, or of 
musical, i.e. literary, education. The impartiality in balancing the two 
elements is the more remarkable as it leads him to impose the most 
severe restrictions on literary education, compared with what was, in his 
time, customary in Athens. This, of course, is only part of his general 
tendency to prefer Spartan customs to Athenian ones. (Crete, his other 
model, was even more anti-musical than Sparta—.) Plato's political 
principles of literary education are based upon a simple comparison. 
Sparta, he saw, treated its human cattle just a little too harshly; this is a 
symptom or even an admission of a feeling of weakness—, and therefore 
a symptom of the incipient degeneration of the master class. Athens, on 
the other hand, was altogether too liberal and slack in her treatment of 
slaves. Plato took this as proof that Sparta insisted just a little too much 
on gymnastics, and Athens, of course, far too much on music. This simple 
estimate enabled him readily to reconstruct what in his opinion must have 
been the true measure or the true blend of the two elements in the 
education of the best state, and to lay down the principles of his 
educational policy. Judged from the Athenian viewpoint, it is nothing less 
than the demand that all literary education be strangled— by a close 
adherence to the example of Sparta with its strict state control of all 
literary matters. Not only poetry but also music in the ordinary sense of 
the term are to be controlled by a rigid censorship, and both are to be 
devoted entirely to strengthening the stability of the state by making the 
young more conscious of class discipline—, and thus more ready to serve 
class interests. Plato even forgets that it is the function of music to make 
the young more gentle, for he demands such forms of music as will make 
them braver, i.e. fiercer. (Considering that Plato was an Athenian, his 
arguments concerning music proper appear to me almost incredible in 
their superstitious intolerance, especially if compared with a more 
enlightened contemporary criticism—. But even now he has many 



musicians on his side, possibly because they are flattered by his high 
opinion of the importance of music, i.e. of its political power. The same 
is true of educationists, and even more of philosophers, since Plato 
demands that they should rule; a demand which will be discussed in 
chapter 8.) 

The political principle that determines the education of the soul, 
namely, the preservation of the stability of the state, determines also that 
of the body. The aim is simply that of Sparta. While the Athenian citizen 
was educated to a general versatility, Plato demands that the ruling class 
shall be trained as a class of professional warriors, ready to strike against 
enemies from without or from within the state. Children of both sexes, we 
are told twice, 'must be taken on horseback within the sight of actual war; 
and provided it can be done safely, they must be brought into battle, and 
made to taste blood; just as one does with young hounds'—. The 
description of a modern writer, who characterizes contemporary 
totalitarian education as 'an intensified and continual form of 
mobilization', fits Plato's whole system of education very well indeed. 

This is an outline of Plato's theory of the best or most ancient state, of 
the city which treats its human cattle exactly as a wise but hardened 
shepherd treats his sheep; not too cruelly, but with the proper contempt 
... As an analysis both of Spartan social institutions and of the conditions 
of their stability and instability, and as an attempt at reconstructing more 
rigid and primitive forms of tribal life, this description is excellent 
indeed. (Only the descriptive aspect is dealt with in this chapter. The 
ethical aspects will be discussed later.) I believe that much in Plato's 
writings that has been usually considered as mere mythological or 
Utopian speculation can in this way be interpreted as sociological 
description and analysis. If we look, for instance, at his myth of the 
triumphant war hordes subjugating a settled population, then we must 
admit that from the point of view of descriptive sociology it is most 



successful. In fact, it could even claim to be an anticipation of an 
interesting (though possibly too sweeping) modern theory of the origin of 
the state, according to which centralized and organized political power 
generally originates in such a conquest—. There may be more 
descriptions of this kind in Plato's writings than we can at present 
estimate. 



V 

To sum up. In an attempt to understand and to interpret the changing 
social world as he experienced it, Plato was led to develop a systematic 
historicist sociology in great detail. He thought of existing states as 
decaying copies of an unchanging Form or Idea. He tried to reconstruct 
this Form or Idea of a state, or at least to describe a society which 
resembled it as closely as possible. Along with ancient traditions, he used 
as material for his reconstruction the results of his analysis of the social 
institutions of Sparta and Crete — the most ancient forms of social life he 
could find in Greece — in which he recognized arrested forms of even 
older tribal societies. But in order to make a proper use of this material, 
he needed a principle for distinguishing between the good or original or 
ancient traits of the existing institutions and their symptoms of decay. 
This principle he found in his law of political revolutions, according to 
which disunion in the ruling class, and their preoccupation with economic 
affairs, are the origin of all social change. His best state was therefore to 
be reconstructed in such a way as to eliminate all the germs and elements 
of disunion and decay as radically as this could be done; that is to say, it 
was to be constructed out of the Spartan state with an eye to the 
conditions necessary for the unbroken unity of the master class. 



guaranteed by its economic abstinence, its breeding, and its training. 

Interpreting existing societies as decadent copies of an ideal state, 
Plato furnished Hesiod's somewhat crude views of human history at once 
with a theoretical background and with a wealth of practical application. 
He developed a remarkably realistic historicist theory which found the 
cause of social change in Heraclitus' disunion, and in the strife of classes 
in which he recognized the driving as well as the corrupting forces of 
history. He applied these historicist principles to the story of the Decline 
and Fall of the Greek city-states, and especially to a criticism of 
democracy, which he described as effeminate and degenerate. And we 
may add that later, in the Laws—, he applied them also to a story of the 
Decline and Fall of the Persian Empire, thus making the beginning of a 
long series of Decline-and-Fall dramatizations of the histories of empires 
and civilizations. (O. Spengler's notorious Decline of the West is perhaps 
the worst but not the last— of them.) All this, I think, can be interpreted 
as an attempt, and a most impressive one, to explain, and to rationalize, 
his experience of the breakdown of the tribal society; an experience 
analogous to that which had led Heraclitus to develop the first philosophy 
of change. 

But our analysis of Plato's descriptive sociology is still incomplete. 
His stories of the Decline and Fall, and with it nearly all the later stories, 
exhibit at least two characteristics which we have not discussed so far. He 
conceived these declining societies as some kind of organism, and the 
decline as a process similar to ageing. And he believed that the decline is 
well deserved, in the sense that moral decay, a fall and decline of the 
soul, goes hand in hand with that of the social body. All this plays an 
important role in Plato's theory of the first change — in the Story of the 
Number and of the Fall of Man. This theory, and its connection with the 
doctrine of Forms or Ideas, will be discussed in the next chapter. 



5 

Nature and Convention 



Plato was not the first to approach social phenomena in the spirit of 
scientific investigation. The beginning of social science goes back at least 
to the generation of Protagoras, the first of the great thinkers who called 
themselves 'Sophists'. It is marked by the realization of the need to 
distinguish between two different elements in man's environment — his 
natural environment and his social environment. This is a distinction 
which is difficult to make and to grasp, as can be inferred from the fact 
that even now it is not clearly established in our minds. It has been 
questioned ever since the time of Protagoras. Most of us, it seems, have a 
strong inclination to accept the peculiarities of our social environment as 
if they were 'natural'. 

It is one of the characteristics of the magical attitude of a primitive 
tribal or 'closed' society that it lives in a charmed circle- of unchanging 
taboos, of laws and customs which are felt to be as inevitable as the rising 
of the sun, or the cycle of the seasons, or similar obvious regularities of 
nature. And it is only after this magical 'closed society' has actually 
broken down that a theoretical understanding of the difference between 
'nature' and 'society' can develop. 



I 



An analysis of this development requires, I believe, a clear grasp of an 
important distinction. It is the distinction between (a) natural laws, or 
laws of nature, such as the laws describing the movements of the sun, the 
moon, and the planets, the succession of the seasons, etc., or the law of 
gravity or, say, the laws of thermodynamics and, on the other hand, {b) 
normative laws, or norms, or prohibitions and commandments, i.e. such 
rules as forbid or demand certain modes of conduct; examples are the Ten 
Commandments or the legal rules regulating the procedure of the election 
of Members of Parliament, or the laws that constitute the Athenian 
Constitution. 

Since the discussion of these matters is often vitiated by a tendency to 
blur this distinction, a few more words may be said about it. A law in 
sense {a) — a natural law — is describing a strict, unvarying regularity 
which either in fact holds in nature (in this case, the law is a true 
statement) or does not hold (in this case it is false). If we do not know 
whether a law of nature is true or false, and if we wish to draw attention 
to our uncertainty, we often call it an 'hypothesis'. A law of nature is 
unalterable; there are no exceptions to it. For if we are satisfied that 
something has happened which contradicts it, then we do not say that 
there is an exception, or an alteration to the law, but rather that our 
hypothesis has been refuted, since it has turned out that the supposed 
strict regularity did not hold, or in other words, that the supposed law of 
nature was not a true law of nature, but a false statement. Since laws of 
nature are unalterable, they can be neither broken nor enforced. They are 
beyond human control, although they may possibly be used by us for 
technical purposes, and although we may get into trouble by not knowing 
them, or by ignoring them. 

All this is very different if we turn to laws of the kind (Z?), that is, to 
normative laws. A normative law, whether it is now a legal enactment or 
a moral commandment, can be enforced by men. Also, it is alterable. It 



may be perhaps described as good or bad, right or wrong, acceptable or 
unacceptable; but only in a metaphorical sense can it be called 'true' or 
'false', since it does not describe a fact, but lays down directions for our 
behaviour. If it has any point or significance, then it can be broken; and if 
it cannot be broken then it is superfluous and without significance. 'Do 
not spend more money than you possess' is a significant normative law; 
it may be significant as a moral or legal rule, and the more necessary as it 
is so often broken. 'Do not take more money out of your purse than there 
was in it' may be said to be, by its wording, also a normative law; but 
nobody would consider seriously such a rule as a significant part of a 
moral or legal system, since it cannot be broken. If a significant 
normative law is observed, then this is always due to human control — to 
human actions and decisions. Usually it is due to the decision to 
introduce sanctions — to punish or restrain those who break the law. 

I believe, in common with a great number of thinkers, and especially 
with many social scientists, that the distinction between laws in sense (a), 
i.e. statements describing regularities of nature, and laws in sense (b), i.e. 
norms such as prohibitions or commandments, is a fundamental one, and 
that these two kinds of law have hardly more in common than a name. 
But this view is by no means generally accepted; on the contrary, many 
thinkers believe that there are norms — ^prohibitions or commandments — 
which are 'natural' in the sense that they are laid down in accordance 
with natural laws in sense (a). They say, for example, that certain legal 
norms are in accordance with human nature, and therefore with 
psychological natural laws in sense (a), while other legal norms may be 
contrary to human nature; and they add that those norms which can be 
shown to be in accordance with human nature are really not very different 
from natural laws in sense (a). Others say that natural laws in sense (a) 
are really very similar to normative laws since they are laid down by the 
will or decision of the Creator of the Universe — a view which. 



undoubtedly, lies behind the use of the originally normative word 'law' 
for laws of the kind (a). All these views may be worthy of being 
discussed. But in order to discuss them, it is necessary first to distinguish 
between laws in the sense of (a) and laws in the sense of (b), and not to 
confuse the issue by a bad terminology. Thus we shall reserve the term 
'natural laws' exclusively for laws of type (a), and we shall refuse to 
apply this term to any norms which are claimed to be, in some sense or 
other, 'natural'. The confusion is quite unnecessary since it is easy to 
speak of 'natural rights and obligations' or of 'natural norms' if we wish 
to stress the 'natural' character of laws of type (b). 



II 

I believe that it is necessary for the understanding of Plato's sociology to 
consider how the distinction between natural and normative laws may 
have developed. I shall first discuss what seem to have been the starting 
point and the last step of the development, and later what seem to have 
been three intermediate steps, which all play a part in Plato's theory. The 
starting point can be described as a naive monism. It may be said to be 
characteristic of the 'closed society'. The last step, which I describe as 
critical dualism (or critical conventionalism), is characteristic of the 
'open society'. The fact that there are still many who try to avoid making 
this step may be taken as an indication that we are still in the midst of the 
transition from the closed to the open society. (With all this, compare 
chapter 10.) 

The starting point which I have called 'naive monism' is the stage at 
which the distinction between natural and normative laws is not yet 
made. Unpleasant experiences are the means by which man learns to 



adjust himself to his environment. No distinction is made between 
sanctions imposed by other men, if a normative taboo is broken, and 
unpleasant experiences suffered in the natural environment. Within this 
stage, we may further distinguish between two possibilities. The one can 
be described as a naive naturalism. At this stage regularities, whether 
natural or conventional, are felt to be beyond the possibility of any 
alteration whatever. But I believe that this stage is only an abstract 
possibility which probably was never realized. More important is a stage 
which we can describe as a naive conventionalism — a stage at which both 
natural and normative regularities are experienced as expressions of, and 
as dependent upon, the decisions of man-like gods or demons. Thus the 
cycle of the seasons, or the peculiarities of the movements of the sun, the 
moon, and the planets, may be interpreted as obeying the 'laws' or 
'decrees' or 'decisions' which 'rule heaven and earth', and which were 
laid down and 'pronounced by the creator-god in the beginning'-. It is 
understandable that those who think in this way may believe that even the 
natural laws are open to modifications, under certain exceptional 
circumstances; that with the help of magical practices man may 
sometimes influence them; and that natural regularities are upheld by 
sanctions, as if they were normative. This point is well illustrated by 
Heraclitus' saying: 'The sun will not outstep the measure of his path; or 
else the goddesses of Fate, the handmaids of Justice, will know how to 
find him.' 

The breakdown of magic tribalism is closely connected with the 
realization that taboos are different in various tribes, that they are 
imposed and enforced by man, and that they may be broken without 
unpleasant repercussions if one can only escape the sanctions imposed by 
one's fellow-men. This realization is quickened when it is observed that 
laws are altered and made by human lawgivers. I have in mind not only 
such lawgivers as Solon, but also the laws which were made and enforced 



by the common people of democratic cities. These experiences may lead 
to a conscious differentiation between the man-enforced normative laws, 
based on decisions or conventions, and the natural regularities which are 
beyond his power. When this differentiation is clearly understood, then 
we can describe the position reached as a critical dualism, or critical 
conventionalism. In the development of Greek philosophy this dualism of 
facts and norms announces itself in terms of the opposition between 
nature and convention.- 

In spite of the fact that this position was reached a long time ago by the 
Sophist Protagoras, an older contemporary of Socrates, it is still so little 
understood that it seems necessary to explain it in some detail. First, we 
must not think that critical dualism implies a theory of the historical 
origin of norms. It has nothing to do with the obviously untenable 
historical assertion that norms in the first place were consciously made or 
introduced by man, instead of having been found by him to be simply 
there (whenever he was first able to find anything of this kind). It 
therefore has nothing to do with the assertion that norms originate with 
man, and not with God, nor does it underrate the importance of normative 
laws. Least of all has it anything to do with the assertion that norms, 
since they are conventional, i.e. man-made, are therefore 'merely 
arbitrary'. Critical dualism merely asserts that norms and normative laws 
can be made and changed by man, more especially by a decision or 
convention to observe them or to alter them, and that it is therefore man 
who is morally responsible for them; not perhaps for the norms which he 
finds to exist in society when he first begins to reflect upon them, but for 
the norms which he is prepared to tolerate once he has found out that he 
can do something to alter them. Norms are man-made in the sense that we 
must blame nobody but ourselves for them; neither nature, nor God. It is 
our business to improve them as much as we can, if we find that they are 
objectionable. This last remark implies that by describing norms as 



conventional, I do not mean that they must be arbitrary, or that one set of 
normative laws will do just as well as another. By saying that some 
systems of laws can be improved, that some laws may be better than 
others, I rather imply that we can compare the existing normative laws 
(or social institutions) with some standard norms which we have decided 
are worthy of being realized. But even these standards are of our making 
in the sense that our decision in favour of them is our own decision, and 
that we alone carry the responsibility for adopting them. The standards 
are not to be found in nature. Nature consists of facts and of regularities, 
and is in itself neither moral nor immoral. It is we who impose our 
standards upon nature, and who in this way introduce morals into the 
natural world-, in spite of the fact that we are part of this world. We are 
products of nature, but nature has made us together with our power of 
altering the world, of foreseeing and of planning for the future, and of 
making far-reaching decisions for which we are morally responsible. Yet 
responsibility, decisions, enter the world of nature only with us. 



Ill 



It is important for the understanding of this attitude to realize that these 
decisions can never be derived from facts (or from statements of facts), 
although they pertain to facts. The decision, for instance, to oppose 
slavery does not depend upon the fact that all men are born free and 
equal, and that no man is born in chains. For even if all were born free, 
some men might perhaps try to put others in chains, and they may even 
believe that they ought to put them in chains. And conversely, even if 
men were born in chains, many of us might demand the removal of these 
chains. Or to put this matter more precisely, if we consider a fact as 



alterable — such as the fact that many people are suffering from diseases 
— ^then we can always adopt a number of different attitudes towards this 
fact: more especially, we can decide to make an attempt to alter it; or we 
can decide to resist any such attempt; or we can decide not to take action 
at all. 

All moral decisions pertain in this way to some fact or other, especially 
to some fact of social life, and all (alterable) facts of social life can give 
rise to many different decisions. Which shows that the decisions can 
never be derivable from these facts, or from a description of these facts. 

But they cannot be derived from another class of facts either; I mean 
those natural regularities which we describe with the help of natural laws. 
It is perfectly true that our decisions must be compatible with the natural 
laws (including those of human physiology and psychology), if they are 
ever to be carried into effect; for if they run counter to such laws, then 
they simply cannot be carried out. The decision that all should work 
harder and eat less, for example, cannot be carried out beyond a certain 
point for physiological reasons, i.e. because beyond a certain point it 
would be incompatible with certain natural laws of physiology. Similarly, 
the decision that all should work less and eat more also cannot be carried 
out beyond a certain point, for various reasons, including the natural laws 
of economics. (As we shall see below, in section iv of this chapter, there 
are natural laws in the social sciences also; we shall call them 
'sociological laws'.) 

Thus certain decisions may be eliminated as incapable of being 
executed, because they contradict certain natural laws (or 'unalterable 
facts'). But this does not mean, of course, that any decision can be 
logically derived from such 'unalterable facts'. Rather, the situation is 
this. In view of any fact whatsoever, whether it is alterable or unalterable, 
we can adopt various decisions — such as to alter it; to protect it from 
those who wish to alter it; not to interfere, etc. But if the fact in question 



is unalterable — either because an alteration is impossible in view of the 
existing laws of nature, or because an alteration is for other reasons too 
difficult for those who wish to alter it — then any decision to alter it will 
be simply impracticable; in fact, any decision concerning such a fact will 
be pointless and without significance. 

Critical dualism thus emphasizes the impossibility of reducing 
decisions or norms to facts; it can therefore be described as a dualism oj 
facts and decisions. 

But this dualism seems to be open to attack. Decisions are facts, it may 
be said. If we decide to adopt a certain norm, then the making of this 
decision is itself a psychological or sociological fact, and it would be 
absurd to say that there is nothing in common between such facts and 
other facts. Since it cannot be doubted that our decisions about norms, i.e. 
the norms we adopt, clearly depend upon certain psychological facts, 
such as the influence of our upbringing, it seems to be absurd to postulate 
a dualism of facts and decisions, or to say that decisions cannot be 
derived from facts. This objection can be answered by pointing out that 
we can speak of a 'decision' in two different senses. We may speak of a 
certain decision which has been submitted, or considered, or reached, or 
been decided upon; or alternatively, we may speak of an act of deciding 
and call this a 'decision'. Only in the second sense can we describe a 
decision as a fact. The situation is analogous with a number of other 
expressions. In one sense, we may speak of a certain resolution which has 
been submitted to some council, and in the other sense, the council's act 
of taking it may be spoken of as the council's resolution. Similarly, we 
may speak of a proposal or a suggestion before us, and on the other hand 
of the act of proposing or suggestion something, which may also be 
called 'proposal' or 'suggestion'. An analogous ambiguity is well known 
in the field of descriptive statements. Let us consider the statement: 
'Napoleon died on St. Helena.' It will be useful to distinguish this 



statement from the fact which it describes, and which we may call the 
primary fact, viz. the fact that Napoleon died at St. Helena. Now a 
historian, say Mr. A, when writing the biography of Napoleon, may make 
the statement mentioned. In doing so, he is describing what we called the 
primary fact. But there is also a secondary fact, which is altogether 
different from the primary one, namely the fact that he made this 
statement; and another historian, Mr. B, when writing the biography of 
Mr. A, may describe this second fact by saying: 'Mr. A stated that 
Napoleon died on St. Helena.' The secondary fact described in this way 
happens to be itself a description. But it is a description in a sense of the 
word that must be distinguished from the sense in which we called the 
statement 'Napoleon died on St. Helena' a description. The making of a 
description, or of a statement, is a sociological or psychological fact. But 
the description made is to be distinguished from the fact that it has been 
made. It cannot even be derived from this fact; for that would mean that 
we can validly deduce 'Napoleon died on St. Helena' from 'Mr. A stated 
that Napoleon died on St. Helena', which obviously we cannot. 

In the field of decisions, the situation is analogous. The making of a 
decision, the adoption of a norm or of a standard, is a fact. But the norm 
or standard which has been adopted, is not a fact. That most people agree 
with the norm 'Thou shalt not steal' is a sociological fact. But the norm 
'Thou shalt not steal' is not a fact, and can never be inferred from 
sentences describing facts. This will be seen most clearly when we 
remember that there are always various and even opposite decisions 
possible with respect to a certain relevant fact. For instance, in face of the 
sociological fact that most people adopt the norm 'Thou shalt not steal', 
it is still possible to decide either to adopt this norm, or to oppose its 
adoption; it is possible to encourage those who have adopted the norm, or 
to discourage them, and to persuade them to adopt another norm. To sum 
up, it is impossible to derive a sentence stating a norm or a decision or, 



say, a proposal for a policy from a sentence stating a fact ; this is only 
another way of saying that it is impossible to derive norms or decisions 
or proposals from facts.- 

The statement that norms are man-made (man-made not in the sense 
that they were consciously designed, but in the sense that men can judge 
and alter them — that is to say, in the sense that the responsibility for 
them is entirely ours) has often been misunderstood. Nearly all 
misunderstandings can be traced back to one fundamental 
misapprehension, namely, to the belief that 'convention' implies 
'arbitrariness'; that if we are free to choose any system of norms we like, 
then one system is just as good as any other. It must, of course, be 
admitted that the view that norms are conventional or artificial indicates 
that there will be a certain element of arbitrariness involved, i.e. that 
there may be different systems of norms between which there is not much 
to choose (a fact that has been duly emphasized by Protagoras). But 
artificiality by no means implies full arbitrariness. Mathematical calculi, 
for instance, or symphonies, or plays, are highly artificial, yet it does not 
follow that one calculus or symphony or play is just as good as any other. 
Man has created new worlds — of language, of music, of poetry, of 
science; and the most important of these is the world of the moral 
demands, for equality, for freedom, and for helping the weak-. When 
comparing the field of morals with the field of music or of mathematics, 
I do not wish to imply that these similarities reach very far. There is, 
more especially, a great difference between moral decisions and 
decisions in the field of art. Many moral decisions involve the life and 
death of other men. Decisions in the field of art are much less urgent and 
important. It is therefore most misleading to say that a man decides for or 
against slavery as he may decide for or against certain works of music 
and literature, or that moral decisions are purely matters of taste. Nor are 
they merely decisions about how to make the world more beautiful, or 



about other luxuries of this kind; they are decisions of much greater 
urgency. (With all this, cp. also chapter 9.) Our comparison is only 
intended to show that the view that moral decisions rest with us does not 
imply that they are entirely arbitrary. 

The view that norms are man-made is also, strangely enough, contested 
by some who see in this attitude an attack on religion. It must be 
admitted, of course, that this view is an attack on certain forms of 
religion, namely, on the religion of blind authority, on magic and 
tabooism. But I do not think that it is in any way opposed to a religion 
built upon the idea of personal responsibility and freedom of conscience. 
I have in mind, of course, especially Christianity, at least as it is usually 
interpreted in democratic countries; that Christianity which, as against all 
tabooism, preaches, 'Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time 
. . . But I say unto you . . . ' ; opposing in every case the voice of conscience 
to mere formal obedience and the fulfilment of the law. 

I would not admit that to think of ethical laws as being man-made in 
this sense is incompatible with the religious view that they are given to us 
by God. Historically, all ethics undoubtedly begin with religion; but I do 
not now deal with historical questions. I do not ask who was the first 
ethical lawgiver. I only maintain that it is we, and we alone, who are 
responsible for adopting or rejecting some suggested moral laws; it is we 
who must distinguish between the true prophets and the false prophets. 
All kinds of norms have been claimed to be God- given. If you accept the 
'Christian' ethics of equality and toleration and freedom of conscience 
only because of its claim to rest upon divine authority, then you build on 
a weak basis; for it has been only too often claimed that inequality is 
willed by God, and that we must not be tolerant with unbelievers. If, 
however, you accept the Christian ethics not because you are commanded 
to do so but because of your conviction that it is the right decision to 
take, then it is you who have decided. My insistence that we make the 



decisions and carry the responsibility must not be taken to imply that we 
cannot, or must not, be helped by faith, and inspired by tradition or by 
great examples. Nor does it imply that the creation of moral decisions is 
merely a 'natural' process, i.e. of the order of physico-chemical 
processes. In fact, Protagoras, the first critical dualist, taught that nature 
does not know norms, and that the introduction of norms is due to man, 
and the most important of human achievements. He thus held that 
'institutions and conventions were what raised men above the brutes', as 
Burnet- puts it. But in spite of his insistence that man creates norms, that 
it is man who is the measure of all things, he believed that man could 
achieve the creation of norms only with supernatural help. Norms, he 
taught, are superimposed upon the original or natural state of affairs by 
man, but with the help of Zeus. It is at Zeus' bidding that Hermes gives to 
men an understanding of justice and honour; and he distributes this gift to 
all men equally. The way in which the first clear statement of critical 
dualism makes room for a religious interpretation of our sense of 
responsibility shows how little critical dualism is opposed to a religious 
attitude. A similar approach can be discerned, I believe, in the historical 
Socrates (see chapter 10 ) who felt compelled, by his conscience as well 
as by his religious beliefs, to question all authority, and who searched for 
the norms in whose justice he could trust. The doctrine of the autonomy 
of ethics is independent of the problem of religion, but compatible with, 
or perhaps even necessary for, any religion which respects individual 
conscience. 



IV 



So much concerning the dualism of facts and decisions, or the doctrine of 



the autonomy of ethics, first advocated by Protagoras and Socrates-. It is, 
I believe, indispensable for a reasonable understanding of our social 
environment. But of course this does not mean that all 'social laws', i.e. 
all regularities of our social life, are normative and man-imposed. On the 
contrary, there are important natural laws of social life also. For these, 
the term sociological laws seems appropriate. It is just the fact that in 
social life we meet with both kinds of laws, natural and normative, which 
makes it so important to distinguish them clearly. 

In speaking of sociological laws or natural laws of social life, I do not 
think so much of the alleged laws of evolution in which historicists such 
as Plato are interested, although if there are any such regularities of 
historical developments, their formulations would certainly fall under the 
category of sociological laws. Nor do I think so much of the laws of 
'human nature', i.e. of psychological and socio-psychological regularities 
of human behaviour. I have in mind, rather, such laws as are formulated 
by modern economic theories, for instance, the theory of international 
trade, or the theory of the trade cycle. These and other important 
sociological laws are connected with the functioning oi social 
institutions. (Cp. chapters 3 and 9.) These laws play a role in our social 
life corresponding to the role played in mechanical engineering by, say, 
the principle of the lever. For institutions, like levers, are needed if we 
want to achieve anything which goes beyond the power of our muscles. 
Like machines, institutions multiply our power for good and evil. Like 
machines, they need intelligent supervision by someone who understands 
their way of functioning and, most of all, their purpose, since we cannot 
build them so that they work entirely automatically. Furthermore, their 
construction needs some knowledge of social regularities which impose 
limitations upon what can be achieved by institutions-. (These limitations 
are somewhat analogous, for instance, to the law of conservation of 
energy, which amounts to the statement that we cannot build a perpetual 



motion machine.) But fundamentally, institutions are always made by 
establishing the observance of certain norms, designed with a certain aim 
i n mind. This holds especially for institutions which are consciously 
created; but even those — ^the vast majority — ^which arise as the 
undesigned results of human actions (cp. chapter 14) are the indirect 
results of purposive actions of some kind or other; and their functioning 
depends, largely, on the observance of norms. (Even mechanical engines 
are made, as it were, not only of iron, but by combining iron and norms; 
i.e. by transforming physical things, but according to certain normative 
rules, namely their plan or design.) In institutions, normative laws and 
sociological, i.e. natural, laws are closely interwoven, and it is therefore 
impossible to understand the functioning of institutions without being 
able to distinguish between these two. (These remarks are intended to 
suggest certain problems rather than to give solutions. More especially, 
the analogy mentioned between institutions and machines must not be 
interpreted as proposing the theory that institutions are machines — in 
some essentialist sense. Of course they are not machines. And although 
the thesis is here proposed that we may obtain useful and interesting 
results if we ask ourselves whether an institution does serve any purpose, 
and what purposes it may serve, it is not asserted that every institution 
serves some definite purpose — its essential purpose, as it were.) 



v 

As indicated before, there are many intermediate steps in the 
development from a naive or magical monism to a critical dualism which 
clearly realizes the distinction between norms and natural laws. Most of 
these intermediate positions arise from the misapprehension that if a 



norm is conventional or artificial, it must be wholly arbitrary. To 
understand Plato's position, which combines elements of them all, it is 
necessary to make a survey of the three most important of these 
intermediate positions. They are (1) biological naturalism, (2) ethical or 
juridical positivism, and (3) psychological or spiritual naturalism. It is 
interesting that every one of these positions has been used for defending 
ethical views which are radically opposed to each other; more especially, 
for defending the worship of power, and for defending the rights of the 
weak. 

(1) Biological naturalism, or more precisely, the biological form of 
ethical naturalism, is the theory that in spite of the fact that moral laws 
and the laws of states are arbitrary, there are some eternal unchanging 
laws of nature from which we can derive such norms. Food habits, i.e. the 
number of meals, and the kind of food taken, are an example of the 
arbitrariness of conventions, the biological naturalist may argue; yet 
there are undoubtedly certain natural laws in this field. For instance, a 
man will die if he takes either insufficient or too much food. Thus it 
seems that just as there are realities behind appearances, so behind our 
arbitrary conventions there are some unchanging natural laws and 
especially the laws of biology. 

Biological naturalism has been used not only to defend 
equalitarianism, but also to defend the anti-equalitarian doctrine of the 
rule of the strong. One of the first to put forward this naturalism was the 
poet Pindar, who used it to support the theory that the strong should rule. 
He claimed— that it is a law, valid throughout nature, that the stronger 
does with the weaker whatever he likes. Thus laws which protect the 
weak are not merely arbitrary but artificial distortions of the true natural 
law that the strong should be free and the weak should be his slave. The 
view is discussed a good deal by Plato; it is attacked in the Gorgias, a 
dialogue which is still much influenced by Socrates; in the Republic, it is 



put in the mouth of Thrasymachus, and identified with ethical 
individualism (see the next chapter); in the Laws, Plato is less 
antagonistic to Pindar's view; but he still contrasts it with the rule of the 
wisest, which, he says, is a better principle, and just as much in 
accordance with nature (see also the quotation later in this chapter). 

The first to put forward a humanitarian or equalitarian version of 
biological naturalism was the Sophist Antiphon. To him is due also the 
identification of nature with truth, and of convention with opinion (or 
'delusive opinion'—). Antiphon is a radical naturalist. He believes that 
most norms are not merely arbitrary, but directly contrary to nature. 
Norms, he says, are imposed from outside, while the rules of nature are 
inevitable. It is disadvantageous and even dangerous to break man- 
imposed norms if the breach is observed by those who impose them; but 
there is no inner necessity attached to them, and nobody needs to be 
ashamed of breaking them; shame and punishment are only sanctions 
arbitrarily imposed from outside. On this criticism of conventional 
morals, Antiphon bases a utilitarian ethics. 'Of the actions here 
mentioned, one would find many to be contrary to nature. For they 
involve more suffering where there should be less, and less pleasure 
where there could be more, and injury where it is unnecessary.'— At the 
same time, he taught the need for self-control. His equalitarianism he 
formulates as follows: 'The nobly born we revere and adore; but not the 
lowly born. These are barbarous habits. For as to our natural gifts, we are 
all on an equal footing, on all points, whether we now happen to be 
Greeks or Barbarians . . . We all breathe the air through our mouths and 
nostrils.' 

A similar equalitarianism was voiced by the Sophist Hippias, whom 
Plato represents as addressing his audience: 'Gentlemen, I believe that we 
are all kinsmen and friends and fellow-citizens; if not by conventional 
law, then by nature. For by nature, likeness is an expression of kinship; 



but conventional law, the tyrant of mankind, compels us to do much that 
is against nature.'— This spirit was bound up with the Athenian 
movement against slavery (mentioned in chapter 4) to which Euripides 
gave expression: 'The name alone brings shame upon the slave who can 
be excellent in every way and truly equal to the free born man.' 
Elsewhere, he says: 'Man's law of nature is equality.' And Alcidamas, a 
disciple of Gorgias and a contemporary of Plato, wrote: 'God has made 
all men free; no man is a slave by nature.' Similar views are also 
expressed by Lycophron, another member of Gorgias' school: 'The 
splendour of noble birth is imaginary, and its prerogatives are based upon 
a mere word. ' 

Reacting against this great humanitarian movement — the movement of 
the 'Great Generation', as I shall call it later ( chapter 10 ) — Plato, and his 
disciple Aristotle, advanced the theory of the biological and moral 
inequality of man. Greeks and barbarians are unequal by nature; the 
opposition between them corresponds to that between natural masters and 
natural slaves. The natural inequality of men is one of the reasons for 
their living together, for their natural gifts are complementary. Social life 
begins with natural inequality, and it must continue upon that foundation. 
I shall discuss these doctrines later in more detail. At present, they may 
serve to show how biological naturalism can be used to support the most 
divergent ethical doctrines. In the light of our previous analysis of the 
impossibility of basing norms upon facts this result is not unexpected. 

Such considerations, however, are perhaps not sufficient to defeat a 
theory as popular as biological naturalism; I therefore propose two more 
direct criticisms. First, it must be admitted that certain forms of 
behaviour may be described as more 'natural' than other forms; for 
instance, going naked or eating only raw food; and some people think that 
this in itself justifies the choice of these forms. But in this sense it 
certainly is not natural to interest oneself in art, or science, or even in 



arguments in favour of naturalism. The choice of conformity with 
'nature' as a supreme standard leads ultimately to consequences which 
few will be prepared to face; it does not lead to a more natural form of 
civilization, but to beastliness—. The second criticism is more important. 
The biological naturalist assumes that he can derive his norms from the 
natural laws which determine the conditions of health, etc., if he does not 
naively believe that we need adopt no norms whatever but simply live 
according to the 'laws of nature'. He overlooks the fact that he makes a 
choice, a decision; that it is possible that some other people cherish 
certain things more than their health (for instance, the many who have 
consciously risked their lives for medical research). And he is therefore 
mistaken if he believes that he has not made a decision, or that he has 
derived his norms from biological laws. 

(2) Ethical positivism shares with the biological form of ethical natural 
ism the belief that we must try to reduce norms to facts. But the facts are 
this time sociological facts, namely, the actual existing norms. Positivism 
maintains that there are no other norms but the laws which have actually 
been set up (or 'posited') and which have therefore a positive existence. 
Other standards are considered as unreal imaginations. The existing laws 
are the only possible standards of goodness: what is, is good. (Might is 
right.) 'According to some forms of this theory, it is a gross 
misunderstanding to believe that the individual can judge the norms of 
society; rather, it is society which provides the code by which the 
individual must be judged. 

As a matter of historical fact, ethical (or moral, or juridical) positivism 
has usually been conservative, or even authoritarian; and it has often 
invoked the authority of God. Its arguments depend, I believe, upon the 
alleged arbitrariness of norms. We must believe in existing norms, it 
claims, because there are no better norms which we may find for 
ourselves. In reply to this it might be asked: What about this norm 'We 



must believe etc.'? If this is only an existing norm, then it does not count 
as an argument in favour of these norms; but if it is an appeal to our 
insight, then it admits that we can, after all, find norms ourselves. And if 
we are told to accept norms on authority because we cannot judge them, 
then neither can we judge whether the claims of the authority are 
justified, or whether we may not follow a false prophet. And if it is held 
that there are no false prophets because laws are arbitrary anyhow, so that 
the main thing is to have some laws, then we may ask ourselves why it 
should be so important to have laws at all; for if there are no further 
standards, why then should we not choose to have no laws? (These 
remarks may perhaps indicate the reasons for my belief that authoritarian 
or conservative principles are usually an expression of ethical nihilism; 
that is to say, of an extreme moral scepticism, of a distrust of man and of 
his possibilities.) 

While the theory of natural rights has, in the course of history, often 
been proffered in support of equalitarian and humanitarian ideas, the 
positivist school was usually in the opposite camp. But this is not much 
more than an accident. As has been shown, ethical naturalism may be 
used with very different intentions. (It has recently been used for 
confusing the whole issue by advertising certain allegedly 'natural' rights 
and obligations as 'natural laws'.) Conversely, there are also 
humanitarian and progressive positivists. For if all norms are arbitrary, 
why not be tolerant? This is a typical attempt to justify a humanitarian 
attitude along positivist lines. 

(3) Psychological or spiritual naturalism is in a way a combination of 
the two previous views, and it can best be explained by means of an 
argument against the one-sidedness of these views. The ethical positivist 
is right, this argument runs, if he emphasizes that all norms are 
conventional, i.e. a product of man, and of human society; but he 
overlooks the fact that they are therefore an expression of the 



psychological or spiritual nature of man, and of the nature of human 
society. The biological naturalist is right in assuming that there are 
certain natural aims or ends, from which we can derive natural norms; but 
he overlooks the fact that our natural aims are not necessarily such aims 
as health, pleasure, or food, shelter or propagation. Human nature is such 
that man, or at least some men, do not want to live by bread alone, that 
they seek higher aims, spiritual aims. We may thus derive man's true 
natural aims from his own true nature, which is spiritual, and social. And 
we may, further, derive the natural norms of life from his natural ends. 

This plausible position was, I believe, first formulated by Plato, who 
was here under the influence of the Socratic doctrine of the soul, i.e. of 
Socrates' teaching that the spirit matters more than the flesh—. Its appeal 
to our sentiments is undoubtedly very much stronger than that of the 
other two positions. It can however be combined, like these, with any 
ethical decision; with a humanitarian attitude as well as with the worship 
of power. For we can, for instance, decide to treat all men as participating 
in this spiritual human nature; or we can insist like Heraclitus, that the 
many 'fill their bellies like the beasts', and are therefore of an inferior 
nature, and that only a few elect ones are worthy of the spiritual 
community of men. Accordingly, spiritual naturalism has been much 
used, and especially by Plato, to justify the natural prerogatives of the 
'noble' or 'elect' or 'wise' or of the 'natural leader'. (Plato's attitude is 
discussed in the following chapters.) On the other hand, it has been used 
by Christian and other— humanitarian forms of ethics, for instance by 
Paine and by Kant, to demand the recognition of the 'natural rights' of 
every human individual. It is clear that spiritual naturalism can be used to 
defend any 'positive', i.e. existing, norm. For it can always be argued that 
these norms would not be in force if they did not express some traits of 
human nature. In this way, spiritual naturalism can, in practical problems, 
become one with positivism, in spite of their traditional opposition. In 



fact, this form of naturalism is so wide and so vague that it may be used 
to defend anything. There is nothing that has ever occurred to man which 
could not be claimed to be 'natural'; for if it were not in his nature, how 
could it have occurred to him? 

Looking back at this brief survey, we may perhaps discern two main 
tendencies which stand in the way of adopting a critical dualism. The first 
i s a general tendency towards monism—, that is to say, towards the 
reduction of norms to facts. The second lies deeper, and it possibly forms 
the background of the first. It is based upon our fear of admitting to 
ourselves that the responsibility for our ethical decisions is entirely ours 
and cannot be shifted to anybody else; neither to God, nor to nature, nor 
to society, nor to history. All these ethical theories attempt to find 
somebody, or perhaps some argument, to take the burden from us—. But 
we cannot shirk this responsibility. Whatever authority we may accept, it 
is we who accept it. We only deceive ourselves if we do not realize this 
simple point. 



VI 

We now turn to a more detailed analysis of Plato's naturalism and its 
relation to his historicism. Plato, of course, does not always use the term 
'nature' in the same sense. The most important meaning which he 
attaches to it is, I believe, practically identical with that which he 
attaches to the term 'essence'. This way of using the term 'nature' still 
survives among essentialists even in our day; they still speak, for 
instance, of the nature of mathematics, or of the nature of inductive 
inference, or of the 'nature of happiness and misery'—. When used by 
Plato in this way, 'nature' means nearly the same as 'Form' or 'Idea'; for 



the Form or Idea of a thing, as shown above, is also its essence. The main 
difference between natures and Forms or Ideas seems to be this. The 
Form or Idea of a sensible thing is, as we have seen, not in that thing, but 
separated from it; it is its forefather, its primogenitor; but this Form or 
father passes something on to the sensible things which are its offspring 
or race, namely, their nature. This 'nature' is thus the inborn or original 
quality of a thing, and in so far, its inherent essence; it is the original 
power or disposition of a thing, and it determines those of its properties 
which are the basis of its resemblance to, or of its innate participation in, 
its Form or Idea. 

'Natural' is, accordingly, what is innate or original or divine in a thing, 
while 'artificial' is that which has been later changed by man or added or 
imposed by him, through external compulsion. Plato frequently insists 
that all products of human 'art' at their best are only copies of 'natural' 
sensible things. But since these in turn are only copies of the divine 
Forms or Ideas, the products of art are only copies of copies, twice 
removed from reality, and therefore less good, less real, and less true— 
than even the (natural) things in flux. We see from this that Plato agrees 
with Antiphon— in at least one point, namely in assuming that the 
opposition between nature and convention or art corresponds to that 
between truth and falsehood, between reality and appearance, between 
primary or original and secondary or man-made things, and to that 
between the objects of rational knowledge and those of delusive opinion. 
The opposition corresponds also, according to Plato, to that between 'the 
offspring of divine workmanship' or 'the products of divine art', and 
'what man makes out of them, i.e. the products of human art'.— All those 
things whose intrinsic value Plato wishes to emphasize he therefore 
claims to be natural as opposed to artificial. Thus he insists in the Laws 
that the soul has to be considered prior to all material things, and that it 
must therefore be said to exist by nature: 'Nearly everybody ... is 



ignorant of the power of the soul, and especially of her origin. They do 
not know that she is among the first of things, and prior to all bodies . . . 
In using the word "nature" one wants to describe the things that were 
created first; but if it turns out that it is the soul which is prior to other 
things (and not, perhaps, fire or air), . . . then the soul, beyond all others, 
may be asserted to exist by nature, in the truest sense of the word.'— 
(Plato here re-affirms his old theory that the soul is more closely akin to 
the Forms or Ideas than the body; a theory which is also the basis of his 
doctrine of immortality.) 

But Plato not only teaches that the soul is prior to other things and 
therefore exists 'by nature'; he uses the term 'nature', if applied to man, 
frequently also as a name for spiritual powers or gifts or natural talents, 
so that we can say that a man's 'nature' is much the same as his 'soul'; it 
is the divine principle by which he participates in the Form or Idea, in the 
divine primogenitor of his race. And the term 'race', again, is frequently 
used in a very similar sense. Since a 'race' is united by being the 
offspring of the same primogenitor, it must also be united by a common 
nature. Thus the terms 'nature' and 'race' are frequently used by Plato as 
synonyms, for instance, when he speaks of the 'race of philosophers' and 
of those who have 'philosophic natures'; so that both these terms are 
closely akin to the terms 'essence' and 'soul'. 

Plato's theory of 'nature' opens another approach to his historicist 
methodology. Since it seems to be the task of science in general to 
examine the true nature of its objects, it is the task of a social or political 
science to examine the nature of human society, and of the state. But the 
nature of a thing, according to Plato, is its origin; or at least it is 
determined by its origin. Thus the method of any science will be the 
investigation of the origin of things (of their 'causes'). This principle, 
when applied to the science of society and of politics, leads to the 
demand that the origin of society and of the state must be examined. 



History therefore is not studied for its own sake but serves as the method 
of the social sciences. This is the historicist methodology. 

What is the nature of human society, of the state? According to 
historicist methods, this fundamental question of sociology must be 
reformulated in this way: what is the origin of society and of the state? 
The reply given by Plato in the Republic as well as in the Laws—, agrees 
with the position described above as spiritual naturalism. The origin of 
society is a convention, di social contract. But it is not only that; it is, 
rather, a natural convention, i.e. a convention which is based upon human 
nature, and more precisely, upon the social nature of man. 

This social nature of man has its origin in the imperfection of the 
human individual. In opposition to Socrates—, Plato teaches that the 
human individual cannot be self-sufficient, owing to the limitations 
inherent in human nature. Although Plato insists that there are very 
different degrees of human perfection, it turns out that even the very few 
comparatively perfect men still depend upon others (who are less 
perfect); if for nothing else, then for having the dirty work, the manual 
work, done by them—. In this way, even the 'rare and uncommon natures' 
who approach perfection depend upon society, upon the state. They can 
reach perfection only through the state and in the state; the perfect state 
must offer them the proper 'social habitat', without which they must 
grow corrupt and degenerate. The state therefore must be placed higher 
than the individual since only the state can be self-sufficient ('autark'), 
perfect, and able to make good the necessary imperfection of the 
individual. 

Society and the individual are thus interdependent. The one owes its 
existence to the other. Society owes its existence to human nature, and 
especially to its lack of self-sufficiency; and the individual owes his 
existence to society, since he is not self-sufficient. But within this 
relationship of interdependence, the superiority of the state over the 



individual manifests itself in various ways; for instance, in the fact that 
the seed of the decay and disunion of a perfect state does not spring up in 
the state itself, but rather in its individuals; it is rooted in the 
imperfection of the human soul, of human nature; or more precisely, in 
the fact that the race of men is liable to degenerate. To this point, the 
origin of political decay, and its dependence upon the degeneration of 
human nature, I shall return presently; but I wish first to make a few 
comments on some of the characteristics of Plato's sociology, especially 
upon his version of the theory of the social contract, and upon his view of 
the state as a super-individual, i.e. his version of the biological or organic 
theory of the state. 

Whether Protagoras first proposed a theory that laws originate with a 
social contract, or whether Lycophron (whose theory will be discussed in 
the next chapter) was the first to do so, is not certain. In any case, the idea 
is closely related to Protagoras' conventionalism. The fact that Plato 
consciously combined some conventionalist ideas, and even a version of 
the contract theory, with his naturalism, is in itself an indication that 
conventionalism in its original form did not maintain that laws are 
wholly arbitrary; and Plato's remarks on Protagoras confirm this—. How 
conscious Plato was of a conventionalist element in his version of 
naturalism can be seen from a passage in the Laws. Plato there gives a list 
of the various principles upon which political authority might be based, 
mentioning Pindar's biological naturalism (see above), i.e. 'the principle 
that the stronger shall rule and the weaker be ruled', which he describes 
as a principle 'according to nature, as the Theban poet Pindar once 
stated' . Plato contrasts this principle with another which he recommends 
by showing that it combines conventionalism with naturalism: 'But there 
is also a . . . claim which is the greatest principle of all, namely, that the 
wise shall lead and rule, and that the ignorant shall follow; and this, O 
Pindar, wisest of poets, is surely not contrary to nature, but according to 



nature; for what it demands is not external compulsion but the truly 
natural sovereignty of a law which is based upon mutual consent.'— 

In the Republic we find elements of the conventionalist contract theory 
in a similar way combined with elements of naturalism (and 
utilitarianism). 'The city originates', we hear there, 'because we are not 
self-sufficient; ... or is there another origin of settlement in cities? ... 
Men gather into one settlement many . . . helpers, since they need many 
things ... And when they share their goods with one another, the one 
giving, the other partaking, does not every one expect in this way to 
further his own interest?'— Thus the inhabitants gather in order that each 
may further his own interest; which is an element of the contract theory. 
But behind this stands the fact that they are not self-sufficient, a fact of 
human nature; which is an element of naturalism. And this element is 
developed further. 'By nature, no two of us are exactly alike. Each has his 
peculiar nature, some being fit for one kind of work and some for another 
... Is it better that a man should work in many crafts or that he should 
work in one only? . . . Surely, more will be produced and better and more 
easily if each man works in one occupation only, according to his natural 
gifts.' 

In this way, the economic principle of the division of labour is 
introduced (reminding us of the affinity between Plato's historicism and 
the materialist interpretation of history). But this principle is based here 
upon an element of biological naturalism, namely, upon the natural 
inequality of men. At first, this idea is introduced inconspicuously and, as 
it were, innocently. But we shall see in the next chapter that it has far- 
reaching consequences; indeed, the only really important division of 
labour turns out to be that between rulers and ruled, claimed to be based 
upon the natural inequality of masters and slaves, of wise and ignorant. 

We have seen that there is a considerable element of conventionalism 
as well as of biological naturalism in Plato's position; an observation 



which is not surprising when we consider that this position is, on the 
whole, that of spiritual naturalism which, because of its vagueness, easily 
allows for all such combinations. This spiritual version of naturalism is 
perhaps best formulated in thQLaws. 'Men say', says Plato, 'that the 
greatest and most beautiful things are natural ... and the lesser things 
artificial.' So far he agrees; but he then attacks the materialists who say 
'that fire and water, and earth and air, all exist by nature ... and that all 
normative laws are altogether unnatural and artificial and based upon 
superstitions which are not true.' Against this view, he shows first, that it 
is not bodies nor elements, but the soul which truly 'exists by nature'— (I 
have quoted this passage above); and from this he concludes that order, 
and law, must also be by nature, since they spring from the soul: 'If the 
soul is prior to the body, then things dependent upon the soul' (i.e. 
spiritual matters) 'are also prior to those dependent upon body . . . And the 
soul orders and directs all things.' This supplies the theoretical 
background for the doctrine that 'laws and purposeful institutions exist 
by nature, and not by anything lower than nature, since they are born of 
reason and true thought.' This is a clear statement of spiritual naturalism; 
and it is combined as well with positivist beliefs of a conservative kind: 
'Thoughtful and prudent legislation will find a most powerful help 
because the laws will remain unchanged once they have been laid down in 
writing. ' 

From all this it can be seen that arguments derived from Plato's 
spiritual naturalism are quite incapable of helping to answer any question 
which may arise concerning the 'just' or 'natural' character of any 
particular law. Spiritual naturalism is much too vague to be applied to 
any practical problem. It cannot do much beyond providing some general 
arguments in favour of conservativism. In practice, everything is left to 
the wisdom of the great lawgiver (a godlike philosopher, whose picture, 
especially in the Laws, is undoubtedly a self-portrait; see also chapter 8 ). 



As opposed to his spiritual naturalism, however, Plato's theory of the 
interdependence of society and the individual furnishes more concrete 
results; and so does his anti-equalitarian biological naturalism. 



VII 



It has been indicated above that because of its self-sufficiency, the ideal 
state appears to Plato as the perfect individual, and the individual citizen, 
accordingly, as an imperfect copy of the state. This view which makes of 
the state a kind of super- organism or Leviathan introduces into the 
Occident the so-called organic or biological theory of the state. The 
principle of this theory will be criticized later—. Here I wish first to draw 
attention to the fact that Plato does not defend the theory, and indeed 
hardly formulates it explicitly. But it is clearly enough implied; in fact, 
the fundamental analogy between the state and the human individual is 
one of the standard topics of the Republic. It is worth mentioning, in this 
connection, that the analogy serves to further the analysis of the 
individual rather than that of the state. One could perhaps defend the view 
that Plato (perhaps under the influence of Alcmaeon) does not offer so 
much a biological theory of the state as a political theory of the human 
individual—. This view, I think, is fully in accordance with his doctrine 
that the individual is lower than the state, and a kind of imperfect copy of 
it. In the very place in which Plato introduces his fundamental analogy, it 
is used in this way; that is to say, as a method of explaining and 
elucidating the individual. The city, it is said, is greater than the 
individual, and therefore easier to examine. Plato gives this as his reason 
for suggesting that 'we should begin our inquiry' (namely, into the nature 
of justice) 'in the city, and continue it afterwards in the individual. 



always watching for points of similarity ... May we not expect in this 
way to discern more easily what we are looking for?' 

From his way of introducing it we can see that Plato (and perhaps his 
readers) took his fundamental analogy for granted. This may well be a 
symptom of nostalgia, of a longing for a unified and harmonious, an 
'organic' state: for a society of a more primitive kind. (See chapter 10 .) 
The city state ought to remain small, he says, and should grow only as 
long as its increase does not endanger its unity. The whole city should, by 
its nature, be one, and not many.— Plato thus emphasizes the 'oneness' or 
individuality of his city. But he also emphasizes the 'manyness' of the 
human individual. In his analysis of the individual soul, and of its 
division into three parts, reason, energy, and animal instincts, 
corresponding to the three classes of his state, the guardians, warriors, 
and workers (who still continue to 'fill their bellies like the beasts', as 
Heraclitus had said), Plato goes so far as to oppose these parts to one 
another as if they were 'distinct and conflicting persons'—. 'We are thus 
told', says Grote, 'that though man is apparently One, he is in reality 
Many . . . though the perfect Commonwealth is apparently Many, it is in 
reality One.' It is clear that this corresponds to the Ideal character of the 
state of which the individual is a kind of imperfect copy. Such an 
emphasis upon oneness and wholeness — especially of the state; or 
perhaps of the world — may be described as 'holism'. Plato's holism, I 
believe, is closely related to the tribal collectivism mentioned in earlier 
chapters. Plato was longing for the lost unity of tribal life. A life of 
change, in the midst of a social revolution, appeared to him unreal. Only 
a stable whole, the permanent collective, has reality, not the passing 
individuals. It is 'natural' for the individual to subserve the whole, which 
is no mere assembly of individuals, but a 'natural' unit of a higher order. 

Plato gives many excellent sociological descriptions of this 'natural', 
i.e. tribal and collectivist, mode of social life: 'The law', he writes in the 



Republic, ' ... is designed to bring about the welfare of the state as a 
whole, fitting the citizens into one unit, by means of both persuasion and 
force. It makes them all share in whatever benefit each of them can 
contribute to the community. And it is actually the law which creates for 
the state men of the right frame of mind; not for the purpose of letting 
them loose, so that everybody can go his own way, but in order to utilize 
them all for welding the city together.'— That there is in this holism an 
emotional aestheticism, a longing for beauty, can be seen, for instance, 
from a remark in the Laws: 'Every artist . . . executes the part for the sake 
of the whole, and not the whole for the sake of the part.' At the same 
place, we also find a truly classical formulation of political holism: 'You 
are created for the sake of the whole, and not the whole for the sake of 
you.' Within this whole, the different individuals, and groups of 
individuals, with their natural inequalities, must render their specific and 
very unequal services. 

All this would indicate that Plato's theory was a form of the organic 
theory of the state, even if he had not sometimes spoken of the state as an 
organism. But since he did this, there can be no doubt left that he must be 
described as an exponent, or rather, as one of the originators, of this 
theory. His version of this theory may be characterized as a personalist or 
psychological one, since he describes the state not in a general way as 
similar to some organism or other, but as analogous to the human 
individual, and more specifically to the human soul. Especially the 
disease of the state, the dissolution of its unity, corresponds to the disease 
of the human soul, of human nature. In fact, the disease of the state is not 
only correlated with, but is directly produced by, the corruption of human 
nature, more especially of the members of the ruling class. Every single 
one of the typical stages in the degeneration of the state is brought about 
by a corresponding stage in the degeneration of the human soul, of human 
nature, of the human race. And since this moral degeneration is 



interpreted as based upon racial degeneration, we might say that the 
biological element in Plato's naturalism turns out, in the end, to have the 
most important part in the foundation of his historicism. For the history 
of the downfall of the first or perfect state is nothing but the history of 
the biological degeneration of the race of men. 



VIII 



It was mentioned in the last chapter that the problem of the beginning of 
change and decay is one of the major difficulties of Plato's historicist 
theory of society. The first, the natural and perfect city-state, cannot be 
supposed to carry within itself the germ of dissolution, 'for a city which 
carries within itself the germ of dissolution is for that very reason 
imperfect'—. Plato tries to get over the difficulty by laying the blame on 
his universally valid historical, biological, and perhaps even 
cosmological, evolutionary law of degeneration, rather than on the 
particular constitution of the first or perfect city—: 'Everything that has 
been generated must decay.' But this general theory does not provide a 
fully satisfactory solution, for it does not explain why even a sufficiently 
perfect state cannot escape the law of decay. And indeed, Plato hints that 
historical decay might have been avoided—, had the rulers of the first or 
natural state been trained philosophers. But they were not. They were not 
trained (as he demands that the rulers of his heavenly city should be) in 
mathematics and dialectics; and in order to avoid degeneration, they 
would have needed to be initiated into the higher mysteries of eugenics, 
of the science of 'keeping pure the race of the guardians', and of avoiding 
the mixture of the noble metals in their veins with the base metals of the 
workers. But these higher mysteries are difficult to reveal. Plato 



distinguishes sharply, in the fields of mathematics, acoustics, and 
astronomy, between mere (delusive) opinion which is tainted by 
experience, and which cannot reach exactness, and is altogether on a low 
level, and pure rational knowledge, which is free from sensual experience 
and exact. This distinction he applies also to the field of eugenics. A 
merely empirical art of breeding cannot be precise, i.e. it cannot keep the 
race perfectly pure. This explains the downfall of the original city which 
is so good, i.e. so similar to its Form or Idea, that 'a city thus constituted 
can hardly be shaken'. 'But this', Plato continues, 'is the way it 
dissolves', and he proceeds to outline his theory of breeding, of the 
Number, and of the Fall of Man. 

All plants and animals, he tells us, must be bred according to definite 
periods of time, if barrenness and degeneration are to be avoided. Some 
knowledge of these periods, which are connected with the length of the 
life of the race, will be available to the rulers of the best state, and they 
will apply it to the breeding of the master race. It will not, however, be 
rational, but only empirical knowledge; it will be 'calculation aided by 
(or based on) perception' (cp. the next quotation). But as we have just 
seen, perception and experience can never be exact and reliable, since its 
objects are not the pure Forms or Ideas, but the world of things in flux; 
and since the guardians have no better kind of knowledge at their 
disposal, the breed cannot be kept pure, and racial degeneration must 
creep in. This is how Plato explains the matter: 'Concerning your own 
race' (i.e. the race of men, as opposed to animals), 'the rulers of the city 
whom you have trained may be wise enough; but since they are using 
calculation aided by perception, they will not hit, accidentally, upon the 
way of getting either good offspring, or none at all.' Lacking a purely 
rational method,— 'they will blunder, and some day they will beget 
children in the wrong way'. In what follows next, Plato hints, rather 
mysteriously, that there is now a way to avoid this through the discovery 



of a purely rational and mathematical science which possesses in the 
'Platonic Number' (a number determining the True Period of the human 
race) the key to the master law of higher eugenics. But since the 
guardians of old times were ignorant of Pythagorean number-mysticism, 
and with it, of this key to the higher knowledge of breeding, the otherwise 
perfect natural state could not escape decay. After partially revealing the 
secret of his mysterious Number, Plato continues: 'This ... number is 
master over better or worse births; and whenever these guardians of yours 
— who are ignorant of these matters — unite bride and bridegroom in the 
wrong manner—, the children will have neither good natures nor good 
luck. Even the best of them . . . will prove unworthy when succeeding to 
the power of their fathers; and as soon as they are guardians, they will not 
listen to us any more' — that is, in matters of musical and gymnastic 
education, and, as Plato especially emphasizes, in the supervision of 
breeding. 'Hence rulers will be appointed who are not altogether fit for 
their task as guardians; namely to watch, and to test, the metals in the 
races (which are Hesiod's races as well as yours), gold and silver and 
bronze and iron. So iron will mingle with silver and bronze with gold and 
from this mixture. Variation will be born and absurd Irregularity; and 
whenever these are born they will beget Strife and Hostility. And this is 
how we must describe the ancestry and birth of Dissension, wherever she 
arises.' 

This is Plato's story of the Number and of the Fall of Man. It is the 
basis of his historicist sociology, especially of his fundamental law of 
social revolutions discussed in the last chapter—. For racial degeneration 
explains the origin of disunion in the ruling class, and with it, the origin 
of all historical development. The internal disunion of human nature, the 
schism of the soul, leads to the schism of the ruling class. And as with 
Heraclitus, war, class war, is the father and promoter of all change, and of 
the history of man, which is nothing but the history of the breakdown of 



society. We see that Plato's idealist historicism ultimately rests not upon 
a spiritual, but upon a biological basis; it rests upon a kind of meta- 
biology— of the race of men. Plato was not only a naturalist who 
proffered a biological theory of the state, he was also the first to proffer a 
biological and racial theory of social dynamics, of political history. 'The 
Platonic Number', says Adam—, 'is thus the setting in which Plato's 
"Philosophy of History" is framed.' 

It is, I think, appropriate to conclude this sketch of Plato's descriptive 
sociology with a summary and an evaluation. 

Plato succeeded in giving an astonishingly true, though of course 
somewhat idealized, reconstruction of an early Greek tribal and 
collectivist society similar to that of Sparta. An analysis of the forces, 
especially the economic forces, which threaten the stability of such a 
society, enables him to describe the general policy as well as the social 
institutions which are necessary for arresting it. And he gives, 
furthermore, a rational reconstruction of the economic and historical 
development of the Greek city-states. 

These achievements are impaired by his hatred of the society in which 
he was living, and by his romantic love for the old tribal form of social 
life. It is this attitude which led him to formulate an untenable law of 
historical development, namely, the law of universal degeneration or 
decay. And the same attitude is also responsible for the irrational, 
fantastic, and romantic elements of his otherwise excellent analysis. On 
the other hand, it was just his personal interest and his partiality which 
sharpened his eye and so made his achievements possible. He derived his 
historicist theory from the fantastic philosophical doctrine that the 
changing visible world is only a decaying copy of an unchanging 
invisible world. But this ingenious attempt to combine a historicist 
pessimism with an ontological optimism leads, when elaborated, to 
difficulties. These difficulties forced upon him the adoption of a 



biological naturalism, leading (together with 'psychologism— , i.e. the 
theory that society depends on the 'human nature' of its members) to 
mysticism and superstition, culminating in a pseudo-rational 
mathematical theory of breeding. They even endangered the impressive 
unity of his theoretical edifice. 



IX 



Looking back at this edifice, we may briefly consider its ground-plan—. 
This ground-plan, conceived by a great architect, exhibits a fundamental 
metaphysical dualism in Plato's thought. In the field of logic, this 
dualism presents itself as the opposition between the universal and the 
particular. In the field of mathematical speculation, it presents itself as 
the opposition between the One and the Many. In the field of 
epistemology, it is the opposition between rational knowledge based on 
pure thought, and opinion based on particular experiences. In the field of 
ontology, it is the opposition between the one, original, invariable, and 
true, reality, and the many, varying, and delusive, appearances; between 
pure being and becoming, or more precisely, changing. In the field of 
cosmology, it is the opposition between that which generates and that 
which is generated, and which must decay. In ethics, it is the opposition 
between the good, i.e. that which preserves, and the evil, i.e. that which 
corrupts. In politics, it is the opposition between the one collective, the 
state, which may attain perfection and autarchy, and the great mass of the 
people — the many individuals, the particular men who must remain 
imperfect and dependent, and whose particularity is to be suppressed for 
the sake of the unity of the state (see the next chapter). And this whole 
dualist philosophy, I believe, originated from the urgent wish to explain 



the contrast between the vision of an ideal society, and the hateful actual 
state of affairs in the social field — ^the contrast between a stable society, 
and a society in the process of revolution. 



Plato's Political Programme 



6 

Totalitarian Justice 



The analysis of Plato's sociology makes it easy to present his political 
programme. His fundamental demands can be expressed in either of two 
formulae, the first corresponding to his idealist theory of change and rest, 
the second to his naturalism. The idealist formula is: Arrest all political 
change! Change is evil, rest divine-. All change can be arrested if the 
state is made an exact copy of its original, i.e. of the Form or Idea of the 
city. Should it be asked how this is practicable, we can reply with the 
naturalistic formula: Back to nature! Back to the original state of our 
forefathers, the primitive state founded in accordance with human nature, 
and therefore stable; back to the tribal patriarchy of the time before the 
Fall, to the natural class rule of the wise few over the ignorant many. 

I believe that practically all the elements of Plato's political 
programme can be derived from these demands. They are, in turn, based 
upon his historicism; and they have to be combined with his sociological 
doctrines concerning the conditions for the stability of class rule. The 
principal elements I have in mind are: 

(a) The strict division of the classes; i.e. the ruling class consisting 
of herdsmen and watch- dogs must be strictly separated from the 
human cattle. 

(b) The identification of the fate of the state with that of the ruling 
class; the exclusive interest in this class, and in its unity; and 



subservient to this unity, the rigid rules for breeding and 
educating this class, and the strict supervision and collectivization 
of the interests of its members. 

From these principal elements, others can be derived, for instance the 
following: 

(c) The ruling class has a monopoly of things like military virtues 
and training, and of the right to carry arms and to receive 
education of any kind; but it is excluded from any participation in 
economic activities, and especially from earning money. 

(d) There must be a censorship of all intellectual activities of the 
ruling class, and a continual propaganda aiming at moulding and 
unifying their minds. All innovation in education, legislation, and 
religion must be prevented or suppressed. 

(e) The state must be self-sufficient. It must aim at economic 
autarchy; for otherwise the rulers would either be dependent upon 
traders, or become traders themselves. The first of these 
alternatives would undermine their power, the second their unity 
and the stability of the state. 

This programme can, I think, be fairly described as totalitarian. And it 
is certainly founded upon a historicist sociology. 

But is that all? Are there no other features of Plato's programme, 
elements which are neither totalitarian nor founded upon historicism? 
What about Plato's ardent desire for Goodness and Beauty, or his love of 
Wisdom and of Truth? What about his demand that the wise, the 
philosophers, should rule? What about his hopes of making the citizens of 
his state virtuous as well as happy? And what about his demand that the 
state should be founded upon Justice? Even writers who criticize Plato 



believe that his political doctrine, in spite of certain similarities, is 
clearly distinguished from modern totalitarianism by these aims of his, 
the happiness of the citizens, and the rule of justice. Grossman, for 
instance, whose critical attitude can be gauged from his remark that 
'Plato's philosophy is the most savage and most profound attack upon 
liberal ideas which history can show'-, seems still to believe that Plato's 
plan is 'the building of a perfect state in which every citizen is really 
happy'. Another example is Joad who discusses the similarities between 
Plato's programme and that of fascism at some length, but who asserts 
that there are fundamental differences, since in Plato's best state 'the 
ordinary man ... achieves such happiness as appertains to his nature', and 
since this state is built upon the ideas of 'an absolute good and an 
absolute justice'. 

In spite of such arguments I believe that Plato's political programme, 
far from being morally superior to totalitarianism, is fundamentally 
identical with it. I believe that the objections against this view are based 
upon an ancient and deep-rooted prejudice in favour of idealizing Plato. 
That Grossman has done much to point out and to destroy this inclination 
may be seen from this statement: 'Before the Great War ... Plato ... was 
rarely condemned outright as a reactionary, resolutely opposed to every 
principle of the liberal creed. Instead he was elevated to a higher rank, . . . 
removed from practical life, dreaming of a transcendent Gity of God.'- 
Grossman himself, however, is not free from that tendency which he so 
clearly exposes. It is interesting that this tendency could persist for such a 
long time in spite of the fact that Grote and Gomperz had pointed out the 
reactionary character of some doctrines of the Republic and the Laws. But 
even they did not see all the implications of these doctrines; they never 
doubted that Plato was, fundamentally, a humanitarian. And their adverse 
criticism was ignored, or interpreted as a failure to understand and to 
appreciate Plato who was by Ghristians considered a 'Ghristian before 



Christ', and by revolutionaries a revolutionary. This kind of complete 
faith in Plato is undoubtedly still dominant, and Field, for instance, finds 
it necessary to warn his readers that 'we shall misunderstand Plato 
entirely if we think of him as a revolutionary thinker'. This is, of course, 
very true; and it would clearly be pointless if the tendency to make of 
Plato a revolutionary thinker, or at least a progressivist, were not fairly 
widespread. But Field himself has the same kind of faith in Plato; for 
when he goes on to say that Plato was 'in strong opposition to the new 
and subversive tendencies' of his time, then surely he accepts too readily 
Plato's testimony for the subversiveness of these new tendencies. The 
enemies of freedom have always charged its defenders with subversion. 
And nearly always they have succeeded in persuading the guileless and 
well-meaning. 

The idealization of the great idealist permeates not only the 
interpretations of Plato's writings, but also the translations. Drastic 
remarks of Plato's which do not fit the translator's views of what a 
humanitarian should say are frequently either toned down or 
misunderstood. This tendency begins with the translation of the very title 
of Plato's so-called 'Republic'. What comes first to our mind when 
hearing this title is that the author must be a liberal, if not a 
revolutionary. But the title 'Republic' is, quite simply, the English form 
of the Latin rendering of a Greek word that had no associations of this 
kind, and whose proper English translation would be 'The Constitution' 
or 'The City State' or 'The State'. The traditional translation 'The 
Republic' has undoubtedly contributed to the general conviction that 
Plato could not have been a reactionary. 

In view of all that Plato says about Goodness and Justice and the other 
Ideas mentioned, my thesis that his political demands are purely 
totalitarian and anti-humanitarian needs to be defended. In order to 
undertake this defence, I shall, for the next four chapters, break off the 



analysis of historicism, and concentrate upon a critical examination of 
the ethical Ideas mentioned, and of their part in Plato's political 
demands. In the present chapter, I shall examine the Idea of Justice; in 
the three following chapters, the doctrine that the wisest and best should 
rule, and the Ideas of Truth, Wisdom, Goodness, and Beauty. 



I 

What do we really mean when we speak of 'Justice'? I do not think that 
verbal questions of this kind are particularly important, or that it is 
possible to make a definite answer to them, since such terms are always 
used in various senses. However, I think that most of us, especially those 
whose general outlook is humanitarian, mean something like this: (a) an 
equal distribution of the burden of citizenship, i.e. of those limitations of 
freedom which are necessary in social life-; (b) equal treatment of the 
citizens before the law, provided, of course, that (c) the laws show neither 
favour nor disfavour towards individual citizens or groups or classes; (d) 
impartiality of the courts of justice; and (e) an equal share in the 
advantages (and not only in the burden) which membership of the state 
may offer to its citizens. If Plato had meant by 'justice' anything of this 
kind, then my claim that his programme is purely totalitarian would 
certainly be wrong and all those would be right who believe that Plato's 
politics rested upon an acceptable humanitarian basis. But the fact is that 
he meant by 'justice' something entirely different. 

What did Plato mean by 'justice'? I assert that in the Republic he used 
the term 'just' as a synonym for 'that which is in the interest of the best 
state'. And what is in the interest of this best state? To arrest all change, 
by the maintenance of a rigid class division and class rule. If I am right in 



this interpretation, then we should have to say that Plato's demand for 
justice leaves his political programme at the level of totalitarianism; and 
we should have to conclude that we must guard against the danger of 
being impressed by mere words. 

Justice is the central topic of thQ Republic; in fact, 'On Justice' is its 
traditional sub-title. In his enquiry into the nature of justice, Plato makes 
use of the method mentioned- in the last chapter; he first tries to search 
for this Idea in the state, and then attempts to apply the result to the 
individual. One cannot say that Plato's question 'What is justice?' 
quickly finds an answer, for it is only given in the Fourth Book. The 
considerations which lead up to it will be analysed more fully later in this 
chapter. Briefly, they are these. 

The city is founded upon human nature, its needs, and its limitations-. 
'We have stated, and, you will remember, repeated over and over again 
that each man in our city should do one work only; namely, that work for 
which his nature is naturally best fitted.' From this Plato concludes that 
everyone should mind his own business; that the carpenter should confine 
himself to carpentering, the shoemaker to making shoes. Not much harm 
is done, however, if two workers change their natural places. 'But should 
anyone who is by nature a worker (or else a member of the money- 
earning class) . . . manage to get into the warrior class; or should a warrior 
get into the class of the guardians, without being worthy of it; ... then this 
kind of change and of underhand plotting would mean the downfall of the 
city.' From this argument which is closely related to the principle that the 
carrying of arms should be a class prerogative, Plato draws his final 
conclusion that any changing or intermingling within the three classes 
must be injustice, and that the opposite, therefore, is justice: 'When each 
class in the city minds its own business, the money-earning class as well 
as the auxiliaries and the guardians, then this will be justice.' This 
conclusion is reaffirmed and summed up a little later: 'The city is just . . . 



if each of its three classes attends to its own work.' But this statement 
means that Plato identifies justice with the principle of class rule and of 
class privilege. For the principle that every class should attend to its own 
business means, briefly and bluntly, that the state is just if the ruler rules, 
if the worker works, and- if the slave slaves. 

It will be seen that Plato's concept of justice is fundamentally different 
from our ordinary view as analysed above. Plato calls class privilege 
'just', while we usually mean by justice rather the absence of such 
privilege. But the difference goes further than that. We mean by justice 
some kind of equality in the treatment of individuals, while Plato 
considers justice not as a relationship between individuals, but as a 
property of the whole state, based upon a relationship between its classes. 
The state is just if it is healthy, strong, united — stable. 



II 

But was Plato perhaps right? Does 'justice' perhaps mean what he says? I 
do not intend to discuss such a question. If anyone should hold that 
'justice' means the unchallenged rule of one class, then I should simply 
reply that I am all for injustice. In other words, I believe that nothing 
depends upon words, and everything upon our practical demands or upon 
the proposals for framing our policy which we decide to adopt. Behind 
Plato's definition of justice stands, fundamentally, his demand for a 
totalitarian class rule, and his decision to bring it about. 

But was he not right in a different sense? Did his idea of justice 
perhaps correspond to the Greek way of using this word? Did the Greeks 
perhaps mean by 'justice', something holistic, like the 'health of the 
state', and is it not utterly unfair and unhistorical to expect from Plato an 



anticipation of our modern idea of justice as equality of the citizens 
before the law? This question, indeed, has been answered in the 
affirmative, and the claim has been made that Plato's holistic idea of 
'social justice' is characteristic of the traditional Greek outlook, of the 
'Greek genius' which 'was not, like the Roman, specifically legal', but 
rather 'specifically metaphysical'-. But this claim is untenable. As a 
matter of fact, the Greek way of using the word 'justice' was indeed 
surprisingly similar to our own individualistic and equalitarian usage. 

In order to show this, I may first refer to Plato himself who, in the 
dialogue Gorgias (which is earlier than the Republic), speaks of the view 
that 'justice is equality' as one held by the great mass of the people, and 
as one which agrees not only with 'convention', but with 'nature itself. I 
may further quote Aristotle, another opponent of equalitarianism, who, 
under the influence of Plato's naturalism, elaborated among other things 
the theory that some men are by nature born to slave-. Nobody could be 
less interested in spreading an equalitarian and individualistic 
interpretation of the term 'justice'. But when speaking of the judge, 
whom he describes as 'a personification of that which is just', Aristotle 
says that it is the task of the judge to 'restore equality'. He tells us that 
'all men think justice to be a kind of equality', an equality, namely, 
which 'pertains to persons'. He even thinks (but here he is wrong) that the 
Greek word for 'justice' is to be derived from a root that means 'equal 
division'. (The view that 'justice' means a kind of 'equality in the 
division of spoils and honours to the citizens' agrees with Plato's views 
in the Laws, where two kinds of equality in the distribution of spoils and 
honours are distinguished — 'numerical' or 'arithmetical' equality and 
'proportionate' equality; the second of which takes account of the degree 
in which the persons in question possess virtue, breeding, and wealth — 
and where this proportionate equality is said to constitute 'political 
justice'.) And when Aristotle discusses the principles of democracy, he 



says that 'democratic justice is the application of the principle of 
arithmetical equality (as distinct from proportionate equality).' All this is 
certainly not merely his personal impression of the meaning of justice, 
nor is it perhaps only a description of the way in which the word was 
used, after Plato, under the influence of the Gorgias and the Laws] it is, 
rather, the expression of a universal and ancient as well as popular use of 
the word 'justice'.— 

In view of this evidence, we must say, I think, that the holistic and 
anti-equalitarian interpretation of justice in thQ Republic was an 
innovation, and that Plato attempted to present his totalitarian class rule 
as 'just' while people generally meant by 'justice' the exact opposite. 

This result is startling, and opens up a number of questions. Why did 
Plato claim, in the Republic, that justice meant inequality if in general 
usage, it meant equality? To me the only likely reply seems to be that he 
wanted to make propaganda for his totalitarian state by persuading the 
people that it was the 'just' state. But was such an attempt worth his 
while, considering that it is not words but what we mean by them that 
matters? Of course it was worth while; this can be seen from the fact that 
he fully succeeded in persuading his readers, down to our own day, that 
he was candidly advocating justice, i.e. that justice they were striving for. 
And it is a fact that he thereby spread doubt and confusion among 
equalitarians and individualists who, under the influence of his authority, 
began to ask themselves whether his idea of justice was not truer and 
better than theirs. Since the word 'justice' symbolizes to us an aim of 
such importance, and since so many are prepared to endure anything for 
it, and to do all in their power for its realization, the enlistment of these 
humanitarian forces, or at least, the paralysing of equalitarianism, was 
certainly an aim worthy of being pursued by a believer in totalitarianism. 
But was Plato aware that justice meant so much to men? He was; for he 
writes in thQ Republic: 'When a man has committed an injustice, ... is it 



not true that his courage refuses to be stirred? . . . But when he believes 
that he has suffered injustice, does not his vigour and his wrath flare up at 
once? And is it not equally true that when fighting on the side of what he 
believes to be just, he can endure hunger and cold, and any kind of 
hardship? And does he not hold on until he conquers, persisting in his 
exalted state until he has either achieved his aim, or perished?'— 

Reading this, we cannot doubt that Plato knew the power of faith, and, 
above all, of a faith in justice. Nor can we doubt that the Republic must 
tend to pervert this faith, and to replace it by a directly opposite faith. 
And in the light of the available evidence, it seems to me most probable 
that Plato knew very well what he was doing. Equalitarianism was his 
arch-enemy, and he was out to destroy it; no doubt in the sincere belief 
that it was a great evil and a great danger. But his attack upon 
equalitarianism was not an honest attack. Plato did not dare to face the 
enemy openly. 

I proceed to present the evidence in support of this contention. 

Ill 

The Republic is probably the most elaborate monograph on justice ever 
written. It examines a variety of views about justice, and it does this in a 
way which leads us to believe that Plato omitted none of the more 
important theories known to him. In fact, Plato clearly implies— that 
because of his vain attempts to track it down among the current views, a 
new search for justice is necessary. Yet in his survey and discussion of 
the current theories, the view that justice is equality before the law 
{'isonomy') is never mentioned. This omission can be explained only in 
two ways. Either he overlooked the equalitarian theory—, or he purposely 



avoided it. The first possibility seems very unlikely if we consider the 
care with which the Republic is composed, and the necessity for Plato to 
analyse the theories of his opponents if he was to make a forceful 
presentation of his own. But this possibility appears even more 
improbable if we consider the wide popularity of the equalitarian theory. 
We need not, however, rely upon merely probable arguments since it can 
be easily shown that Plato was not only acquainted with the equalitarian 
theory but well aware of its importance when he wrote the Republic. As 
already mentioned in this chapter (in section II), and as will be shown in 
detail later (in section VIII), equalitarianism played a considerable role in 
the earlier Gorgias where it is even defended; and in spite of the fact that 
the merits or demerits of equalitarianism are nowhere seriously discussed 
in the Republic, Plato did not change his mind regarding its influence, for 
the Republic itself testifies to its popularity. It is there alluded to as a 
very popular democratic belief; but it is treated only with scorn, and all 
we hear about it consists of a few sneers and pin-pricks—, well matched 
with the abusive attack upon Athenian democracy, and made at a place 
where justice is not the topic of the discussion. The possibility that the 
equalitarian theory of justice was overlooked by Plato is therefore ruled 
out, and so is the possibility that he did not see that a discussion of an 
influential theory diametrically opposed to his own was requisite. The 
fact that his silence in thQ Republic is broken only by a few jocular 
remarks (apparently he thought them too good to be suppressed—) can be 
explained only as a conscious refusal to discuss it. In view of all that, I do 
not see how Plato's method of impressing upon his readers the belief that 
all important theories have been examined can be reconciled with the 
standards of intellectual honesty; though we must add that his failure is 
undoubtedly due to his complete devotion to a cause in whose goodness 
he firmly believed. 

In order to appreciate fully the implications of Plato's practically 



unbroken silence on this issue, we must first see clearly that the 
equalitarian movement as Plato knew it represented all he hated, and that 
his own theory, in the Republic and in all later works, was largely a reply 
to the powerful challenge of the new equalitarianism and 
humanitarianism. To show this, I shall discuss the main principles of the 
humanitarian movement, and contrast them with the corresponding 
principles of Platonic totalitarianism. 

The humanitarian theory of justice makes three main demands or 
proposals, namely (a) the equalitarian principle proper, i.e. the proposal 
to eliminate 'natural' privileges, (Z?) the general principle of 
individualism, and (c) the principle that it should be the task and the 
purpose of the state to protect the freedom of its citizens. To each of 
these political demands or proposals there corresponds a directly opposite 
principle of Platonism, namely {a^) the principle of natural privilege, (Z?^) 
the general principle of holism or collectivism, and (c^) the principle that 
it should be the task and the purpose of the individual to maintain, and to 
strengthen, the stability of the state. — I shall discuss these three points in 
order, devoting to each of them one of the sections IV, V, and VI of this 
chapter. 



IV 

Equalitarianism proper is the demand that the citizens of the state should 
be treated impartially. It is the demand that birth, family connection, or 
wealth must not influence those who administer the law to the citizens. In 
other words, it does not recognize any 'natural' privileges, although 
certain privileges may be conferred by the citizens upon those they trust. 
This equalitarian principle had been admirably formulated by Pericles 



a few years before Plato's birth, in an oration which has been preserved 
by Thucydides— . It will be quoted more fully in chapter 10, but two of its 
sentences may be given here: 'Our laws', said Pericles, 'afford equal 
justice to all alike in their private disputes, but we do not ignore the 
claims of excellence. When a citizen distinguishes himself, then he is 
preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as a 
reward for merit; and poverty is not a bar ...'These sentences express 
some of the fundamental aims of the great equalitarian movement which, 
as we have seen, did not even shrink from attacking slavery. In Pericles' 
own generation, this movement was represented by Euripides, Antiphon, 
and Hippias, who have all been quoted in the last chapter, and also by 
Herodotus—. In Plato's generation, it was represented by Alcidamas and 
Lycophron, both quoted above; another supporter was Antisthenes, who 
had been one of Socrates' closest friends. 

Plato's principle of justice was, of course, diametrically opposed to all 
this. He demanded natural privileges for the natural leaders. But how did 
he contest the equalitarian principle? And how did he establish his own 
demands? 

It will be remembered from the last chapter that some of the best- 
known formulations of the equalitarian demands were couched in the 
impressive but questionable language of 'natural rights', and that some of 
their representatives argued in favour of these demands by pointing out 
the 'natural', i.e. biological, equality of men. We have seen that the 
argument is irrelevant; that men are equal in some important respects, 
and unequal in others; and that normative demands cannot be derived 
from this fact, or from any other fact. It is therefore interesting to note 
that the naturalist argument was not used by all equalitarians, and that 
Pericles, for one, did not even allude to it—. 

Plato quickly found that naturalism was a weak spot within the 
equalitarian doctrine, and he took the fullest advantage of this weakness. 



To tell men that they are equal has a certain sentimental appeal. But this 
appeal is small compared with that made by a propaganda that tells them 
that they are superior to others, and that others are inferior to them. Are 
you naturally equal to your servants, to your slaves, to the manual worker 
who is no better than an animal? The very question is ridiculous! Plato 
seems to have been the first to appreciate the possibilities of this 
reaction, and to oppose contempt, scorn, and ridicule to the claim to 
natural equality. This explains why he was anxious to impute the 
naturalistic argument even to those of his opponents who did not use it; in 
thQ Menexenus, a parody of Pericles' oration, he therefore insists on 
linking together the claims to equal laws and to natural equality: 'The 
basis of our constitution is equality of birth', he says ironically. 'We are 
all brethren, and are all children of one mother; ... and the natural 
equality of birth induces us to strive for equality before the law.'— 

Later, in the Laws, Plato summarizes his reply to equalitarianism in the 
formula: 'Equal treatment of unequals must beget inequity'—; and this 
was developed by Aristotle into the formula 'Equality for equals, 
inequality for unequals'. This formula indicates what may be termed the 
standard objection to equalitarianism; the objection that equality would 
be excellent if only men were equal, but that it is manifestly impossible 
since they are not equal, and since they cannot be made equal. This 
apparently very realistic objection is, in fact, most unrealistic, for 
political privileges have never been founded upon natural differences of 
character. And, indeed, Plato does not seem to have had much confidence 
in this objection when writing thQ Republic, for it is used there only in 
one of his sneers at democracy when he says that it 'distributes equality 
to equals and unequals alike.'— Apart from this remark, he prefers not to 
argue against equalitarianism, but to forget it. 

Summing up, it can be said that Plato never underrated the significance 
of the equalitarian theory, supported as it was by a man like Pericles, but 



that, in XhQ Republic, he did not treat it at all; he attacked it, but not 
squarely and openly. 

But how did he try to establish his own anti-equalitarianism, his 
principle of natural privilege? In \hQ Republic, he proffered three 
different arguments, though two of them hardly deserve the name. The 
first— is the surprising remark that, since all the other three virtues of the 
state have been examined, the remaining fourth, that of 'minding one's 
own business', must be 'justice'. I am reluctant to believe that this was 
meant as an argument; but it must be, for Plato's leading speaker, 
'Socrates', introduces it by asking: 'Do you know how I arrive at this 
conclusion?' The second argument is more interesting, for it is an attempt 
to show that his anti-equalitarianism can be derived from the ordinary 
(i.e. equalitarian) view that justice is impartiality. I quote the passage in 
full. Remarking that the rulers of the city will also be its judges, 
'Socrates' says—: 'And will it not be the aim of their jurisdiction that no 
man shall take what belongs to another, and shall be deprived of what is 
his own?' — 'Yes', is the reply of 'Glaucon', the interlocutor, 'that will be 
their intention.' — 'Because that would be just?' — 'Yes.' — 'Accordingly, 
to keep and to practise what belongs to us and is our own will be 
generally agreed upon to be justice.' Thus it is established that 'to keep 
and to practise what is one's own' is the principle of just jurisdiction, 
according to our ordinary ideas of justice. Here the second argument 
ends, giving way to the third (to be analysed below) which leads to the 
conclusion that it is justice to keep one's own station (or to do one's own 
business), which is the station (or the business) o/ ones own class or 
caste. 

The sole purpose of this second argument is to impress upon the reader 
that 'justice', in the ordinary sense of the word, requires us to keep our 
own station, since we should always keep what belongs to us. That is to 
say, Plato wishes his readers to draw the inference: 'It is just to keep and 



to practise what is one's own. My place (or my business) is my own. Thus 
it is just for me to keep to my place (or to practise my business).' This is 
about as sound as the argument: 'It is just to keep and to practise what is 
one's own. This plan of stealing your money is my own. Thus it is just for 
me to keep to my plan, and to put it into practice, i.e. to steal your 
money.' It is clear that the inference which Plato wishes us to draw is 
nothing but a crude juggle with the meaning of the term 'one's own'. (For 
the problem is whether justice demands that everything which is in some 
sense 'our own', e.g. 'our own' class, should therefore be treated, not 
only as our possession, but as our inalienable possession. But in such a 
principle Plato himself does not believe; for it would clearly make a 
transition to communism impossible. And what about keeping our own 
children?) This crude juggle is Plato's way of establishing what Adam 
calls 'a point of contact between his own view of Justice and the popular 
... meaning of the word'. This is how the greatest philosopher of all time 
tries to convince us that he has discovered the true nature of justice. 

The third and last argument which Plato offers is much more serious. It 
is an appeal to the principle of holism or collectivism, and is connected 
with the principle that it is the purpose of the individual to maintain the 
stability of the state. It will therefore be discussed, in this analysis, 
below, in sections V and VI. 

But before proceeding to these points, I wish to draw attention to the 
'preface' which Plato places before his description of the 'discovery' 
which we are here examining. It must be considered in the light of the 
observations we have made so far. Viewed in this light, the 'lengthy 
preface' — this is how Plato himself describes it — appears as an ingenious 
attempt to prepare the reader for the 'discovery of justice' by making him 
believe that there is an argument going on when in reality he is only faced 
with a display of dramatic devices, designed to soothe his critical 
faculties. 



Having discovered wisdom as the virtue proper to the guardians and 
courage as that proper to the auxiliaries, 'Socrates' announces his 
intention of making a final effort to discover justice. 'Two things are 
left'—, he says, 'which we shall have to discover in the city: temperance, 
and finally that other thing which is the main object of all our 
investigations, namely justice.' — 'Exactly', says Glaucon. Socrates now 
suggests that temperance shall be dropped. But Glaucon protests and 
Socrates gives in, saying that 'it would be wrong' (or 'crooked') to 
refuse. This little dispute prepares the reader for the re-introduction of 
justice, suggests to him that Socrates possesses the means for its 
'discovery', and reassures him that Glaucon is carefully watching Plato's 
intellectual honesty in conducting the argument which he, the reader 
himself, need not therefore watch at all—. 

Socrates next proceeds to discuss temperance which he discovers to be 
the only virtue proper to the workers. (By the way, the much debated 
question whether Plato's 'justice' is distinguishable from his 
'temperance' can be easily answered. Justice means to keep ones place', 
temperance means to know ones place — that is to say, more precisely, to 
be satisfied with it. What other virtue could be proper to the workers who 
fill their bellies like the beasts?) When temperance has been discovered, 
Socrates asks: 'And what about the last principle? Obviously it will be 
justice.' — 'Obviously', replies Glaucon. 

'Now, my dear Glaucon', says Socrates, 'we must, like hunters, 
surround her cover and keep a close watch, and we must not allow her to 
escape, and to get away; for surely, justice must be somewhere near this 
spot. You had better look out and search the place. And if you are the first 
to see her, then give me a shout!' Glaucon, like the reader, is of course 
unable to do anything of the sort, and implores Socrates to take the lead. 
'Then offer your prayers with me', says Socrates, 'and follow me.' But 
even Socrates finds the ground 'hard to traverse, since it is covered with 



underwood; it is dark, and difficult to explore ... But', he says, 'we must 
go on with it'. And instead of protesting 'Go on with what? With our 
exploration, i.e. with our argument? But we have not even started. There 
has not been a glimmer of sense in what you have said so far', Glaucon, 
and the naive reader with him replies meekly: 'Yes, we must go on.' Now 
Socrates reports that he has 'got a glimpse' (we have not), and gets 
excited. 'Hurray! Hurray!' he cries, 'Glaucon! There seems to be a track! 
I think now that the quarry will not escape us!' — 'That is good news', 
replies Glaucon. 'Upon my word', says Socrates, 'we have made utter 
fools of ourselves. What we were looking for at a distance, has been lying 
at our very feet all the time! And we never saw it!' With exclamations 
and repeated assertions of this kind, Socrates continues for a good while, 
interrupted by Glaucon, who gives expression to the reader's feelings and 
asks Socrates what he has found. But when Socrates says only 'We have 
been talking of it all the time, without realizing that we were actually 
describing it', Glaucon expresses the reader's impatience and says: 'This 
preface gets a bit lengthy; remember that I want to hear what it is all 
about.' And only then does Plato proceed to proffer the two 'arguments' 
which I have outlined. 

Glaucon's last remark may be taken as an indication that Plato was 
conscious of what he was doing in this 'lengthy preface'. I cannot 
interpret it as anything but an attempt — it proved to be highly successful 
— to lull the reader's critical faculties, and, by means of a dramatic 
display of verbal fire-works, to divert his attention from the intellectual 
poverty of this masterly piece of dialogue. One is tempted to think that 
Plato knew its weakness, and how to hide it. 



v 



The problem of individualism and collectivism is closely related to that 
of equality and inequality. Before going on to discuss it, a few 
terminological remarks seem to be necessary. 

The term 'individualism' can be used (according to the Oxford 
Dictionary) in two different ways: {a) in opposition to collectivism, and 
{b) in opposition to altruism. There is no other word to express the former 
meaning, but several synonyms for the latter, for example 'egoism' or 
'selfishness'. This is why in what follows I shall use the term 
'individualism' exclusively in sense (a), using terms like 'egoism' or 
'selfishness' if sense {b) is intended. A little table may be useful: 

{a) Individualism is opposed to {a^ Collectivism, 

(b) Egoism is opposed to (b) Altruism. 

Now these four terms describe certain attitudes, or demands, or 
decisions, or proposals, for codes of normative laws. Though necessarily 
vague, they can, I believe, be easily illustrated by examples and so be 
used with a precision sufficient for our present purpose. Let us begin with 
collectivism—, since this attitude is already familiar to us from our 
discussion of Plato's holism. His demand that the individual should 
subserve the interests of the whole, whether this be the universe, the city, 
the tribe, the race, or any other collective body, was illustrated in the last 
chapter by a few passages. To quote one of these again, but more fully—: 
'The part exists for the sake of the whole, but the whole does not exist for 
the sake of the part . . . You are created for the sake of the whole and not 
the whole for the sake of you.' This quotation not only illustrates holism 
and collectivism, but also conveys its strong emotional appeal of which 
Plato was conscious (as can be seen from the preamble to the passage). 
The appeal is to various feelings, e.g. the longing to belong to a group or 
a tribe; and one factor in it is the moral appeal for altruism and against 



selfishness, or egoism. Plato suggests that if you cannot sacrifice your 
interests for the sake of the whole, then you are selfish. 

Now a glance at our little table will show that this is not so. 
Collectivism is not opposed to egoism, nor is it identical with altruism or 
unselfishness. Collective or group egoism, for instance class egoism, is a 
very common thing (Plato knew— this very well), and this shows clearly 
enough that collectivism as such is not opposed to selfishness. On the 
other hand, an anti-collectivist, i.e. an individualist, can, at the same 
time, be an altruist; he can be ready to make sacrifices in order to help 
other individuals. One of the best examples of this attitude is perhaps 
Dickens. It would be difficult to say which is the stronger, his passionate 
hatred of selfishness or his passionate interest in individuals with all their 
human weaknesses; and this attitude is combined with a dislike, not only 
of what we now call collective bodies or collectives—, but even of a 
genuinely devoted altruism, if directed towards anonymous groups rather 
than concrete individuals. (I remind the reader of Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak 
House, 'a lady devoted to public duties'.) These illustrations, I think, 
explain sufficiently clearly the meaning of our four terms; and they show 
that any of the terms in our table can be combined with either of the two 
terms that stand in the other line (which gives four possible 
combinations). 

Now it is interesting that for Plato, and for most Platonists, an 
altruistic individualism (as for instance that of Dickens) cannot exist. 
According to Plato, the only alternative to collectivism is egoism; he 
simply identifies all altruism with collectivism, and all individualism 
with egoism. This is not a matter of terminology, of mere words, for 
instead of four possibilities, Plato recognized only two. This has created 
considerable confusion in speculation on ethical matters, even down to 
our own day. 

Plato's identification of individualism with egoism furnishes him with 



a powerful weapon for his defence of collectivism as well as for his 
attack upon individualism. In defending collectivism, he can appeal to 
our humanitarian feeling of unselfishness; in his attack, he can brand all 
individualists as selfish, as incapable of devotion to anything but 
themselves. This attack, although aimed by Plato against individualism in 
our sense, i.e. against the rights of human individuals, reaches of course 
only a very different target, egoism. But this difference is constantly 
ignored by Plato and by most Platonists. 

Why did Plato try to attack individualism? I think he knew very well 
what he was doing when he trained his guns upon this position, for 
individualism, perhaps even more than equalitarianism, was a stronghold 
in the defences of the new humanitarian creed. The emancipation of the 
individual was indeed the great spiritual revolution which had led to the 
breakdown of tribalism and to the rise of democracy. Plato's uncanny 
sociological intuition shows itself in the way in which he invariably 
discerned the enemy wherever he met him. 

Individualism was part of the old intuitive idea of justice. That justice 
is not, as Plato would have it, the health and harmony of the state, but 
rather a certain way of treating individuals, is emphasized by Aristotle, it 
will be remembered, when he says 'justice is something that pertains to 
persons'—. This individualistic element had been emphasized by the 
generation of Pericles. Pericles himself made it clear that the laws must 
guarantee equal justice 'to all alike in their private disputes'; but he went 
further. 'We do not feel called upon', he said, 'to nag at our neighbour if 
he chooses to go his own way.' (Compare this with Plato's remark — that 
the state does not produce men 'for the purpose of letting them loose, 
each to go his own way ...'.) Pericles insists that this individualism must 
be linked with altruism: 'We are taught ... never to forget that we must 
protect the injured'; and his speech culminates in a description of the 
young Athenian who grows up 'to a happy versatility, and to self- 



reliance.' 

This individualism, united with altruism, has become the basis of our 
western civilization. It is the central doctrine of Christianity ('love your 
neighbour', say the Scriptures, not 'love your tribe'); and it is the core of 
all ethical doctrines which have grown from our civilization and 
stimulated it. It is also, for instance, Kant's central practical doctrine 
('always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them 
as mere means to your ends'). There is no other thought which has been 
so powerful in the moral development of man. 

Plato was right when he saw in this doctrine the enemy of his caste 
state; and he hated it more than any other of the 'subversive' doctrines of 
his time. In order to show this even more clearly, I shall quote two 
passages from the Laws— whose truly astonishing hostility towards the 
individual is, I think, too little appreciated. The first of them is famous as 
a reference to thQ Republic, whose 'community of women and children 
and property' it discusses. Plato describes here the constitution of the 
Republic as 'the highest form of the state'. In this highest state, he tells 
us, 'there is common property of wives, of children, and of all chattels. 
And everything possible has been done to eradicate from our life 
everywhere and in every way all that is private and individual. So far as it 
can be done, even those things which nature herself has made private and 
individual have somehow become the common property of all. Our very 
eyes and ears and hands seem to see, to hear, and to act, as if they 
belonged not to individuals but to the community. All men are moulded 
to be unanimous in the utmost degree in bestowing praise and blame, and 
they even rejoice and grieve about the same things, and at the same time. 
And all the laws are perfected for unifying the city to the utmost.' Plato 
goes on to say that 'no man can find a better criterion of the highest 
excellence of a state than the principles just expounded'; and he describes 
such a state as 'divine', and as the 'model' or 'pattern' or 'original' of the 



state, i.e. as its Form or Idea. This is Plato's own view of the Republic, 
expressed at a time when he had given up hope of realizing his political 
ideal in all its glory. 

The second passage, also from theZaw^, is, if possible, even more 
outspoken. It should be emphasized that the passage deals primarily with 
military expeditions and with military discipline, but Plato leaves no 
doubt that these same militarist principles should be adhered to not only 
in war, but also 'in peace, and from the earliest childhood on'. Like other 
totalitarian militarists and admirers of Sparta, Plato urges that the all- 
important requirements of military discipline must be paramount, even in 
peace, and that they must determine the whole life of all citizens; for not 
only the full citizens (who are all soldiers) and the children, but also the 
very beasts must spend their whole life in a state of permanent and total 
mobilization—. 'The greatest principle of all', he writes, 'is that nobody, 
whether male or female, should ever be without a leader. Nor should the 
mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his 
own initiative, neither out of zeal, nor even playfully. But in war and in 
the midst of peace — to his leader he shall direct his eye, and follow him 
faithfully. And even in the smallest matters he should stand under 
leadership. For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his 
meals— . . . only if he has been told to do so ... In a word, he should teach 
his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently, and to 
become utterly incapable of it. In this way the life of all will be spent in 
total community. There is no law, nor will there ever be one, which is 
superior to this, or better and more effective in ensuring salvation and 
victory in war. And in times of peace, and from the earliest childhood on 
should it be fostered — this habit of ruling others, and of being ruled by 
others. And every trace of anarchy should be utterly eradicated from all 
the life of all the men, and even of the wild beasts which are subject to 
men.' 



These are strong words. Never was a man more in earnest in his 
hostility towards the individual. And this hatred is deeply rooted in the 
fundamental dualism of Plato's philosophy; he hated the individual and 
his freedom just as he hated the varying particular experiences, the 
variety of the changing world of sensible things. In the field of politics, 
the individual is to Plato the Evil One himself. 

This attitude, anti-humanitarian and anti- Christian as it is, has been 
consistently idealized. It has been interpreted as humane, as unselfish, as 
altruistic, and as Christian. E. B. England, for instance, calls— the first of 
these two passages from thQ Laws 'a vigorous denunciation of 
selfishness'. Similar words are used by Barker, when discussing Plato's 
theory of justice. He says that Plato's aim was 'to replace selfishness and 
civil discord by harmony', and that 'the old harmony of the interests of 
the State and the individual ... is thus restored in the teachings of Plato; 
but restored on a new and higher level, because it has been elevated into a 
conscious sense of harmony'. Such statements and countless similar ones 
can be easily explained if we remember Plato's identification of 
individualism with egoism; for all these Platonists believe that anti- 
individualism is the same as selflessness. This illustrates my contention 
that this identification had the effect of a successful piece of anti- 
humanitarian propaganda, and that it has confused speculation on ethical 
matters down to our own time. But we must also realize that those who, 
deceived by this identification and by high-sounding words, exalt Plato's 
reputation as a teacher of morals and announce to the world that his 
ethics is the nearest approach to Christianity before Christ, are preparing 
the way for totalitarianism and especially for a totalitarian, anti-Christian 
interpretation of Christianity. And this is a dangerous thing, for there 
have been times when Christianity was dominated by totalitarian ideas. 
There was an Inquisition; and, in another form, it may come again. 

It may therefore be worth while to mention some further reasons why 



guileless people have persuaded themselves of the humaneness of Plato's 
intentions. One is that when preparing the ground for his collectivist 
doctrines, Plato usually begins by quoting a maxim or proverb (which 
seems to be of Pythagorean origin): 'Friends have in common all things 
they possess.'— This is, undoubtedly, an unselfish, high-minded and 
excellent sentiment. Who could suspect that an argument starting from 
such a commendable assumption would arrive at a wholly anti- 
humanitarian conclusion? Another and important point is that there are 
many genuinely humanitarian sentiments expressed in Plato's dialogues, 
particularly in those written before the Republic when he was still under 
the influence of Socrates. I mention especially Socrates' doctrine, in the 
Gorgias, that it is worse to do injustice than to suffer it. Clearly, this 
doctrine is not only altruistic, but also individualistic; for in a collectivist 
theory of justice like that of the Republic, injustice is an act against the 
state, not against a particular man, and though a man may commit an act 
of injustice, only the collective can suffer from it. But in the Gorgias we 
find nothing of the kind. The theory of justice is a perfectly normal one, 
and the examples of injustice given by 'Socrates' (who has here probably 
a good deal of the real Socrates in him) are such as boxing a man's ears, 
injuring, or killing him. Socrates' teaching that it is better to suffer such 
acts than to do them is indeed very similar to Christian teaching, and his 
doctrine of justice fits in excellently with the spirit of Pericles. (An 
attempt to interpret this will be made in chapter 10.) 

Now thQ Republic develops a new doctrine of justice which is not 
merely incompatible with such an individualism, but utterly hostile 
towards it. But a reader may easily believe that Plato is still holding fast 
to the doctrine of the Gorgias. For in the Republic, Plato frequently 
alludes to the doctrine that it is better to suffer than to commit injustice, 
in spite of the fact that this is simply nonsense from the point of view of 
the collectivist theory of justice proffered in this work. Furthermore, we 



hear in thQ Republic the opponents of 'Socrates' giving voice to the 
opposite theory, that it is good and pleasant to inflict injustice, and bad to 
suffer it. Of course, every humanitarian is repelled by such cynicism, and 
when Plato formulates his aims through the mouth of Socrates: 'I fear to 
commit a sin if I permit such evil talk about Justice in my presence, 
without doing my utmost to defend her'—, then the trusting reader is 
convinced of Plato's good intentions, and ready to follow him wherever 
he goes. 

The effect of this assurance of Plato's is much enhanced by the fact 
that it follows, and is contrasted with, the cynical and selfish speeches— 
of Thrasymachus, who is depicted as a political desperado of the worst 
kind. At the same time, the reader is led to identify individualism with 
the views of Thrasymachus, and to think that Plato, in his fight against it, 
is fighting against all the subversive and nihilistic tendencies of his time. 
But we should not allow ourselves to be frightened by an individualist 
bogy such as Thrasymachus (there is a great similarity between his 
portrait and the modern collectivist bogy of 'bolshevism') into accepting 
another more real and more dangerous because less obvious form of 
barbarism. For Plato replaces Thrasymachus' doctrine that the 
individual's might is right by the equally barbaric doctrine that right is 
everything that furthers the stability and the might of the state. 

To sum up. Because of his radical collectivism, Plato is not even 
interested in those problems which men usually call the problems of 
justice, that is to say, in the impartial weighing of the contesting claims 
of individuals. Nor is he interested in adjusting the individual's claims to 
those of the state. For the individual is altogether inferior. 'I legislate 
with a view to what is best for the whole state', says Plato, ' . . . for I justly 
place the interests of the individual on an inferior level of value.'— He is 
concerned solely with the collective whole as such, and justice, to him, is 
nothing but the health, unity, and stability of the collective body. 



VI 



So far, we have seen that humanitarian ethics demands an equalitarian 
and individualistic interpretation of justice; but we have not yet outlined 
the humanitarian view of the state as such. On the other hand, we have 
seen that Plato's theory of the state is totalitarian; but we have not yet 
explained the application of this theory to the ethics of the individual. 
Both these tasks will be undertaken now, the second first; and I shall 
begin by analysing the third of Plato's arguments in his 'discovery' of 
justice, an argument which has so far been sketched only very roughly. 
Here is Plato's third argument—: 

'Now see whether you agree with me', says Socrates. 'Do you think it 
would do much harm to the city if a carpenter started making shoes and a 
shoemaker carpentering?' — 'Not very much.' — 'But should one who is 
by nature a worker, or a member of the money-earning class . . . manage 
to get into the warrior class; or should a warrior get into the guardians' 
class without being worthy of it; then this kind of change and of 
underhand plotting would mean the downfall of the city?' — 'Most 
definitely it would.' — 'We have three classes in our city, and I take it that 
any such plotting or changing from one class to another is a great crime 
against the city, and may rightly be denounced as the utmost 
wickedness?' — 'Assuredly.' — 'But you will certainly declare that utmost 
wickedness towards one's own city is injustice?' — 'Certainly.' — 'Then 
this is injustice. And conversely, we shall say that when each class in the 
city attends to its own business, the money-earning class as well as the 
auxiliaries and the guardians, then this will be justice.' 

Now if we look at this argument, we find (a) the sociological 
assumption that any relaxing of the rigid caste system must lead to the 
downfall of the city; (b) the constant reiteration of the one argument that 



what harms the city is injustice; and (c) the inference that the opposite is 
justice. Now we may grant here the sociological assumption (a) since it is 
Plato's ideal to arrest social change, and since he means by 'harm' 
anything that may lead to change; and it is probably quite true that social 
change can be arrested only by a rigid caste system. And we may further 
grant the inference (c) that the opposite of injustice is justice. Of greater 
interest, however, is (b); a glance at Plato's argument will show that his 
whole trend of thought is dominated by the question: does this thing harm 
the city? Does it do much harm or little harm? He constantly reiterates 
that what threatens to harm the city is morally wicked and unjust. 

We see here that Plato recognizes only one ultimate standard, the 
interest of the state. Everything that furthers it is good and virtuous and 
just; everything that threatens it is bad and wicked and unjust. Actions 
that serve it are moral; actions that endanger it, immoral. In other words, 
Plato's moral code is strictly utilitarian; it is a code of coUectivist or 
political utilitarianism. The criterion of morality is the interest of the 
state. Morality is nothing but political hygiene. 

This is the collectivist, the tribal, the totalitarian theory of morality: 
'Good is what is in the interest of my group; or my tribe; or my state.' It 
is easy to see what this morality implied for international relations: that 
the state itself can never be wrong in any of its actions, as long as it is 
strong; that the state has the right, not only to do violence to its citizens, 
should that lead to an increase of strength, but also to attack other states, 
provided it does so without weakening itself. (This inference, the explicit 
recognition of the amorality of the state, and consequently the defence of 
moral nihilism in international relations, was drawn by Hegel.) 

From the point of view of totalitarian ethics, from the point of view of 
collective utility, Plato's theory of justice is perfectly correct. To keep 
one's place is a virtue. It is that civil virtue which corresponds exactly to 
the military virtue of discipline. And this virtue plays exactly that role 



which 'justice' plays in Plato's system of virtues. For the cogs in the 
great clockwork of the state can show 'virtue' in two ways. First, they 
must be fit for their task, by virtue of their size, shape, strength, etc.; and 
secondly, they must be fitted each into its right place and must retain that 
place. The first type of virtues, fitness for a specific task, will lead to a 
differentiation, in accordance with the specific task of the cog. Certain 
cogs will be virtuous, i.e. fit, only if they are ('by their nature') large; 
others if they are strong; and others if they are smooth. But the virtue of 
keeping to one's place will be common to all of them; and it will at the 
same time be a virtue of the whole: that of being properly fitted together 
— of being in harmony. To this universal virtue Plato gives the name 
'justice'. This procedure is perfectly consistent and it is fully justified 
from the point of view of totalitarian morality. If the individual is 
nothing but a cog, then ethics is nothing but the study of how to fit him 
into the whole. 

I wish to make it clear that I believe in the sincerity of Plato's 
totalitarianism. His demand for the unchallenged domination of one class 
over the rest was uncompromising, but his ideal was not the maximum 
exploitation of the working classes by the upper class; it was the stability 
of the whole. The reason, however, which he gives for the need to keep 
the exploitation within limits, is again purely utilitarian. It is the interest 
of stabilizing the class rule. Should the guardians try to get too much, he 
argues, then they will in the end have nothing at all. 'If they are not 
satisfied with a life of stability and security, . . . and are tempted, by their 
power, to appropriate for themselves all the wealth of the city, then surely 
they are bound to find out how wise Hesiod was when he said, "the half is 
more than the whole".'— But we must realize that even this tendency to 
restrict the exploitation of class privileges is a fairly common ingredient 
of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is not simply amoral. It is the morality 
of the closed society — of the group, or of the tribe; it is not individual 



selfishness, but it is collective selfishness. 

Considering that Plato's third argument is straightforward and 
consistent, the question may be asked why he needed the 'lengthy 
preface' as well as the two preceding arguments. Why all this uneasiness? 
(Platonists will of course reply that this uneasiness exists only in my 
imagination. That may be so. But the irrational character of the passages 
can hardly be explained away.) The answer to this question is, I believe, 
that Plato's collective clockwork would hardly have appealed to his 
readers if it had been presented to them in all its barrenness and 
meaninglessness. Plato was uneasy because he knew and feared the 
strength and the moral appeal of the forces he tried to break. He did not 
dare to challenge them, but tried to win them over for his own purposes. 
Whether we witness in Plato's writings a cynical and conscious attempt 
to employ the moral sentiments of the new humanitarianism for his own 
purposes, or whether we witness rather a tragic attempt to persuade his 
own better conscience of the evils of individualism, we shall never know. 
My personal impression is that the latter is the case, and that this inner 
conflict is the main secret of Plato's fascination. I think that Plato was 
moved to the depths of his soul by the new ideas, and especially by the 
great individualist Socrates and his martyrdom. And I think that he 
fought against this influence upon himself as well as upon others with all 
the might of his unequalled intelligence, though not always openly. This 
explains also why from time to time, amid all his totalitarianism, we find 
some humanitarian ideas. And it explains why it was possible for 
philosophers to represent Plato as a humanitarian. 

A strong argument in support of this interpretation is the way in which 
Plato treated, or rather, maltreated, the humanitarian and rational theory 
of the state, a theory which had been developed for the first time in his 
generation. 

In a clear presentation of this theory, the language of political demands 



or of political proposals (cp. chapter 5, III) should be used; that is to say, 
we should not try to answer the essentialist question: What is the state, 
what is its true nature, its real meaning? Nor should we try to answer the 
historicist question: How did the state originate, and what is the origin of 
political obligation? We should rather put our question in this way: What 
do we demand from a state? What do we propose to consider as the 
legitimate aim of state activity? And in order to find out what our 
fundamental political demands are, we may ask: Why do we prefer living 
in a well-ordered state to living without a state, i.e. in anarchy? This way 
of asking our question is a rational one. It is a question which a 
technologist must try to answer before he can proceed to the construction 
or reconstruction of any political institution. For only if he knows what 
he wants can he decide whether a certain institution is or is not well 
adapted to its function. 

Now if we ask our question in this way, the reply of the humanitarian 
will be: What I demand from the state is protection; not only for myself, 
but for others too. I demand protection for my own freedom and for other 
people's. I do not wish to live at the mercy of anybody who has the larger 
fists or the bigger guns. In other words, I wish to be protected against 
aggression from other men. I want the difference between aggression and 
defence to be recognized, and defence to be supported by the organized 
power of the state. (The defence is one of a status quo, and the principle 
proposed amounts to this — that the status quo should not be changed by 
violent means, but only according to law, by compromise or arbitration, 
except where there is no legal procedure for its revision.) I am perfectly 
ready to see my own freedom of action somewhat curtailed by the state, 
provided I can obtain protection of that freedom which remains, since I 
know that some limitations of my freedom are necessary; for instance, I 
must give up my 'freedom' to attack, if I want the state to support 
defence against any attack. But I demand that the fundamental purpose of 



the state should not be lost sight of; I mean, the protection of that 
freedom which does not harm other citizens. Thus I demand that the state 
must limit the freedom of the citizens as equally as possible, and not 
beyond what is necessary for achieving an equal limitation of freedom. 

Something like this will be the demand of the humanitarian, of the 
equalitarian, of the individualist. It is a demand which permits the social 
technologist to approach political problems rationally, i.e. from the point 
of view of a fairly clear and definite aim. 

Against the claim that an aim like this can be formulated sufficiently 
clearly and definitely, many objections have been raised. It has been said 
that once it is recognized that freedom must be limited, the whole 
principle of freedom breaks down, and the question what limitations are 
necessary and what are wanton cannot be decided rationally, but only by 
authority. But this objection is due to a muddle. It mixes up the 
fundamental question of what we want from a state with certain 
important technological difficulties in the way of the realization of our 
aims. It is certainly difficult to determine exactly the degree of freedom 
that can be left to the citizens without endangering that freedom whose 
protection is the task of the state. But that something like an approximate 
determination of that degree is possible is proved by experience, i.e. by 
the existence of democratic states. In fact, this process of approximate 
determination is one of the main tasks of legislation in democracies. It is 
a difficult process, but its difficulties are certainly not such as to force 
upon us a change in our fundamental demands. These are, stated very 
briefly, that the state should be considered as a society for the prevention 
of crime, i.e. of aggression. And the whole objection that it is hard to 
know where freedom ends and crime begins is answered, in principle, by 
the famous story of the hooligan who protested that, being a free citizen, 
he could move his fist in any direction he liked; whereupon the judge 
wisely replied: 'The freedom of the movement of your fists is limited by 



the position of your neighbour's nose.' 

The view of the state which I have sketched here may be called 
'protectionism'. The term 'protectionism' has often been used to describe 
tendencies which are opposed to freedom. Thus the economist means by 
protectionism the policy of protecting certain industrial interests against 
competition; and the moralist means by it the demand that officers of the 
state shall establish a moral tutelage over the population. Although the 
political theory which I call protectionism is not connected with any of 
these tendencies, and although it is fundamentally a liberal theory, I think 
that the name may be used to indicate that, though liberal, it has nothing 
to do with the policy of strict non-intervention (often, but not quite 
correctly, called 'laissez-faire'). Liberalism and state-interference are not 
opposed to each other. On the contrary, any kind of freedom is clearly 
impossible unless it is guaranteed by the state—. A certain amount of 
state control in education, for instance, is necessary, if the young are to 
be protected from a neglect which would make them unable to defend 
their freedom, and the state should see that all educational facilities are 
available to everybody. But too much state control in educational matters 
is a fatal danger to freedom, since it must lead to indoctrination. As 
already indicated, the important and difficult question of the limitations 
of freedom cannot be solved by a cut and dried formula. And the fact that 
there will always be borderline cases must be welcomed, for without the 
stimulus of political problems and political struggles of this kind, the 
citizens' readiness to fight for their freedom would soon disappear, and 
with it, their freedom. (Viewed in this light, the alleged clash between 
freedom and security, that is, a security guaranteed by the state, turns out 
to be a chimera. For there is no freedom if it is not secured by the state; 
and conversely, only a state which is controlled by free citizens can offer 
them any reasonable security at all.) 

Stated in this way, the protectionist theory of the state is free from any 



elements of historicism or essentialism. It does not say that the state 
originated as an association of individuals with a protectionist aim, or 
that any actual state in history was ever consciously ruled in accordance 
with this aim. And it says nothing about the essential nature of the state, 
or about a natural right to freedom. Nor does it say anything about the 
way in which states actually function. It formulates a political demand, or 
more precisely, a proposal for the adoption of a certain policy. I suspect, 
however, that many conventionalists who have described the state as 
originating from an association for the protection of its members, 
intended to express this very demand, though they did it in a clumsy and 
misleading language — the language of historicism. A similar misleading 
way of expressing this demand is to assert that it is essentially the 
function of the state to protect its members; or to assert that the state is to 
be defined as an association for mutual protection. All these theories 
must be translated, as it were, into the language of demands or proposals 
for political actions before they can be seriously discussed. Otherwise, 
endless discussions of a merely verbal character are unavoidable. 

An example of such a translation may be given. A criticism of what I 
call protectionism has been proffered by Aristotle—, and repeated by 
Burke, and by many modern Platonists. This criticism asserts that 
protectionism takes too mean a view of the tasks of the state which is 
(using Burke's words) 'to be looked upon with other reverence, because it 
is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal 
existence of a temporary and perishable nature'. In other words, the state 
is said to be something higher or nobler than an association with rational 
ends; it is an object of worship. It has higher tasks than the protection of 
human beings and their rights. It has moral tasks. 'To take care of virtue 
is the business of a state which truly deserves this name', says Aristotle. 
If we try to translate this criticism into the language of political demands, 
then we find that these critics of protectionism want two things. First, 



they wish to make the state an object of worship. From our point of view, 
there is nothing to say against this wish. It is a religious problem; and the 
state-worshippers must solve for themselves how to reconcile their creed 
with their other religious beliefs, for example, with the First 
Commandment. The second demand is political. In practice, this demand 
would simply mean that officers of the state should be concerned with the 
morality of the citizens, and that they should use their power not so much 
for the protection of the citizens' freedom as for the control of their 
moral life. In other words, it is the demand that the realm of legality, i.e. 
of state-enforced norms, should be increased at the expense of the realm 
of morality proper, i.e. of norms enforced not by the state but by our own 
moral decisions — ^by our conscience. Such a demand or proposal can be 
rationally discussed; and it can be said against it that those who raise 
such demands apparently do not see that this would be the end of the 
individual's moral responsibility, and that it would not improve but 
destroy morality. It would replace personal responsibility by tribalistic 
taboos and by the totalitarian irresponsibility of the individual. Against 
this whole attitude, the individualist must maintain that the morality of 
states (if there is any such thing) tends to be considerably lower than that 
of the average citizen, so that it is much more desirable that the morality 
of the state should be controlled by the citizens than the opposite. What 
we need and what we want is to moralize politics, and not to politicize 
morals. 

It should be mentioned that, from the protectionist point of view, the 
existing democratic states, though far from perfect, represent a very 
considerable achievement in social engineering of the right kind. Many 
forms of crime, of attack on the rights of human individuals by other 
individuals, have been practically suppressed or very considerably 
reduced, and courts of law administer justice fairly successfully in 
difficult conflicts of interest. There are many who think that the 



extension of these methods— to international crime and international 
conflict is only a Utopian dream; but it is not so long since the institution 
of an effective executive for upholding civil peace appeared Utopian to 
those who suffered under the threats of criminals, in countries where at 
present civil peace is quite successfully maintained. And I think that the 
engineering problems of the control of international crime are really not 
so difficult, once they are squarely and rationally faced. If the matter is 
presented clearly, it will not be hard to get people to agree that protective 
institutions are necessary, both on a regional and on a world-wide scale. 
Let the state-worshippers continue to worship the state, but demand that 
the institutional technologists be allowed not only to improve its internal 
machinery, but also to build up an organization for the prevention of 
international crime. 



VII 

Returning now to the history of these movements, it seems that the 
protectionist theory of the state was first proffered by the Sophist 
Lycophron, a pupil of Gorgias. It has already been mentioned that he was 
(like Alcidamas, also a pupil of Gorgias) one of the first to attack the 
theory of natural privilege. That he held the theory which I have called 
'protectionism' is recorded by Aristotle, who speaks about him in a 
manner which makes it very likely that he originated it. From the same 
source we learn that he formulated it with a clarity which has hardly been 
attained by any of his successors. 

Aristotle tells us that Lycophron considered the law of the state as a 
'covenant by which men assure one another of justice' (and that it has not 
the power to make citizens good or just). He tells us furthermore— that 



Lycophron looked upon the state as an instrument for the protection of its 
citizens against acts of injustice (and for permitting them peaceful 
intercourse, especially exchange), demanding that the state should be a 
'co-operative association for the prevention of crime'. It is interesting 
that there is no indication in Aristotle's account that Lycophron 
expressed his theory in a historicist form, i.e. as a theory concerning the 
historical origin of the state in a social contract. On the contrary, it 
emerges clearly from Aristotle's context that Lycophron's theory was 
solely concerned with the end of the state; for Aristotle argues that 
Lycophron has not seen that the essential end of the state is to make its 
citizens virtuous. This indicates that Lycophron interpreted this end 
rationally, from a technological point of view, adopting the demands of 
equalitarianism, individualism, and protectionism. 

In this form, Lycophron's theory is completely secure from the 
objections to which the traditional historicist theory of the social contract 
is exposed. It is often said, for instance by Barker—, that the contract 
theory 'has been met by modern thinkers point by point'. That may be so; 
but a survey of Barker's points will show that they certainly do not meet 
the theory of Lycophron, in whom Barker sees (and in this point I am 
inclined to agree with him) the probable founder of the earliest form of a 
theory which has later been called the contract theory. Barker's points 
can be set down as follows: (a) There was, historically, never a contract; 
(b) the state was, historically, never instituted; (c) laws are not 
conventional, but arise out of tradition, superior force, perhaps instinct, 
etc.; they are customs before they become codes; (d) the strength of the 
laws does not lie in the sanctions, in the protective power of the state 
which enforces them, but in the individual's readiness to obey them, i.e. 
in the individual's moral will. 

It will be seen at once that objections (a), (b), and (c), which in 
themselves are admittedly fairly correct (although there have been some 



contracts) concern the theory only in its historicist form and are 
irrelevant to Lycophron's version. We therefore need not consider them 
at all. Objection (J), however, deserves closer consideration. What can be 
meant by it? The theory attacked stresses the 'will', or better the decision 
of the individual, more than any other theory; in fact, the word 'contract' 
suggests an agreement by 'free will'; it suggests, perhaps more than any 
other theory, that the strength of the laws lies in the individual's 
readiness to accept and to obey them. How, then, can (d) be an objection 
against the contract theory? The only explanation seems to be that Barker 
does not think the contract to spring from the 'moral will' of the 
individual, but rather from a selfish will; and this interpretation is the 
more likely as it is in keeping with Plato's criticism. But one need not be 
selfish in order to be a protectionist. Protection need not mean self- 
protection; many people insure their lives with the aim of protecting 
others and not themselves, and in the same way they may demand state 
protection mainly for others, and to a lesser degree (or not at all) for 
themselves. The fundamental idea of protectionism is: protect the weak 
from being bullied by the strong. This demand has been raised not only 
by the weak, but often by the strong also. It is, to say the least of it, 
misleading to suggest that it is a selfish or an immoral demand. 

Lycophron's protectionism is, I think, free of all these objections. It is 
the most fitting expression of the humanitarian and equalitarian 
movement of the Periclean age. And yet, we have been robbed of it. It has 
been handed down to later generations only in a distorted form; as the 
historicist theory of the origin of the state in a social contract; or as an 
essentialist theory claiming that the true nature of the state is that of a 
convention; and as a theory of selfishness, based on the assumption of the 
fundamentally immoral nature of man. All this is due to the 
overwhelming influence of Plato's authority. 



VIII 



There can be little doubt that Plato knew Lycophron's theory well, for he 
was (in all likelihood) Lycophron's younger contemporary. And, indeed, 
this theory can be easily identified with one which is mentioned first in 
the Gorgias and later in thQ Republic. (In neither place does Plato 
mention its author; a procedure often adopted by him when his opponent 
was alive.) In the Gorgias, the theory is expounded by Callicles, an 
ethical nihilist like the Thrasymachus of the Republic. In the Republic, it 
is expounded by Glaucon. In neither case does the speaker identify 
himself with the theory he presents. 

The two passages are in many respects parallel. Both present the theory 
in a historicist form. I.e. as a theory of the origin of 'justice'. Both 
present it as if its logical premises were necessarily selfish and even 
nihilistic; i.e. as if the protectionist view of the state was upheld only by 
those who would like to inflict injustice, but are too weak to do so, and 
who therefore demand that the strong should not do so either; a 
presentation which is certainly not fair, since the only necessary premise 
of the theory is the demand that crime, or injustice, should be suppressed. 

So far, the two passages in the Gorgias and in the Republic run 
parallel, a parallelism which has often been commented upon. But there 
is a tremendous difference between them which has, so far as I know, 
been overlooked by commentators. It is this. In the Gorgias, the theory is 
presented by Callicles as one which he opposes; and since he also 
opposes Socrates, the protectionist theory is, by implication, not attacked 
but rather defended by Plato. And, indeed, a closer view shows that 
Socrates upholds several of its features against the nihilist Callicles. But 
in ihQ Republic, the same theory is presented by Glaucon as an 



elaboration and development of the views of Thrasymachus, i.e. of the 
nihilist who takes here the place of Callicles; in other words, the theory is 
presented as nihilist, and Socrates as the hero who victoriously destroys 
this devilish doctrine of selfishness. 

Thus the passages in which most commentators find a similarity 
between the tendencies of the Gorgias and the Republic reveal, in fact, a 
complete change of front. In spite of Callicles' hostile presentation, the 
tendency of the Gorgias is favourable to protectionism; but the Republic 
is violently against it. 

Here is an extract from Callicles' speech in the Gorgias—: 'The laws 
are made by the great mass of the people which consists mainly of the 
weak men. And they make the laws ... in order to protect themselves and 
their interests. Thus they deter the stronger men ... and all others who 
might get the better of them, from doing so; ... and they mean by the 
word "injustice" the attempt of a man to get the better of his neighbours; 
and being aware of their inferiority, they are, I should say, only too glad 
if they can obtain equality.' If we look at this account and eliminate what 
is due to Callicles' open scorn and hostility, then we find all the elements 
of Lycophron's theory: equalitarianism, individualism, and protection 
against injustice. Even the reference to the 'strong' and to the 'weak' who 
are aware of their inferiority fits the protectionist view very well indeed, 
provided the element of caricature is allowed for. It is not at all unlikely 
that Lycophron's doctrine explicitly raised the demand that the state 
should protect the weak, a demand which is, of course, anything but 
ignoble. (The hope that this demand will one day be fulfilled is expressed 
by the Christian teaching: 'The meek shall inherit the earth.') 

Callicles himself does not like protectionism; he is in favour of the 
'natural' rights of the stronger. It is very significant that Socrates, in his 
argument against Callicles, comes to the rescue of protectionism; for he 
connects it with his own central thesis — that it is better to suffer injustice 



than to inflict it. He says, for instance—: 'Are not the many of the 
opinion, as you were lately saying, that justice is equality? And also that 
it is more disgraceful to inflict injustice than to suffer it?' And later: 
nature itself, and not only convention, affirms that to inflict injustice is 
more disgraceful than to suffer it, and that justice is equality.' (In spite of 
its individualistic and equalitarian and protectionist tendencies, the 
Gorgias also exhibits some leanings which are strongly anti-democratic. 
The explanation may be that Plato when writing the Gorgias had not yet 
developed his totalitarian theories; although his sympathies were already 
anti-democratic, he was still under Socrates' influence. How anybody can 
think that the Gorgias and the Republic can be both at the same time true 
accounts of Socrates' opinions, I fail to understand.) 

Let us now turn to the Republic, where Glaucon presents protectionism 
as a logically more stringent but ethically unchanged version of 
Thrasymachus' nihilism. 'My theme', says Glaucon—, 'is the origin of 
justice, and what sort of thing it really is. According to some it is by 
nature an excellent thing to inflict injustice upon others, and a bad thing 
to suffer it. But they hold that the badness of suffering injustice much 
exceeds the desirability of inflicting it. For a time, then, men will inflict 
injustice on one another, and of course suffer it, and they will get a good 
taste of both. But ultimately, those who are not strong enough to repel it, 
or to enjoy inflicting it, decide that it is more profitable for them to join 
in a contract, mutually assuring one another that no one should inflict 
injustice, or suffer it. This is the way in which laws were established . . . 
And this is the nature and the origin of justice, according to that theory.' 

As far as its rational content goes, this is clearly the same theory; and 
the way in which it is represented also resembles in detail— Callicles' 
speech in the Gorgias. And yet, Plato has made a complete change of 
front. The protectionist theory is now no longer defended against the 
allegation that it is based on cynical egoism; on the contrary. Our 



humanitarian sentiments, our moral indignation, already aroused by 
Thrasymachus' nihilism, are utilized for turning us into enemies of 
protectionism. This theory, whose humanitarian character has been 
indicated in the Gorgias, is now made by Plato to appear as anti- 
humanitarian, and indeed, as the outcome of the repulsive and most 
unconvincing doctrine that injustice is a very good thing — for those who 
can get away with it. And he does not hesitate to rub this point in. In an 
extensive continuation of the passage quoted, Glaucon elaborates in much 
detail the allegedly necessary assumptions or premises of protectionism. 
Among these he mentions, for instance, the view that the inflicting of 
injustice is 'the best of all things'—; that justice is established only 
because many men are too weak to commit crimes; and that to the 
individual citizen, a life of crime would be most profitable. And 
'Socrates', i.e. Plato, vouches explicitly— for the authenticity of 
Glaucon's interpretation of the theory presented. By this method, Plato 
seems to have succeeded in persuading most of his readers, and at any 
rate all Platonists, that the protectionist theory here developed is identical 
with the ruthless and cynical selfishness of Thrasymachus—; and, what is 
more important, that all forms of individualism amount to the same, 
namely, selfishness. But it was not only his admirers he persuaded; he 
even succeeded in persuading his opponents, and especially the adherents 
of the contract theory. From Carneades— to Hobbes, they not only 
adopted his fatal historicist presentation, but also Plato's assurances that 
the basis of their theory was an ethical nihilism. 

Now it must be realized that the elaboration of its allegedly selfish 
basis is the whole of Plato's argument against protectionism; and 
considering the space taken up by this elaboration, we may safely assume 
that it was not his reticence which made him proffer no better argument, 
but the fact that he had none. Thus protectionism had to be dismissed by 
an appeal to our moral sentiments — as an affront against the idea of 



justice, and against our feelings of decency. 

This is Plato's method of dealing with a theory which was not only a 
dangerous rival of his own doctrine, but also representative of the new 
humanitarian and individualistic creed, i.e. the arch-enemy of everything 
that was dear to Plato. The method is clever; its astonishing success 
proves it. But I should not be fair if I did not frankly admit that Plato's 
method appears to me dishonest. For the theory attacked does not need 
any assumption more immoral than that injustice is evil, i.e. that it should 
be avoided, and brought under control. And Plato knew quite well that the 
theory was not based on selfishness, for in the Gorgias he had presented 
it not as identical with the nihilistic theory from which it is 'derived' in 
the Republic, but as opposed to it. 

Summing up, we can say that Plato's theory of justice, as presented in 
the Republic and later works, is a conscious attempt to get the better of 
the equalitarian, individualistic, and protectionist tendencies of his time, 
and to re-establish the claims of tribalism by developing a totalitarian 
moral theory. At the same time, he was strongly impressed by the new 
humanitarian morality; but instead of combating equalitarianism with 
arguments, he avoided even discussing it. And he successfully enlisted 
the humanitarian sentiments, whose strength he knew so well, in the 
cause of the totalitarian class rule of a naturally superior master race. 

These class prerogatives, he claimed, are necessary for upholding the 
stability of the state. They constitute therefore the essence of justice. 
Ultimately, this claim is based upon the argument that justice is useful to 
the might, health, and stability of the state; an argument which is only too 
similar to the modem totalitarian definition: right is whatever is useful to 
the might of my nation, or my class, or my party. 

But this is not yet the whole story. By its emphasis on class 
prerogative, Plato's theory of justice puts the problem 'Who should 
rule?' in the centre of political theory. His reply to this question was that 



the wisest, and the best, should rule. Does not this excellent reply modify 
the character of his theory? 



7 

The Principle of Leadership 



The wise shall lead and rule, and the ignorant shall follow. 

Plato. 

Certain objections- to our interpretation of Plato's political programme 
have forced us into an investigation of the part played, within this 
programme, by such moral ideas as Justice, Goodness, Beauty, Wisdom, 
Truth, and Happiness. The present and the two following chapters are to 
continue this analysis, and the part played by the idea of Wisdom in 
Plato's political philosophy will occupy us next. 

We have seen that Plato's idea of justice demands, fundamentally, that 
the natural rulers should rule and the natural slaves should slave. It is part 
of the historicist demand that the state, in order to arrest all change, 
should be a copy of its Idea, or of its true 'nature'. This theory of justice 
indicates very clearly that Plato saw the fundamental problem of politics 
in the question: JVho shall rule the state? 



I 

It is my conviction that by expressing the problem of politics in the form 
'Who should rule?' or 'Whose will should be supreme?', etc., Plato 
created a lasting confusion in political philosophy. It is indeed analogous 



to the confusion he created in the field of moral philosophy by his 
identification, discussed in the last chapter, of collectivism and altruism. 
It is clear that once the question 'Who should rule?' is asked, it is hard to 
avoid some such reply as 'the best' or 'the wisest' or 'the born ruler' or 
'he who masters the art of ruling' (or, perhaps, 'The General Will' or 
'The Master Race' or 'The Industrial Workers' or 'The People'). But 
such a reply, convincing as it may sound — for who would advocate the 
rule of 'the worst' or 'the greatest fool' or 'the born slave'? — is, as I shall 
try to show, quite useless. 

First of all, such a reply is liable to persuade us that some fundamental 
problem of political theory has been solved. But if we approach political 
theory from a different angle, then we find that far from solving any 
fundamental problems, we have merely skipped over them, by assuming 
that the question 'Who should rule?' is fundamental. For even those who 
share this assumption of Plato's admit that political rulers are not always 
sufficiently 'good' or 'wise' (we need not worry about the precise 
meaning of these terms), and that it is not at all easy to get a government 
on whose goodness and wisdom one can implicitly rely. If that is granted, 
then we must ask whether political thought should not face from the 
beginning the possibility of bad government; whether we should not 
prepare for the worst leaders, and hope for the best. But this leads to a 
new approach to the problem of politics, for it forces us to replace the 
question: Who should rule? by the new- question: How can we so 
organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be 
prevented from doing too much damage? 

Those who believe that the older question is fundamental, tacitly 
assume that political power is 'essentially' unchecked. They assume that 
someone has the power — either an individual or a collective body, such 
as a class. And they assume that he who has the power can, very nearly, 
do what he wills, and especially that he can strengthen his power, and 



thereby approximate it further to an unlimited or unchecked power. They 
assume that political power is, essentially, sovereign. If this assumption 
is made, then, indeed, the question 'Who is to be the sovereign?' is the 
only important question left. 

I shall call this assumption the theory of (unchecked) sovereignty , 
using this expression not for any particular one of the various theories of 
sovereignty, proffered more especially by such writers as Bodin, 
Rousseau, or Hegel, but for the more general assumption that political 
power is practically unchecked, or for the demand that it ought to be so; 
together with the implication that the main question left is to get this 
power into the best hands. This theory of sovereignty is tacitly assumed 
in Plato's approach, and has played its role ever since. It is also implicitly 
assumed, for instance, by those modern writers who believe that the main 
problem is: Who should dictate? The capitalists or the workers? 

Without entering into a detailed criticism, I wish to point out that there 
are serious objections against a rash and implicit acceptance of this 
theory. Whatever its speculative merits may appear to be, it is certainly a 
very unrealistic assumption. No political power has ever been unchecked, 
and as long as men remain human (as long as the 'Brave New World' has 
not materialized), there can be no absolute and unrestrained political 
power. So long as one man cannot accumulate enough physical power in 
his hands to dominate all others, just so long must he depend upon his 
helpers. Even the most powerful tyrant depends upon his secret police, 
his henchmen and his hangmen. This dependence means that his power, 
great as it may be, is not unchecked, and that he has to make concessions, 
playing one group off against another. It means that there are other 
political forces, other powers besides his own, and that he can exert his 
rule only by utilizing and pacifying them. This shows that even the 
extreme cases of sovereignty are never cases of pure sovereignty. They 
are never cases in which the will or the interest of one man (or, if there 



were such a thing, the will or the interest of one group) can achieve his 
aim directly, without giving up some of it in order to enlist powers which 
he cannot conquer. And in an overwhelming number of cases, the 
limitations of political power go much further than this. 

I have stressed these empirical points, not because I wish to use them 
as an argument, but merely in order to avoid objections. My claim is that 
every theory of sovereignty omits to face a more fundamental question — 
the question, namely, whether we should not strive towards institutional 
control of the rulers by balancing their powers against other powers. This 
theory of checks and balances can at least claim careful consideration. 
The only objections to this claim, as far as I can see, are {a) that such a 
control is practically impossible, or (b) that it is essentially 
inconceivable since political power is essentially sovereign-. Both of 
these dogmatic objections are, I believe, refuted by the facts; and with 
them fall a number of other influential views (for instance, the theory that 
the only alternative to the dictatorship of one class is that of another 
class). 

In order to raise the question of institutional control of the rulers, we 
need not assume more than that governments are not always good or 
wise. But since I have said something about historical facts, I think I 
should confess that I feel inclined to go a little beyond this assumption. I 
am inclined to think that rulers have rarely been above the average, either 
morally or intellectually, and often below it. And I think that it is 
reasonable to adopt, in politics, the principle of preparing for the worst, 
as well as we can, though we should, of course, at the same time try to 
obtain the best. It appears to me madness to base all our political efforts 
upon the faint hope that we shall be successful in obtaining excellent, or 
even competent, rulers. Strongly as I feel in these matters, I must insist, 
however, that my criticism of the theory of sovereignty does not depend 
on these more personal opinions. 



Apart from these personal opinions, and apart from the above 
mentioned empirical arguments against the general theory of sovereignty, 
there is also a kind of logical argument which can be used to show the 
inconsistency of any of the particular forms of the theory of sovereignty; 
more precisely, the logical argument can be given different but analogous 
forms to combat the theory that the wisest should rule, or else the 
theories that the best, or the law, or the majority, etc., should rule. One 
particular form of this logical argument is directed against a too naive 
version of liberalism, of democracy, and of the principle that the majority 
should rule; and it is somewhat similar to the well-known 'paradox oj 
freedom' which has been used first, and with success, by Plato. In his 
criticism of democracy, and in his story of the rise of the tyrant, Plato 
raises implicitly the following question: What if it is the will of the 
people that they should not rule, but a tyrant instead? The free man, Plato 
suggests, may exercise his absolute freedom, first by defying the laws 
and ultimately by defying freedom itself and by clamouring for a tyrant-. 
This is not just a far-fetched possibility; it has happened a number of 
times; and every time it has happened, it has put in a hopeless intellectual 
position all those democrats who adopt, as the ultimate basis of their 
political creed, the principle of the majority rule or a similar form of the 
principle of sovereignty. On the one hand, the principle they have adopted 
demands from them that they should oppose any but the majority rule, 
and therefore the new tyranny; on the other hand, the same principle 
demands from them that they should accept any decision reached by the 
majority, and thus the rule of the new tyrant. The inconsistency of their 
theory must, of course, paralyse their actions-. Those of us democrats 
who demand the institutional control of the rulers by the ruled, and 
especially the right of dismissing the government by a majority vote, 
must therefore base these demands upon better grounds than a self- 
contradictory theory of sovereignty. (That this is possible will be briefly 



shown in the next section of this chapter.) 

Plato, we have seen, came near to discovering the paradoxes of 
freedom and of democracy. But what Plato and his followers overlooked 
is that all the other forms of the theory of sovereignty give rise to 
analogous inconsistencies. ^4// theories of sovereignty are paradoxical. 
For instance, we may have selected 'the wisest' or 'the best' as a ruler. 
But 'the wisest' in his wisdom may find that not he but 'the best' should 
rule, and 'the best' in his goodness may perhaps decide that 'the 
majority' should rule. It is important to notice that even that form of the 
theory of sovereignty which demands the 'Kingship of the Law' is open 
to the same objection. This, in fact, has been seen very early, as 
Heraclitus' remark- shows: 'The law can demand, too, that the will of 
One Man must be obeyed. ' 

In summing up this brief criticism, one can, I believe, assert that the 
theory of sovereignty is in a weak position, both empirically and 
logically. The least that can be demanded is that it must not be adopted 
without careful consideration of other possibilities. 



II 

And indeed, it is not difficult to show that a theory of democratic control 
can be developed which is free of the paradox of sovereignty. The theory 
I have in mind is one which does not proceed, as it were, from a doctrine 
of the intrinsic goodness or righteousness of a majority rule, but rather 
from the baseness of tyranny; or more precisely, it rests upon the 
decision, or upon the adoption of the proposal, to avoid and to resist 
tyranny. 

For we may distinguish two main types of government. The first type 



consists of governments of which we can get rid without bloodshed — for 
example, by way of general elections; that is to say, the social institutions 
provide means by which the rulers may be dismissed by the ruled, and the 
social traditions- ensure that these institutions will not easily be 
destroyed by those who are in power. The second type consists of 
governments which the ruled cannot get rid of except by way of a 
successful revolution — that is to say, in most cases, not at all. I suggest 
the term 'democracy' as a shorthand label for a government of the first 
type, and the term 'tyranny' or 'dictatorship' for the second. This, I 
believe, corresponds closely to traditional usage. But I wish to make clear 
that no part of my argument depends on the choice of these labels; and 
should anybody reverse this usage (as is frequently done nowadays), then 
I should simply say that I am in favour of what he calls 'tyranny', and 
object to what he calls 'democracy'; and I should reject as irrelevant any 
attempt to discover what 'democracy' 'really' or 'essentially' means, for 
example, by translating the term into 'the rule of the people'. (For 
although 'the people' may influence the actions of their rulers by the 
threat of dismissal, they never rule themselves in any concrete, practical 
sense.) 

If we make use of the two labels as suggested, then we can now 
describe, as the principle of a democratic policy, the proposal to create, 
develop, and protect, political institutions for the avoidance of tyranny. 
This principle does not imply that we can ever develop institutions of this 
kind which are faultless or foolproof, or which ensure that the policies 
adopted by a democratic government will be right or good or wise — or 
even necessarily better or wiser than the policies adopted by a benevolent 
tyrant. (Since no such assertions are made, the paradox of democracy is 
avoided.) What may be said, however, to be implied in the adoption of 
the democratic principle is the conviction that the acceptance of even a 
bad policy in a democracy (as long as we can work for a peaceful change) 



is preferable to the submission to a tyranny, however wise or benevolent. 
Seen in this light, the theory of democracy is not based upon the principle 
that the majority should rule; rather, the various equalitarian methods of 
democratic control, such as general elections and representative 
government, are to be considered as no more than well-tried and, in the 
presence of a widespread traditional distrust of tyranny, reasonably 
effective institutional safeguards against tyranny, always open to 
improvement, and even providing methods for their own improvement. 

He who accepts the principle of democracy in this sense is therefore 
not bound to look upon the result of a democratic vote as an authoritative 
expression of what is right. Although he will accept a decision of the 
majority, for the sake of making the democratic institutions work, he will 
feel free to combat it by democratic means, and to work for its revision. 
And should he live to see the day when the majority vote destroys the 
democratic institutions, then this sad experience will tell him only that 
there does not exist a foolproof method of avoiding tyranny. But it need 
not weaken his decision to fight tyranny, nor will it expose his theory as 
inconsistent. 



Ill 

Returning to Plato, we find that by his emphasis upon the problem 'who 
should rule', he implicitly assumed the general theory of sovereignty. 
The question of an institutional control of the rulers, and of an 
institutional balancing of their powers, is thereby eliminated without ever 
having been raised. The interest is shifted from institutions to questions 
of personnel, and the most urgent problem now becomes that of selecting 
the natural leaders, and that of training them for leadership. 



In view of this fact some people think that in Plato's theory, the 
welfare of the state is ultimately an ethical and spiritual matter, 
depending on persons and personal responsibility rather than on the 
construction of impersonal institutions. I believe that this view of 
Platonism is superficial.^// long-term politics are institutional. There is 
no escape from that, not even for Plato. The principle of leadership does 
not replace institutional problems by problems of personnel, it only 
creates new institutional problems. As we shall see, it even burdens the 
institutions with a task which goes beyond what can be reasonably 
demanded from a mere institution, namely, with the task of selecting the 
future leaders. It would be therefore a mistake to think that the 
opposition between the theory of balances and the theory of sovereignty 
corresponds to that between institutionalism and personalism. Plato's 
principle of leadership is far removed from a pure personalism since it 
involves the working of institutions; and indeed it may be said that a pure 
personalism is impossible. But it must be said that a pure institutionalism 
is impossible also. Not only does the construction of institutions involve 
important personal decisions, but the functioning of even the best 
institutions (such as democratic checks and balances) will always depend, 
to a considerable degree, on the persons involved. Institutions are like 
fortresses. They must be well designed and manned. 

This distinction between the personal and the institutional element in a 
social situation is a point which is often missed by the critics of 
democracy. Most of them are dissatisfied with democratic institutions 
because they find that these do not necessarily prevent a state or a policy 
from falling short of some moral standards or of some political demands 
which may be urgent as well as admirable. But these critics misdirect 
their attacks; they do not understand what democratic institutions may be 
expected to do, and what the alternative to democratic institutions would 
be. Democracy (using this label in the sense suggested above) provides 



the institutional framework for the reform of political institutions. It 
makes possible the reform of institutions without using violence, and 
thereby the use of reason in the designing of new institutions and the 
adjusting of old ones. It cannot provide reason. The question of the 
intellectual and moral standard of its citizens is to a large degree a 
personal problem. (The idea that this problem can be tackled, in turn, by 
an institutional eugenic and educational control is, I believe, mistaken; 
some reasons for my belief will be given below.) It is quite wrong to 
blame democracy for the political shortcomings of a democratic state. 
We should rather blame ourselves, that is to say, the citizens of the 
democratic state. In a non-democratic state, the only way to achieve 
reasonable reforms is by the violent overthrow of the government, and 
the introduction of a democratic framework. Those who criticize 
democracy on any 'moral' grounds fail to distinguish between personal 
and institutional problems. It rests with us to improve matters. The 
democratic institutions cannot improve themselves. The problem of 
improving them is always a problem for persons rather than for 
institutions. But if we want improvements, we must make clear which 
institutions we want to improve. 

There is another distinction within the field of political problems 
corresponding to that between persons and institutions. It is the one 
between the problems of the day and the problems of the future. While 
the problems of the day are largely personal, the building of the future 
must necessarily be institutional. If the political problem is approached 
by asking 'Who should rule?', and if Plato's principle of leadership is 
adopted — that is to say, the principle that the best should rule — then the 
problem of the future must take the form of designing institutions for the 
selection of future leaders. 

This is one of the most important problems in Plato's theory of 
education. In approaching it I do not hesitate to say that Plato utterly 



corrupted and confused the theory and practice of education by linking it 
up with his theory of leadership. The damage done is, if possible, even 
greater than that inflicted upon ethics by the identification of 
collectivism with altruism, and upon political theory by the introduction 
of the principle of sovereignty. Plato's assumption that it should be the 
task of education (or more precisely, of the educational institutions) to 
select the future leaders, and to train them for leadership, is still largely 
taken for granted. By burdening these institutions with a task which must 
go beyond the scope of any institution, Plato is partly responsible for 
their deplorable state. But before entering into a general discussion of his 
view of the task of education, I wish to develop, in more detail, his theory 
of leadership, the leadership of the wise. 



IV 

I think it most likely that this theory of Plato's owes a number of its 
elements to the influence of Socrates. One of the fundamental tenets of 
Socrates was, I believe, his moral intellectualism. By this I understand 
(a) his identification of goodness and wisdom, his theory that nobody acts 
against his better knowledge, and that lack of knowledge is responsible 
for all moral mistakes; (b) his theory that moral excellence can be taught, 
and that it does not require any particular moral faculties, apart from the 
universal human intelligence. 

Socrates was a moralist and an enthusiast. He was the type of man who 
would criticize any form of government for its short-comings (and 
indeed, such criticism would be necessary and useful for any government, 
although it is possible only under a democracy) but he recognized the 
importance of being loyal to the laws of the state. As it happened, he 



spent his life largely under a democratic form of government, and as a 
good democrat he found it his duty to expose the incompetence and 
windbaggery of some of the democratic leaders of his time. At the same 
time, he opposed any form of tyranny; and if we consider his courageous 
behaviour under the Thirty Tyrants then we have no reason to assume that 
his criticism of the democratic leaders was inspired by anything like anti- 
democratic leanings-. It is not unlikely that he demanded (like Plato) that 
the best should rule, which would have meant, in his view, the wisest, or 
those who knew something about justice. But we must remember that by 
'justice' he meant equalitarian justice (as indicated by the passages from 
the Gorgias quoted in the last chapter), and that he was not only an 
equalitarian but also an individualist — ^perhaps the greatest apostle of an 
individualistic ethics of all time. And we should realize that, if he 
demanded that the wisest men should rule, he clearly stressed that he did 
not mean the learned men; in fact, he was sceptical of all professional 
learnedness, whether it was that of the philosophers of the past or of the 
learned men of his own generation, the Sophists. The wisdom he meant 
was of a different kind. It was simply the realization: how little do I 
know! Those who did not know this, he taught, knew nothing at all. (This 
is the true scientific spirit. Some people still think, as Plato did when he 
had established himself as a learned Pythagorean sage-, that Socrates' 
agnostic attitude must be explained by the lack of success of the science 
of his day. But this only shows that they do not understand this spirit, and 
that they are still possessed by the pre-Socratic magical attitude towards 
science, and towards the scientist, whom they consider as a somewhat 
glorified shaman, as wise, learned, initiated. They judge him by the 
amount of knowledge in his possession, instead of taking, with Socrates, 
his awareness of what he does not know as a measure of his scientific 
level as well as of his intellectual honesty.) 

It is important to see that this Socratic intellectualism is decidedly 



equalitarian. Socrates believed that everyone can be taught; in the Meno, 
we see him teaching a young slave a version— of the now so-called 
theorem of Pythagoras, in an attempt to prove that any uneducated slave 
has the capacity to grasp even abstract matters. And his intellectualism is 
also anti-authoritarian. A technique, for instance rhetoric, may perhaps be 
dogmatically taught by an expert, according to Socrates; but real 
knowledge, wisdom, and also virtue, can be taught only by a method 
which he describes as a form of midwifery. Those eager to learn may be 
helped to free themselves from their prejudice; thus they may learn self- 
criticism, and that truth is not easily attained. But they may also learn to 
make up their minds, and to rely, critically, on their decisions, and on 
their insight. In view of such teaching, it is clear how much the Socratic 
demand (if he ever raised this demand) that the best, i.e. the intellectually 
honest, should rule, differs from the authoritarian demand that the most 
learned, or from the aristocratic demand that the best, i.e. the most noble, 
should rule. (Socrates' belief that even courage is wisdom can, I think, be 
interpreted as a direct criticism of the aristocratic doctrine of the nobly 
born hero.) 

But this moral intellectualism of Socrates is a two-edged sword. It has 
its equalitarian and democratic aspect, which was later developed by 
Antisthenes. But it has also an aspect which may give rise to strongly 
anti- democratic tendencies. Its stress upon the need for enlightenment, 
for education, might easily be misinterpreted as a demand for 
authoritarianism. This is connected with a question which seems to have 
puzzled Socrates a great deal: that those who are not sufficiently 
educated, and thus not wise enough to know their deficiencies, are just 
those who are in the greatest need of education. Readiness to learn in 
itself proves the possession of wisdom, in fact all the wisdom claimed by 
Socrates for himself; for he who is ready to learn knows how little he 
knows. The uneducated seems thus to be in need of an authority to wake 



him up, since he cannot be expected to be self-critical. But this one 
element of authoritarianism was wonderfully balanced in Socrates' 
teaching by the emphasis that the authority must not claim more than 
that. The true teacher can prove himself only by exhibiting that self- 
criticism which the uneducated lacks. 'Whatever authority I may have 
rests solely upon my knowing how little I know' : this is the way in which 
Socrates might have justified his mission to stir up the people from their 
dogmatic slumber. This educational mission he believed to be also a 
political mission. He felt that the way to improve the political life of the 
city was to educate the citizens to self-criticism. In this sense he claimed 
to be 'the only politician of his day'—, in opposition to those others who 
flatter the people instead of furthering their true interests. 

This Socratic identification of his educational and political activity 
could easily be distorted into the Platonic and Aristotelian demand that 
the state should look after the moral life of its citizens. And it can easily 
be used for a dangerously convincing proof that all democratic control is 
vicious. For how can those whose task it is to educate be judged by the 
uneducated? How can the better be controlled by the less good? But this 
argument is, of course, entirely un-Socratic. It assumes an authority of 
the wise and learned man, and goes far beyond Socrates' modest idea of 
the teacher's authority as founded solely on his consciousness of his own 
limitations. State- authority in these matters is liable to achieve, in fact, 
the exact opposite of Socrates' aim. It is liable to produce dogmatic self- 
satisfaction and massive intellectual complacency, instead of critical 
dissatisfaction and eagerness for improvement. I do not think that it is 
unnecessary to stress this danger which is seldom clearly realized. Even 
an author like Grossman, who, I believe, understood the true Socratic 
spirit, agrees— with Plato in what he calls Plato's third criticism of 
Athens: 'Education, which should be the major responsibility of the State, 
had been left to individual caprice . . . Here again was a task which should 



be entrusted only to the man of proven probity. The future of any State 
depends on the younger generation, and it is therefore madness to allow 
the minds of children to be moulded by individual taste and force of 
circumstances. Equally disastrous had been the State's laissez-faire 
policy with regard to teachers and schoolmasters and sophist-lecturers.'— 
But the Athenian state's laissez-faire policy, criticized by Grossman and 
Plato, had the invaluable result of enabling certain sophist-lecturers to 
teach, and especially the greatest of them all, Socrates. And when this 
policy was later dropped, the result was Socrates' death. This should be a 
warning that state control in such matters is dangerous, and that the cry 
for the 'man of proven probity' may easily lead to the suppression of the 
best. (Bertrand Russell's recent suppression is a case in point.) But as far 
as basic principles are concerned, we have here an instance of the deeply 
rooted prejudice that the only alternative to laissez-faire is full state 
responsibility. I certainly believe that it is the responsibility of the state 
to see that its citizens are given an education enabling them to participate 
in the life of the community, and to make use of any opportunity to 
develop their special interests and gifts; and the state should certainly 
also see (as Grossman rightly stresses) that the lack of 'the individual's 
capacity to pay' should not debar him from higher studies. This, I 
believe, belongs to the state's protective functions. To say, however, that 
'the future of the state depends on the younger generation, and that it is 
therefore madness to allow the minds of children to be moulded by 
individual taste', appears to me to open wide the door to totalitarianism. 
State interest must not be lightly invoked to defend measures which may 
endanger the most precious of all forms of freedom, namely, intellectual 
freedom. And although I do not advocate 'laissez-faire with regard to 
teachers and schoolmasters', I believe that this policy is infinitely 
superior to an authoritative policy that gives officers of the state full 
powers to mould minds, and to control the teaching of science, thereby 



backing the dubious authority of the expert by that of the state, ruining 
science by the customary practice of teaching it as an authoritative 
doctrine, and destroying the scientific spirit of inquiry — the spirit of the 
search for truth, as opposed to the belief in its possession. 

I have tried to show that Socrates' intellectualism was fundamentally 
equalitarian and individualistic, and that the element of authoritarianism 
which it involved was reduced to a minimum by Socrates' intellectual 
modesty and his scientific attitude. The intellectualism of Plato is very 
different from this. The Platonic 'Socrates' of the Republic— is the 
embodiment of an unmitigated authoritarianism. (Even his self- 
deprecating remarks are not based upon awareness of his limitations, but 
are rather an ironical way of asserting his superiority.) His educational 
aim is not the awakening of self-criticism and of critical thought in 
general. It is, rather, indoctrination — the moulding of minds and of souls 
which (to repeat a quotation from ihQLaws—) are 'to become, by long 
habit, utterly incapable of doing anything at all independently'. And 
Socrates' great equalitarian and liberating idea that it is possible to 
reason with a slave, and that there is an intellectual link between man and 
man, a medium of universal understanding, namely, 'reason', this idea is 
replaced by a demand for an educational monopoly of the ruling class, 
coupled with the strictest censorship, even of oral debates. 

Socrates had stressed that he was not wise; that he was not in the 
possession of truth, but that he was a searcher, an inquirer, a lover of 
truth. This, he explained, is expressed by the word 'philosopher', i.e. the 
lover of wisdom, and the seeker for it, as opposed to 'Sophist', i.e. the 
professionally wise man. If ever he claimed that statesmen should be 
philosophers, he could only have meant that, burdened with an excessive 
responsibility, they should be searchers for truth, and conscious of their 
limitations. 

How did Plato convert this doctrine? At first sight, it might appear that 



he did not alter it at all, when demanding that the sovereignty of the state 
should be invested in the philosophers; especially since, like Socrates, he 
defined philosophers as lovers of truth. But the change made by Plato is 
indeed tremendous. His lover is no longer the modest seeker, he is the 
proud possessor of truth. A trained dialectician, he is capable of 
intellectual intuition, i.e. of seeing, and of communicating with, the 
eternal, the heavenly Forms or Ideas. Placed high above all ordinary men, 
he is 'god-like, if not ... divine'—, both in his wisdom and in his power. 
Plato's ideal philosopher approaches both to omniscience and to 
omnipotence. He is the Philosopher-King. It is hard, I think, to conceive a 
greater contrast than that between the Socratic and the Platonic ideal of a 
philosopher. It is the contrast between two worlds — the world of a 
modest, rational individualist and that of a totalitarian demi-god. 

Plato's demand that the wise man should rule — the possessor of truth, 
the 'fully qualified philosopher '^^^ — raises, of course, the problem of 
selecting and educating the rulers. In a purely personalist (as opposed to 
an institutional) theory, this problem might be solved simply by declaring 
that the wise ruler will in his wisdom be wise enough to choose the best 
man for his successor. This is not, however, a very satisfactory approach 
to the problem. Too much would depend on uncontrolled circumstances; 
an accident may destroy the future stability of the state. But the attempt 
to control circumstances, to foresee what might happen and to provide for 
it, must lead here, as everywhere, to the abandonment of a purely 
personalist solution, and to its replacement by an institutional one. As 
already stated, the attempt to plan for the future must always lead to 
institutionalism. 



v 



The institution which according to Plato has to look after the future 
leaders can be described as the educational department of the state. It is, 
from a purely political point of view, by far the most important 
institution within Plato's society. It holds the keys to power. For this 
reason alone it should be clear that at least the higher grades of education 
are to be directly controlled by the rulers. But there are some additional 
reasons for this. The most important is that only 'the expert and ... the 
man of proven probity', as Grossman puts it, which in Plato's view means 
only the very wisest adepts, that is to say, the rulers themselves, can be 
entrusted with the final initiation of the future sages into the higher 
mysteries of wisdom. This holds, above all, for dialectics, i.e. the art of 
intellectual intuition, of visualizing the divine originals, the Forms or 
Ideas, of unveiling the Great Mystery behind the common man's 
everyday world of appearances. 

What are Plato's institutional demands regarding this highest form of 
education? They are remarkable. He demands that only those who are 
past their prime of life should be admitted. 'When their bodily strength 
begins to fail, and when they are past the age of public and military 
duties, then, and only then, should they be permitted to enter at will the 
sacred field ...'— namely, the field of the highest dialectical studies. 
Plato's reason for this amazing rule is clear enough. He is afraid of the 
power of thought. 'All great things are dangerous'— is the remark by 
which he introduces the confession that he is afraid of the effect which 
philosophic thought may have upon brains which are not yet on the verge 
of old age. (All this he puts into the mouth of Socrates, who died in 
defence of his right of free discussion with the young.) But this is exactly 
what we should expect if we remember that Plato's fundamental aim was 
to arrest political change. In their youth, the members of the upper class 
shall fight. When they are too old to think independently, they shall 
become dogmatic students to be imbued with wisdom and authority in 



order to become sages themselves and to hand on their wisdom, the 
doctrine of collectivism and authoritarianism, to future generations. 

It is interesting that in a later and more elaborate passage which 
attempts to paint the rulers in the brightest colours, Plato modifies his 
suggestion. Now— he allows the future sages to begin their preparatory 
dialectical studies at the age of thirty, stressing, of course, 'the need for 
great caution' and the dangers of 'insubordination ... which corrupts so 
many dialecticians'; and he demands that 'those to whom the use of 
arguments may be permitted must possess disciplined and well-balanced 
natures'. This alteration certainly helps to brighten the picture. But the 
fundamental tendency is the same. For, in the continuation of this 
passage, we hear that the future leaders must not be initiated into the 
higher philosophical studies — into the dialectic vision of the essence of 
the Good — before they reach, having passed through many tests and 
temptations, the age of fifty. 

This is the teaching of thQ Republic. It seems that the dialogue 
Parmenides— contains a similar message, for here Socrates is depicted as 
a brilliant young man who, having dabbled successfully in pure 
philosophy, gets into serious trouble when asked to give an account of the 
more subtle problems of the theory of ideas. He is dismissed by the old 
Parmenides with the admonition that he should train himself more 
thoroughly in the art of abstract thought before venturing again into the 
higher field of philosophical studies. It looks as if we had here (among 
other things) Plato's answer — 'Even a Socrates was once too young for 
dialectics' — to his pupils who pestered him for an initiation which he 
considered premature. 

Why is it that Plato does not wish his leaders to have originality or 
initiative? The answer, I think, is clear. He hates change and does not 
want to see that re-adjustments may become necessary. But this 
explanation of Plato's attitude does not go deep enough. In fact, we are 



faced here with a fundamental difficulty of the leader principle. The very 
idea of selecting or educating future leaders is self-contradictory. You 
may solve the problem, perhaps, to some degree in the field of bodily 
excellence. Physical initiative and bodily courage are perhaps not so hard 
to ascertain. But the secret of intellectual excellence is the spirit of 
criticism; it is intellectual independence. And this leads to difficulties 
which must prove insurmountable for any kind of authoritarianism. The 
authoritarian will in general select those who obey, who believe, who 
respond to his influence. But in doing so, he is bound to select 
mediocrities. For he excludes those who revolt, who doubt, who dare to 
resist his influence. Never can an authority admit that the intellectually 
courageous, i.e. those who dare to defy his authority, may be the most 
valuable type. Of course, the authorities will always remain convinced of 
their ability to detect initiative. But what they mean by this is only a 
quick grasp of their intentions, and they will remain for ever incapable of 
seeing the difference. (Here we may perhaps penetrate the secret of the 
particular difficulty of selecting capable military leaders. The demands of 
military discipline enhance the difficulties discussed, and the methods of 
military advancement are such that those who do dare to think for 
themselves are usually eliminated. Nothing is less true, as far as 
intellectual initiative is concerned, than the idea that those who are good 
in obeying will also be good in commanding—. Very similar difficulties 
arise in political parties: the 'Man Friday' of the party leader is seldom a 
capable successor.) 

We are led here, I believe, to a result of some importance, and to one 
which can be generalized. Institutions for the selection of the outstanding 
can hardly be devised. Institutional selection may work quite well for 
such purposes as Plato had in mind, namely for arresting change. But it 
will never work well if we demand more than that, for it will always tend 
to eliminate initiative and originality, and, more generally, qualities 



which are unusual and unexpected. This is not a criticism of political 
institutionalism. It only re-affirms what has been said before, that we 
should always prepare for the worst leaders, although we should try, of 
course, to get the best. But it is a criticism of the tendency to burden 
institutions, especially educational institutions, with the impossible task 
of selecting the best. This should never be made their task. This tendency 
transforms our educational system into a race-course, and turns a course 
of studies into a hurdle-race. Instead of encouraging the student to devote 
himself to his studies for the sake of studying, instead of encouraging in 
him a real love for his subject and for inquiry—, he is encouraged to study 
for the sake of his personal career; he is led to acquire only such 
knowledge as is serviceable in getting him over the hurdles which he 
must clear for the sake of his advancement. In other words, even in the 
field of science, our methods of selection are based upon an appeal to 
personal ambition of a somewhat crude form. (It is a natural reaction to 
this appeal if the eager student is looked upon with suspicion by his 
colleagues.) The impossible demand for an institutional selection of 
intellectual leaders endangers the very life not only of science, but of 
intelligence. 

It has been said, only too truly, that Plato was the inventor of both our 
secondary schools and our universities. I do not know a better argument 
for an optimistic view of mankind, no better proof of their indestructible 
love for truth and decency, of their originality and stubbornness and 
health, than the fact that this devastating system of education has not 
utterly ruined them. In spite of the treachery of so many of their leaders, 
there are quite a number, old as well as young, who are decent, and 
intelligent, and devoted to their task. 'I sometimes wonder how it was 
that the mischief done was not more clearly perceptible,' says Samuel 
Butler—, 'and that the young men and women grew up as sensible and 
goodly as they did, in spite of the attempts almost deliberately made to 



warp and stunt their growth. Some doubtless received damage, from 
which they suffered to their life's end; but many seemed little or none the 
worse, and some almost the better. The reason would seem to be that the 
natural instinct of the lads in most cases so absolutely rebelled against 
their training, that do what the teachers might they could never get them 
to pay serious heed to it.' 

It may be mentioned here that, in practice, Plato did not prove too 
successful as a selector of political leaders. I have in mind not so much 
the disappointing outcome of his experiment with Dionysius the Younger, 
tyrant of Syracuse, but rather the participation of Plato's Academy in 
Dio's successful expedition against Dionysius. Plato's famous friend Dio 
was supported in this adventure by a number of members of Plato's 
Academy. One of them was Callippus, who became Dio's most trusted 
comrade. After Dio had made himself tyrant of Syracuse he ordered 
Heraclides, his ally (and perhaps his rival), to be murdered. Shortly 
afterwards he was himself murdered by Callippus who usurped the 
tyranny, which he lost after thirteen months. (He was, in turn, murdered 
by the Pythagorean philosopher Leptines.) But this event was not the only 
one of its kind in Plato's career as a teacher. Clearchus, one of Plato's 
(and of Isocrates') disciples, made himself tyrant of Heraclea after 
having posed as a democratic leader. He was murdered by his relation, 
Chion, another member of Plato's Academy. (We cannot know how 
Chion, whom some represent as an idealist, would have developed, since 
he was soon killed.) These and a few similar experiences of Plato's^^^ — 
who could boast a total of at least nine tyrants among his onetime pupils 
and associates — throw light on the peculiar difficulties connected with 
the selection of men who are to be invested with absolute power. It is 
hard to find a man whose character will not be corrupted by it. As Lord 
Acton says — all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

To sum up. Plato's political programme was much more institutional 



than personalist; he hoped to arrest political change by the institutional 
control of succession in leadership. The control was to be educational, 
based upon an authoritarian view of learning — ^upon the authority of the 
learned expert, and 'the man of proven probity'. This is what Plato made 
of Socrates' demand that a responsible politician should be a lover of 
truth and of wisdom rather than an expert, and that he was wise only— if 
he knew his limitations. 



8 

The Philosopher King 



And the state will erect monuments ... to commemorate them. And sacrifices will be offered 
to them as demigods, ... as men who are blessed by grace, and godlike. 

Plato. 

The contrast between the Platonic and the Socratic creed is even greater 
than I have shown so far. Plato, I have said, followed Socrates in his 
definition of the philosopher. 'Whom do you call true philosophers? — 
Those who love truth', we read in thQ Republic-. But he himself is not 
quite truthful when he makes this statement. He does not really believe in 
it, for he bluntly declares in other places that it is one of the royal 
privileges of the sovereign to make full use of lies and deceit: 'It is the 
business of the rulers of the city, if it is anybody's, to tell lies, deceiving 
both its enemies and its own citizens for the benefit of the city; and no 
one else must touch this privilege. '- 

'For the benefit of the city', says Plato. Again we find that the appeal 
to the principle of collective utility is the ultimate ethical consideration. 
Totalitarian morality overrules everything, even the definition, the Idea, 
of the philosopher. It need hardly be mentioned that, by the same 
principle of political expediency, the ruled are to be forced to tell the 
truth. 'If the ruler catches anyone else in a lie ... then he will punish him 
for introducing a practice which injures and endangers the city . . . '- Only 
in this slightly unexpected sense are the Platonic rulers — the philosopher 



kings — lovers of truth. 



I 



Plato illustrates this application of his principle of collective utility to the 
problem of truthfulness by the example of the physician. The example is 
well chosen, since Plato likes to visualize his political mission as one of 
the healer or saviour of the sick body of society. Apart from this, the role 
which he assigns to medicine throws light upon the totalitarian character 
of Plato's city where state interest dominates the life of the citizen from 
the mating of his parents to his grave. Plato interprets medicine as a form 
of politics, or as he puts it himself, he 'regards Aesculapius, the god of 
medicine, as a politician'-. Medical art, he explains, must not consider 
the prolongation of life as its aim, but only the interest of the state. 'In all 
properly ruled communities, each man has his particular work assigned to 
him in the state. This he must do, and no one has time to spend his life in 
falling ill and getting cured.' Accordingly, the physician has 'no right to 
attend to a man who cannot carry out his ordinary duties; for such a man 
is useless to himself and to the state'. To this is added the consideration 
that such a man might have 'children who would probably be equally 
sick', and who also would become a burden to the state. (In his old age, 
Plato mentions medicine, in spite of his increased hatred of 
individualism, in a more personal vein. He complains of the doctor who 
treats even free citizens as if they were slaves, 'issuing his orders like a 
tyrant whose will is law, and then rushing off to the next slave-patient'-, 
and he pleads for more gentleness and patience in medical treatment, at 
least for those who are not slaves.) Concerning the use of lies and deceit, 
Plato urges that these are 'useful only as a medicine'-; but the ruler of the 



state, Plato insists, must not behave like some of those 'ordinary doctors' 
who have not the courage to administer strong medicines. The 
philosopher king, a lover of truth as a philosopher, must, as a king, be 'a 
more courageous man', since he must be determined 'to administer a 
great many lies and deceptions' — for the benefit of the ruled, Plato 
hastens to add. Which means, as we already know, and as we learn here 
again from Plato's reference to medicine, 'for the benefit of the state'. 
(Kant remarked once in a very different spirit that the sentence 
'Truthfulness is the best policy' might indeed be questionable, whilst the 
sentence 'Truthfulness is better than policy' is beyond dispute-.) 

What kind of lies has Plato in mind when he exhorts his rulers to use 
strong medicine? Grossman rightly emphasizes that Plato means 
'propaganda, the technique of controlling the behaviour of ... the bulk of 
the ruled majority'-. Certainly, Plato had these first in his mind; but when 
Grossman suggests that the propaganda lies were only intended for the 
consumption of the ruled, while the rulers should be a fully enlightened 
intelligentsia, then I cannot agree. I think, rather, that Plato's complete 
break with anything resembling Socrates' intellectualism is nowhere 
more obvious than in the place where he twice expresses his hope that 
even the rulers themselves, at least after a few generations, might be 
induced to believe his greatest propaganda lie; I mean his racialism, his 
Myth of Blood and Soil, known as the Myth of the Metals in Man and of 
the Earthborn. Here we see that Plato's utilitarian and totalitarian 
principles overrule everything, even the ruler's privilege of knowing, and 
of demanding to be told, the truth. The motive of Plato's wish that the 
rulers themselves should believe in the propaganda lie is his hope of 
increasing its wholesome effect, i.e. of strengthening the rule of the 
master race, and ultimately, of arresting all political change. 



II 



Plato introduces his Myth of Blood and Soil with the blunt admission that 
it is a fraud. 'Well then', says the Socrates of the Republic, 'could we 
perhaps fabricate one of those very handy lies which indeed we 
mentioned just recently? With the help of one single lordly lie we may, if 
we are lucky, persuade even the rulers themselves — but at any rate the 
rest of the city.'- It is interesting to note the use of the term 'persuade'. 
To persuade somebody to believe a lie means, more precisely, to mislead 
or to hoax him; and it would be more in tune with the frank cynicism of 
the passage to translate 'we may, if we are lucky, hoax even the rulers 
themselves'. But Plato uses the term 'persuasion' very frequently, and its 
occurrence here throws some light on other passages. It may be taken as a 
warning that in similar passages he may have propaganda lies in his 
mind; more especially where he advocates that the statesman should rule 
'by means of both persuasion and force'—. 

After announcing his 'lordly lie', Plato, instead of proceeding directly 
to the narration of his Myth, first develops a lengthy preface, somewhat 
similar to the lengthy preface which precedes his discovery of justice; an 
indication, I think, of his uneasiness. It seems that he did not expect the 
proposal which follows to find much favour with his readers. The Myth 
itself introduces two ideas. The first is to strengthen the defence of the 
mother country; it is the idea that the warriors of his city are 
autochthonous, 'born of the earth of their country', and ready to defend 
their country which is their mother. This old and well-known idea is 
certainly not the reason for Plato's hesitation (although the wording of 
the dialogue cleverly suggests it). The second idea, however, 'the rest of 
the story', is the myth of racialism: 'God ... has put gold into those who 
are capable of ruling, silver into the auxiliaries, and iron and copper into 



the peasants and the other producing classes.'— These metals are 
hereditary, they are racial characteristics. In this passage, in which Plato, 
hesitatingly, first introduces his racialism, he allows for the possibility 
that children may be born with an admixture of another metal than those 
of their parents; and it must be admitted that he here announces the 
following rule: if in one of the lower classes 'children are born with an 
admixture of gold and silver, they shall ... be appointed guardians, and . . . 
auxiliaries'. But this concession is rescinded in later passages of the 
Republic (and also in the Laws), especially in the story of the Fall of Man 
and of the Number—, partially quoted in chapter 5 above. From this 
passage we learn that any admixture of one of the base metals must be 
excluded from the higher classes. The possibility of admixtures and 
corresponding changes in status therefore only means that nobly born but 
degenerate children may be pushed down, and not that any of the base 
born may be lifted up. The way in which any mixing of metals must lead 
to destruction is described in the concluding passage of the story of the 
Fall of Man: 'Iron will mingle with silver and bronze with gold, and from 
this mixture variation will be born and absurd irregularity; and whenever 
these are born they will beget struggle and hostility. And this is how we 
must describe the ancestry and birth of Dissension, wherever she 
arises'—. It is in this light that we must consider that the Myth of the 
Earthborn concludes with the cynical fabrication of a prophecy by a 
fictitious oracle 'that the city must perish when guarded by iron and 
copper'—. Plato's reluctance to proffer his racialism at once in its more 
radical form indicates, I suppose, that he knew how much it was opposed 
to the democratic and humanitarian tendencies of his time. 

If we consider Plato's blunt admission that his Myth of Blood and Soil 
is a propaganda lie, then the attitude of the commentators towards the 
Myth is somewhat puzzling. Adam, for instance, writes: 'Without it, the 
present sketch of a state would be incomplete. We require some 



guarantee for the permanence of the city . . . ; and nothing could be more 
in keeping with the prevailing moral and religious spirit of Plato's ... 
education than that he should find that guarantee in faith rather than in 
reason.'— I agree (though this is not quite what Adam meant) that 
nothing is more in keeping with Plato's totalitarian morality than his 
advocacy of propaganda lies. But I do not quite understand how the 
religious and idealistic commentator can declare, by implication, that 
religion and faith are on the level of an opportunist lie. As a matter of 
fact, Adam's comment is reminiscent of Hobbes' conventionalism, of the 
view that the tenets of religion, although not true, are a most expedient 
and indispensable political device. And this consideration shows us that 
Plato, after all, was more of a conventionalist than one might think. He 
does not even stop short of establishing a religious faith 'by convention' 
(we must credit him with the frankness of his admission that it is only a 
fabrication), while the reputed conventionalist Protagoras at least 
believed that the laws, which are our making, are made with the help of 
divine inspiration. It is hard to understand why those of Plato's 
commentators— who praise him for fighting against the subversive 
conventionalism of the Sophists, and for establishing a spiritual 
naturalism ultimately based on religion, fail to censure him for making a 
convention, or rather an invention, the ultimate basis of religion. In fact, 
Plato's attitude towards religion as revealed by his 'inspired lie' is 
practically identical with that of Critias, his beloved uncle, the brilliant 
leader of the Thirty Tyrants who established an inglorious blood-regime 
in Athens after the Peloponnesian war. Critias, a poet, was the first to 
glorify propaganda lies, whose invention he described in forceful verses 
eulogizing the wise and cunning man who fabricated religion, in order to 
'persuade' the people, i.e. to threaten them into submission.— 

'Then came, it seems, that wise and cunning man. 



The first inventor of the fear of gods . . . 

He framed a tale, a most alluring doctrine, 

Concealing truth by veils of lying lore. 

He told of the abode of awful gods. 

Up in revolving vaults, whence thunder roars 

And lightning's fearful flashes blind the eye ... 

He thus encircled men by bonds of fear; 

Surrounding them by gods in fair abodes. 

He charmed them by his spells, and daunted them — 

And lawlessness turned into law and order. 

In Critias' view, religion is nothing but the lordly lie of a great and 
clever statesman. Plato's views are strikingly similar, both in the 
introduction of the Myth in the Republic (where he bluntly admits that 
the Myth is a lie) and in the Laws where he says that the installation of 
rites and of gods is 'a matter for a great thinker'—. — But is this the whole 
truth about Plato's religious attitude? Was he nothing but an opportunist 
in this field, and was the very different spirit of his earlier works merely 
Socratic? 

There is of course no way of deciding this question with certainty, 
though I feel, intuitively, that there may sometimes be a more genuine 
religious feeling expressed even in the later works. But I believe that 
wherever Plato considers religious matters in their relation to politics, his 
political opportunism sweeps all other feelings aside. Thus Plato 
demands, in the Laws, the severest punishment even for honest and 
honourable people— if their opinions concerning the gods deviate from 
those held by the state. Their souls are to be treated by a Nocturnal 
Council of inquisitors—, and if they do not recant or if they repeat the 
offence, the charge of impiety means death. Has he forgotten that 
Socrates had fallen a victim to that very charge? 

That it is mainly state interest which inspires these demands, rather 
than interest in the religious faith as such, is indicated by Plato's central 
religious doctrine. The gods, he teaches in the Laws, punish severely all 



those on the wrong side in the conflict between good and evil, a conflict 
which is explained as that between collectivism and individualism—. And 
the gods, he insists, take an active interest in men, they are not merely 
spectators. It is impossible to appease them. Neither through prayers nor 
through sacrifices can they be moved to abstain from punishment—. The 
political interest behind this teaching is clear, and it is made even clearer 
by Plato's demand that the state must suppress all doubt about any part of 
this politico-religious dogma, and especially about the doctrine that the 
gods never abstain from punishment. 

Plato's opportunism and his theory of lies makes it, of course, difficult 
to interpret what he says. How far did he believe in his theory of justice? 
How far did he believe in the truth of the religious doctrines he preached? 
Was he perhaps himself an atheist, in spite of his demand for the 
punishment of other (lesser) atheists? Although we cannot hope to answer 
any of these questions definitely, it is, I believe, difficult, and 
methodologically unsound, not to give Plato at least the benefit of the 
doubt. And especially the fundamental sincerity of his belief that there is 
an urgent need to arrest all change can, I think, hardly be questioned. (I 
shall return to this in chapter 10.) On the other hand, we cannot doubt that 
Plato subjects the Socratic love of truth to the more fundamental 
principle that the rule of the master class must be strengthened. 

It is interesting, however, to note that Plato's theory of truth is slightly 
less radical than his theory of justice. Justice, we have seen, is defined, 
practically, as that which serves the interest of his totalitarian state. It 
would have been possible, of course, to define the concept of truth in the 
same utilitarian or pragmatist fashion. The Myth is true, Plato could have 
said, since anything that serves the interest of my state must be believed 
and therefore must be called 'true'; and there must be no other criterion 
of truth. In theory, an analogous step has actually been taken by the 
pragmatist successors of Hegel; in practice, it has been taken by Hegel 



himself and his racialist successors. But Plato retained enough of the 
Socratic spirit to admit candidly that he was lying. The step taken by the 
school of Hegel was one that could never have occurred, I think, to any 
companion of Socrates—. 

Ill 

So much for the role played by the Idea of Truth in Plato's best state. But 
apart from Justice and Truth, we have still to consider some further Ideas, 
such as Goodness, Beauty, and Happiness, if we wish to remove the 
objections, raised in chapter 6, against our interpretation of Plato's 
political programme as purely totalitarian, and as based on historicism. 
An approach to the discussion of these Ideas, and also to that of Wisdom, 
which has been partly discussed in the last chapter, can be made by 
considering the somewhat negative result reached by our discussion of 
the Idea of Truth. For this result raises a new problem: Why does Plato 
demand that the philosophers should be kings or the kings philosophers, 
if he defines the philosopher as a lover of truth, insisting, on the other 
hand, that the king must be 'more courageous', and use lies? 

The only reply to this question is, of course, that Plato has, in fact, 
something very different in mind when he uses the term 'philosopher'. 
And indeed, we have seen in the last chapter that his philosopher is not 
the devoted seeker for wisdom, but its proud possessor. He is a learned 
man, a sage. What Plato demands, therefore, is the rule of learnedness — 
sophocracy, if I may so call it. In order to understand this demand, we 
must try to find what kind of functions make it desirable that the ruler of 
Plato's state should be a possessor of knowledge, a 'fully qualified 
philosopher', as Plato says. The functions to be considered can be divided 



into two main groups, namely those connected with the foundation of the 
state, and those connected with its preservation. 

IV 

The first and the most important function of the philosopher king is that 
of the city's founder and lawgiver. It is clear why Plato needs a 
philosopher for this task. If the state is to be stable, then it must be a true 
copy of the divine Form or Idea of the State. But only a philosopher who 
is fully proficient in the highest of sciences, in dialectics, is able to see, 
and to copy, the heavenly Original. This point receives much emphasis in 
the part of the Republic in which Plato develops his arguments for the 
sovereignty of the philosophers—. Philosophers 'love to see the truth', 
and a real lover always loves to see the whole, not merely the parts. Thus 
he does not love, as ordinary people do, sensible things and their 
'beautiful sounds and colours and shapes', but he wants 'to see, and to 
admire the real nature of beauty' — the Form or Idea of Beauty. In this 
way, Plato gives the term philosopher a new meaning, that of a lover and 
a seer of the divine world of Forms or Ideas. As such, the philosopher is 
the man who may become the founder of a virtuous city—: 'The 
philosopher who has communion with the divine' may be 'overwhelmed 
by the urge to realize ... his heavenly vision', of the ideal city and of its 
ideal citizens. He is like a draughtsman or a painter who has 'the divine 
as his model'. Only true philosophers can 'sketch the ground-plan of the 
city', for they alone can see the original, and can copy it, by 'letting their 
eyes wander to and fro, from the model to the picture, and back from the 
picture to the model'. 

As 'a painter of constitutions'—, the philosopher must be helped by the 



light of goodness and of wisdom. A few remarks will be added 
concerning these two ideas, and their significance for the philosopher in 
his function as a founder of the city. 

Plato's Idea of the Good is the highest in the hierarchy of Forms. It is 
the sun of the divine world of Forms or Ideas, which not only sheds light 
on all the other members, but is the source of their existence—. It is also 
the source or cause of all knowledge and all truth—. The power of seeing, 
of appreciating, of knowing the Good is thus indispensable— to the 
dialectician. Since it is the sun and the source of light in the world of 
Forms, it enables the philosopher-painter to discern his objects. Its 
function is therefore of the greatest importance for the founder of the 
city. But this purely formal information is all we get. Plato's Idea of the 
Good nowhere plays a more direct ethical or political role; never do we 
hear which deeds are good, or produce good, apart from the well-known 
collectivist moral code whose precepts are introduced without recourse to 
the Idea of Good. Remarks that the Good is the aim, that it is desired by 
every man—, do not enrich our information. This empty formalism is still 
more marked in thQ Philebus, where the Good is identified— with the 
Idea of 'measure' or 'mean'. And when I read the report that Plato, in his 
famous lecture 'On the Good', disappointed an uneducated audience by 
defining the Good as 'the class of the determinate conceived as a unity', 
then my sympathy is with the audience. In thQ Republic, Plato says 
frankly— that he cannot explain what he means by 'the Good'. The only 
practical suggestion we ever get is the one mentioned at the beginning of 
chapter 4 — that good is everything that preserves, and evil everything 
that leads to corruption or degeneration. ('Good' does not, however, seem 
to be here the Idea of Good, but rather a property of things which makes 
them resemble the ideas.) Good is, accordingly, an unchanging, an 
arrested state of things; it is the state of things at rest. 

This does not seem to carry us very far beyond Plato's political 



totalitarianism; and the analysis of Plato's Idea of Wisdom leads to 
equally disappointing results. Wisdom, as we have seen, does not mean to 
Plato the Socratic insight into one's own limitations; nor does it mean 
what most of us would expect, a warm interest in, and a helpful 
understanding of, humanity and human affairs. Plato's wise men, highly 
preoccupied with the problems of a superior world, 'have no time to look 
down at the affairs of men they look upon, and hold fast to, the 
ordered and the measured'. It is the right kind of learning that makes a 
man wise: 'Philosophic natures are lovers of that kind of learning which 
reveals to them a reality that exists for ever and is not harassed by 
generation and degeneration.' It does not seem that Plato's treatment of 
wisdom can carry us beyond the ideal of arresting change. 



v 

Although the analysis of the functions of the city's founder has not 
revealed any new ethical elements in Plato's doctrine, it has shown that 
there is a definite reason why the founder of the city must be a 
philosopher. But this does not fully justify the demand for the permanent 
sovereignty of the philosopher. It only explains why the philosopher must 
be the first lawgiver, but not why he is needed as the permanent ruler, 
especially since none of the later rulers must introduce any change. For a 
full justification of the demand that the philosophers should rule, we 
must therefore proceed to analyse the tasks connected with the city's 
preservation. 

We know from Plato's sociological theories that the state, once 
established, will continue to be stable as long as there is no split in the 
unity of the master class. The bringing up of that class is, therefore, the 



great preserving function of the sovereign, and a function which must 
continue as long as the state exists. How far does it justify the demand 
that a philosopher must rule? To answer this question, we distinguish 
again, within this function, between two different activities: the 
supervision of education, and the supervision of eugenic breeding. 

Why should the director of education be a philosopher? Why is it not 
sufficient, once the state and its educational system are established, to put 
an experienced general, a soldier-king, in charge of it? The answer that 
the educational system must provide not only soldiers but philosophers, 
and therefore needs philosophers as well as soldiers as supervisors, is 
obviously unsatisfactory; for if no philosophers were needed as directors 
of education and as permanent rulers, then there would be no need for the 
educational system to produce new ones. The requirements of the 
educational system cannot as such justify the need for philosophers in 
Plato's state, or the postulate that the rulers must be philosophers. This 
would be different, of course, if Plato's education had an individualistic 
aim, apart from its aim to serve the interest of the state; for example, the 
aim to develop philosophical faculties for their own sake. But when we 
see, as we did in the preceding chapter, how frightened Plato was of 
permitting anything like independent thought—; and when we now see 
that the ultimate theoretical aim of this philosophic education was merely 
a 'Knowledge of the Idea of the Good' which is incapable of giving an 
articulate account of this Idea, then we begin to realize that this cannot be 
the explanation. And this impression is strengthened if we remember 
chapter 4, where we have seen that Plato also demanded restrictions in 
the Athenian 'musical' education. The great importance which Plato 
attaches to a philosophical education of the rulers must be explained by 
other reasons — by reasons which must be purely political. 

The main reason I can see is the need for increasing to the utmost the 
authority of the rulers. If the education of the auxiliaries functions 



properly, there will be plenty of good soldiers. Outstanding military 
faculties may therefore be insufficient to establish an unchallenged and 
unchallengeable authority. This must be based on higher claims. Plato 
bases it upon the claims of supernatural, mystical powers which he 
develops in his leaders. They are not like other men. They belong to 
another world, they communicate with the divine. Thus the philosopher 
king seems to be, partly, a copy of a tribal priest-king, an institution 
which we have mentioned in connection with Heraclitus. (The institution 
of tribal priest-kings or medicine-men or shamans seems also to have 
influenced the old Pythagorean sect, with their surprisingly naive tribal 
taboos. Apparently, most of these were dropped even before Plato. But 
the claim of the Pythagoreans to a supernatural basis of their authority 
remained.) Thus Plato's philosophical education has a definite political 
function. It puts a mark on the rulers, and it establishes a barrier between 
the rulers and the ruled. (This has remained a major function of 'higher' 
education down to our own time.) Platonic wisdom is acquired largely for 
the sake of establishing a permanent political class rule. It can be 
described as political 'medicine', giving mystic powers to its possessors, 
the medicine-men.— 

But this cannot be the full answer to our question of the functions of 
the philosopher in the state. It means, rather, that the question why a 
philosopher is needed has only been shifted, and that we would have now 
to raise the analogous question of the practical political functions of the 
shaman or the medicine-man. Plato must have had some definite aim 
when he devised his specialized philosophic training. We must look for a 
permanent function of the ruler, analogous to the temporary function of 
the lawgiver. The only hope of discovering such a function seems to be in 
the field of breeding the master race. 



VI 



The best way to find out why a philosopher is needed as a permanent 
ruler is to ask the question: What happens, according to Plato, to a state 
which is not permanently ruled by a philosopher? Plato has given a clear 
answer to this question. If the guardians of the state, even of a very 
perfect one, are unaware of Pythagorean lore and of the Platonic Number, 
then the race of the guardians, and with it the state, must degenerate. 

Racialism thus takes up a more central part in Plato's political 
programme than one would expect at first sight. Just as the Platonic racial 
or nuptial Number provides the setting for his descriptive sociology, 'the 
setting in which Plato's Philosophy of History is framed' (as Adam puts 
it), so it also provides the setting of Plato's political demand for the 
sovereignty of the philosophers. After what has been said in chapter 4 
about the graziers' or cattle breeders' background of Plato's state, we are 
perhaps not quite unprepared to find that his king is a breeder king. But it 
may still surprise some that his philosopher turns out to be a philosophic 
breeder. The need for scientific, for mathematico-dialectical and 
philosophical breeding is not the least of the arguments behind the claim 
for the sovereignty of the philosophers. 

It has been shown in chapter 4 how the problem of obtaining a pure 
breed of human watch-dogs is emphasized and elaborated in the earlier 
parts of thQ Republic. But so far we have not met with any plausible 
reason why only a genuine and fully qualified philosopher should be a 
proficient and successful political breeder. And yet, as every breeder of 
dogs or horses or birds knows, rational breeding is impossible without a 
pattern, an aim to guide him in his efforts, an ideal which he may try to 
approach by the methods of mating and of selecting. Without such a 
standard, he could never decide which offspring is 'good enough'; he 



could never speak of the difference between 'good offspring' and 'bad 
offspring'. But this standard corresponds exactly to a Platonic Idea of the 
race which he intends to breed. 

Just as only the true philosopher, the dialectician, can see, according to 
Plato, the divine original of the city, so it is only the dialectician who can 
see that other divine original — the Form or Idea of Man. Only he is 
capable of copying this model, of calling it down from Heaven to Earth—, 
and of realizing it here. It is a kingly Idea, this Idea of Man. It does not, 
as some have thought, represent what is common to all men; it is not the 
universal concept 'man'. It is, rather, the godlike original of man, an 
unchanging superman; it is a super-Greek, and a super-master. The 
philosopher must try to realize on earth what Plato describes as the race 
of 'the most constant, the most virile, and, within the limits of 
possibilities, the most beautifully formed men . . . : nobly born, and of 
awe-inspiring character'—. It is to be a race of men and women who are 
'godlike if not divine ... sculptured in perfect beauty '^^^ — a lordly race, 
destined by nature to kingship and mastery. 

We see that the two fundamental functions of the philosopher king are 
analogous: he has to copy the divine original of the city, and he has to 
copy the divine original of man. He is the only one who is able, and who 
has the urge, 'to realize, in the individual as well as in the city, his 
heavenly vision'—. 

Now we can understand why Plato drops his first hint that a more than 
ordinary excellence is needed in his rulers in the same place where he 
first claims that the principles of animal breeding must be applied to the 
race of men. We are, he says, most careful in breeding animals. 'If you 
did not breed them in this way, don't you think that the race of your birds 
or your dogs would quickly degenerate?' When inferring from this that 
man must be bred in the same careful way, 'Socrates' exclaims: 'Good 
heavens! ... What surpassing excellence we shall have to demand from 



our rulers, if the same principles apply to the race of men!'— This 
exclamation is significant; it is one of the first hints that the rulers may 
constitute a class of 'surpassing excellence' with status and training of 
their own; and it thus prepares us for the demand that they ought to be 
philosophers. But the passage is even more significant in so far as it 
directly leads to Plato's demand that it must be the duty of the rulers, as 
doctors of the race of men, to administer lies and deception. Lies are 
necessary, Plato asserts, 'if your herd is to reach highest perfection'; for 
this needs 'arrangements that must be kept secret from all but the rulers, 
if we wish to keep the herd of guardians really free from disunion'. 
Indeed, the appeal (quoted above) to the rulers for more courage in 
administering lies as a medicine is made in this connection; it prepares 
the reader for the next demand, considered by Plato as particularly 
important. He decrees— that the rulers should fabricate, for the purpose 
of mating the young auxiliaries, 'an ingenious system of balloting, so that 
the persons who have been disappointed . . . may blame their bad luck, and 
not the rulers', who are, secretly, to engineer the ballot. And immediately 
after this despicable advice for dodging the admission of responsibility 
(by putting it into the mouth of Socrates, Plato libels his great teacher), 
'Socrates' makes a suggestion— which is soon taken up and elaborated by 
Glaucon and which we may therefore call the Glauconic Edict. I mean the 
brutal law— which imposes on everybody of either sex the duty of 
submitting, for the duration of a war, to the wishes of the brave: 'As long 
as the war lasts, ... nobody may say "No" to him. Accordingly, if a 
soldier wishes to make love to anybody, whether male or female, this law 
will make him more eager to carry off the price of valour.' The state, it is 
carefully pointed out, will thereby obtain two distinct benefits — more 
heroes, owing to the incitement, and again more heroes, owing to the 
increased numbers of children from heroes. (The latter benefit, as the 
most important one from the point of view of a long-term racial policy, is 



put into the mouth of 'Socrates'.) 



VII 

No special philosophical training is required for this kind of breeding. 
Philosophical breeding, however, plays its main part in counteracting the 
dangers of degeneration. In order to fight these dangers, a fully qualified 
philosopher is needed, i.e. one who is trained in pure mathematics 
(including solid geometry), pure astronomy, pure harmonics, and, the 
crowning achievement of all, in dialectics. Only he who knows the secrets 
of mathematical eugenics, of the Platonic Number, can bring back to 
man, and preserve for him, the happiness enjoyed before the Fall—. All 
this should be borne in mind when, after the announcement of the 
Glauconic Edict (and after an interlude dealing with the natural 
distinction between Greeks and Barbarians, corresponding, according to 
Plato, to that between masters and slaves), the doctrine is enunciated 
which Plato carefully marks as his central and most sensational political 
demand — the sovereignty of the philosopher king. This demand alone, he 
teaches, can put an end to the evils of social life; to the evil rampant in 
states, i.Q. political instability, as well as to its more hidden cause, the 
evil rampant in the members of the race of men, i.e. racial degeneration. 
This is the passage.— 

'Well,' says Socrates, 'I am now about to dive into that topic which I 
compared before to the greatest wave of all. Yet I must speak, even 
though I foresee that this will bring upon me a deluge of laughter. Indeed, 
I can see it now, this very wave, breaking over my head into an uproar of 
laughter and defamation ...' — 'Out with the story!' says Glaucon. 
'Unless,' says Socrates, 'unless, in their cities, philosophers are vested 



with the might of kings, or those now called kings and oligarchs become 
genuine and fully qualified philosophers; and unless these two, political 
might and philosophy, are fused (while the many who nowadays follow 
their natural inclination for only one of these two are suppressed by 
force), unless this happens, my dear Glaucon, there can be no rest; and 
the evil will not cease to be rampant in the cities — nor, I believe, in the 
race of men.' (To which Kant wisely replied: 'That kings should become 
philosophers, or philosophers kings, is not likely to happen; nor would it 
be desirable, since the possession of power invariably debases the free 
judgement of reason. It is, however, indispensable that a king — or a 
kingly, i.e. self-ruling, people — should not suppress philosophers but 
leave them the right of public utterance.'—) 

This important Platonic passage has been quite appropriately described 
as the key to the whole work. Its last words, 'nor, I believe, in the race of 
men', are, I think, an afterthought of comparatively minor importance in 
this place. It is, however, necessary to comment upon them, since the 
habit of idealizing Plato has led to the interpretation— that Plato speaks 
here about 'humanity', extending his promise of salvation from the scope 
of the cities to that of 'mankind as a whole'. It must be said, in this 
connection, that the ethical category of 'humanity' as something that 
transcends the distinction of nations, races, and classes, is entirely 
foreign to Plato. In fact, we have sufficient evidence of Plato's hostility 
towards the equalitarian creed, a hostility which is seen in his attitude 
towards Antisthenes— , an old disciple and friend of Socrates. Antisthenes 
also belonged to the school of Gorgias, like Alcidamas and Lycophron, 
whose equalitarian theories he seems to have extended into the doctrine 
of the brotherhood of all men, and of the universal empire of men—. This 
creed is attacked in the Republic by correlating the natural inequality of 
Greeks and Barbarians to that of masters and slaves; and it so happens 
that this attack is launched— immediately before the key passage we are 



here considering. For these and other reasons—, it seems safe to assume 
that Plato, when speaking of the evil rampant in the race of men, alluded 
to a theory with which his readers would be sufficiently acquainted at this 
place, namely, to his theory that the welfare of the state depends, 
ultimately, upon the 'nature' of the individual members of the ruling 
class; and that their nature, and the nature of their race, or offspring, is 
threatened, in turn, by the evils of an individualistic education, and, more 
important still, by racial degeneration. Plato's remark, with its clear 
allusion to the opposition between divine rest and the evil of change and 
decay, fore-shadows the story of the Number and the Fall of Man— . 

It is very appropriate that Plato should allude to his racialism in this 
key passage in which he enunciates his most important political demand. 
For without the 'genuine and fully qualified philosopher', trained in all 
those sciences which are prerequisite to eugenics, the state is lost. In his 
story of the Number and the Fall of Man, Plato tells us that one of the 
first and fatal sins of omission committed by the degenerate guardians 
will be their loss of interest in eugenics, in watching and testing the 
purity of the race: 'Hence rulers will be ordained who are altogether unfit 
for their task as guardians; namely, to watch, and to test, the metals in the 
races (which are Hesiod's races as well as yours), gold and silver and 
bronze and iron.'— 

It is ignorance of the mysterious nuptial Number which leads to all 
that. But the Number was undoubtedly Plato's own invention. (It 
presupposes pure harmonics, which in turn presupposes solid geometry, a 
new science at the time when the Republic was written.) Thus we see that 
nobody but Plato himself knew the secret of, and held the key to, true 
guardianship. But this can mean only one thing. The philosopher king is 
Plato himself, and the Republic is Plato's own claim for kingly power — 
to the power which he thought his due, uniting in himself, as he did, both 
the claims of the philosopher and of the descendant and legitimate heir of 



Codrus the martyr, the last of Athens' kings, who, according to Plato, had 
sacrificed himself 'in order to preserve the kingdom for his children'. 



VIII 



Once this conclusion has been reached, many things which otherwise 
would remain unrelated become connected and clear. It can hardly be 
doubted, for instance, that Plato's work, full of allusions as it is to 
contemporary problems and characters, was meant by its author not so 
much as a theoretical treatise, but as a topical political manifesto. 'We do 
Plato the gravest of wrongs', says A. E. Taylor, 'if we forget that the 
Republic is no mere collection of theoretical discussions about 
government . . . but a serious project of practical reform put forward by an 
Athenian set on fire, like Shelley, with a "passion for reforming the 
world".'— This is undoubtedly true, and we could have concluded from 
this consideration alone that, in describing his philosopher kings, Plato 
must have thought of some of the contemporary philosophers. But in the 
days when thQ Republic was written, there were in Athens only three 
outstanding men who might have claimed to be philosophers: 
Antisthenes, Isocrates, and Plato himself. If we approach thQ Republic 
with this in mind, we find at once that, in the discussion of the 
characteristics of the philosopher kings, there is a lengthy passage which 
is clearly marked out by Plato as containing personal allusions. It 
begins— with an unmistakable allusion to a popular character, namely 
Alcibiades, and ends by openly mentioning a name (that of Theages), and 
with a reference of 'Socrates' to himself—. Its upshot is that only very 
few can be described as true philosophers, eligible for the post of 
philosopher king. The nobly born Alcibiades, who was of the right type. 



deserted philosophy, in spite of Socrates' attempts to save him. Deserted 
and defenceless, philosophy was claimed by unworthy suitors. 
Ultimately, 'there is left only a handful of men who are worthy of being 
associated with philosophy' . From the point of view we have reached, we 
would have to expect that the 'unworthy suitors' are Antisthenes and 
Isocrates and their school (and that they are the same people whom Plato 
demands to have 'suppressed by force', as he says in the key passage of 
the philosopher king). And, indeed, there is some independent evidence 
corroborating this expectation—. Similarly, we should expect that the 
'handful of men who are worthy' includes Plato and, perhaps, some of his 
friends (possibly Dio); and, indeed, a continuation of this passage leaves 
little doubt that Plato speaks here of himself: 'He who belongs to this 
small band ... can see the madness of the many, and the general 
corruption of all public affairs. The philosopher ... is like a man in a cage 
of wild beasts. He will not share the injustice of the many, but his power 
does not suffice for continuing his fight alone, surrounded as he is by a 
world of savages. He would be killed before he could do any good, to his 
city or to his friends . . . Having duly considered all these points, he will 
hold his peace, and confine his efforts to his own work ...'—. The strong 
resentment expressed in these sour and most un-Socratic— words marks 
them clearly as Plato's own. For a full appreciation, however, of this 
personal confession, it must be compared with the following: 'It is not in 
accordance with nature that the skilled navigator should beg the unskilled 
sailors to accept his command; nor that the wise man should wait at the 
doors of the rich . . . But the true and natural procedure is that the sick, 
whether rich or poor, should hasten to the doctor's door. Likewise should 
those who need to be ruled besiege the door of him who can rule; and 
never should a ruler beg them to accept his rule, if he is any good at all.' 
Who can miss the sound of an immense personal pride in this passage? 
Here am I, says Plato, your natural ruler, the philosopher king who knows 



how to rule. If you want me, you must come to me, and if you insist, I 
may become your ruler. But I shall not come begging to you. 

Did he believe that they would come? Like many great works of 
literature, the Republic shows traces that its author experienced 
exhilarating and extravagant hopes of success—, alternating with periods 
of despair. Sometimes, at least, Plato hoped that they would come; that 
the success of his work, the fame of his wisdom, would bring them along. 
Then again, he felt that they would only be incited to furious attacks; that 
all he would bring upon himself was 'an uproar of laughter and 
defamation' — ^perhaps even death. 

Was he ambitious? He was reaching for the stars — for god-likeness. I 
sometimes wonder whether part of the enthusiasm for Plato is not due to 
the fact that he gave expression to many secret dreams—. Even where he 
argues against ambition, we cannot but feel that he is inspired by it. The 
philosopher, he assures us—, is not ambitious; although 'destined to rule, 
he is the least eager for it'. But the reason given is — that his status is too 
high. He who has had communion with the divine may descend from his 
heights to the mortals below, sacrificing himself for the sake of the 
interest of the state. He is not eager; but as a natural ruler and saviour, he 
is ready to come. The poor mortals need him. Without him the state must 
perish, for he alone knows the secret of how to preserve it — the secret of 
arresting degeneration. 

I think we must face the fact that behind the sovereignty of the 
philosopher king stands the quest for power. The beautiful portrait of the 
sovereign is a self-portrait. When we have recovered from the shock of 
this finding, we may look anew at the awe-inspiring portrait; and if we 
can fortify ourselves with a small dose of Socrates' irony then we may 
cease to find it so terrifying. We may begin to discern its human, indeed, 
its only too human features. We may even begin to feel a little sorry for 
Plato, who had to be satisfied with establishing the first professorship. 



instead of the first kingship, of philosophy; who could never realize his 
dream, the kingly Idea which he had formed after his own image. 
Fortified by our dose of irony, we may even find, in Plato's story, a 
melancholy resemblance to that innocent and unconscious little satire on 
Platonism, the story of the Ugly Dachshund, of Tono, the Great Dane, 
who forms his kingly Idea of 'Great Dog' after his own image (but who 
happily finds in the end that he is Great Dog himself)—. 

What a monument of human smallness is this idea of the philosopher 
king. What a contrast between it and the simplicity and humaneness of 
Socrates, who warned the statesman against the danger of being dazzled 
by his own power, excellence, and wisdom, and who tried to teach him 
what matters most — that we are all frail human beings. What a decline 
from this world of irony and reason and truthfulness down to Plato's 
kingdom of the sage whose magical powers raise him high above 
ordinary men; although not quite high enough to forgo the use of lies, or 
to neglect the sorry trade of every shaman — the selling of spells, of 
breeding spells, in exchange for power over his fellow-men. 



9 

Aestheticism, Perfectionism, 
Utopianism 



'Everything has got to be smashed to start with. Our whole damned civilization has got to 
go, before we can bring any decency into the world.' 

'Mourlan', in Du Gard'S Les Thibaults. 

Inherent in Plato's programme there is a certain approach towards 
politics which, I believe, is most dangerous. Its analysis is of great 
practical importance from the point of view of rational social 
engineering. The Platonic approach I have in mind can be described as 
that of Utopian engineering, as opposed to another kind of social 
engineering which I consider as the only rational one, and which may be 
described by the name of piecemeal engineering. The Utopian approach is 
the more dangerous as it may seem to be the obvious alternative to an 
out-and-out historicism — ^to a radically historicist approach which 
implies that we cannot alter the course of history; at the same time, it 
appears to be a necessary complement to a less radical historicism, like 
that of Plato, which permits human interference. 

The Utopian approach may be described as follows. Any rational action 
must have a certain aim. It is rational in the same degree as it pursues its 
aim consciously and consistently, and as it determines its means 
according to this end. To choose the end is therefore the first thing we 
have to do if we wish to act rationally; and we must be careful to 



determine our real or ultimate ends, from which we must distinguish 
clearly those intermediate or partial ends which actually are only means, 
or steps on the way, to the ultimate end. If we neglect this distinction, 
then we must also neglect to ask whether these partial ends are likely to 
promote the ultimate end, and accordingly, we must fail to act rationally. 
These principles, if applied to the realm of political activity, demand that 
we must determine our ultimate political aim, or the Ideal State, before 
taking any practical action. Only when this ultimate aim is determined, in 
rough outline at least, only when we are in possession of something like a 
blueprint of the society at which we aim, only then can we begin to 
consider the best ways and means for its realization, and to draw up a 
plan for practical action. These are the necessary preliminaries of any 
practical political move that can be called rational, and especially of 
social engineering. 

This, in brief, is the methodological approach which I call Utopian 
engineering-. It is convincing and attractive. In fact, it is just the kind of 
methodological approach to attract all those who are either unaffected by 
historicist prejudices or reacting against them. This makes it only the 
more dangerous, and its criticism the more imperative. 

Before proceeding to criticize Utopian engineering in detail, I wish to 
outline another approach to social engineering, namely, that of piecemeal 
engineering. It is an approach which I think to be methodologically 
sound. The politician who adopts this method may or may not have a 
blueprint of society before his mind, he may or may not hope that 
mankind will one day realize an ideal state, and achieve happiness and 
perfection on earth. But he will be aware that perfection, if at all 
attainable, is far distant, and that every generation of men, and therefore 
also the living, have a claim; perhaps not so much a claim to be made 
happy, for there are no institutional means of making a man happy, but a 
claim not to be made unhappy, where it can be avoided. They have a 



claim to be given all possible help, if they suffer. The piecemeal engineer 
will, accordingly, adopt the method of searching for, and fighting against, 
the greatest and most urgent evils of society, rather than searching for, 
and fighting for, its greatest ultimate good-. This difference is far from 
being merely verbal. In fact, it is most important. It is the difference 
between a reasonable method of improving the lot of man, and a method 
which, if really tried, may easily lead to an intolerable increase in human 
suffering. It is the difference between a method which can be applied at 
any moment, and a method whose advocacy may easily become a means 
of continually postponing action until a later date, when conditions are 
more favourable. And it is also the difference between the only method of 
improving matters which has so far been really successful, at any time, 
and in any place (Russia included, as will be seen), and a method which, 
wherever it has been tried, has led only to the use of violence in place of 
reason, and if not to its own abandonment, at any rate to that of its 
original blueprint. 

In favour of his method, the piecemeal engineer can claim that a 
systematic fight against suffering and injustice and war is more likely to 
be supported by the approval and agreement of a great number of people 
than the fight for the establishment of some ideal. The existence of social 
evils, that is to say, of social conditions under which many men are 
suffering, can be comparatively well established. Those who suffer can 
judge for themselves, and the others can hardly deny that they would not 
like to change places. It is infinitely more difficult to reason about an 
ideal society. Social life is so complicated that few men, or none at all, 
could judge a blueprint for social engineering on the grand scale; whether 
it be practicable; whether it would result in a real improvement; what 
kind of suffering it may involve; and what may be the means for its 
realization. As opposed to this, blueprints for piecemeal engineering are 
comparatively simple. They are blueprints for single institutions, for 



health and unemployed insurance, for instance, or arbitration courts, or 
anti-depression budgeting-, or educational reform. If they go wrong, the 
damage is not very great, and a re-adjustment not very difficult. They are 
less risky, and for this very reason less controversial. But if it is easier to 
reach a reasonable agreement about existing evils and the means of 
combating them than it is about an ideal good and the means of its 
realization, then there is also more hope that by using the piecemeal 
method we may get over the very greatest practical difficulty of all 
reasonable political reform, namely, the use of reason, instead of passion 
and violence, in executing the programme. There will be a possibility of 
reaching a reasonable compromise and therefore of achieving the 
improvement by democratic methods. ('Compromise' is an ugly word, 
but it is important for us to learn its proper use. Institutions are inevitably 
the result of a compromise with circumstances, interests, etc., though as 
persons we should resist influences of this kind.) 

As opposed to that, the Utopian attempt to realize an ideal state, using 
a blueprint of society as a whole, is one which demands a strong 
centralized rule of a few, and which therefore is likely to lead to a 
dictatorship-. This I consider a criticism of the Utopian approach; for I 
have tried to show, in the chapter on the Principle of Leadership, that an 
authoritarian rule is a most objectionable form of government. Some 
points not touched upon in that chapter furnish us with even more direct 
arguments against the Utopian approach. One of the difficulties faced by 
a benevolent dictator is to find whether the effects of his measures agree 
with his good intentions (as de Tocqueville saw clearly more than a 
hundred years ago-). The difficulty arises out of the fact that 
authoritarianism must discourage criticism; accordingly, the benevolent 
dictator will not easily hear of complaints concerning the measures he 
has taken. But without some such check, he can hardly find out whether 
his measures achieve the desired benevolent aim. The situation must 



become even worse for the Utopian engineer. The reconstruction of 
society is a big undertaking which must cause considerable 
inconvenience to many, and for a considerable span of time. Accordingly, 
the Utopian engineer will have to be deaf to many complaints; in fact, it 
will be part of his business to suppress unreasonable objections. (He will 
say, like Lenin, 'You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.') 
But with it, he must invariably suppress reasonable criticism also. 
Another difficulty of Utopian engineering is related to the problem of the 
dictator's successor. In chapter 7 I have mentioned certain aspects of this 
problem. Utopian engineering raises a difficulty analogous to but even 
more serious than the one which faces the benevolent tyrant who tries to 
find an equally benevolent successor (see note 25 to chapter 7). The very 
sweep of such a Utopian undertaking makes it improbable that it will 
realize its ends during the lifetime of one social engineer, or group of 
engineers. And if the successors do not pursue the same ideal, then all the 
sufferings of the people for the sake of the ideal may have been in vain. 

A generalization of this argument leads to a further criticism of the 
Utopian approach. This approach, it is clear, can be of practical value 
only if we assume that the original blueprint, perhaps with certain 
adjustments, remains the basis of the work until it is completed. But that 
will take some time. It will be a time of revolutions, both political and 
spiritual, and of new experiments and experience in the political field. It 
is therefore to be expected that ideas and ideals will change. What had 
appeared the ideal state to the people who made the original blueprint, 
may not appear so to their successors. If that is granted, then the whole 
approach breaks down. The method of first establishing an ultimate 
political aim and then beginning to move towards it is futile if we admit 
that the aim may be considerably changed during the process of its 
realization. It may at any moment turn out that the steps so far taken 
actually lead away from the realization of the new aim. And if we change 



our direction according to the new aim, then we expose ourselves to the 
same risk again. In spite of all the sacrifices made, we may never get 
anywhere at all. Those who prefer one step towards a distant ideal to the 
realization of a piecemeal compromise should always remember that if 
the ideal is very distant, it may even become difficult to say whether the 
step taken was towards or away from it. This is especially so if the course 
should proceed by zigzag steps, or, in Hegel's jargon, 'dialectically', or if 
it is not clearly planned at all. (This bears upon the old and somewhat 
childish question of how far the end can justify the means. Apart from 
claiming that no end could ever justify all means, I think that a fairly 
concrete and realizable end may justify temporary measures which a 
more distant ideal never could-.) 

We see now that the Utopian approach can be saved only by the 
Platonic belief in one absolute and unchanging ideal, together with two 
further assumptions, namely (a) that there are rational methods to 
determine once and for all what this ideal is, and (b) what the best means 
of its realization are. Only such far-reaching assumptions could prevent 
us from declaring the Utopian methodology to be utterly futile. But even 
Plato himself and the most ardent Platonists would admit that (a) is 
certainly not true; that there is no rational method for determining the 
ultimate aim, but, if anything, only some kind of intuition. Any 
difference of opinion between Utopian engineers must therefore lead, in 
the absence of rational methods, to the use of power instead of reason, i.e. 
to violence. If any progress in any definite direction is made at all, then it 
is made in spite of the method adopted, not because of it. The success 
may be due, for instance, to the excellence of the leaders; but we must 
never forget that excellent leaders cannot be produced by rational 
methods, but only by luck. 

It is important to understand this criticism properly; I do not criticize 
the ideal by claiming that an ideal can never be realized, that it must 



always remain a Utopia. This would not be a valid criticism, for many 
things have been realized which have once been dogmatically declared to 
be unrealizable, for instance, the establishment of institutions for 
securing civil peace, i.e. for the prevention of crime within the state; and 
I think that, for instance, the establishment of corresponding institutions 
for the prevention of international crime, i.e. armed aggression or 
blackmail, though often branded as Utopian, is not even a very difficult 
problem-. What I criticize under the name Utopian engineering 
recommends the reconstruction of society as a whole, i.e. very sweeping 
changes whose practical consequences are hard to calculate, owing to our 
limited experiences. It claims to plan rationally for the whole of society, 
although we do not possess anything like the factual knowledge which 
would be necessary to make good such an ambitious claim. We cannot 
possess such knowledge since we have insufficient practical experience 
in this kind of planning, and knowledge of facts must be based upon 
experience. At present, the sociological knowledge necessary for large- 
scale engineering is simply non-existent. 

In view of this criticism, the Utopian engineer is likely to grant the 
need for practical experience, and for a social technology based upon 
practical experiences. But he will argue that we shall never know more 
about these matters if we recoil from making social experiments which 
alone can furnish us with the practical experience needed. And he might 
add that Utopian engineering is nothing but the application of the 
experimental method to society. Experiments cannot be carried out 
without involving sweeping changes. They must be on a large scale, 
owing to the peculiar character of modern society with its great masses of 
people. An experiment in socialism, for instance, if confined to a factory, 
or to a village, or even to a district, would never give us the kind of 
realistic information which we need so urgently. 

Such arguments in favour of Utopian engineering exhibit a prejudice 



which is as widely held as it is untenable, namely, the prejudice that 
social experiments must be on a 'large scale', that they must involve the 
whole of society if they are to be carried out under realistic conditions. 
But piecemeal social experiments can be carried out under realistic 
conditions, in the midst of society, in spite of being on a 'small scale', 
that is to say, without revolutionizing the whole of society. In fact, we are 
making such experiments all the time. The introduction of a new kind of 
life-insurance, of a new kind of taxation, of a new penal reform, are all 
social experiments which have their repercussions through the whole of 
society without remodelling society as a whole. Even a man who opens a 
new shop, or who reserves a ticket for the theatre, is carrying out a kind 
of social experiment on a small scale; and all our knowledge of social 
conditions is based on experience gained by making experiments of this 
kind. The Utopian engineer we are opposing is right when he stresses that 
an experiment in socialism would be of little value if carried out under 
laboratory conditions, for instance, in an isolated village, since what we 
want to know is how things work out in society under normal social 
conditions. But this very example shows where the prejudice of the 
Utopian engineer lies. He is convinced that we must recast the whole 
structure of society, when we experiment with it; and he can therefore 
conceive a more modest experiment only as one that recasts the whole 
structure of a small society. But the kind of experiment from which we 
can learn most is the alteration of one social institution at a time. For 
only in this way can we learn how to fit institutions into the framework of 
other institutions, and how to adjust them so that they work according to 
our intentions. And only in this way can we make mistakes, and learn 
from our mistakes, without risking repercussions of a gravity that must 
endanger the will to future reforms. Furthermore, the Utopian method 
must lead to a dangerous dogmatic attachment to a blueprint for which 
countless sacrifices have been made. Powerful interests must become 



linked up with the success of the experiment. All this does not contribute 
to the rationality, or to the scientific value, of the experiment. But the 
piecemeal method permits repeated experiments and continuous 
readjustments. In fact, it might lead to the happy situation where 
politicians begin to look out for their own mistakes instead of trying to 
explain them away and to prove that they have always been right. This — 
and not Utopian planning or historical prophecy — would mean the 
introduction of scientific method into politics, since the whole secret of 
scientific method is a readiness to learn from mistakes-. 

These views can be corroborated, I believe, by comparing social and, 
for instance, mechanical engineering. The Utopian engineer will of 
course claim that mechanical engineers sometimes plan even very 
complicated machinery as a whole, and that their blueprints may cover, 
and plan in advance, not only a certain kind of machinery, but even the 
whole factory which produces this machinery. My reply would be that the 
mechanical engineer can do all this because he has sufficient experience 
at his disposal, i.e. theories developed by trial and error. But this means 
that he can plan because he has made all kinds of mistakes already; or in 
other words, because he relies on experience which he has gained by 
applying piecemeal methods. His new machinery is the result of a great 
many small improvements. He usually has a model first, and only after a 
great number of piecemeal adjustments to its various parts does he 
proceed to a stage where he could draw up his final plans for the 
production. Similarly, his plan for the production of his machine 
incorporates a great number of experiences, namely, of piecemeal 
improvements made in older factories. The wholesale or large-scale 
method works only where the piecemeal method has furnished us first 
with a great number of detailed experiences, and even then only within 
the realm of these experiences. Few manufacturers would be prepared to 
proceed to the production of a new engine on the basis of a blueprint 



alone, even if it were drawn up by the greatest expert, without first 
making a model and 'developing' it by little adjustments as far as 
possible. 

It is perhaps useful to contrast this criticism of Platonic Idealism in 
politics with Marx's criticism of what he calls 'Utopianism'. What is 
common to Marx's criticism and mine is that both demand more realism. 
We both believe that Utopian plans will never be realized in the way they 
were conceived, because hardly any social action ever produces precisely 
the result expected. (This does not, in my opinion, invalidate the 
piecemeal approach, because here we may learn — or rather, we ought to 
learn — and change our views, while we act.) But there are many 
differences. In arguing against Utopianism, Marx condemns in fact all 
social engineering — a point which is rarely understood. He denounces the 
faith in a rational planning of social institutions as altogether unrealistic, 
since society must grow according to the laws of history and not 
according to our rational plans. All we can do, he asserts, is to lessen the 
birthpangs of the historical processes. In other words, he adopts a 
radically historicist attitude, opposed to all social engineering. But there 
is one element within Utopianism which is particularly characteristic of 
Plato's approach and which Marx does not oppose, although it is perhaps 
the most important of those elements which I have attacked as 
unrealistic. It is the sweep of Utopianism, its attempt to deal with society 
as a whole, leaving no stone unturned. It is the conviction that one has to 
go to the very root of the social evil, that nothing short of a complete 
eradication of the offending social system will do if we wish to 'bring 
any decency into the world' (as Du Gard says). It is, in short, its 
uncompromising radicalism. (The reader will notice that I am using this 
term in its original and literal sense — not in the now customary sense of a 
'liberal progressivism', but in order to characterize an attitude of 'going 
to the root of the matter'.) Both Plato and Marx are dreaming of the 



apocalyptic revolution which will radically transfigure the whole social 
world. 

This sweep, this extreme radicalism of the Platonic approach (and of 
the Marxian as well) is, I believe, connected with its aestheticism, i.e. 
with the desire to build a world which is not only a little better and more 
rational than ours, but which is free from all its ugliness: not a crazy 
quilt, an old garment badly patched, but an entirely new gown, a really 
beautiful new world-. This aestheticism is a very understandable attitude; 
in fact, I believe most of us suffer a little from such dreams of perfection. 
(Some reasons why we do so will, I hope, emerge from the next chapter.) 
But this aesthetic enthusiasm becomes valuable only if it is bridled by 
reason, by a feeling of responsibility, and by a humanitarian urge to help. 
Otherwise it is a dangerous enthusiasm, liable to develop into a form of 
neurosis or hysteria. 

Nowhere do we find this aestheticism more strongly expressed than in 
Plato. Plato was an artist; and like many of the best artists, he tried to 
visualize a model, the 'divine original' of his work, and to 'copy' it 
faithfully. A good number of the quotations given in the last chapter 
illustrate this point. What Plato describes as dialectics is, in the main, the 
intellectual intuition of the world of pure beauty. His trained philosophers 
are men who 'have seen the truth of what is beautiful and just, and 
good'—, and can bring it down from heaven to earth. Politics, to Plato, is 
the Royal Art. It is an art — not in a metaphorical sense in which we may 
speak about the art of handling men, or the art of getting things done, but 
in a more literal sense of the word. It is an art of composition, like music, 
painting, or architecture. The Platonic politician composes cities, for 
beauty's sake. 

But here I must protest. I do not believe that human lives may be made 
the means for satisfying an artist's desire for self-expression. We must 
demand, rather, that every man should be given, if he wishes, the right to 



model his life himself, as far as this does not interfere too much with 
others. Much as I may sympathize with the aesthetic impulse, I suggest 
that the artist might seek expression in another material. Politics, I 
demand, must uphold equalitarian and individualistic principles; dreams 
of beauty have to submit to the necessity of helping men in distress, and 
men who suffer injustice; and to the necessity of constructing institutions 
to serve such purposes—. 

It is interesting to observe the close relationship between Plato's utter 
radicalism, the demand for sweeping measures, and his aestheticism. The 
following passages are most characteristic. Plato, speaking about 'the 
philosopher who has communion with the divine', mentions first that he 
will be 'overwhelmed by the urge ... to realize his heavenly vision in 
individuals as well as in the city', — a city which 'will never know 
happiness unless its draughtsmen are artists who have the divine as their 
model'. Asked about the details of their draughtsmanship, Plato's 
'Socrates' gives the following striking reply: 'They will take as their 
canvas a city and the characters of men, and they will, first of all, make 
their canvas clean — ^by no means an easy matter. But this is just the 
point, you know, where they will differ from all others. They will not 
start work on a city nor on an individual (nor will they draw up laws) 
unless they are given a clean canvas, or have cleaned it themselves.'— 

The kind of thing Plato has in mind when he speaks of canvas-cleaning 
is explained a little later. 'How can that be done?' asks Glaucon. 'All 
citizens above the age of ten', Socrates answers, 'must be expelled from 
the city and deported somewhere into the country; and the children who 
are now free from the influence of the manners and habits of their parents 
must be taken over. They must be educated in the ways [of true 
philosophy], and according to the laws, which we have described.' (The 
philosophers are not, of course, among the citizens to be expelled: they 
remain as educators, and so do, presumably, those non-citizens who must 



keep them going.) In the same spirit, Plato says in the Statesman of the 
royal rulers who rule in accordance with the Royal Science of 
Statesmanship: 'Whether they happen to rule by law or without law, over 
willing or unwilling subjects; ... and whether they purge the state for its 
good, by killing or by deporting [or 'banishing'] some of its citizens . . . — 
so long as they proceed according to science and justice, and preserve . . . 
the state and make it better than it was, this form of government must be 
declared the only one that is right.' 

This is the way in which the artist-politician must proceed. This is 
what canvas-cleaning means. He must eradicate the existing institutions 
and traditions. He must purify, purge, expel, banish, and kill. ('Liquidate' 
is the terrible modern term for it.) Plato's statement is indeed a true 
description of the uncompromising attitude of all forms of out-and-out 
radicalism — of the aestheticist's refusal to compromise. The view that 
society should be beautiful like a work of art leads only too easily to 
violent measures. But all this radicalism and violence is both unrealistic 
and futile. (This has been shown by the example of Russia's 
development. After the economic breakdown to which the canvas- 
cleaning of the so-called 'war communism' had led, Lenin introduced his 
'New Economic Policy', in fact a kind of piecemeal engineering, though 
without the conscious formulation of its principles or of a technology. He 
started by restoring most of the features of the picture which had been 
eradicated with so much human suffering. Money, markets, 
differentiation of income, and private property — for a time even private 
enterprise in production — ^were reintroduced, and only after this basis was 
re-established began a new period of reform—.) 

In order to criticize the foundations of Plato's aesthetic radicalism, we 
may distinguish two different points. 

The first is this. What some people have in mind who speak of our 
'social system', and of the need to replace it by another 'system', is very 



similar to a picture painted on a canvas which has to be wiped clean 
before one can paint a new one. But there are some great differences. One 
of them is that the painter and those who co-operate with him as well as 
the institutions which make their life possible, his dreams and plans for a 
better world, and his standards of decency and morality, are all part of the 
social system, i.e. of the picture to be wiped out. If they were really to 
clean the canvas, they would have to destroy themselves, and their 
Utopian plans. (And what follows then would probably not be a beautiful 
copy of a Platonic ideal but chaos.) The political artist clamours, like 
Archimedes, for a place outside the social world on which he can take his 
stand, in order to lever it off its hinges. But such a place does not exist; 
and the social world must continue to function during any reconstruction. 
This is the simple reason why we must reform its institutions little by 
little, until we have more experience in social engineering. 

This leads us to the more important second point, to the irrationalism 
which is inherent in radicalism. In all matters, we can only learn by trial 
and error, by making mistakes and improvements; we can never rely on 
inspiration, although inspirations may be most valuable as long as they 
can be checked by experience. Accordingly, it is not reasonable to 
assume that a complete reconstruction of our social world would lead at 
once to a workable system. Rather we should expect that, owing to lack of 
experience, many mistakes would be made which could be eliminated 
only by a long and laborious process of small adjustments; in other 
words, by that rational method of piecemeal engineering whose 
application we advocate. But those who dislike this method as 
insufficiently radical would have again to wipe out their freshly 
constructed society, in order to start anew with a clean canvas; and since 
the new start, for the same reasons, would not lead to perfection either, 
they would have to repeat this process without ever getting anywhere. 
Those who admit this and are prepared to adopt our more modest method 



of piecemeal improvements, but only after the first radical canvas- 
cleaning, can hardly escape the criticism that their first sweeping and 
violent measures were quite unnecessary. 

Aestheticism and radicalism must lead us to jettison reason, and to 
replace it by a desperate hope for political miracles. This irrational 
attitude which springs from an intoxication with dreams of a beautiful 
world is what I call Romanticism—. It may seek its heavenly city in the 
past or in the future; it may preach 'back to nature' or 'forward to a world 
of love and beauty' ; but its appeal is always to our emotions rather than 
to reason. Even with the best intentions of making heaven on earth it only 
succeeds in making it a hell — that hell which man alone prepares for his 
fellow-men. 



The Background of Plato's Attack 



10 

The Open Society and its Enemies 



He will restore us to our original nature, and heal us, and make us happy and blessed. 

Plato. 

There is still something missing from our analysis. The contention that 
Plato's political programme is purely totalitarian, and the objections to 
this contention which were raised in chapter 6, have led us to examine the 
part played, within this programme, by such moral ideas as Justice, 
Wisdom, Truth, and Beauty. The result of this examination was always 
the same. We found that the role of these ideas is important, but that they 
do not lead Plato beyond totalitarianism and racialism. But one of these 
ideas we have still to examine: that of Happiness. It may be remembered 
that we quoted Grossman in connection with the belief that Plato's 
political programme is fundamentally a 'plan for the building of a perfect 
state in which every citizen is really happy', and that I described this 
belief as a relic of the tendency to idealize Plato. If called upon to justify 
my opinion, I should not have much difficulty in pointing out that Plato's 
treatment of happiness is exactly analogous to his treatment of justice; 
and especially, that it is based upon the same belief that society is 'by 
nature' divided into classes or castes. True happiness-, Plato insists, is 
achieved only by justice, i.e. by keeping one's place. The ruler must find 
happiness in ruling, the warrior in warring; and, we may infer, the slave 
in slaving. Apart from that, Plato says frequently that what he is aiming 



at is neither the happiness of individuals nor that of any particular class 
in the state, but only the happiness of the whole, and this, he argues, is 
nothing but the outcome of that rule of justice which I have shown to be 
totalitarian in character. That only this justice can lead to any true 
happiness is one of the main theses of the Republic. 

In view of all this, it seems to be a consistent and hardly refutable 
interpretation of the material to present Plato as a totalitarian party- 
politician, unsuccessful in his immediate and practical undertakings, but 
in the long run only too successful- in his propaganda for the arrest and 
overthrow of a civilization which he hated. But one only has to put the 
matter in this blunt fashion in order to feel that there is something 
seriously amiss with this interpretation. At any rate, so I felt, when I had 
formulated it. I felt perhaps not so much that it was untrue, but that it was 
defective. I therefore began to search for evidence which would refute 
this interpretation-. However, in every point but one, this attempt to 
refute my interpretation was quite unsuccessful. The new material made 
the identity between Platonism and totalitarianism only the more 
manifest. 

The one point in which I felt that my search for a refutation had 
succeeded concerned Plato's hatred of tyranny. Of course, there was 
always the possibility of explaining this away. It would have been easy to 
say that his indictment of tyranny was mere propaganda. Totalitarianism 
often professes a love for 'true' freedom, and Plato's praise of freedom as 
opposed to tyranny sounds exactly like this professed love. In spite of 
this, I felt that certain of his observations on tyranny-, which will be 
mentioned later in this chapter, were sincere. The fact, of course, that 
'tyranny' usually meant in Plato's day a form of rule based on the support 
of the masses made it possible to claim that Plato's hatred of tyranny was 
consistent with my original interpretation. But I felt that this did not 
remove the need for modifying my interpretation. I also felt that the mere 



emphasis on Plato's fundamental sincerity was quite insufficient to 
accomplish this modification. No amount of emphasis could offset the 
general impression of the picture. A new picture was needed which would 
have to include Plato's sincere belief in his mission as healer of the sick 
social body, as well as the fact that he had seen more clearly than 
anybody else before or after him what was happening to Greek society. 
Since the attempt to reject the identity of Platonism and totalitarianism 
had not improved the picture, I was ultimately forced to modify my 
interpretation of totalitarianism itself. In other words, my attempt to 
understand Plato by analogy with modern totalitarianism led me, to my 
own surprise, to modify my view of totalitarianism. It did not modify my 
hostility, but it ultimately led me to see that the strength of both the old 
and the new totalitarian movements rested on the fact that they attempted 
to answer a very real need, however badly conceived this attempt may 
have been. 

In the light of my new interpretation, it appears to me that Plato's 
declaration of his wish to make the state and its citizens happy is not 
merely propaganda. I am ready to grant his fundamental benevolence-. I 
also grant that he was right, to a limited extent, in the sociological 
analysis on which he based his promise of happiness. To put this point 
more precisely: I believe that Plato, with deep sociological insight, found 
that his contemporaries were suffering under a severe strain, and that this 
strain was due to the social revolution which had begun with the rise of 
democracy and individualism. He succeeded in discovering the main 
causes of their deeply rooted unhappiness — social change, and social 
dissension — and he did his utmost to fight them. There is no reason to 
doubt that one of his most powerful motives was to win back happiness 
for the citizens. For reasons discussed later in this chapter, I believe that 
the medico-political treatment which he recommended, the arrest of 
change and the return to tribalism, was hopelessly wrong. But the 



recommendation, though not practicable as a therapy, testifies to Plato's 
power of diagnosis. It shows that he knew what was amiss, that he 
understood the strain, the unhappiness, under which the people were 
labouring, even though he erred in his fundamental claim that by leading 
them back to tribalism he could lessen the strain, and restore their 
happiness. 

It is my intention to give in this chapter a very brief survey of the 
historical material which induced me to hold such opinions. A few 
critical remarks on the method adopted, that of historical interpretation, 
will be found in the last chapter of the book. It will therefore suffice here 
if I say that I do not claim scientific status for this method, since the tests 
of an historical interpretation can never be as rigorous as those of an 
ordinary hypothesis. The interpretation is mainly a point of view, whose 
value lies in its fertility, in its power to throw light upon the historical 
material, to lead us to find new material, and to help us to rationalize and 
to unify it. What I am going to say here is therefore not meant as a 
dogmatic assertion, however boldly I may perhaps sometimes express my 
opinions. 



I 

Our Western civilization originated with the Greeks. They were, it seems, 
the first to make the step from tribalism to humanitarianism. Let us 
consider what that means. 

The early Greek tribal society resembles in many respects that of 
peoples like the Polynesians, the Maoris for instance. Small bands of 
warriors, usually living in fortified settlements, ruled by tribal chiefs or 
kings, or by aristocratic families, were waging war against one another on 



sea as well as on land. There were, of course, many differences between 
the Greek and the Polynesian ways of life, for there is, admittedly, no 
uniformity in tribalism. There is no standardized 'tribal way of life'. It 
seems to me, however, that there are some characteristics that can be 
found in most, if not all, of these tribal societies. I mean their magical or 
irrational attitude towards the customs of social life, and the 
corresponding rigidity of these customs. 

The magical attitude towards social custom has been discussed before. 
Its main element is the lack of distinction between the customary or 
conventional regularities of social life and the regularities found in 
'nature'; and this often goes together with the belief that both are 
enforced by a supernatural will. The rigidity of the social customs is 
probably in most cases only another aspect of the same attitude. (There 
are some reasons to believe that this aspect is even more primitive, and 
that the supernatural belief is a kind of rationalization of the fear of 
changing a routine — a fear which we can find in very young children.) 
When I speak of the rigidity of tribalism I do not mean that no changes 
can occur in the tribal ways of life. I mean rather that the comparatively 
infrequent changes have the character of religious conversions or 
revulsions, or of the introduction of new magical taboos. They are not 
based upon a rational attempt to improve social conditions. Apart from 
such changes — ^which are rare — ^taboos rigidly regulate and dominate all 
aspects of life. They do not leave many loop-holes. There are few 
problems in this form of life, and nothing really equivalent to moral 
problems. I do not mean to say that a member of a tribe does not 
sometimes need much heroism and endurance in order to act in 
accordance with the taboos. What I mean is that he will rarely find 
himself in the position of doubting how he ought to act. The right way is 
always determined, though difficulties must be overcome in following it. 
It is determined by taboos, by magical tribal institutions which can never 



become objects of critical consideration. Not even a Heraclitus 
distinguishes clearly between the institutional laws of tribal life and the 
laws of nature; both are taken to be of the same magical character. Based 
upon the collective tribal tradition, the institutions leave no room for 
personal responsibility. The taboos that establish some form of group- 
responsibility may be the forerunner of what we call personal 
responsibility, but they are fundamentally different from it. They are not 
based upon a principle of reasonable accountability, but rather upon 
magical ideas, such as the idea of appeasing the powers of fate. 

It is well known how much of this still survives. Our own ways of life 
are still beset with taboos; food taboos, taboos of politeness, and many 
others. And yet, there are some important differences. In our own way of 
life there is, between the laws of the state on the one hand and the taboos 
we habitually observe on the other, an ever-widening field of personal 
decisions, with its problems and responsibilities; and we know the 
importance of this field. Personal decisions may lead to the alteration of 
taboos, and even of political laws which are no longer taboos. The great 
difference is the possibility of rational reflection upon these matters. 
Rational reflection begins, in a way, with Heraclitus-. With Alcmaeon, 
Phaleas and Hippodamus, with Herodotus and the Sophists, the quest for 
the 'best constitution' assumes, by degrees, the character of a problem 
which can be rationally discussed. And in our own time, many of us make 
rational decisions concerning the desirability or otherwise of new 
legislation, and of other institutional changes; that is to say, decisions 
based upon an estimate of possible consequences, and upon a conscious 
preference for some of them. We recognize rational personal 
responsibility. 

In what follows, the magical or tribal or collectivist society will also 
be called the closed society, and the society in which individuals are 
confronted with personal decisions, the open society. 



A closed society at its best can be justly compared to an organism. The 
so-called organic or biological theory of the state can be applied to it to a 
considerable extent. A closed society resembles a herd or a tribe in being 
a semi-organic unit whose members are held together by semi-biological 
ties — kinship, living together, sharing common efforts, common dangers, 
common joys and common distress. It is still a concrete group of concrete 
individuals, related to one another not merely by such abstract social 
relationships as division of labour and exchange of commodities, but by 
concrete physical relationships such as touch, smell, and sight. And 
although such a society may be based on slavery, the presence of slaves 
need not create a fundamentally different problem from that of 
domesticated animals. Thus those aspects are lacking which make it 
impossible to apply the organic theory successfully to an open society. 

The aspects I have in mind are connected with the fact that, in an open 
society, many members strive to rise socially, and to take the places of 
other members. This may lead, for example, to such an important social 
phenomenon as class struggle. We cannot find anything like class 
struggle in an organism. The cells or tissues of an organism, which are 
sometimes said to correspond to the members of a state, may perhaps 
compete for food; but there is no inherent tendency on the part of the legs 
to become the brain, or of other members of the body to become the 
belly. Since there is nothing in the organism to correspond to one of the 
most important characteristics of the open society, competition for status 
among its members, the so-called organic theory of the state is based on a 
false analogy. The closed society, on the other hand, does not know much 
of such tendencies. Its institutions, including its castes, are sacrosanct — 
taboo. The organic theory does not fit so badly here. It is therefore not 
surprising to find that most attempts to apply the organic theory to our 
society are veiled forms of propaganda for a return to tribalism-. 

As a consequence of its loss of organic character, an open society may 



become, by degrees, what I should like to term an 'abstract society'. It 
may, to a considerable extent, lose the character of a concrete or real 
group of men, or of a system of such real groups. This point which has 
been rarely understood may be explained by way of an exaggeration. We 
could conceive of a society in which men practically never meet face to 
face — in which all business is conducted by individuals in isolation who 
communicate by typed letters or by telegrams, and who go about in 
closed motor-cars. (Artificial insemination would allow even propagation 
without a personal element.) Such a fictitious society might be called a 
'completely abstract or depersonalized society'. Now the interesting 
point is that our modem society resembles in many of its aspects such a 
completely abstract society. Although we do not always drive alone in 
closed motor cars (but meet face to face thousands of men walking past 
us in the street) the result is very nearly the same as if we did — we do not 
establish as a rule any personal relation with our fellow-pedestrians. 
Similarly, membership of a trade union may mean no more than the 
possession of a membership card and the payment of a contribution to an 
unknown secretary. There are many people living in a modem society 
who have no, or extremely few, intimate personal contacts, who live in 
anonymity and isolation, and consequently in unhappiness. For although 
society has become abstract, the biological make-up of man has not 
changed much; men have social needs which they cannot satisfy in an 
abstract society. 

Of course, our picture is even in this form highly exaggerated. There 
never will be or can be a completely abstract or even a predominantly 
abstract society — ^no more than a completely rational or even a 
predominantly rational society. Men still form real groups and enter into 
real social contacts of all kinds, and try to satisfy their emotional social 
needs as well as they can. But most of the social groups of a modem open 
society (with the exception of some lucky family groups) are poor 



substitutes, since they do not provide for a common life. And many of 
them do not have any function in the life of the society at large. 

Another way in which the picture is exaggerated is that it does not, so 
far, contain any of the gains made — only the losses. But there are gains. 
Personal relationships of a new kind can arise where they can be freely 
entered into, instead of being determined by the accidents of birth; and 
with this, a new individualism arises. Similarly, spiritual bonds can play 
a major role where the biological or physical bonds are weakened; etc. 
However this may be, our example, I hope, will have made plain what is 
meant by a more abstract society in contradistinction to a more concrete 
or real social group; and it will have made it clear that our modern open 
societies function largely by way of abstract relations, such as exchange 
or co-operation. (It is the analysis of these abstract relations with which 
modern social theory, such as economic theory, is mainly concerned. This 
point has not been understood by many sociologists, such as Durkheim, 
who never gave up the dogmatic belief that society must be analysed in 
terms of real social groups.) 

In the light of what has been said, it will be clear that the transition 
from the closed to the open society can be described as one of the deepest 
revolutions through which mankind has passed. Owing to what we have 
described as the biological character of the closed society, this transition 
must be felt deeply indeed. Thus when we say that our Western 
civilization derives from the Greeks, we ought to realize what it means. It 
means that the Greeks started for us that great revolution which, it seems, 
is still in its beginning — the transition from the closed to the open 
society. 



II 



Of course, this revolution was not made consciously. The breakdown of 
tribalism, of the closed societies of Greece, may be traced back to the 
time when population growth began to make itself felt among the ruling 
class of landed proprietors. This meant the end of 'organic' tribalism. For 
it created social tension within the closed society of the ruling class. At 
first, there appeared to be something like an 'organic' solution of this 
problem, the creation of daughter cities. (The 'organic' character of this 
solution was underlined by the magical procedures followed in the 
sending out of colonists.) But this ritual of colonization only postponed 
the breakdown. It even created new danger spots wherever it led to 
cultural contacts; and these, in turn, created what was perhaps the worst 
danger to the closed society — commerce, and a new class engaged in 
trade and seafaring. By the sixth century B.C., this development had led to 
the partial dissolution of the old ways of life, and even to a series of 
political revolutions and reactions. And it had led not only to attempts to 
retain and to arrest tribalism by force, as in Sparta, but also to that great 
spiritual revolution, the invention of critical discussion, and, in 
consequence, of thought that was free from magical obsessions. At the 
same time we find the first symptoms of a new uneasiness. The strain oj 
civilization was beginning to be felt. 

This strain, this uneasiness, is a consequence of the breakdown of the 
closed society. It is still felt even in our day, especially in times of social 
change. It is the strain created by the effort which life in an open and 
partially abstract society continually demands from us — ^by the endeavour 
to be rational, to forgo at least some of our emotional social needs, to 
look after ourselves, and to accept responsibilities. We must, I believe, 
bear this strain as the price to be paid for every increase in knowledge, in 
reasonableness, in co-operation and in mutual help, and consequently in 
our chances of survival, and in the size of the population. It is the price 
we have to pay for being human. 



The strain is most closely related to the problem of the tension between 
the classes which is raised for the first time by the breakdown of the 
closed society. The closed society itself does not know this problem. At 
least to its ruling members, slavery, caste, and class rule are 'natural' in 
the sense of being unquestionable. But with the breakdown of the closed 
society, this certainty disappears, and with it all feeling of security. The 
tribal community (and later the 'city') is the place of security for the 
member of the tribe. Surrounded by enemies and by dangerous or even 
hostile magical forces, he experiences the tribal community as a child 
experiences his family and his home, in which he plays his definite part; 
a part he knows well, and plays well. The breakdown of the closed 
society, raising as it does the problems of class and other problems of 
social status, must have had the same effect upon the citizens as a serious 
family quarrel and the breaking up of the family home is liable to have on 
children^. Of course, this kind of strain was felt by the privileged classes, 
now that they were threatened, more strongly than by those who had 
formerly been suppressed; but even the latter felt uneasy. They also were 
frightened by the breakdown of their 'natural' world. And though they 
continued to fight their struggle, they were often reluctant to exploit their 
victories over their class enemies who were supported by tradition, the 
status quo, a higher level of education, and a feeling of natural authority. 

In this light we must try to understand the history of Sparta, which 
successfully tried to arrest these developments, and of Athens, the 
leading democracy. 

Perhaps the most powerful cause of the breakdown of the closed 
society was the development of sea-communications and commerce. 
Close contact with other tribes is liable to undermine the feeling of 
necessity with which tribal institutions are viewed; and trade, commercial 
initiative, appears to be one of the few forms in which individual 
initiative- and independence can assert itself, even in a society in which 



tribalism still prevails. These two, seafaring and commerce, became the 
main characteristics of Athenian imperialism, as it developed in the fifth 
century B.C. And indeed they were recognized as the most dangerous 
developments by the oligarchs, the members of the privileged, or of the 
formerly privileged, classes of Athens. It became clear to them that the 
trade of Athens, its monetary commercialism, its naval policy, and its 
democratic tendencies were parts of one single movement, and that it was 
impossible to defeat democracy without going to the roots of the evil and 
destroying both the naval policy and the empire. But the naval policy of 
Athens was based upon its harbours, especially the Piraeus, the centre of 
commerce and the stronghold of the democratic party; and strategically, 
upon the walls which fortified Athens, and later, upon the Long Walls 
which linked it to the harbours of the Piraeus and Phalerum. Accordingly, 
we find that for more than a century the empire, the fleet, the harbour, 
and the walls were hated by the oligarchic parties of Athens as the 
symbols of the democracy and as the sources of its strength which they 
hoped one day to destroy. 

Much evidence of this development can be found in Thucydides' 
History of the Peloponnesian War, or rather, of the two great wars of 
431^21 and 419- 403 B.C., between Athenian democracy and the arrested 
oligarchic tribalism of Sparta. When reading Thucydides we must never 
forget that his heart was not with Athens, his native city. Although he 
apparently did not belong to the extreme wing of the Athenian oligarchic 
clubs who conspired throughout the war with the enemy, he was certainly 
a member of the oligarchic party, and a friend neither of the Athenian 
people, the demos, who had exiled him, nor of its imperialist policy. (I do 
not intend to belittle Thucydides, the greatest historian, perhaps, who 
ever lived. But however successful he was in making sure of the facts he 
records, and however sincere his efforts to be impartial, his comments 
and moral judgements represent an interpretation, a point of view; and in 



this we need not agree with him.) I quote first from a passage describing 
Themistocles' policy in 482 B.C., half a century before the Peloponnesian 
war: 'Themistocles also persuaded the Athenians to finish the Piraeus ... 
Since the Athenians had now taken to the sea, he thought that they had a 
great opportunity for building an empire. He was the first who dared to 
say that they should make the sea their domain . . . '— Twenty- five years 
later, 'the Athenians began to build their Long Walls to the sea, one to the 
harbour of Bhalerum, the other to the Piraeus'—. But this time, twenty- 
six years before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, the oligarchic 
party was fully aware of the meaning of these developments. We hear 
from Thucydides that they did not shrink even from the most blatant 
treachery. As sometimes happens with oligarchs, class interest 
superseded their patriotism. An opportunity offered itself in the form of a 
hostile Spartan expeditionary force operating in the north of Athens, and 
they determined to conspire with Sparta against their own country. 
Thucydides writes: 'Certain Athenians were privately making overtures 
to them' (i.e. to the Spartans) ' in the hope that they would put an end to 
the democracy, and to the building of the Long Walls. But the other 
Athenians ... suspected their design against democracy.' The loyal 
Athenian citizens therefore went out to meet the Spartans, but were 
defeated. It appears, however, that they had weakened the enemy 
sufficiently to prevent him from joining forces with the fifth columnists 
within their own city. Some months later, the Long Walls were 
completed, which meant that the democracy could enjoy security as long 
as it upheld its naval supremacy. 

This incident throws light on the tenseness of the class situation in 
Athens, even twenty-six years before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian 
war, during which the situation became much worse. It also throws light 
on the methods employed by the subversive and pro- Spartan oligarchic 



party. Thucydides, one must note, mentions their treachery only in 
passing, and he does not censure them, although in other places he speaks 
most strongly against class struggle and party spirit. The next passages 
quoted, written as a general reflection on the Corcyraean Revolution of 
427 B.C., are interesting, first as an excellent picture of the class situation; 
secondly, as an illustration of the strong words Thucydides could find 
when he wanted to describe analogous tendencies on the side of the 
democrats of Corcyra. (In order to judge his lack of impartiality we must 
remember that in the beginning of the war Corcyra had been one of 
Athens' democratic allies, and that the revolt had been started by the 
oligarchs.) Moreover, the passage is an excellent expression of the 
feeling of a general social breakdown: 'Nearly the whole Hellenic world', 
writes Thucydides, 'was in commotion. In every city, the leaders of the 
democratic and of the oligarchic parties were trying hard, the one to bring 
in the Athenians, the other the Lacedaemonians . . . The tie of party was 
stronger than the tie of blood . . . The leaders on either side used specious 
names, the one party professing to uphold the constitutional equality of 
the many, the other the wisdom of the nobility; in reality they made the 
public interest their price, professing, of course, their devotion to it. They 
used any conceivable means for getting the better of one another, and 
committed the most monstrous crimes ... This revolution gave birth to 
every form of wickedness in Hellas . . . Everywhere prevailed an attitude 
of perfidious antagonism. There was no word binding enough, no oath 
terrible enough, to reconcile enemies. Each man was strong only in the 
conviction that nothing was secure.'— 

The full significance of the attempt of the Athenian oligarchs to accept 
the help of Sparta and stop the building of the Long Walls can be gauged 
when we realize that this treacherous attitude had not changed when 
Aristotle wrote his Politics, more than a century later. We hear there 
about an oligarchic oath, which, Aristotle said, 'is now in vogue'. This is 



how it runs: 'I promise to be an enemy of the people, and to do my best to 
give them bad advice!'— It is clear that we cannot understand the period 
without remembering this attitude. 

I mentioned above that Thucydides himself was an anti-democrat. This 
becomes clear when we consider his description of the Athenian empire, 
and the way it was hated by the various Greek states. Athens' rule over its 
empire, he tells us, was felt to be no better than a tyranny, and all the 
Greek tribes were afraid of her. In describing public opinion at the 
outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, he is mildly critical of Sparta and 
very critical of Athenian imperialism. 'The general feeling of the peoples 
was strongly on the side of the Lacedaemonians; for they maintained that 
they were the liberators of Hellas. Cities and individuals were eager to 
assist them and the general indignation against the Athenians was 
intense. Some were longing to be liberated from Athens, others fearful of 
falling under its sway.' — It is most interesting that this judgement of the 
Athenian empire has become, more or less, the official judgement of 
'History', i.e. of most of the historians. Just as the philosophers find it 
hard to free themselves from Plato's point of view, so are the historians 
bound to that of Thucydides. As an example I may quote Meyer (the best 
German authority on this period), who simply repeats Thucydides when 
he says: 'The sympathies of the educated world of Greece were ... turned 
away from Athens.'— 

But such statements are only expressions of the anti-democratic point 
of view. Many facts recorded by Thucydides — for instance, the passage 
quoted which describes the attitude of the democratic and oligarchic 
party leaders — show that Sparta was 'popular' not among the peoples of 
Greece but only among the oligarchs; among the 'educated', as Meyer 
puts it so nicely. Even Meyer admits that 'the democratically minded 
masses hoped in many places for her victory'—, i.e. for the victory of 
Athens; and Thucydides' narrative contains many instances which prove 



Athens' popularity among the democrats and the suppressed. But who 
cares for the opinion of the uneducated masses? If Thucydides and the 
'educated' assert that Athens was a tyrant, then she was a tyrant. 

It is most interesting that the same historians who hail Rome for her 
achievement, the foundation of a universal empire, condemn Athens for 
her attempt to achieve something better. The fact that Rome succeeded 
where Athens failed is not a sufficient explanation of this attitude. They 
do not really censure Athens for her failure, since they loathe the very 
idea that her attempt might have been successful. Athens, they believe, 
was a ruthless democracy, a place ruled by the uneducated, who hated and 
suppressed the educated, and were hated by them in turn. But this view — 
the myth of the cultural intolerance of democratic Athens — makes 
nonsense of the known facts, and above all of the astonishing spiritual 
productivity of Athens in this particular period. Even Meyer must admit 
this productivity. 'What Athens produced in this decade', he says with 
characteristic modesty, 'ranks equal with one of the mightiest decades of 
German literature.'— Pericles, who was the democratic leader of Athens 
at this time, was more than justified when he called her 'The School of 
Hellas'. 

I am far from defending everything that Athens did in building up her 
empire, and I certainly do not wish to defend wanton attacks (if such have 
occurred), or acts of brutality; nor do I forget that Athenian democracy 
was still based on slavery—. But it is necessary, I believe, to see that 
tribalist exclusiveness and self-sufficiency could be superseded only by 
some form of imperialism. And it must be said that certain of the 
imperialist measures introduced by Athens were rather liberal. One very 
interesting instance is the fact that Athens offered, in 405 B.C., to her ally, 
the Ionian island Samos, 'that the Samians should be Athenians from now 
on; and that both cities should be one state; and that the Samians should 



order their internal affairs as they chose, and retain their laws.' — Another 
instance is Athens' method of taxing her empire. Much has been said 
about these taxes, or tributes, which have been described — very unjustly, 
I believe — as a shameless and tyrannical way of exploiting the smaller 
cities. In an attempt to evaluate the significance of these taxes, we must, 
of course, compare them with the volume of the trade which, in return, 
was protected by the Athenian fleet. The necessary information is given 
by Thucydides, from whom we learn that the Athenians imposed upon 
their allies, in 413 B.C., 'in place of the tribute, a duty of 5 per cent, on all 
things imported and exported by sea; and they thought that this would 
yield more'—. This measure, adopted under severe strain of war, 
compares favourably, I believe, with the Roman methods of 
centralization. The Athenians, by this method of taxation, became 
interested in the development of allied trade, and so in the initiative and 
independence of the various members of their empire. Originally, the 
Athenian empire had developed out of a league of equals. In spite of the 
temporary predominance of Athens, publicly criticized by some of her 
citizens (cp. Aristophanes' Lysistrata), it seems probable that her interest 
in the development of trade would have led, in time, to some kind of 
federal constitution. At least, we know in her case of nothing like the 
Roman method of 'transferring' the cultural possessions from the empire 
to the dominant city, i.e. of looting. And whatever one might say against 
plutocracy, it is preferable to a rule of looters—. 

This favourable view of Athenian imperialism can be supported by 
comparing it with the Spartan methods of handling foreign affairs. They 
were determined by the ultimate aim that dominated Sparta's policy, by 
its attempt to arrest all change and to return to tribalism. (This is 
impossible, as I shall contend later on. Innocence once lost cannot be 
regained, and an artificially arrested closed society, or a cultivated 
tribalism, cannot equal the genuine article.) The principles of Spartan 



policy were these. (1) Protection of its arrested tribalism: shut out all 
foreign influences which might endanger the rigidity of tribal taboos. — 
(2) Anti-humanitarianism: shut out, more especially, all equalitarian, 
democratic, and individualistic ideologies. — (3) Autarky: be independent 
of trade. — (4) Anti-universalism or particularism: uphold the 
differentiation between your tribe and all others; do not mix with 
inferiors. — (5) Mastery: dominate and enslave your neighbours. — (6) But 
do not become too large: 'The city should grow only as long as it can do 
so without impairing its unity'—, and especially, without risking the 
introduction of universalistic tendencies. — If we compare these six 
principal tendencies with those of modern totalitarianism, then we see 
that they agree fundamentally, with the sole exception of the last. The 
difference can be described by saying that modern totalitarianism appears 
to have imperialist tendencies. But this imperialism has no element of a 
tolerant universalism, and the world-wide ambitions of the modern 
totalitarians are imposed upon them, as it were, against their will. Two 
factors are responsible for this. The first is the general tendency of all 
tyrannies to justify their existence by saving the state (or the people) 
from its enemies — a tendency which must lead, whenever the old 
enemies have been successfully subdued, to the creation or invention of 
new ones. The second factor is the attempt to carry into effect the closely 
related points (2) and (5) of the totalitarian programme. 
Humanitarianism, which, according to point (2), must be kept out, has 
become so universal that, in order to combat it effectively at home, it 
must be destroyed all over the world. But our world has become so small 
that everybody is now a neighbour, so that, to carry out point (5), 
everybody must be dominated and enslaved. But in ancient times, nothing 
could have appeared more dangerous to those who adopted a 
particularism like Sparta's, than Athenian imperialism, with its inherent 
tendency to develop into a commonwealth of Greek cities, and perhaps 



even into a universal empire of man. 

Summing up our analysis so far, we can say that the political and 
spiritual revolution which had begun with the breakdown of Greek 
tribalism reached its climax in the fifth century, with the outbreak of the 
Peloponnesian war. It had developed into a violent class war, and, at the 
same time, into a war between the two leading cities of Greece. 

Ill 

But how can we explain the fact that outstanding Athenians like 
Thucydides stood on the side of reaction against these new 
developments? Class interest is, I believe, an insufficient explanation; for 
what we have to explain is the fact that, while many of the ambitious 
young nobles became active, although not always reliable, members of 
the democratic party, some of the most thoughtful and gifted resisted its 
attraction. The main point seems to be that although the open society was 
already in existence, although it had, in practice, begun to develop new 
values, new equalitarian standards of life, there was still something 
missing, especially for the 'educated'. The new faith of the open society, 
its only possible faith, humanitarianism, was beginning to assert itself, 
but was not yet formulated. For the time being, one could not see much 
more than class war, the democrats' fear of the oligarchic reaction, and 
the threat of further revolutionary developments. The reaction against 
these developments had therefore much on its side — tradition, the call for 
defending old virtues, and the old religion. These tendencies appealed to 
the feelings of most men, and their popularity gave rise to a movement to 
which, although it was led and used for their own ends by the Spartans 
and their oligarchic friends, many upright men must have belonged, even 



at Athens. From the slogan of the movement, 'Back to the state of our 
forefathers', or 'Back to the old paternal state', derives the term 'patriot'. 
It is hardly necessary to insist that the beliefs popular among those who 
supported this 'patriotic' movement were grossly perverted by those 
oligarchs who did not shrink from handing over their own city to the 
enemy, in the hope of gaining support against the democrats. Thucydides 
was one of the representative leaders of this movement for the 'paternal 
state'—, and though he probably did not support the treacherous acts of 
the extreme anti-democrats, he could not disguise his sympathies with 
their fundamental aim — to arrest social change, and to fight the 
universalistic imperialism of the Athenian democracy and the 
instruments and symbols of its power, the navy, the walls, and commerce. 
(In view of Plato's doctrines concerning commerce, it may be interesting 
to note how great the fear of commercialism was. When after his victory 
over Athens in 404 B.C. the Spartan king, Lysander, returned with great 
booty, the Spartan 'patriots', i.e. the members of the movement for the 
'paternal state', tried to prevent the import of gold; and though it was 
ultimately admitted, its possession was limited to the state, and capital 
punishment was imposed on any citizen found in possession of precious 
metals. In Plato's Laws, very similar procedures are advocated—). 

Although the 'patriotic' movement was partly the expression of the 
longing to return to more stable forms of life, to religion, decency, law 
and order, it was itself morally rotten. Its ancient faith was lost, and was 
largely replaced by a hypocritical and even cynical exploitation of 
religious sentiments.— Nihilism, as painted by Plato in the portraits of 
Callicles and Thrasymachus, could be found if anywhere among the 
young 'patriotic' aristocrats who, if given the opportunity, became 
leaders of the democratic party. The clearest exponent of this nihilism 
was perhaps the oligarchic leader who helped to deal the death-blow at 
Athens, Plato's uncle Critias, the leader of the Thirty Tyrants.— 



But at this time, in the same generation to which Thucydides belonged, 
there rose a new faith in reason, freedom and the brotherhood of all men 
— the new faith, and, as I believe, the only possible faith, of the open 
society. 

IV 

This generation which marks a turning point in the history of mankind, I 
should like to call the Great Generation; it is the generation which lived 
in Athens just before, and during, the Peloponnesian war.— There were 
great conservatives among them, like Sophocles, or Thucydides. There 
were men among them who represent the period of transition; who were 
wavering, like Euripides, or sceptical, like Aristophanes. But there was 
also the great leader of democracy, Pericles, who formulated the principle 
of equality before the law and of political individualism, and Herodotus, 
who was welcomed and hailed in Pericles' city as the author of a work 
that glorified these principles. Protagoras, a native of Abdera who 
became influential in Athens, and his countryman Democritus must also 
be counted among the Great Generation. They formulated the doctrine 
that human institutions of language, custom, and law are not of the 
magical character of taboos but man-made, not natural but conventional, 
insisting, at the same time, that we are responsible for them. Then there 
was the school of Gorgias — Alcidamas, Lycophron and Antisthenes, who 
developed the fundamental tenets of antislavery, of a rational 
protectionism, and of anti-nationalism, i.e. the creed of the universal 
empire of men. And there was, perhaps the greatest of all, Socrates, who 
taught the lesson that we must have faith in human reason, but at the 
same time beware of dogmatism; that we must keep away both from 



misology— , the distrust of theory and of reason, and from the magical 
attitude of those who make an idol of wisdom; who taught, in other 
words, that the spirit of science is criticism. 

Since I have not so far said much about Pericles, and nothing at all 
about Democritus, I may use some of their own words in order to 
illustrate the new faith. First Democritus: 'Not out of fear but out of a 
feeling of what is right should we abstain from doing wrong . . . Virtue is 
based, most of all, upon respecting the other man . . . Every man is a little 
world of his own . . . We ought to do our utmost to help those who have 
suffered injustice ... To be good means to do no wrong; and also, not to 
want to do wrong ... It is good deeds, not words, that count ... The 
poverty of a democracy is better than the prosperity which allegedly goes 
with aristocracy or monarchy, just as liberty is better than slavery . . . The 
wise man belongs to all countries, for the home of a great soul is the 
whole world.' To him is due also that remark of a true scientist: 'I would 
rather find a single causal law than be the king of Persia! '— 

In their humanitarian and universalistic emphasis some of these 
fragments of Democritus sound, although they are of earlier date, as if 
they were directed against Plato. The same impression is conveyed, only 
much more strongly, by Pericles' famous funeral oration, delivered at 
least half a century before the Republic was written. I have quoted two 
sentences from this oration in chapter 6, when discussing 
equalitarianism— , but a few passages may be quoted here more fully in 
order to give a clearer impression of its spirit. 'Our political system does 
not compete with institutions which are elsewhere in force. We do not 
copy our neighbours, but try to be an example. Our administration 
favours the many instead of the few: this is why it is called a democracy. 
The laws afford equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, but we 
do not ignore the claims of excellence. When a citizen distinguishes 
himself, then he will be called to serve the state, in preference to others. 



not as a matter of privilege, but as a reward of merit; and poverty is no 
bar ... The freedom we enjoy extends also to ordinary life; we are not 
suspicious of one another, and do not nag our neighbour if he chooses to 
go his own way . . . But this freedom does not make us lawless. We are 
taught to respect the magistrates and the laws, and never to forget that we 
must protect the injured. And we are also taught to observe those 
unwritten laws whose sanction lies only in the universal feeling of what is 
right . . . 

'Our city is thrown open to the world; we never expel a foreigner ... 
We are free to live exactly as we please, and yet we are always ready to 
face any danger . . . We love beauty without indulging in fancies, and 
although we try to improve our intellect, this does not weaken our will . . . 
To admit one's poverty is no disgrace with us; but we consider it 
disgraceful not to make an effort to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not 
neglect public affairs when attending to his private business ... We 
consider a man who takes no interest in the state not as harmless, but as 
useless; and although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able 
to judge it. We do not look upon discussion as a stumbling-block in the 
way of political action, but as an indispensable preliminary to acting 
wisely . . . We believe that happiness is the fruit of freedom and freedom 
that of valour, and we do not shrink from the dangers of war ... To sum 
up, I claim that Athens is the School of Hellas, and that the individual 
Athenian grows up to develop a happy versatility, a readiness for 
emergencies, and self-reliance.'— 

These words are not merely a eulogy on Athens; they express the true 
spirit of the Great Generation. They formulate the political programme of 
a great equalitarian individualist, of a democrat who well understands 
that democracy cannot be exhausted by the meaningless principle that 
'the people should rule', but that it must be based on faith in reason, and 
on humanitarianism. At the same time, they are an expression of true 



patriotism, of just pride in a city which had made it its task to set an 
example; which became the school, not only of Hellas, but, as we know, 
of mankind, for millennia past and yet to come. 

Pericles' speech is not only a programme. It is also a defence, and 
perhaps even an attack. It reads, as I have already hinted, like a direct 
attack on Plato. I do not doubt that it was directed, not only against the 
arrested tribalism of Sparta, but also against the totalitarian ring or 'link' 
at home; against the movement for the paternal state, the Athenian 
'Society of the Friends of Laconia' (as Th. Gomperz called them in 
1902—). The speech is the earliest— and at the same time perhaps the 
strongest statement ever made in opposition to this kind of movement. Its 
importance was felt by Plato, who caricatured Pericles' oration half a 
century later in the passages of thQ Republic— in which he attacks 
democracy, as well as in that undisguised parody, the dialogue called 
Menexenus or the Funeral Oration—. But the Friends of Laconia whom 
Pericles attacked retaliated long before Plato. Only five or six years after 
Pericles' oration, a pamphlet on the Constitution of Athens— was 
published by an unknown author (possibly Critias), now usually called 
the 'Old Oligarch'. This ingenious pamphlet, the oldest extant treatise on 
political theory, is, at the same time, perhaps the oldest monument of the 
desertion of mankind by its intellectual leaders. It is a ruthless attack 
upon Athens, written no doubt by one of her best brains. Its central idea, 
an idea which became an article of faith with Thucydides and Plato, is the 
close connection between naval imperialism and democracy. And it tries 
to show that there can be no compromise in a conflict between two 
worlds—, the worlds of democracy and of oligarchy; that only the use of 
ruthless violence, of total measures, including the intervention of allies 
from outside (the Spartans), can put an end to the unholy rule of freedom. 
This remarkable pamphlet was to become the first of a practically infinite 
sequence of works on political philosophy which were to repeat more or 



less, openly or covertly, the same theme down to our own day. Unwilling 
and unable to help mankind along their difficult path into an unknown 
future which they have to create for themselves, some of the 'educated' 
tried to make them turn back into the past. Incapable of leading a new 
way, they could only make themselves leaders of the perennial revolt 
against freedom. It became the more necessary for them to assert their 
superiority by fighting against equality as they were (using Socratic 
language) misanthropists and misologists — incapable of that simple and 
ordinary generosity which inspires faith in men, and faith in human 
reason and freedom. Harsh as this judgement may sound, it is just, I fear, 
if it is applied to those intellectual leaders of the revolt against freedom 
who came after the Great Generation, and especially after Socrates. We 
can now try to see them against the background of our historical 
interpretation. 

The rise of philosophy itself can be interpreted, I think, as a response 
to the breakdown of the closed society and its magical beliefs. It is an 
attempt to replace the lost magical faith by a rational faith; it modifies 
the tradition of passing on a theory or a myth by founding a new tradition 
— the tradition of challenging theories and myths and of critically 
discussing them—. (A significant point is that this attempt coincides with 
the spread of the so-called Orphic sects whose members tried to replace 
the lost feeling of unity by a new mystical religion.) The earliest 
philosophers, the three great lonians and Pythagoras, were probably quite 
unaware of the stimulus to which they were reacting. They were the 
representatives as well as the unconscious antagonists of a social 
revolution. The very fact that they founded schools or sects or orders, i.e. 
new social institutions or rather concrete groups with a common life and 
common functions, and modelled largely after those of an idealized tribe, 
proves that they were reformers in the social field, and therefore, that 
they were reacting to certain social needs. That they reacted to these 



needs and to their own sense of drift, not by imitating Hesiod in inventing 
a historicist myth of destiny and decay—, but by inventing the tradition of 
criticism and discussion, and with it the art of thinking rationally, is one 
of the inexplicable facts which stand at the beginning of our civilization. 
But even these rationalists reacted to the loss of the unity of tribalism in a 
largely emotional way. Their reasoning gives expression to their feeling 
of drift, to the strain of a development which was about to create our 
individualistic civilization. One of the oldest expressions of this strain 
goes back to Anaximander— , the second of the Ionian philosophers. 
Individual existence appeared to him as hubris, as an impious act of 
injustice, as a wrongful act of usurpation, for which individuals must 
suffer, and do penance. The first to become conscious of the social 
revolution and the struggle of classes was Heraclitus. How he rationalized 
his feeling of drift by developing the first anti-democratic ideology and 
the first historicist philosophy of change and destiny, has been described 
in the second chapter of this book. Heraclitus was the first conscious 
enemy of the open society. 

Nearly all these early thinkers were labouring under a tragic and 
desperate strain—. The only exception is perhaps the monotheist 
Xenophanes— , who carried his burden courageously. We cannot blame 
them for their hostility towards the new developments in the way in 
which we may, to some extent, blame their successors. The new faith of 
the open society, the faith in man, in equalitarian justice, and in human 
reason, was perhaps beginning to take shape, but it was not yet 
formulated. 



V 



The greatest contribution to this faith was to be made by Socrates, who 
died for it. Socrates was not a leader of Athenian democracy, like 
Pericles, or a theorist of the open society, like Protagoras. He was, rather, 
a critic of Athens and of her democratic institutions, and in this he may 
have borne a superficial resemblance to some of the leaders of the 
reaction against the open society. But there is no need for a man who 
criticizes democracy and democratic institutions to be their enemy, 
although both the democrats he criticizes, and the totalitarians who hope 
to profit from any disunion in the democratic camp, are likely to brand 
him as such. There is a fundamental difference between a democratic and 
a totalitarian criticism of democracy. Socrates' criticism was a 
democratic one, and indeed of the kind that is the very life of democracy. 
(Democrats who do not see the difference between a friendly and a 
hostile criticism of democracy are themselves imbued with the 
totalitarian spirit. Totalitarianism, of course, cannot consider any 
criticism as friendly, since every criticism of such an authority must 
challenge the principle of authority itself.) 

I have already mentioned some aspects of Socrates' teaching: his 
intellectualism, i.e. his equalitarian theory of human reason as a universal 
medium of communication; his stress on intellectual honesty and self- 
criticism; his equalitarian theory of justice, and his doctrine that it is 
better to be a victim of injustice than to inflict it upon others. I think it is 
this last doctrine which can help us best to understand the core of his 
teaching, his creed of individualism, his belief in the human individual as 
an end in himself. 

The closed society, and with it its creed that the tribe is everything and 
the individual nothing, had broken down. Individual initiative and self- 
assertion had become a fact. Interest in the human individual as 
individual, and not only as tribal hero and saviour, had been aroused—. 
But a philosophy which makes man the centre of its interest began only 



with Protagoras. And the belief that there is nothing more important in 
our life than other individual men, the appeal to men to respect one 
another and themselves, appears to be due to Socrates. 

Burnet has stressed— that it was Socrates who created the conception 
of the soul, a conception which had such an immense influence upon our 
civilization. I believe that there is much in this view, although I feel that 
its formulation may be misleading, especially the use of the term 'soul'; 
for Socrates seems to have kept away from metaphysical theories as 
much as he could. His appeal was a moral appeal, and his theory of 
individuality (or of the 'soul', if this word is preferred) is, I think, a 
moral and not a metaphysical doctrine. He was fighting, with the help of 
this doctrine, as always, against self-satisfaction and complacency. He 
demanded that individualism should not be merely the dissolution of 
tribalism, but that the individual should prove worthy of his liberation. 
This is why he insisted that man is not merely a piece of flesh — a body. 
There is more in man, a divine spark, reason; and a love of truth, of 
kindness, humaneness, a love of beauty and of goodness. It is these that 
make a man's life worth while. But if I am not merely a 'body', what am 
I, then? You are, first of all, intelligence, was Socrates' reply. It is your 
reason that makes you human; that enables you to be more than a mere 
bundle of desires and wishes; that makes you a self-sufficient individual 
and entitles you to claim that you are an end in yourself. Socrates' saying 
'care for your souls' is largely an appeal for intellectual honesty, just as 
the saying 'know thyself is used by him to remind us of our intellectual 
limitations. 

These, Socrates insisted, are the things that matter. And what he 
criticized in democracy and democratic statesmen was their inadequate 
realization of these things. He criticized them rightly for their lack of 
intellectual honesty, and for their obsession with power-politics—. With 
his emphasis upon the human side of the political problem, he could not 



take much interest in institutional reform. It was the immediate, the 
personal aspect of the open society in which he was interested. He was 
mistaken when he considered himself a politician; he was a teacher. 

But if Socrates was, fundamentally, the champion of the open society, 
and a friend of democracy, why, it may be asked, did he mix with anti- 
democrats? For we know that among his companions were not only 
Alcibiades, who for a time went over to the side of Sparta, but also two of 
Plato's uncles, Critias who later became the ruthless leader of the Thirty 
Tyrants, and Charmides who became his lieutenant. 

There is more than one reply to this question. First we are told by Plato 
that Socrates' attack upon the democratic politicians of his time was 
carried out partly with the purpose of exposing the selfishness and lust 
for power of the hypocritical flatterers of the people, more particularly, 
of the young aristocrats who posed as democrats, but who looked upon 
the people as mere instruments of their lust for power—. This activity 
made him, on the one hand, attractive to some at least of the enemies of 
democracy; on the other hand it brought him into contact with ambitious 
aristocrats of that very type. And here enters a second consideration. 
Socrates, the moralist and individualist, would never merely attack these 
men. He would, rather, take a real interest in them, and he would hardly 
give them up without making a serious attempt to convert them. There 
are many allusions to such attempts in Plato's dialogues. We have reason, 
and this is a third consideration, to believe that Socrates, the teacher- 
politician, even went out of his way to attract young men and to gain 
influence over them, especially when he considered them open to 
conversion, and thought that some day they might possibly hold offices 
of responsibility in their city. The outstanding example is, of course, 
Alcibiades, singled out from his very childhood as the great future leader 
of the Athenian empire. And Critias' brilliancy, ambition and courage 
made him one of the few likely competitors of Alcibiades. (He co- 



operated with Alcibiades for a time, but later turned against him. It is not 
at all improbable that the temporary co-operation was due to Socrates' 
influence.) From all we know about Plato's own early and later political 
aspirations, it is more than likely that his relations with Socrates were of 
a similar kind—. Socrates, though one of the leading spirits of the open 
society, was not a party man. He would have worked in any circle where 
his work might have benefited his city. If he took interest in a promising 
youth he was not to be deterred by oligarchic family connections. 

But these connections were to cause his death. When the great war was 
lost, Socrates was accused of having educated the men who had betrayed 
democracy and conspired with the enemy to bring about the downfall of 
Athens. 

The history of the Peloponnesian war and the fall of Athens is still 
often told, under the influence of Thucydides' authority, in such a way 
that the defeat of Athens appears as the ultimate proof of the moral 
weaknesses of the democratic system. But this view is merely a 
tendentious distortion, and the well-known facts tell a very different 
story. The main responsibility for the lost war rests with the treacherous 
oligarchs who continuously conspired with Sparta. Prominent among 
these were three former disciples of Socrates, Alcibiades, Critias, and 
Charmides. After the fall of Athens in 404 B.C. the two latter became the 
leaders of the Thirty Tyrants, who were no more than a puppet 
government under Spartan protection. The fall of Athens, and the 
destruction of the walls, are often presented as the final results of the 
great war which had started in 431 B.C. But in this presentation lies a 
major distortion; for the democrats fought on. At first only seventy 
strong, they prepared under the leadership of Thrasybulus and Anytus the 
liberation of Athens, where Critias was meanwhile killing scores of 
citizens; during the eight months of his reign of terror the death-roll 
contained 'rather a greater number of Athenians than the Peloponnesians 



had killed during the last ten years of war'—. But after eight months (in 
403 B.C.) Critias and the Spartan garrison were attacked and defeated by 
the democrats, who established themselves in the Piraeus, and both of 
Plato's uncles lost their lives in the battle. Their oligarchic followers 
continued for a time the reign of terror in the city of Athens itself, but 
their forces were in a state of confusion and dissolution. Having proved 
themselves incapable of ruling, they were ultimately abandoned by their 
Spartan protectors, who concluded a treaty with the democrats. The peace 
re-established democracy in Athens. Thus the democratic form of 
government had proved its superior strength under the most severe trials, 
and even its enemies began to think it invincible. (Nine years later, after 
the battle of Cnidus, the Athenians could re-erect their walls. The defeat 
of democracy had turned into victory.) 

As soon as the restored democracy had re-established normal legal 
conditions—, a case was brought against Socrates. Its meaning was clear 
enough; he was accused of having had his hand in the education of the 
most pernicious enemies of the state, Alcibiades, Critias, and Charmides. 
Certain difficulties for the prosecution were created by an amnesty for all 
political crimes committed before the re-establishment of the democracy. 
The charge could not therefore openly refer to these notorious cases. And 
the prosecutors probably sought not so much to punish Socrates for the 
unfortunate political events of the past which, as they knew well, had 
happened against his intentions; their aim was, rather, to prevent him 
from continuing his teaching, which, in view of its effects, they could 
hardly regard otherwise than as dangerous to the state. For all these 
reasons, the charge was given the vague and rather meaningless form that 
Socrates was corrupting the youth, that he was impious, and that he had 
attempted to introduce novel religious practices into the state. (The latter 
two charges undoubtedly expressed, however clumsily, the correct feeling 



that in the ethico-religious field he was a revolutionary.) Because of the 
amnesty, the 'corrupted youth' could not be more precisely named, but 
everybody knew, of course, who was meant—. In his defence, Socrates 
insisted that he had no sympathy with the policy of the Thirty, and that he 
had actually risked his life by defying their attempt to implicate him in 
one of their crimes. And he reminded the jury that among his closest 
associates and most enthusiastic disciples there was at least one ardent 
democrat, Chaerephon, who fought against the Thirty (and who was, it 
appears, killed in battle)—. 

It is now usually recognized that Anytus, the democratic leader who 
backed the prosecution, did not intend to make a martyr of Socrates. The 
aim was to exile him. But this plan was defeated by Socrates' refusal to 
compromise his principles. That he wanted to die, or that he enjoyed the 
role of martyr, I do not believe—. He simply fought for what he believed 
to be right, and for his life's work. He had never intended to undermine 
democracy. In fact, he had tried to give it the faith it needed. This had 
been the work of his life. It was, he felt, seriously threatened. The 
betrayal of his former companions let his work and himself appear in a 
light which must have disturbed him deeply. He may even have 
welcomed the trial as an opportunity to prove that his loyalty to his city 
was unbounded. 

Socrates explained this attitude most carefully when he was given an 
opportunity to escape. Had he seized it, and become an exile, everybody 
would have thought him an opponent of democracy. So he stayed, and 
stated his reasons. This explanation, his last will, can be found in Plato's 
Crito—. It is simple. If I go, said Socrates, I violate the laws of the state. 
Such an act would put me in opposition to the laws, and prove my 
disloyalty. It would do harm to the state. Only if I stay can I put beyond 
doubt my loyalty to the state, with its democratic laws, and prove that I 
have never been its enemy. There can be no better proof of my loyalty 



than my willingness to die for it. 

Socrates' death is the ultimate proof of his sincerity. His fearlessness, 
his simplicity, his modesty, his sense of proportion, his humour never 
deserted him. 'I am the gadfly that God has attached to this city', he said 
in his Apology, 'and all day long and in all places I am always fastening 
upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. You would not 
readily find another like me, and therefore I should advise you to spare 
me ... If you strike at me, as Anytus advises you, and rashly put me to 
death, then you will remain asleep for the rest of your lives, unless God in 
his care sends you another gadfly'—. He showed that a man could die, not 
only for fate and fame and other grand things of this kind, but also for the 
freedom of critical thought, and for a self-respect which has nothing to do 
with self-importance or sentimentality. 



VI 

Socrates had only one worthy successor, his old friend Antisthenes, the 
last of the Great Generation. Plato, his most gifted disciple, was soon to 
prove the least faithful. He betrayed Socrates, just as his uncles had done. 
These, besides betraying Socrates, had also tried to implicate him in their 
terrorist acts, but they did not succeed, since he resisted. Plato tried to 
implicate Socrates in his grandiose attempt to construct the theory of the 
arrested society; and he had no difficulty in succeeding, for Socrates was 
dead. 

I know of course that this judgement will seem outrageously harsh, 
even to those who are critical of Plato—. But if we look upon the Apology 
and the Crito as Socrates' last will, and if we compare these testaments of 
his old age with Plato's testament, the Laws, then it is difficult to judge 



otherwise. Socrates had been condemned, but his death was not intended 
by the initiators of the trial. Plato's Laws remedy this lack of intention. 
Here he elaborates coolly and carefully the theory of inquisition. Free 
thought, criticism of political institutions, teaching new ideas to the 
young, attempts to introduce new religious practices or even opinions, are 
all pronounced capital crimes. In Plato's state, Socrates might have never 
been given the opportunity of defending himself publicly; and he 
certainly would have been handed over to the secret Nocturnal Council 
for the purpose of 'attending' to his diseased soul, and finally for 
punishing it. 

I cannot doubt the fact of Plato's betrayal, nor that his use of Socrates 
as the main speaker of the Republic was the most successful attempt to 
implicate him. But it is another question whether this attempt was 
conscious. 

In order to understand Plato we must visualize the whole contemporary 
situation. After the Peloponnesian war, the strain of civilization was felt 
as strongly as ever. The old oligarchic hopes were still alive, and the 
defeat of Athens had even tended to encourage them. The class struggle 
continued. Yet Critias' attempt to destroy democracy by carrying out the 
programme of the Old Oligarch had failed. It had not failed through lack 
of determination; the most ruthless use of violence had been 
unsuccessful, in spite of favourable circumstances in the shape of 
powerful support from victorious Sparta. Plato felt that a complete 
reconstruction of the programme was needed. The Thirty had been beaten 
in the realm of power politics largely because they had offended the 
citizens' sense of justice. The defeat had been largely a moral defeat. The 
faith of the Great Generation had proved its strength. The Thirty had 
nothing of this kind to offer; they were moral nihilists. The programme of 
the Old Oligarch, Plato felt, could not be revived without basing it upon 
another faith, upon a persuasion which re-affirmed the old values of 



tribalism, opposing them to the faith of the open society. Men must be 
taught that justice is inequality, and that the tribe, the collective, stands 
higher than the individual—. But since Socrates' faith was too strong to 
be challenged openly, Plato was driven to re- interpret it as a faith in the 
closed society. This was difficult; but it was not impossible. For had not 
Socrates been killed by the democracy? Had not democracy lost any right 
to claim him? And had not Socrates always criticized the anonymous 
multitude as well as its leaders for their lack of wisdom? It was not so 
very difficult, moreover, to re-interpret Socrates as having recommended 
the rule of the 'educated', the learned philosophers. In this interpretation, 
Plato was much encouraged when he discovered that it was also part of 
the ancient Pythagorean creed; and most of all, when he found, in 
Archytas of Tarentum, a Pythagorean sage as well as a great and 
successful statesman. Here, he felt, was the solution of the riddle. Had not 
Socrates himself encouraged his disciples to participate in politics? Did 
this not mean that he wanted the enlightened, the wise, to rule? What a 
difference between the crudity of the ruling mob of Athens and the 
dignity of an Archytas! Surely Socrates, who had never stated his solution 
of the constitutional problem, must have had Pythagoreanism in mind. 

In this way Plato may have found that it was possible to give by 
degrees a new meaning to the teaching of the most influential member of 
the Great Generation, and to persuade himself that an opponent whose 
overwhelming strength he would never have dared to attack directly, was 
an ally. This, I believe, is the simplest interpretation of the fact that Plato 
retained Socrates as his main speaker even after he had departed so 
widely from his teaching that he could no longer deceive himself about 
this deviation—. But it is not the whole story. He felt, I believe, in the 
depth of his soul, that Socrates' teaching was very different indeed from 
this presentation, and that he was betraying Socrates. And I think that 
Plato's continuous efforts to make Socrates re-interpret himself are at the 



same time Plato's efforts to quiet his own bad conscience. By trying 
again and again to prove that his teaching was only the logical 
development of the true Socratic doctrine, he tried to persuade himself 
that he was not a traitor. 

In reading Plato we are, I feel, witnesses of an inner conflict, of a truly 
titanic struggle in Plato's mind. Even his famous 'fastidious reserve, the 
suppression of his own personality'—, or rather, the attempted 
suppression — for it is not at all difficult to read between the lines — is an 
expression of this struggle. And I believe that Plato's influence can partly 
be explained by the fascination of this conflict between two worlds in one 
soul, a struggle whose powerful repercussions upon Plato can be felt 
under that surface of fastidious reserve. This struggle touches our 
feelings, for it is still going on within ourselves. Plato was the child of a 
time which is still our own. (We must not forget that it is, after all, only a 
century since the abolition of slavery in the United States, and even less 
since the abolition of serfdom in Central Europe.) Nowhere does this 
inner struggle reveal itself more clearly than in Plato's theory of the soul. 
That Plato, with his longing for unity and harmony, visualized the 
structure of the human soul as analogous to that of a class-divided 
society— shows how deeply he must have suffered. 

Plato's greatest conflict arises from the deep impression made upon 
him by the example of Socrates, but his own oligarchic inclinations strive 
only too successfully against it. In the field of rational argument, the 
struggle is conducted by using the argument of Socrates' 
humanitarianism against itself. What appears to be the earliest example 
of this kind can be found in the Euthyphro—. I am not going to be like 
Euthyphro, Plato assures himself; I shall never take it upon myself to 
accuse my own father, my own venerated ancestors, of having sinned 
against a law and a humanitarian morality which is on the level of vulgar 
piety. Even if they took human life, it was, after all, only the lives of their 



own serfs, who are no better than criminals; and it is not my task to judge 
them. Did not Socrates show how hard it is to know what is right and 
wrong, pious and impious? And was he not himself prosecuted for 
impiety by these so-called humanitarians? Other traces of Plato's 
struggle can, I believe, be found in nearly every place where he turns 
against humanitarian ideas, especially in thQ Republic. His evasiveness 
and his resort to scorn in combating the equalitarian theory of justice, his 
hesitant preface to his defence of lying, to his introduction of racialism, 
and to his definition of justice, have all been mentioned in previous 
chapters. But perhaps the clearest expression of the conflict can be found 
in thQ Menexenus, that sneering reply to Pericles' funeral oration. Here, I 
feel, Plato gives himself away. In spite of his attempt to hide his feelings 
behind irony and scorn, he cannot but show how deeply he was impressed 
by Pericles' sentiments. This is how Plato makes his 'Socrates' 
maliciously describe the impression made upon him by Pericles' oration: 
'A feeling of exultation stays with me for more than three days; not until 
the fourth or fifth day, and not without an effort, do I come to my senses 
and realize where I am.'— Who can doubt that Plato reveals here how 
seriously he was impressed by the creed of the open society, and how 
hard he had to struggle to come to his senses and to realize where he was 
— namely, in the camp of its enemies? 



VII 

Plato's strongest argument in this struggle was, I believe, sincere: 
According to the humanitarian creed, he argued, we should be ready to 
help our neighbours. The people need help badly, they are unhappy, they 
labour under a severe strain, a sense of drift. There is no certainty, no 



security— in life, when everything is in flux. I am ready to help them. But 
I cannot make them happy without going to the root of the evil. 

And he found the root of the evil. It is the 'Fall of Man', the breakdown 
of the closed society. This discovery convinced him that the Old Oligarch 
and his followers had been fundamentally right in favouring Sparta 
against Athens, and in aping the Spartan programme of arresting change. 
But they had not gone far enough; their analysis had not been carried 
sufficiently deep. They had not been aware of the fact, or had not cared 
for it, that even Sparta showed signs of decay, in spite of its heroic effort 
to arrest all change; that even Sparta had been half-hearted in her 
attempts at controlling breeding in order to eliminate the causes of the 
Fall, the 'variations' and 'irregularities' in the number as well as the 
quality of the ruling race—. (Plato realized that population increase was 
one of the causes of the Fall.) Also, the Old Oligarch and his followers 
had thought, in their superficiality, that with the help of a tyranny, such 
as that of the Thirty, they would be able to restore the good old days. 
Plato knew better. The great sociologist saw clearly that these tyrannies 
were supported by, and that they were kindling in their turn, the modern 
revolutionary spirit; that they were forced to make concessions to the 
equalitarian cravings of the people; and that they had indeed played an 
important part in the breakdown of tribalism. Plato hated tyranny. Only 
hatred can see as sharply as he did in his famous description of the tyrant. 
Only a genuine enemy of tyranny could say that tyrants must 'stir up one 
war after another in order to make the people feel the need of a general', 
of a saviour from extreme danger. Tyranny, Plato insisted, was not the 
solution, nor any of the current oligarchies. Although it is imperative to 
keep the people in their place, their suppression is not an end in itself. 
The end must be the complete return to nature, a complete cleaning of the 
canvas. 

The difference between Plato's theory on the one hand, and that of the 



Old Oligarch and the Thirty on the other, is due to the influence of the 
Great Generation. Individualism, equalitarianism, faith in reason and love 
of freedom were new, powerful, and, from the point of view of the 
enemies of the open society, dangerous sentiments that had to be fought. 
Plato had himself felt their influence, and, within himself, he had fought 
them. His answer to the Great Generation was a truly great effort. It was 
an effort to close the door which had been opened, and to arrest society 
by casting upon it the spell of an alluring philosophy, unequalled in depth 
and richness. In the political field he added but little to the old oligarchic 
programme against which Pericles had once argued—. But he discovered, 
perhaps unconsciously, the great secret of the revolt against freedom, 
formulated in our own day by Pareto— ; ' To take advantage of sentiments, 
not wasting one's energies in futile efforts to destroy them .' Instead of 
showing his hostility to reason, he charmed all intellectuals with his 
brilliance, flattering and thrilling them by his demand that the learned 
should rule. Although arguing against justice he convinced all righteous 
men that he was its advocate. Not even to himself did he fully admit that 
he was combating the freedom of thought for which Socrates had died; 
and by making Socrates his champion he persuaded all others that he was 
fighting for it. Plato thus became, unconsciously, the pioneer of the many 
propagandists who, often in good faith, developed the technique of 
appealing to moral, humanitarian sentiments, for anti-humanitarian, 
immoral purposes. And he achieved the somewhat surprising effect of 
convincing even great humanitarians of the immorality and selfishness of 
their creed—. I do not doubt that he succeeded in persuading himself. He 
transfigured his hatred of individual initiative, and his wish to arrest all 
change, into a love of justice and temperance, of a heavenly state in 
which everybody is satisfied and happy and in which the crudity of 
money- grabbing— is replaced by laws of generosity and friendship. This 
dream of unity and beauty and perfection, this aestheticism and holism 



and collectivism, is the product as well as the symptom of the lost group 
spirit of tribalism—. It is the expression of, and an ardent appeal to, the 
sentiments of those who suffer from the strain of civilization. (It is part 
of the strain that we are becoming more and more painfully aware of the 
gross imperfections in our life, of personal as well as of institutional 
imperfection; of avoidable suffering, of waste and of unnecessary 
ugliness; and at the same time of the fact that it is not impossible for us 
to do something about all this, but that such improvements would be just 
as hard to achieve as they are important. This awareness increases the 
strain of personal responsibility, of carrying the cross of being human.) 



VIII 



Socrates had refused to compromise his personal integrity. Plato, with all 
his uncompromising canvas-cleaning, was led along a path on which he 
compromised his integrity with every step he took. He was forced to 
combat free thought, and the pursuit of truth. He was led to defend lying, 
political miracles, tabooistic superstition, the suppression of truth, and 
ultimately, brutal violence. In spite of Socrates' warning against 
misanthropy and misology, he was led to distrust man and to fear 
argument. In spite of his own hatred of tyranny, he was led to look to a 
tyrant for help, and to defend the most tyrannical measures. By the 
internal logic of his anti-humanitarian aim, the internal logic of power, he 
was led unawares to the same point to which once the Thirty had been 
led, and at which, later, his friend Dio arrived, and others among his 
numerous tyrant-disciples—. He did not succeed in arresting social 
change. (Only much later, in the dark ages, was it arrested by the magic 
spell of the Platonic-Aristotelian essentialism.) Instead, he succeeded in 



binding himself, by his own spell, to powers which once he had hated. 

The lesson which we thus should learn from Plato is the exact opposite 
of what he tries to teach us. It is a lesson which must not be forgotten. 
Excellent as Plato's sociological diagnosis was, his own development 
proves that the therapy he recommended is worse than the evil he tried to 
combat. Arresting political change is not the remedy; it cannot bring 
happiness. We can never return to the alleged innocence and beauty of the 
closed society—. Our dream of heaven cannot be realized on earth. Once 
we begin to rely upon our reason, and to use our powers of criticism, once 
we feel the call of personal responsibilities, and with it, the responsibility 
of helping to advance knowledge, we cannot return to a state of implicit 
submission to tribal magic. For those who have eaten of the tree of 
knowledge, paradise is lost. The more we try to return to the heroic age of 
tribalism, the more surely do we arrive at the Inquisition, at the Secret 
Police, and at a romanticized gangsterism. Beginning with the 
suppression of reason and truth, we must end with the most brutal and 
violent destruction of all that is human—. There is no return to a 
harmonious state of nature. If we turn back, then we must go the whole 
way — we must return to the beasts. 

It is an issue which we must face squarely, hard though it may be for us 
to do so. If we dream of a return to our childhood, if we are tempted to 
rely on others and so be happy, if we shrink from the task of carrying our 
cross, the cross of humaneness, of reason, of responsibility, if we lose 
courage and flinch from the strain, then we must try to fortify ourselves 
with a clear understanding of the simple decision before us. We can 
return to the beasts. But if we wish to remain human, then there is only 
one way, the way into the open society. We must go on into the unknown, 
the uncertain and insecure, using what reason we may have to plan as 
well as we can for both security and freedom. 



Addenda 



I 

Plato and Geometry (1957) 

In the second edition of this book, I made a lengthy addition to note 9 to 
chapter 6 (pp. 248 to 253). The historical hypothesis propounded in this 
note was later amplified in my paper 'The Nature of Philosophical 
Problems and Their Roots in Science' {British Journal for the Philosophy 
of Science, 3, 1952, pp. 124 ff.; now also in my Conjectures and 
Refutations). It may be restated as follows: (1) the discovery of the 
irrationality of the square root of two which led to the breakdown of the 
Pythagorean programme of reducing geometry and cosmology (and 
presumably all knowledge) to arithmetic, produced a crisis in Greek 
mathematics; (2) Euclid's Elements are not a textbook of geometry, but 
rather the final attempt of the Platonic School to resolve this crisis by 
reconstructing the whole of mathematics and cosmology on a geometrical 
basis, in order to deal with the problem of irrationality systematically 
rather thanaJ hoc, thus inverting the Pythagorean programme of 
arithmetization; (3) it was Plato who first conceived the programme later 
carried out by Euclid: it was Plato who first recognized the need for a 
reconstruction; who chose geometry as the new basis, and the geometrical 
method of proportion as the new method; who drew up the programme 
for di geometrization of mathematics, including arithmetic, astronomy, 
and cosmology; and who became the founder of the geometrical picture 



of the world, and thereby also the founder of modern science — of the 
science of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. 

I suggested that the famous inscription over the door of Plato's 
Academy (p. 248, (2)) alluded to this programme of geometrization. 
(That it was intended to announce an inversion of the Pythagorean 
programme seems likely in view of Archytas, fragment A, Diels-Kranz.) 

In the middle of the last paragraph on p. 249 I suggested 'that Plato 
was one of the first to develop a specifically geometrical method aiming 
at rescuing what could be rescued ... from the breakdown of 
Pythagoreanism'; and I described this suggestion as 'a highly uncertain 
historical hypothesis'. I no longer think that the hypothesis is so very 
uncertain. On the contrary, I now feel that a re-reading of Plato, Aristotle, 
Euclid, and Proclus, in the light of this hypothesis, would produce as 
much corroborating evidence as one could expect. In addition to the 
confirming evidence referred to in the paragraph quoted, I now wish to 
add that already ih^Gorgias (451a/b; c; 453e) takes the discussion of 
'odd' and 'even' as characteristic of arithmetic, thereby, clearly 
identifying arithmetic with Pythagorean number theory, while 
characterizing the geometer as the man who adopts the method of 
proportions (465b/c). Moreover, in the passage from the Gorgias (508a) 
Plato speaks not only of geometrical equality (cp. note 48 to chapter 8) 
but he also states implicitly the principle which he was later to develop 
fully in thQ Timaeus: that the cosmic order is di geometrical order. 
Incidentally, the Gorgias also proves that the word 'alogos' was not 
associated in Plato's mind with irrational numbers, since 465a says that 
even a technique, or art, must not be alogos; which would hold a fortiori 
for a science such as geometry. I think we may simply translate 'alogos' 
as 'alogical'. (Cp. also Gorgias 496a/b; and 522e.) The point is important 
for the interpretation of the title of Democritus's lost book, mentioned 
earlier on p. 249. 



My paper on 'The Nature of Philosophical Problems' (see above) 
contains some further suggestions concerning Plato's geometrization oj 
arithmetic and of cosmology in general (his inversion of the Pythagorean 
programme), and his theory of forms. 

Added in 1961 

Since this addendum was first published in 1957, in the third edition of 
this book, I have found, almost by accident, some interesting 
corroboration of the historical hypothesis formulated above, in the first 
paragraph under (2). It is a passage in Proclus' commentaries to the First 
Book of Euclid's Elements (ed. Friedlein, 1873, Prologus ii, p. 71, 2-5) 
from which it becomes clear that there existed a tradition according to 
which Euclid's elements were a Platonic cosmology, a treatment of the 
problems of the Timaeus. 

II 

The Dating of the Theaetetus (1961) 

There is a hint in note 50 (6), to chapter 8, p. 281, that 'the Theaetetus is 
perhaps (as against the usual assumption) earlier than the Republic'. This 
suggestion was made to me by the late Dr. Robert Eisler in a conversation 
not long before his death in 1949. But since he did not tell me any more 
about his conjecture than that it was partly based on Theaetetus 174e, f. — 
the crucial passage whose post-Republican dating did not seem to me to 
fit into my theory — I felt that there was not sufficient evidence for it, and 
that it was too ad hoc to justify me in publicly saddling Eisler with the 



responsibility for it. 

However, I have since found quite a number of independent arguments 
in favour of an earlier dating of the Theaetetus, and I therefore wish now 
to acknowledge Eisler's original suggestion. 

Since Eva Sachs (cp. Socrates, 5, 1917, 531 f.) established that the 
proem of the Theaetetus, as we know it, was written after 369, the 
conjecture of a Socratic core and an early dating involves another — ^that 
of an earlier lost edition, revised by Plato after Theaetetus' death. The 
latter conjecture was proposed independently by various scholars, even 
before the discovery of a papyrus (ed. by Diels, Berlin, Klassikerhefte, 2, 
1905) that contains part of a Commentary to the Theaetetus and refers to 
two distinct editions. The following arguments seem to support both 
conjectures. 

(1) Certain passages in Aristotle seem to allude to the Theaetetus: they 
fit the text of the Theaetetus perfectly, and they claim, at the same time, 
that the ideas there expressed belong to Socrates rather than to Plato. The 
passages I have in mind are the ascription to Socrates of the invention of 
induction {Metaphysics 1078b 17-33; cp. 987b 1 and 1086b3) which, I 
think, is an allusion to Socrates' maieutic (developed at length in the 
Theaetetus), his method of helping the pupil to perceive the true essence 
of a thing through purging his mind of his false prejudices; and the 
further ascription to Socrates of the attitude so strongly expressed again 
and again in the Theaetetus: 'Socrates used to ask questions and not to 
answer them; for he used to confess that he did not know' {Soph. EL 
183b7). (These passages are discussed, in a different context, in my 
lecture On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance, Proceedings of 
the British Academy, 46, 1960 (see especially p. 50) which is also 
separately published by Oxford University Press and is now included in 
my Conjectures and Refutations.) 

(2) The Theaetetus has a surprisingly inconclusive ending, even though 



it turns out that it was so planned and prepared almost from the 
beginning. (In fact, as an attempt to solve the problem of knowledge 
which it ostensibly tries to do, this beautiful dialogue is a complete 
failure.) But endings of a similarly inconclusive nature are known to be 
characteristic of a number of early dialogues. 

(3) 'Know thyself is interpreted, as in the Apology, as 'Know how 
little you know'. In his final speech Socrates says 'After this, Theaetetus 
. . . you will be less harsh and gentler to your associates, for you will have 
the wisdom not to think that you know what you do not know. So much 
my art [of maieutic] can accomplish; nor do I know any of the things that 
are known by others . . . ' 

(4) That ours is a second edition, revised by Plato, seems likely, 
especially in view of the fact that the Introduction to the dialogue (142a 
to the end of 143c) which might well have been added as a memorial to a 
great man, actually contradicts a passage which may have survived the 
revision of the earlier edition of this dialogue; I mean its very end which, 
like a number of other early dialogues, alludes to Socrates' trial as 
imminent. The contradiction consists in the fact that Euclid, who appears 
as a character in the Introduction and who narrates how the dialogue 
came to be written down, tells us (142c/d, 143a) that he went repeatedly 
to Athens (from Megara, presumably), using every time the opportunity 
of checking his notes with Socrates, and making 'corrections' here and 
there. This is told in a way which makes it quite clear that the dialogue 
itself must have taken place at least several months before Socrates' trial 
and death; but this is inconsistent with the ending of the dialogue. (I have 
not seen any reference to this point, but I cannot imagine that it has not 
been discussed by some Platonist.) It may even be that the reference to 
'corrections', in 143a, and also the much discussed description of the 
'new style' in 143b-c (see for example C. Ritter's Plato, vol. I, 1910, pp. 
220 f.) were introduced in order to explain some deviations of the revised 



edition from the original edition. (This would make it possible to place 
the revised edition even after the Sophist.) 

Ill 

Reply to a Critic (1961) 

I have been asked to say something in reply to the critics of this volume. 
But before doing so, I should like to thank again those whose criticism 
has helped me to improve the book in various ways. 

Of the others — those I have come across — I feel reluctant to say much. 
In attacking Plato I have, as I now realize, offended and hurt many 
Platonists, and I am sorry for this. Still, I have been surprised by the 
violence of some of the reactions. 

I think most of the defenders of Plato have denied facts which, it seems 
to me, cannot be seriously denied. This is true even of the best of them: 
Professor Ronald B. Levinson in his monumental book (645 closely 
printed pages) In Defense of Plato. 

In trying to answer Professor Levinson I have before me two tasks of 
very unequal importance. The less important task — defending myself 
against a number of accusations — ^will be tackled first (in section A), so 
that the more important task — replying to Professor Levinson 's defence 
of Plato (in section B) — will not be too much obscured by my personal 
defence. 



A 



The portrait of myself painted by Professor Levinson has caused me to 
doubt the truth of my own portrait of Plato; for if it is possible to derive 
from a living author's book so distorted an image of his doctrines and 
intentions, what hope can there be of producing anything like a true 
portrait of an author born almost twenty-four centuries ago? 

Yet how can I defend myself against being identified with the supposed 
original of the portrait painted by Professor Levinson? All I can do is to 
show that some at least of the mistranslations, misrepresentations, and 
distortions of Plato with which Professor Levinson charges me are really 
non-existent. And even this I can only do by analysing two or three 
representative samples, taken at random from hundreds: there seem to be 
more such charges in the book than there are pages. Thus all I can do is to 
prove that some at least of the most violent accusations levelled against 
me are baseless. 

I should have liked to do this without raising any counter-accusation of 
misquotation, etc.; but as this has turned out to be impossible, I wish to 
make it quite clear that I now see that Professor Levinson, like other 
Platonists, must have found my book not only exasperating, but almost 
sacrilegious. And since I am that man by whom the offence cometh, I 
must not complain if I am bitterly denounced. 

So let us examine a few of the relevant passages. 

Professor Levinson writes (p. 273, note 72) of me: 'As with others of 
whom he disapproves, so here with Critias, Popper has further blackened 
his character by exaggeration. For the verses cited represent religion, 
though a fabrication, as being aimed at the general good of society, not at 
the selfish benefit of the cunning fabricator himself . 

Now if this means anything, it must mean that I have asserted, or at 
least hinted, in the passages quoted by Professor Levinson (that is, pp. 
179 and 140 of A, which corresponds to pp. 183-184, and pp. 142-143 of 
E-) that Critias' verses which I have quoted represent religion not only as 



a fabrication, but as a fabrication 'aimed ... at the selfish benefit of the 
cunning fabricator himself.' 

I deny that I either asserted, or even hinted at, anything of the kind. On 
the contrary, my concern has been to point out that the 'general good of 
society' is one of the dominant preoccupations of Plato, and that his 
attitude in this respect 'is practically identical with that of Critias'. The 
basis of my criticism is clearly announced at the beginning of chapter 8 
(second paragraph) where I write: '"For the benefit of the city", says 
Plato. Again we find that the appeal to the principle of collective utility is 
the ultimate ethical consideration. ' 

What I assert is that this moral principle which posits 'the general 
good of society' as a moral aim, is not good enough as a basis of ethics; 
for example, that it leads to lying — 'for the general good of society' or 
'for the benefit of the city'. In other words, I try to show that ethical 
collectivism is mischievous, and that it corrupts. But I nowhere interpret 
Critias' quoted verses in the sense alleged by Professor Levinson. I 
should be inclined to ask 'Who blackens whose character by 
exaggeration?', were it not for the fact that I recognize that the severity 
of my attack was a provocation which excuses Professor Levinson's 
charges. But it does not make them true. 

A second example is this. Professor Levinson writes (pp. 354 f.): 'One 
of Popper's most extravagant assertions is that Plato had viewed as a 
"favourable circumstance" the presence in Athens of Spartan troops, 
summoned to assist the Thirty in maintaining themselves and their 
iniquitous regime and had felt no other emotion than approval at the 
thought of Athens beneath the Spartan yoke; he would have been 
prepared, we are led to suppose, to summon them again, if their presence 
could aid him in achieving his neooligarchical revolution. There is no 
text which Popper can cite in support of such a charge; it arises solely 
from his picture of Plato as a third head upon the double-headed monster 



he has created, called "the Old Oligarch and Critias"; it is guilt by 
association, the very ultimate example of the witch-hunt technique.' 

To this my reply is: if this is one of my 'most extravagant assertions', 
then I cannot have made any extravagant assertions. For this assertion 
was never made by me; nor does it fit into the picture which I have of 
Plato, and which I have tried — ^not wholly successfully, it seems — to 
convey. 

I do believe that Plato was led, by his distrust of the common man, and 
by his ethical collectivism, to approve of violence; but I simply never 
have made any assertion about Plato even faintly similar to the one which 
Professor Levinson here asserts, somewhat extravagantly, that I have 
made. There is therefore no text which Professor Levinson can cite in 
support of his charge that I have made this assertion: it arises solely from 
his picture of Popper as a third head upon the double-headed monster of 
Otto Neurath and J. A. Lauwerys which Professor Levinson has created; 
and as to 'guilt by association', I can only refer to Professor Levinson's 
p. 441. There he is 'helped towards answering this question' — the 
question of 'the predisposing cause that leads Popper chronically to 
indulge these sinister imaginings' — by associating me with 'an older 
compatriot of Popper's, the late versatile Austrian philosopher and 
sociologist, Otto Neurath'. (In fact neither Neurath nor I had any 
sympathy for the other's philosophy, as emerges only too clearly from 
Neurath's and my own writings; Neurath, for example, defended Hegel, 
and attacked both Kantianism and my own praise of Kant. Of Neurath's 
attack on Plato I heard for the first time when I read about it in Professor 
Levinson's book; and I have not yet seen Neurath's relevant papers.) 

But to return to my alleged 'extravagant assertion': what I actually said 
(p. 195E = 190A) about Plato's feelings is almost the opposite of what 
Professor Levinson (p. 354) reports. I did not at all suggest that Plato 
viewed as a 'favourable circumstance' the presence in Athens of Spartan 



troops, or that he 'felt no other emotion than approval at the thought of 
Athens beneath the Spartan yoke'. What I tried to convey, and what I 
said, was that the Thirty Tyrants had failed 'in spite of favourable 
circumstances in the shape of powerful support from victorious Sparta'; 
and I suggested that Plato saw the cause of their failure — just as I do — in 
the moral failure of the Thirty. I wrote: 'Plato felt that a complete 
reconstruction of the programme was needed. The Thirty had been beaten 
in the realm of power politics largely because they had offended the 
citizens' sense of justice. The defeat had been largely a moral defeat.' 

This is all I say here of Plato's feelings. (I say twice 'Plato felt'.) I 
suggest that the failure of the Thirty induced a partial moral conversion 
in Plato — though not a sufficiently far-reaching one. There is no 
suggestion here of those feelings which Professor Levinson makes me 
attribute to Plato; and I would never have dreamt that anybody could read 
this into my text. 

I certainly do attribute to Plato a measure of sympathy with the Thirty 
Tyrants and especially with their pro- Spartan aims. But this is of course 
something completely different from the 'extravagant assertions' which 
Professor Levinson attributes to me. I can only say that I did suggest that 
he admired his uncle Critias, the leader of the Thirty. I did suggest that he 
was in sympathy with some of Critias' aims and views. But I also said 
that he considered the oligarchy of the Thirty as a moral failure, and that 
this led him to reconstruct his collectivist morality. 

It will be seen that my answer to two of Professor Levinson' s charges 
has taken up almost as much space as the charges themselves. This is 
unavoidable; and I must therefore confine myself to only two further 
examples (out of hundreds), both connected with my alleged 
mistranslations of Plato's text. 

The first is Professor Levinson's allegation that I worsen, or 
exaggerate, Plato's text. 'Popper, however, as before, employs the 



unfavourable word "deport" in his translation, in place of "send out",' 
writes Professor Levinson on p. 349, note 244. But this is simply a 
mistake — Professor Levinson's mistake. If he looks at the passage again, 
he will find that I employ the word 'deport' where his translation — or 
rather Fowler's — uses 'banish'. (The part of the passage in which 
Fowler's translation uses 'send out' simply does not occur in my 
quotation but is replaced by dots.) 

As a consequence of this mistake, it turns out that, in this context. 
Professor Levinson's remark 'as before' is highly appropriate. For before 
the passage just discussed he writes of me (p. 348, note 243): 'Popper 
reenforces his interpretation [p. 166E = p. 162A] of the Platonic passage 
[Rep. 540e/541a] by slight inaccuracies in the translation, tending to give 
the impression of greater scorn or violence in Plato's attitude. Thus he 
translates "send away" (apopempo) as "expel and deport" . . . ' Now first 
of all, there is another of Professor Levinson's slips here (which makes 
two in two consecutive footnotes); for Plato does not use here the word 
'apopempd\ but the word 'ekpempd\ This certainly does not make much 
difference; yet 'ekpempo' has, at any rate, the ' ex' of ' expeP; and one of 
its dictionary meanings is 'to drive away' and another 'to send away in 
disgrace' (or 'to send away with the collateral notion of disgrace' as my 
edition of Liddell and Scott has it). The word is a somewhat stronger 
form of 'pempo' — 'to send off, 'to dispatch' — ^which, if used in 
connection with Hades ('to send to Hades') 'commonly means to send a 
living man to Hades, i.e. to kill him'. (I am quoting Liddell and Scott. 
Nowadays some people might even 'commonly' say 'to dispatch him'. 
Closely related is the meaning intended when Phaedrus tells us in Plato's 
Symposium 179e — a passage referred to by Professor Levinson on p. 348 
— that the gods, redeeming and honouring Achilles for his valour and his 
love of Patroclus, 'sent him to the Islands of the Blessed' — ^while Homer 
sent him to Hades.) It seems obvious that neither of the translations 



'expel' or 'deport' is open to criticism here on scholarly grounds. Yet 
Professor Levinson is open to criticism when he quotes me as writing 
'expel and deport' for I do not use the words in this way. (He would have 
been at least technically correct had he quoted me 'must be expelled ... 
and deported': the three dots make some difference here, for to write 
'expel and deport' could be an attempt to exaggerate, by way of 're- 
enforcing' the one expression with the other. Thus this slight inaccuracy 
tends to re-enforce my alleged misdeed — my alleged re-enforcing of my 
interpretation of this Platonic passage by slight inaccuracies in my 
translation.) 

But anyhow, this case amounts to nothing. For take the passage in 
Shorey's translation. (Shorey is, rightly, accepted as an authority by 
Professor Levinson.) 'AH inhabitants above the age of ten', Shorey 
translates, 'they [the 'philosophers' who have become 'masters of the 
state'] will send out into the fields, and they will take over the children, 
remove them from the manners and habits of their parents, and bring 
them up in their own customs and laws which will be such as we have 
described.' Now does this not say exactly what I said (though perhaps not 
quite as clearly as I did on my p. 166E = 162A)? For who can believe that 
the 'sending out' of 'all the inhabitants above the age of ten' can be 
anything but a violent expulsion and deportation? Would they just 
meekly go, leaving their children behind, when 'sent out', if they were 
not threatened, and compelled, by the 'philosophers' who have become 
'masters of the state'? (Professor Levinson's suggestion, p. 349, that they 
are sent to 'their . . . country estates, outside the city proper' is supported 
by him, ironically enough, with a reference to ihQ Symposium 179e and 
the 'Islands of the Blessed', the place to which Achilles was sent by the 
gods — or more precisely by Apollo's or Paris 's arrow. Gorgias, 526c, 
would have been a more appropriate reference.) 

In all this, there is an important principle involved. I mean the 



principle that there is no such thing as a literal translation', that all 
translations are interpretations; and that we always have to take the 
context into account, and even parallel passages. 

That the passages with which (on p. 166E = p. 162A) I have associated 
the one just quoted may indeed be so associated is confirmed by Shorey's 
own footnotes: he refers, especially, to the passage which I have called 
the 'canvas-cleaning' passage, and to the 'kill-and-banish' passage from 
the Statesman, 293 c-e. 'Whether they happen to rule by law or without 
law, over willing or unwilling subjects; ... and whether they purge the 
state for its good, by killing or by deporting [or, as Professor Levinson 
translates with Fowler, 'by killing or banishing'; see above] some of its 
citizens . . . this form of government must be declared to be the only one 
that is right.' (See my text, p. 166E = p. 162A.) 

Professor Levinson quotes (p. 349) part of this passage more fully than 
I do. Yet he omits to quote that part which I quoted as its commencement, 
'Whether they happen to rule by law or without law, over willing or 
unwilling subjects'. The point is interesting, because it fits Professor 
Levinson's attempt to make the kill-and-banish passage appear in an 
almost innocent light. Immediately after quoting the passage. Professor 
Levinson writes: 'Fair interpretation of this stated principle [I do not see 
any 'principle' here stated, unless it is that all is permitted if it is done 
for the benefit of the state] requires at least a brief indication of the 
general pattern of the dialogue.' In the course of this 'brief indication' of 
Plato's aims and tendencies, we hear — ^without a direct quotation from 
Plato — that 'Other traditional and currently accepted criteria, such as 
whether rule be exercised ... over willing or unwilling subjects, or in 
accord or not in accord with law, are rejected as irrelevant or non- 
essential'. The words from Professor Levinson's passage which I have 
here italicized will be seen to be a near-quotation of the commencement 
(not quoted by Professor Levinson) of my own quotation from Plato's 



kill-and-banish passage. Yet this commencement appears now in a very 
harmless light: no longer are the rulers told to kill and banish 'with or 
without law\ as I indicated; and Professor Levinson's readers get the 
impression that this question is here merely dismissed as a side issue — as 
'irrelevant' to the problem in hand. 

But Plato's readers, and even the participants in his dialogue, get a 
different impression. Even the 'Younger Socrates', who intervened just 
before (after the commencement of the passage as quoted by me) with the 
one exclamation 'Excellent!' is shocked by the lawlessness of the 
proposed killing; for immediately after the enunciation of the kill-and- 
banish principle (perhaps it really is a 'principle', after all) he says, in 
Fowler's translation (the italics are of course mine): 'Everything else that 
you have said seems reasonable; but that government [and such hard 
measures, too, it is implied] should be carried out without laws is a hard 
saying.' 

I think that this remark proves that the commencement of my quotation 
— 'by law or without law' — is really meant by Plato to be part of his kill- 
and-banish principle; that I was right in commencing the quotation where 
I did; and that Professor Levinson is simply mistaken when he suggests 
that 'with or without law' is here merely intended to mean that this is a 
question which is here 'rejected as irrelevant' to the essence of the 
problem in hand. 

In interpreting the kill-and-banish passage, Professor Levinson is 
clearly deeply disturbed; yet at the end of his elaborate attempt to defend 
Plato by comparing his practices with our own he arrives at the following 
view of the passage: 'Looked at in this context, Plato's statesman, with 
his apparent readiness to kill, banish, and enslave, where we should 
prescribe either the penitentiary, at one end, or psychiatric social service, 
at the other, loses much of his sanguinary coloration.' 

Now I do not doubt that Professor Levinson is a genuine humanitarian 



— a democrat and a liberal. But is it not perturbing to see that a genuine 
humanitarian, in his eagerness to defend Plato, can be led to compare in 
this fashion our admittedly very faulty penal practices and our no less 
faulty social services with the avowedly lawless killing and banishing 
(and enslaving) of citizens by the 'true statesman' — a good and wise man 
— 'for the benefit of the city'? Is this not a frightening example of the 
spell which Plato casts over many of his readers, and of the danger of 
Platonism? 

There is too much of this — all mixed with accusations against a largely 
imaginary Popper — for me to deal with. But I wish to say that I regard 
Professor Levinson's book not only as a very sincere attempt to defend 
Plato, but also as an attempt to see Plato in a new light. And though I 
have found only one passage — and quite an unimportant one — which has 
led me to think that, in this place, I interpreted Plato's text (though not 
his meaning) somewhat too freely, I do not wish to create the impression 
that Professor Levinson's is not a very good and interesting book — 
especially if we forget all about the scores of places where 'Popper' is 
quoted, or (as I have shown) slightly misquoted, and very often radically 
misunderstood. 

But more important than these personal questions is the question: how 
far does Professor Levinson's defence of Plato succeed? 



B 



I have learnt that when faced with a new attack on my book by a defender 
of Plato it is best to disregard the smaller points and to look for answers 
to the following five cardinal points. 



(1) How is my assertion met that thQ Republic and the Laws condemn 
the Socrates of the Apology (as pointed out in chapter 10, second 
paragraph of section vi)? As explained in a note (note 55 to chapter 10) 
the assertion was in effect made by Grote, and supported by Taylor. If it 
is fair — and I think it is — then it supports also my assertion mentioned in 
my next point, (2). 

(2) How is my assertion met that Plato's anti-liberal and anti- 
humanitarian attitude cannot possibly be explained by the alleged fact 
that better ideas were not known to him, or that he was, for those days, 
comparatively liberal and humanitarian? 

(3) How is my assertion met that Plato (for example in the canvas- 
cleaning passage of the Republic and in the kill-and-banish passage of the 
Statesman) encouraged his rulers to use ruthless violence 'for the benefit 
of the state'? 

(4) How is my assertion met that Plato established for his philosopher 
kings the duty and privilege of using lies and deceit for the benefit of the 
city, especially in connection with racial breeding, and that he was one of 
the founding fathers of racialism? 

(5) What is said in answer to my quotation of the passage from the 
Laws used as a motto for The Spell of Plato on p. 7 (and, as announced at 
the beginning of the Notes on p. 203, 'discussed in some detail in notes 
33 and 34 to chapter 6')? 

I often tell my students that what I say about Plato is — necessarily — 
merely an interpretation, and that I should not be surprised if Plato 
(should I ever meet his shade) were to tell me, and to establish to my 
satisfaction, that it is a misrepresentation; but I usually add that he would 
have quite a task to explain away a number of the things he had said. 

Has Professor Levinson succeeded on Plato's behalf in this task, 
regarding any of the five points mentioned above? 

I really do not think he has. 



(r) As to the first point, I ask anybody in doubt to read carefully the 
text of the last speech made by the Athenian Stranger in book X of the 
Laws (907d down to, say, 909d). The legislation there discussed is 
concerned with the type of crime of which Socrates was accused. My 
contention is that, while Socrates had a way out (most critics think, in 
view of the evidence of the Apology, that he would probably have escaped 
death had he been willing to accept banishment), Plato's Laws do not 
make any such provision. I shall quote from a passage in Bury's 
translation (which seems to be acceptable to Levinson) of this very long 
speech. After classifying his 'criminals' (that is, those guilty of 'impiety' 
or 'the disease of atheism': the translation is Bury's; cp. 908c), the 
Athenian Stranger discusses first 'those who, though they utterly 
disbelieve the existence of gods, possess by nature a just character ... and 
... are incapable of being induced to commit unjust actions'. (908b-c; 
this is almost a portrait — of course an unconscious one — of Socrates, 
apart from the important fact that he does not seem to have been an 
atheist, though accused of impiety and unorthodoxy.) About these Plato 
says: 

' . . . those criminals . . . being devoid of evil disposition and character, 
shall be placed by the judge according to law in the reformatory for a 
period of not less than five years, during which time no other of the 
citizens shall hold intercourse with them save only those who take part in 
the nocturnal assembly, and they shall company with them [I should 
translate 'they shall attend to them'] to minister to their soul's salvation 
by admonition ...' Thus the 'good' among the impious men get a 
minimum of five years of solitary confinement, only relieved by 
'attention' to their sick souls from the members of the Nocturnal Council. 
' . . . and when the period of their incarceration has expired, if any of them 
seems to be reformed, he shall dwell with those who are reformed, but if 
not, and if he be convicted again on a like charge, he shall be punished by 



death. ' 

I have nothing to add to this. 

(2') The second point is perhaps the most important from Professor 
Levinson's point of view: it is one of his main claims that I am mistaken 
in my assertion that there were humanitarians — ^better ones than Plato — 
among those whom I have called the 'Great Generation'. 

He asserts, in particular, that my picture of Socrates as a man very 
different from Plato in this respect is quite fictitious. 

Now I have devoted a very long footnote (note 56 to chapter 10), in 
fact quite an essay, to this problem — the Socratic Problems and I do not 
see any reason to change my views on it. But I wish to say here that I 
have received support in this historical conjecture of mine about the 
Socratic Problem, from a Platonic scholar of the eminence of Richard 
Robinson; support which is the more significant as Robinson castigates 
me severely (and perhaps justly) for the tone of my attack on Plato. 
Nobody who reads his review of my book {Philosophical Review, 60, 
1951) can accuse him of undue partiality for me; and Professor Levinson 
quotes him approvingly (p. 20) for speaking of my 'rage to blame' Plato. 
But although Professor Levinson (in a footnote on p. 20) refers to Richard 
Robinson as 'mingling praise and blame in his extensive review of the 
Open Society', and although (in another footnote, on p. 61) he rightly 
refers to Robinson as an authority about 'the growth of Plato's logic from 
its Socratic beginnings through its middle period'. Professor Levinson 
never tells his readers that Robinson agrees not only with my main 
accusations against Plato, but also, more especially, with my conjectural 
solution of the Socratic Problem. (Incidentally, Robinson also agrees that 
my quotation mentioned here in point (5) is correct; see below.) 

Since Robinson, as we have heard, 'mingles praise and blame', some of 
his readers (anxious to find confirmation for their 'rage to blame' me) 
may have overlooked the praise contained in the surprising last sentence 



of the following forceful passage from his review (p. 494): 

'Dr. Popper holds that Plato perverted the teaching of Socrates ... To 
him Plato is a very harmful force in politics but Socrates a very 
beneficial one. Socrates died for the right to talk freely to the young; but 
in the Republic Plato makes him take up an attitude of condescension and 
distrust towards them. Socrates died for truth and free speech; but in the 
Republic "Socrates" advocates lying. Socrates was intellectually modest; 
but in the Republic he is a dogmatist. Socrates was an individualist; but in 
the Republic he is a radical collectivist. And so on. 

'What is Dr. Popper's evidence for the views of the real Socrates? It is 
drawn exclusively from Plato himself, from the early dialogues, and 
primarily from thQ Apology. Thus the angel of light with whom he 
contrasts the demon Plato is known to us only from the demon's own 
account! Is this absurd? 

'It is not absurd, in my opinion, but entirely correct.' 

This passage shows that at least one scholar, admitted by Professor 
Levinson to be an authority on Plato, has found that my view on the 
Socratic Problem is not absurd. 

But even if my conjectural solution of the Socratic Problem should be 
mistaken, there is plenty of evidence left for the existence of 
humanitarian tendencies in this period. 

Concerning the speech of Hippias, to be found in Plato's Protagoras, 
337e (see above p. 70; Professor Levinson seems for once not to object to 
my translation; see his p. 144), Professor Levinson writes (p. 147): 'We 
must begin by assuming that Plato is here reflecting faithfully a well- 
known sentiment of Hippias.' So far Professor Levinson and I agree. But 
we disagree completely about the relevance of Hippias' speech. On this I 
have now even stronger views than those I expressed in the text of this 
volume. (Incidentally, I don't think I ever asserted that there was 
evidence that Hippias was an opponent of slavery; what I said of him was 



that 'this spirit was bound up with the Athenian movement against 
slavery'; thus Professor Levinson's elaborate argument that I am not 
justified 'in including him [Hippias] among the opponents of slavery' is 
pointless.) 

I now see Hippias' speech as a manifesto — the first perhaps — of a 
humanitarian faith which inspired the ideas of the Enlightenment and the 
French Revolution: that all men are brothers, and that it is conventional, 
man-made, law and custom which divide them and which are the source 
of much avoidable unhappiness; so that it is not impossible for men to 
make things better by a change in the laws — ^by legal reform. These ideas 
also inspired Kant. And Schiller speaks of conventional law as 'the 
fashion' which sternly (' streng') — Beethoven says 'insolently' ('frech') 
— divides mankind. 

As to slavery, my main contention is that the Republic contains 
evidence of the existence of tendencies in Athens which may be described 
as opposition to slavery. Thus the 'Socrates' of the Republic (563b) says, 
in a speech satirizing Athenian democracy (I quoted it in chapter 4, ii, p. 
43E = p. 44 A; but I am here using Shorey's translation): 'And the climax 
of popular liberty ... is attained in such a city when the purchased slaves, 
male and female, are no less free than the owners who paid for them.' 

Shorey has a number of cross-references to this passage (see footnote 
below); but the passage speaks for itself. Levinson says of this passage 
elsewhere (p. 176): 'Let us contribute the just-quoted passage to help fill 
the modest inventory of Plato's social sins', and on the next page he 
refers to it when he speaks of 'Another instance of Platonic hauteur'. But 
this is no answer to my contention that, taken together with a second 
passage from the Republic quoted in my text (p. 43E = p. 44A), this first 
passage supplies evidence of an anti-slavery movement. The second 
passage (which follows in Plato immediately after an elaboration of the 
first, here quoted at the end of the preceding paragraph) reads in Shorey's 



translation {Republic 563d; the previous passage v^diS Republic 563b): 
'And do you know that the sum total of all these items ... is that they 
render the souls of the citizens so sensitive that they chafe at the slightest 
suggestion of servitude [I translated 'slavery'] and will not endure it?' 

How does Professor Levinson deal with this evidence? First, by 
separating the two passages: the first he does not discuss until p. 176, 
long after he has smashed to bits (on p. 153) my alleged evidence 
concerning an anti-slavery movement. The second he dismisses on p. 153 
as a grotesque mistranslation of mine; for he writes there: 'Yet it is all a 
mistake; though Plato uses the word douleia (slavery or servitude), it 
bears only a figurative allusion [my italics] to slavery in the usual sense.' 

This may sound plausible when the passage is divorced from its 
immediate predecessor (only mentioned by Professor Levinson more than 
twenty pages later, where he explains it by Plato's hauteur); but in its 
context — in connection with Plato's complaint about the licentious 
behaviour of slaves (and even of animals) — ^there can be no doubt 
whatever that, in addition to the meaning which Professor Levinson 
correctly ascribes to the passage, the passage also bears a second meaning 
which takes 'douleia' quite literally; for it says, and it means, that the 
free democratic citizens cannot stand slavery in any form — ^not only do 
they not submit themselves to any suggestion of servitude (not even to 
laws, as Plato goes on to say), but they have become so tender-hearted 
that they cannot bear 'even the slightest suggestion of servitude' — such 
as the slavery of 'purchased slaves, male or female'. 

Professor Levinson (p. 153, after discussing Plato's second passage) 
asks: 'in the light of the evidence ... what, then, can fairly be said to 
remain standing in Popper's case ...? The simplest answer is "Nothing," 
if words are taken in anything like their literal sense.' Yet his own case 
rests upon taking 'douleia\ in a context which clearly refers to slavery, 
not in its literal sense but as 'only a figurative allusion', as he himself has 



put it a few lines earlier.- 

And yet, he says of the grotesque 'mistake' I made in translating 
'douleia' literally: 'This misreading has borne fruit in the preface to 
Sherwood Anderson's play Barefoot in Athens . . . where the unsuspecting 
playwright, following Popper' (Professor Levinson asserts on p. 24 that 
'the Andersonian version of Plato plainly bespeaks a close and docile 
reading of Popper', but he gives no evidence for this strange accusation) 
'passes on to his readers in turn the allusion, and declares flatly ... as on 
Plato's own authority, that the Athenians ... "advocate[d] the 
manumission of all slaves" . . . ' 

Now this remark of Maxwell (not Sherwood) Anderson's may well be 
an exaggeration. But where have I said anything similar to this? And what 
is the worth of a case if, in its defence, the defender has to exaggerate the 
views of his opponent, or blacken them by associating them with the 
(alleged) guilt of some 'docile' reader? (See also the Index to this 
volume, under 'Slavery'.) 

(3') My contention that Plato encouraged his rulers to use ruthless and 
lawless violence, though it is combated by Professor Levinson, is 
nowhere really denied by him, as will be seen from his discussion of the 
'kill-and-banish' passage of the Statesman mentioned in this Addendum 
towards the end of section A. All he denies is that a number of other 
passages in the Republic — the canvas-cleaning passages — are similar, as 
both Shorey and I think. Apart from this, he tries to derive comfort and 
moral support from some of our modern violent practices — a comfort 
which, I fear, will be diminished if he re-reads the passage of the 
Statesman together with its commencement, quoted by me, but first 
omitted by Professor Levinson, and later dismissed as irrelevant. 

(4') As to Plato's racialism, and his injunction to his rulers to use lies 
and deceit for the benefit of the state, I wish to remind my readers, before 
entering into any discussion with Professor Levinson, of Kant's saying 



(see p. 139E = p. 137A) that though 'truthfulness is the best policy' might 
be questionable, 'truthfulness is better than policy' is beyond dispute. 

Professor Levins on writes (p. 434, referring to my pp. 138 ff. E = pp. 
136 ff. A, and especially to p. 150E = p. 148A) very fairly: 'First of all, 
we must agree that the use of lies in certain circumstances is advocated 
[my italics] in the Republic for purposes of government This, after 
all, is my main point. No attempt to play it down or to diminish its 
significance — and no counterattack on my alleged exaggerations — should 
be allowed to obscure this admission. 

Professor Levinson also admits, in the same place, that 'there can be no 
doubt that some use of the persuasive art of speech would be required to 
make the auxiliaries "blame chance and not the rulers" when they are told 
[see my p. 150E = p. 148 A] that the fall of the lot has determined their 
marriages, whereas really these are engineered by the rulers for eugenic 
reasons'. 

This was my second main point. 

Professor Levinson continues (pp. 434 f.; my italics): 'In this instance 
we have the only sanctioning by Plato of an outright practical lie,- to be 
told, to be sure, for benevolent reasons (and only for such purposes does 
Plato sanction the telling), but a lie and nothing more. We, like Popper, 
find this policy distasteful. This lie, then, and any others like it which 
Plato's rather general permission might justify, constitute such basis as 
exists for Popper's charge that Plato proposes to use "lying propaganda" 
in his city.' 

Is this not enough? Let us assume that I was wrong in my other points 
(which, of course, I deny), does not all this at least excuse my suspicion 
that Plato would not have scrupled to make some further use of his 
'rather general permission' of 'the use of lies' — especially in view of the 
fact that he actually 'advocated' the 'use of lies' as Professor Levinson 
has it? 



Moreover, the lying is here used in connection with 'eugenics', or 
more precisely, with the breeding of the master race — ^the race of the 
guardians. 

In defending Plato against my accusation that he was a racialist 
Professor Levinson tries to compare him favourably with some 
'notorious' modem totalitarian racialists whose names I have tried to 
keep out of my book. (And I shall continue to do so.) He says of these (p. 
541; my italics) that their 'breeding schedule' 'was primarily intended to 
preserve the purity of the master race, din aim which we have been at 
some pains to show Plato did not share.' 

Did he not? Was my quotation from one of the main eugenic 
discussions of the Republic (460c) perhaps a mistranslation? I wrote (p. 
51E = p. 52A); I am here introducing new italics): 

'''The race of the guardians must be kept pure'\ says Plato (in defence 
of infanticide) when developing the racialist argument that we breed 
animals with great care while neglecting our own race, an argument 
which has been repeated ever since.' 

Is my translation wrong? Or my assertion that this has been, ever since 
Plato, the main argument of racialists and breeders of the master race? Or 
are the guardians not the masters of Plato's best city? 

As to my translation, Shorey puts it a little differently; I shall quote 
from his translation (the italics are mine) also the preceding sentence 
(referring to infanticide): the offspring of the inferior, and any of 
those of the other sort who are bom defective, they [the rulers] will 
properly dispose of in secret, so that no one will know what has become 
of them. "That is the condition," he said, "of preserving the purity of the 
guardian 's breed 

It will be seen that Shorey 's last sentence is slightly weaker than mine. 
But the difference is trifling, and does not affect my thesis. And at any 
rate, I stick to my translation. 'At all events the breed of the guardians 



must be preserved pure' or 'If at all events [as we agree] the purity of the 
breed of the guardians must be preserved' would be a translation which, 
using some of Shorey's words, brings out precisely the same meaning as 
my translation in the body of the book (p. 5 IE = p. 52A) and here 
repeated. 

I cannot see, therefore, what the difference is between Professor 
Levinson's formulation of that 'notorious ... breeding schedule' of the 
totalitarians, and Plato's formulation of his own breeding aims. Whatever 
minor difference there may be is irrelevant to the central question. 

As to the problem whether Plato allowed — very exceptionally — a 
mingling of his races (which would be the consequence of promoting a 
member of the lower race), opinions may differ. I still believe that what I 
said is true. But I cannot see that it would make any difference if 
exceptions were permitted. (Even those modern totalitarians to whom 
Professor Levinson alludes permitted exceptions.) 

(5') I have been repeatedly and severely attacked for quoting — or rather 
misquoting — a passage from the Laws which I have taken as one of the 
two mottos of The Spell of Plato (the other and contrasting passage is 
from Pericles' funeral oration). These mottos were printed by my 
American publishers on the jacket of the American edition; the English 
editions have no such advertisement. As is usual with jackets, I was not 
consulted by the publishers about them. (But I certainly have no objection 
to my American publishers' choice: why should they not print my mottos 
— or anything else I wrote in the book — on their jackets?) 

My translation and interpretation of this passage has been pronounced 
to be correct by Richard Robinson, as mentioned above; but others went 
so far as to ask me whether I had not consciously tried to hide its identity, 
in order to make it impossible for my readers to check the text! And this 
although I have taken more trouble, I think, than most authors to make it 
possible for my readers to check any passage quoted or referred to. Thus I 



have a reference to my mottos at the beginning of my notes — although it 
is somewhat unusual to make references to one's mottos. 

The main accusation against me for using this passage is that I do not 
say, or do not emphasize sufficiently, that it refers to military matters. 
But here I have testimony in my favour from Professor Levinson himself 
who writes (p. 531, footnote; my italics): 

'Popper, in citing this passage in his text, p. 102 [= p. 103E] duly 
emphasizes its reference to military matters.' 

Thus this charge is answered. However, Professor Levinson continues: 
but [Popper] protests simultaneously that Plato means the same 
"militarist principles" to be adhered to in peace as well as in war, and that 
they are to be applied to every area of peaceful existence rather than 
simply to the program of military training. He then quotes the passage 
with perverse mistranslations which tend to obscure its military reference 
. . . ' and so on. 

Now the first charge here is that I 'protest simultaneously' that Plato 
means these militarist principles to be adhered to in peace as well as in 
war. Indeed I have said so — quoting Plato: it is Plato who says so. Should 
I have suppressed it? Plato says, in Bury's translation of which Professor 
Levinson approves (though I prefer mine: I ask my readers whether there 
is any difference of meaning between them, as distinct from one of 
clarity; see p. 103E = p. 102A): nor should anyone, whether at work 
or in play, grow habituated in mind to acting alone and on his own 
initiative, but he should live always both in war and peace, with his eyes 
fixed constantly on his commander . . . ' (Laws, Loeb Library, vol. ii, p. 
477; my italics). 

And later (p. 479): 

'This task of ruling, and of being ruled by, others must be practised in 
peace from earliest childhood . . . ' 

As to mistranslation, I can only say that there is practically no 



difference between my translation and Bury's — except that I have broken 
up Plato's two very long sentences which, as they stand, are not quite 
easy to follow. Professor Levinson says (p. 531) that I have 'made great 
and illegitimate use' of this passage; and he continues: 'His journalistic 
misapplication of a selection from it on the dust cover' [the publishers' 
advertisement; see above] 'and on the title page of Part I of his book will 
be dissected in our note, where we also print the passage in full.' 

The dissection of my 'journalistic misapplication' in this note consists, 
apart from some alleged 'corrections' of my translation which I do not 
accept, mainly of the same charge — that I have printed the passage on the 
jacket and in other important places. For Professor Levinson writes (p. 
532; italics mine): 

'This small unfairness is entirely eclipsed, however, by what Popper 
has done with the passage elsewhere. On the title page of Part I of his 
book, and also on the dust jacket' [who is unfair to whom?] 'he prints a, 
carefully chosen selection drawn from it, and beside it prints, as its very 
antithesis, a sentence drawn from Pericles' funeral oration ... This is to 
print in parallel a political ideal and a proposed military regulation ; yet 
Popper has not only failed to apprise the reader of this selection of its 
military reference, but employing the same mistranslations, has deleted 
absolutely all those parts of the passage which would reveal the fact.' 

My answer to this is very simple, {a) The mistranslations are non- 
existent, {b) I have tried to show at length that the passage, in spite of its 
military reference, formulates, like the Pericles passage (which 
incidentally also has some, though less, military reference), a political 
ideal — that is, Plato's political ideal. 

I have seen no valid reason to change my belief that I am right in 
holding that this passage — like so many similar passages in the Laws — 
formulates Plato's political ideal. But whether this belief of mine is true 
or not, I have certainly given strong reasons for it (reasons which 



Professor Levinson fails to undermine). And since I have done so, and 
since Professor Levinson does not at all question the fact that I believe 
that I have done so, it constitutes neither a 'small unfairness' nor a great 
one if I try to present the passage as what I believe it to be: Plato's own 
description of his political ideal — of his totalitarian and militaristic ideal 
state. 

As to my mistranslations, I shall confine myself to the one which 
Professor Levinson finds important enough to discuss in his text (as 
distinct from his footnote). He writes, on p. 533: 

'A further objection concerns Popper's use of the word "leader." Plato 
uses "archdn'\ the same word he employs for officials of the state and for 
military commanders; it is clearly the latter, or the directors of the 
athletic contests, whom he has here in mind. ' 

Clearly, there is no case for me to answer. (Should I have perhaps 
translated 'director'?) Anybody who consults a Greek dictionary can 
ascertain that 'archdn\ in its most basic meaning, is properly and 
precisely rendered by the English word 'leader' (or the Latin ' dux' or the 
Italian '// duce'). The word is described, by Liddell and Scott, as a 
participle of the verb 'archon' whose fundamental meaning, according to 
these authorities, is 'to be first', either 'in point of Time', or 'in point of 
Place or Station'. In this second sense the first meanings given are: 'to 
lead, rule, govern, command, be leader or commander'. Accordingly we 
find, under archon, 'a ruler, commander, captain ; also, with respect to 
Athens, the chief magistrates at Athens, nine in number.' This should 
suffice to show that 'leader' is not a mistranslation, provided it fits the 
text. That it does can be seen from Bury's own version in which, it will be 
remembered, the passage is rendered as follows: 'but he should live 
always, both in war and peace, with his eyes fixed constantly on his 
commander and following his lead' . In fact, 'leader' fits the text only too 
well: it is the horrifying fittingness of the word which has produced 



Professor Levinson's protest. Since he is unable to see Plato as an 
advocate of totalitarian leadership, he feels that it must be my 'perverse 
mistranslations' (p. 531) which are to be blamed for the horrifying 
associations which this passage evokes. 

But I assert that it is Plato's text, and Plato's thought, which is 
horrifying. I am, as is Professor Levinson, shocked by the 'leader', and 
all that this term connotes. Yet these connotations must not be played 
down if we wish to understand the appalling implications of the Platonic 
ideal state. These I set out to bring home, as well as I could. 

It is perfectly true that in my comments I have stressed the fact that, 
although the passage refers to military expeditions, Plato leaves no doubt 
that its principles are to apply to the whole life of his soldier-citizens. It 
is no answer to say that a Greek citizen was, and had to be, a soldier; for 
this is true of Pericles and the time of his funeral oration (for soldiers 
fallen in battle) at least as much as of Plato and the time of his Laws. 

This is the point which my mottos were meant to bring out as clearly as 
possible. This made it necessary to cut out one clause from this unwieldy 
passage, thereby omitting (as indicated by the insertion of dots) some of 
those references to military matters which would have obscured my main 
point: I mean the fact that the passage has a general application, to war 
and to peace, and that many Platonists have misread it, and missed its 
point, because of its length and obscure formulation, and because of their 
anxiety to idealize Plato. This is how the case stands. Yet I am accused in 
this context by Professor Levinson (p. 532) of using 'tactics' which 
'make it necessary to check in merciless detail every one of Popper's 
citations from the Platonic text', in order to 'reveal how far from the path 
of objectivity and fairness Popper has been swept'. 

Faced with these accusations and allegations, and with suspicions cast 
upon me, I can only try to defend myself. But I am conscious of the 
principle that no man ought to be judge in his own cause. It is for this 



reason that I wish here to quote what Richard Robinson says (on p. 491 of 
The Philosophical Review, 60) about this Platonic passage, and about my 
translation of it. It should be remembered that Robinson is 'mingling 
praise with blame' in his review of my book, and that part of the blame 
consists in the assertion that my translations of Plato are biased. Yet he 
writes: 

'Biased though they are, they should certainly not be disregarded. They 
draw attention to real and important features of Plato's thought that are 
usually overlooked. In particular. Dr. Popper's show piece, the horrible 
passage irom Laws 942 about never acting on one's own, is correctly 
translated. (It might be urged that Plato intended this to apply only to the 
military life of his citizens, and it is true that the passage begins as a 
prescription for army discipline; but by the end Plato is clearly wishing to 
extend it to all life; cf. "the anarchy must be removed from all the life of 
all the men" [Laws, 942d 1]).' 

I feel that I should add nothing to Robinson's statement. 

To sum up. I cannot possibly attempt to answer even a fraction of the 
charges Professor Levinson has brought against me. I have tried to 
answer only a few of them, bearing in mind, as well as I could, that more 
important than the problem of who is unfair to whom is the question 
whether or not my assertions about Plato have been refuted. I have tried 
to give reasons for my belief that they have not been refuted. But I repeat 
that no man ought to be judge in his own cause: I must leave it to my 
readers to decide. 

Yet I do not wish to end this long discussion without reaffirming my 
conviction of Plato's overwhelming intellectual achievement. My opinion 
that he was the greatest of all philosophers has not changed. Even his 
moral and political philosophy is, as an intellectual achievement, without 
parallel, though I find it morally repulsive, and indeed horrifying. As to 



his physical cosmology, I have changed my mind between the first and 
second edition (more precisely, between the first English edition and the 
first American edition) of this book; and I have tried to give reasons why 
I now think that he is the founder of the geometrical theory of the world', 
a theory whose importance has continuously increased down the ages. His 
literary powers I should think it presumptuous to praise. What my critics 
have shown is, I believe, that Plato's greatness makes it all the more 
important to fight his moral and political philosophy, and to warn those 
who may fall under his magic spell. 



IV (1965) 

In note 3 1 to Chapter 3 I mentioned a number of works which seemed to 
me to anticipate my views of Plato's politics. Since writing this note I 
have read Diana Spearman's great attack, of 1939, on appeasers and 
dictators. Mo Jer^ Dictatorship. Her chapter, 'The Theory of Autocracy', 
contains one of the deepest and most penetrating, and at the same time 
one of the briefest analyses of Plato's political theory that I have seen. 



Notes 

1 'A' stands in this Addendum for the American editions of 1950 and 1956; 'E' for the present 
edition and for the English editions from 1932 on. 

2 Added in 1965. That the word ' douleia' in the passage in question (Republic 563d) bears 
this literal meaning (in addition to the figurative meaning which Professor Levinson 
correctly attributes to it) is confirmed by Shorey, the great Platonist and open enemy of 



democracy, whom Professor Levinson considers an authority on Plato's text. (I can often 
agree with Shorey's interpretation of Plato because he rarely tries to humanize or liberalize 
Plato's text.) For in a footnote which Shorey attaches to the word 'servitude' {douleid) in his 
translation of Republic 563d, he refers to two parallel passages: Gorgias 49 le, dindLaws 
890a. The first of these reads in W. R. M. Lamb's translation (Loeb Edition): 'For how can a 
man be happy if he is a slave to anybody at all?' Here the phrase 'to be a slave' has, like the 
one in the Republic, not only the figurative meaning 'to submit oneself but also the literal 
meaning; indeed, the whole point is the merging of the two meanings. The passage from the 
Laws 890a (an elaborate attack on certain Sophists of the Great Generation) reads in Bury's 
translation (Loeb Edition) as follows: 'these teachers [who corrupt the young men] attract 
them towards the life . . . "according to nature" which consists in being master over the rest, 
in reality [ale-theia\, instead of being a slave to others, according to legal convention.' Plato 
clearly alludes here among others to those Sophists (p. TOE = p. 70A and note 13 to chapter 
5) who taught that men cannot be slaves 'by nature' or 'in truth', but only 'by legal 
convention' (by legal fiction). Thus Shorey connects the crucial passage of the Republic by 
this reference at least indirectly to the great classical discussion of the theory of slavery 
('slavery' in the literal sense). 

3 It is by no means the only instance, as may be seen from my chapter 8. The passage quoted 
in the text to note 2, for example {Rep., 389b), is a different instance from the passage {Rep., 
460a) which Professor Levinson has in mind. There are several other passages. See Rep., 
415d and especially Tim., 18e, which prove that Plato finds his instruction to lie of sufficient 
importance to be included in the very brief summary of the Republic. (See also Laws, 663d 
down to 664b.) 



Volume II 

The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, 
Marx, and the Aftermath 



To the debacle of liberal science can be traced the moral schism of the 
modem world which so tragically divides enlightened men. 

WALTER LIPPMANN. 



The High Tide of Prophecy 



The Rise of Oracular Philosophy 



11 

The Aristotelian Roots of Hegelianism 



The task of writing a history of the ideas in which we are interested — of 
historicism and its connection with totalitarianism — will not be 
attempted here. The reader will remember, I hope, that I do not even try 
to give more than a few scattered remarks which may throw light on the 
background of the modem version of these ideas. The story of their 
development, more particularly during the period from Plato to Hegel and 
Marx, could not possibly be told while keeping the size of the book 
within reasonable limits. I shall therefore not attempt a serious treatment 
of Aristotle, except in so far as his version of Plato's essentialism has 
influenced the historicism of Hegel, and thereby that of Marx. The 
restriction to those ideas of Aristotle with which we have become 
acquainted in our criticism of Plato, Aristotle's great master, does not, 
however, create as serious a loss as one might fear at first sight. For 
Aristotle, in spite of his stupendous learning and his astonishing scope, 
was not a man of striking originality of thought. What he added to the 
Platonic store of ideas was, in the main, systematization and a burning 
interest in empirical and especially in biological problems. To be sure, he 
is the inventor of logic, and for this and his other achievements, he amply 
deserves what he himself claimed (at the end of his Sophistic Refutations) 
— our warm thanks, and our pardon for his shortcomings. Yet for readers 
and admirers of Plato these shortcomings are formidable. 



I 



In some of Plato's latest writings, we can find an echo of the 
contemporary political developments in Athens — of the consolidation of 
democracy. It seems that even Plato began to doubt whether some form 
of democracy had not come to stay. In Aristotle, we find indications that 
he did not doubt any longer. Although he is no friend of democracy, he 
accepts it as unavoidable, and is ready to compromise with the enemy. 

An inclination to compromise, strangely mixed with an inclination to 
find fault with his predecessors and contemporaries (and with Plato in 
particular), is one of the outstanding characteristics of Aristotle's 
encyclopaedic writings. They show no trace of the tragic and stirring 
conflict that is the motive of Plato's work. Instead of Plato's flashes of 
penetrating insight, we find dry systematization and the love, shared by 
so many mediocre writers of later times, for settling any question 
whatever by issuing a 'sound and balanced judgement' that does justice 
to everybody; which means, at times, by elaborately and solemnly 
missing the point. This exasperating tendency which is systematized in 
Aristotle's famous 'doctrine of the mean' is one of the sources of his so 
often forced and even fatuous criticism of Plato-. An example of 
Aristotle's lack of insight, in this case of historical insight (he also was a 
historian), is the fact that he acquiesced in the apparent democratic 
consolidation just when it had been superseded by the imperial monarchy 
of Macedon; a historical event which happened to escape his notice. 
Aristotle, who was, as his father had been, a courtier at the Macedonian 
court, chosen by Philip to be the teacher of Alexander the Great, seems to 
have underrated these men and their plans; perhaps he thought he knew 
them too well. 'Aristotle sat down to dinner with Monarchy without 



becoming aware of it', is Gomperz's appropriate comment. - 

Aristotle's thought is entirely dominated by Plato's. Somewhat 
grudgingly, he followed his great teacher as closely as his temperament 
permitted, not only in his general political outlook but practically 
everywhere. So he endorsed, and systematized, Plato's naturalistic theory 
of slavery-: 'Some men are by nature free, and others slaves; and for the 
latter, slavery is fitting as well as just ... A man who is by nature not his 
own, but another's, is by nature a slave ... Hellenes do not like to call 
themselves slaves, but confine this term to barbarians ... The slave is 
totally devoid of any faculty of reasoning', while free women have just a 
very little of it. (We owe to Aristotle's criticisms and denunciations most 
of our knowledge of the Athenian movement against slavery. By arguing 
against the fighters for freedom, he preserved some of their utterances.) 
In some minor points Aristotle slightly mitigates Plato's theory of 
slavery, and duly censures his teacher for being too harsh. He could 
neither resist an opportunity for criticizing Plato, nor one for a 
compromise, not even if it was a compromise with the liberal tendencies 
of his time. 

But the theory of slavery is only one of Plato's many political ideas to 
be adopted by Aristotle. Especially his theory of the Best State, as far as 
we know it, is modelled upon the theories of the Republic and the Laws', 
and his version throws considerable light on Plato's. Aristotle's Best 
State is a compromise between three things, a romantic Platonic 
aristocracy, a 'sound and balanced' feudalism, and some democratic 
ideas; but feudalism has the best of it. With the democrats, Aristotle 
holds that all citizens should have the right to participate in the 
government. But this, of course, is not meant to be as radical as it sounds, 
for Aristotle explains at once that not only slaves but all members of the 
producing classes are excluded from citizenship. Thus he teaches with 
Plato that the working classes must not rule and the ruling classes must 



not work, nor earn any money. (But they are supposed to have plenty.) 
They own the land, but must not work it themselves. Only hunting, war, 
and similar hobbies are considered worthy of the feudal rulers. Aristotle's 
fear of any form of money earning, i.e. of all professional activities, goes 
perhaps even further than Plato's. Plato had used the term 'banausic'- to 
describe a plebeian, abject, or depraved state of mind. Aristotle extends 
the disparaging use of the term so as to cover all interests which are not 
pure hobbies. In fact, his use of the term is very near to our use of the 
term 'professional', more especially in the sense in which it disqualifies 
in an amateur competition, but also in the sense in which it applies to any 
specialized expert, such as a physician. For Aristotle, every form of 
professionalism means a loss of caste. A feudal gentleman, he insists-, 
must never take too much interest in 'any occupation, art or science ... 
There are also some liberal arts, that is to say, arts which a gentleman 
may acquire, but always only to a certain degree. For if he takes too much 
interest in them, then these evil effects will follow', namely, he will 
become proficient, like a professional, and lose caste. This is Aristotle's 
idea of a liberal education, the idea, unfortunately not yet obsolete-, of a 
gentleman's education, as opposed to the education of a slave, serf, 
servant, or professional man. It is in the same vein that he repeatedly 
insists that 'the first principle of all action is leisure'-. Aristotle's 
admiration and deference for the leisured classes seems to be the 
expression of a curious feeling of uneasiness. It looks as if the son of the 
Macedonian court physician was troubled by the question of his own 
social position, and especially by the possibility that he might lose caste 
because of his own scholarly interests which might be considered 
professional. 'One is tempted to believe', says Gomperz-, 'that he feared 
to hear such denunciations from his aristocratic friends ... It is indeed 
strange to see that one of the greatest scholars of all time, if not the 
greatest, does not wish to be a professional scholar. He would rather be a 



dilettante, and a man of the world Aristotle's feelings of inferiority 
have, perhaps, still another basis, apart from his wish to prove his 
independence of Plato, apart from his own 'professional' origin, and apart 
from the fact that he was, undoubtedly, a professional 'sophist' (he even 
taught rhetoric). For with Aristotle, Platonic philosophy gives up her 
great aspirations, her claims to power. From this moment, it could 
continue only as a teaching profession. And since hardly anybody but a 
feudal lord had the money and the leisure for studying philosophy, all 
that philosophy could aspire to was to become an annex to the traditional 
education of a gentleman. With this more modest aspiration in view, 
Aristotle finds it very necessary to persuade the feudal gentleman that 
philosophical speculation and contemplation may become a most 
important part of his 'good life'; for it is the happiest and noblest and the 
most refined method of whiling away one's time, if one is not occupied 
with political intrigues or by war. It is the best way of spending one's 
leisure since, as Aristotle himself puts it, 'nobody . . . would arrange a war 
for that purpose'-. 

It is plausible to assume that such a courtier's philosophy will tend to 
be optimistic, since it will hardly be a pleasant pastime otherwise. And 
indeed, in its optimism lies the one important adjustment made by 
Aristotle in his systematization— of Platonism. Plato's sense of drift had 
expressed itself in his theory that all change, at least in certain cosmic 
periods, must be for the worse; all change is degeneration. Aristotle's 
theory admits of changes which are improvements; thus change may be 
progress. Plato had taught that all development starts from the original, 
the perfect Form or Idea, so that the developing thing must lose its 
perfection in the degree in which it changes and in which its similarity to 
the original decreases. This theory was given up by his nephew and 
successor, Speusippus, as well as by Aristotle. But Aristotle censured 
Speusippus' arguments as going too far, since they implied a general 



biological evolution towards higher forms. Aristotle, it seems, was 
opposed to the much-discussed evolutionary biological theories of his 
time—. But the peculiar optimistic twist which he gave to Platonism was 
an outcome of biological speculation also. It was based upon the idea of a 
final cause. 

According to Aristotle, one of the four causes of anything — also of any 
movement or change — is the final cause, or the end towards which the 
movement aims. In so far as it is an aim or a desired end, the final cause 
isalsogooJ. It follows from this that ^omQ good may not only be the 
starting point of a movement (as Plato had taught, and as Aristotle 
admitted—) but that some good must also stand at its end. And this is 
particularly important for anything that has a beginning in time, or, as 
Aristotle puts it, for anything that comes into being. The Form or essence 
of anything developing is identical with the purpose or end or final state 
towards which it develops. Thus we obtain after all, in spite of Aristotle's 
disclaimer, something very closely resembling Speusippus' adjustment of 
Platonism. The Form or Idea, which is still, with Plato, considered to be 
good, stands at the end, instead of the beginning. This characterizes 
Aristotle's substitution of optimism for pessimism. 

Aristotle's teleology, i.e. his stress upon the end or aim of change as its 
final cause, is an expression of his predominantly Z?/o/og/ca/ interests. It 
is influenced by Plato's biological theories—, and also by Plato's 
extension of his theory of justice to the universe. For Plato did not 
confine himself to teaching that each of the different classes of citizens 
has its natural place in society, a place to which it belongs and for which 
it is naturally fitted; he also tried to interpret the world of physical bodies 
and their different classes or kinds on similar principles. He tried to 
explain the weight of heavy bodies, like stones, or earth, and their 
tendency to fall, as well as the tendency of air and fire to rise, by the 



assumption that they strive to retain, or to regain, the place inhabited by 
their kind. Stones and earth fall because they strive to be where most 
stones and earth are, and where they belong, in the just order of nature; 
air and fire rise because they strive to be where air and fire (the heavenly 
bodies) are, and where they belong, in the just order of nature—. This 
theory of motion appealed to the zoologist Aristotle; it combines easily 
with the theory of final causes, and it allows an explanation of all motion 
as being analogous with the canter of horses keen to return to their 
stables. He developed it as his famous theory of natural places. 
Everything if removed from its own natural place has a natural tendency 
to return to it. 

Despite some alterations, Aristotle's version of Plato's essentialism 
shows only unimportant differences. Aristotle insists, of course, that 
unlike Plato he does not conceive the Forms or Ideas as existing apart 
from sensible things. But in so far as this difference is important, it is 
closely connected with the adjustment in the theory of change. For one of 
the main points in Plato's theory is that he must consider the Forms or 
essences or originals (or fathers) as existing prior to, and therefore apart 
from, sensible things, since these move further and further away from 
them. Aristotle makes sensible things move towards their final causes or 
ends, and these he identifies— with their Forms or essences. And as a 
biologist, he assumes that sensible things carry potentially within 
themselves the seeds, as it were, of their final states, or of their essences. 
This is one of the reasons why he can say that the Form or essence is in 
the thing, not, as Plato said, prior and external to it. For Aristotle, all 
movement or change means the realization (or 'actualization') of some of 
the potentialities inherent in the essence of a thing—. It is, for example, 
an essential potentiality of a piece of timber, that it can float on water, or 
that it can burn; these potentialities remain inherent in its essence even if 
it should never float or burn. But if it does, then it realizes a potentiality. 



and thereby changes or moves. Accordingly, the essence, which embraces 
all the potentialities of a thing, is something like its internal source of 
change or motion. This Aristotelian essence or Form, this 'formal' or 
'final' cause, is therefore practically identical with Plato's 'nature' or 
'soul'; and this identification is corroborated by Aristotle himself. 
'Nature', he writes— in ihQ Metaphysics , 'belongs also to the same class 
as potentiality; for it is a principle of movement inherent in the thing 
itself.' On the other hand, he defines the 'soul' as the 'first entelechy of a 
living body', and since 'entelechy', in turn, is explained as the Form, or 
the formal cause, considered as a motive force—, we arrive, with the help 
of this somewhat complicated terminological apparatus, back at Plato's 
original point of view: that the soul or nature is something akin to the 
Form or Idea, but inherent in the thing, and its principle of motion. 
(When Zeller praised Aristotle for his 'definite use and comprehensive 
development of a scientific terminology'—, I think he must have felt a bit 
uneasy in using the word 'definite'; but the comprehensiveness is to be 
admitted, as well as the most deplorable fact that Aristotle, by using this 
complicated and somewhat pretentious jargon, fascinated only too many 
philosophers; so that, as Zeller puts it, 'for thousands of years he showed 
philosophy her way'.) 

Aristotle, who was a historian of the more encyclopaedic type, made no 
direct contribution to historicism. He adhered to a more restricted version 
of Plato's theory that floods and other recurring catastrophes destroy the 
human race from time to time, leaving only a few survivors.— But he 
does not seem, apart from this, to have interested himself in the problem 
of historical trends. In spite of this fact, it may be shown here how his 
theory of change lends itself to historicist interpretations, and that it 
contains all the elements needed for elaborating a grandiose historicist 
philosophy. (This opportunity was not fully exploited before Hegel.) 
Three historicist doctrines which directly follow from Aristotle's 



essentialism may be distinguished. (1) Only if a person or a state 
develops, and only by way of its history, can we get to know anything 
about its 'hidden, undeveloped essence' (to use a phrase of Hegel's—). 
This doctrine leads later, first of all, to the adoption of an historicist 
method; that is to say, of the principle that we can obtain any knowledge 
of social entities or essences only by applying the historical method, by 
studying social changes. But the doctrine leads further (especially when 
connected with Hegel's moral positivism which identifies the known as 
well as the real with the good) to the worship of History and its exaltation 
as the Grand Theatre of Reality as well as the World's Court of Justice. 
(2) Change, by revealing what is hidden in the undeveloped essence, can 
only make apparent the essence, the potentialities, the seeds, which from 
the beginning have inhered in the changing object. This doctrine leads to 
the historicist idea of an historical fate or an inescapable essential 
destiny; for, as Hegel— showed later, 'what we call principle, aim, 
destiny' is nothing but the 'hidden undeveloped essence'. This means that 
whatever may befall a man, a nation, or a state, must be considered to 
emanate from, and to be understandable through, the essence, the real 
thing, the real 'personality' that manifests itself in this man, this nation, 
or this state. 'A man's fate is immediately connected with his own being; 
it is something which, indeed, he may fight against, but which is really a 
part of his own life.' This formulation (due to Caird— ) of Hegel's theory 
of fate is clearly the historical and romantic counterpart of Aristotle's 
theory that all bodies seek their own 'natural places'. It is, of course, no 
more than a bombastic expression of the platitude, that what befalls a 
man depends not only on his external circumstances, but also on himself, 
on the way he reacts to them. But the na'ive reader is extremely pleased 
with his ability to understand, and to feel the truth of this depth of 
wisdom that needs to be formulated with the help of such thrilling words 
as 'fate' and especially 'his own being'. (3) In order to become real or 



actual, the essence must unfold itself in change. This doctrine assumes 
later, with Hegel, the following form—: 'That which exists for itself only, 
is ... a mere potentiality: it has not yet emerged into Existence ... It is 
only by activity that the Idea is actualized.' Thus if I wish to 'emerge into 
Existence' (surely a very modest wish), then I must 'assert my 
personality'. This still rather popular theory leads, as Hegel sees clearly, 
to a new justification of the theory of slavery. For self-assertion means—, 
in so far as one's relations to others are concerned, the attempt to 
dominate them. Indeed, Hegel points out that all personal relations can 
thus be reduced to the fundamental relation of master and slave, of 
domination and submission. Each must strive to assert and prove himself, 
and he who has not the nature, the courage, and the general capacity for 
preserving his independence, must be reduced to servitude. This 
charming theory of personal relations has, of course, its counterpart in 
Hegel's theory of international relations. Nations must assert themselves 
on the Stage of History; it is their duty to attempt the domination of the 
World. 

All these far-reaching historicist consequences, which will be 
approached from a different angle in the next chapter, were slumbering 
for more than twenty centuries, 'hidden and undeveloped', in Aristotle's 
essentialism. Aristotelianism was more fertile and promising than most 
of its many admirers know. 



II 

The chief danger to our philosophy, apart from laziness and woolliness, is scholasticism, . . . 
which is treating what is vague as if it were precise. . . 

F. P. Ramsey. 



We have reached a point from which we could without delay proceed to 
an analysis of the historicist philosophy of Hegel, or, at any rate, to the 
brief comments upon the developments between Aristotle and Hegel and 
upon the rise of Christianity that conclude, as section III, the present 
chapter. As a kind of digression, however, I shall next discuss a more 
technical problem, Aristotle's essentialist method of Definitions . 

The problem of definitions and of the 'meaning of terms' does not 
directly bear upon historicism. But it has been an inexhaustible source of 
confusion and of that particular kind of verbiage which, when combined 
with historicism in Hegel's mind, has bred that poisonous intellectual 
disease of our own time which I call oracular philosophy. And it is the 
most important source of Aristotle's regrettably still prevailing 
intellectual influence, of all that verbal and empty scholasticism that 
haunts not only the Middle Ages, but our own contemporary philosophy; 
for even a philosophy as recent as that of L. Wittgenstein— suffers, as we 
shall see, from this influence. The development of thought since Aristotle 
could, I think, be summed up by saying that every discipline, as long as it 
used the Aristotelian method of definition, has remained arrested in a 
state of empty verbiage and barren scholasticism, and that the degree to 
which the various sciences have been able to make any progress depended 
on the degree to which they have been able to get rid of this essentialist 
method. (This is why so much of our 'social science' still belongs to the 
Middle Ages.) The discussion of this method will have to be a little 
abstract, owing to the fact that the problem has been so thoroughly 
muddled by Plato and Aristotle, whose influence has given rise to such 
deep-rooted prejudices that the prospect of dispelling them does not seem 
very bright. In spite of all that, it is perhaps not without interest to 
analyse the source of so much confusion and verbiage. 

Aristotle followed Plato in distinguishing between knowledge and 
opinion—. Knowledge, or science, according to Aristotle, may be of two 



kinds — either demonstrative or intuitive. Demonstrative knowledge is 
also a knowledge of 'causes'. It consists of statements that can be 
demonstrated — the conclusions — together with their syllogistic 
demonstrations (which exhibit the 'causes' in their 'middle terms'). 
Intuitive knowledge consists in grasping the 'indivisible form' or essence 
or essential nature of a thing (if it is 'immediate', i.e. if its 'cause' is 
identical with its essential nature); it is the originative source of all 
science since it grasps the original basic premises of all demonstrations. 

Undoubtedly, Aristotle was right when he insisted that we must not 
attempt to prove or demonstrate all our knowledge. Every proof must 
proceed from premises; the proof as such, that is to say, the derivation 
from the premises, can therefore never finally settle the truth of any 
conclusion, but only show that the conclusion must be true provided the 
premises are true. If we were to demand that the premises should be 
proved in their turn, the question of truth would only be shifted back by 
another step to a new set of premises, and so on, to infinity. It was in 
order to avoid such an infinite regress (as the logicians say) that Aristotle 
taught that we must assume that there are premises which are indubitably 
true, and which do not need any proof; and these he called 'basic 
premises'. If we take for granted the methods by which we derive 
conclusions from these basic premises, then we could say that, according 
to Aristotle, the whole of scientific knowledge is contained in the basic 
premises, and that it would all be ours if only we could obtain an 
encyclopaedic list of the basic premises. But how to obtain these basic 
premises? Like Plato, Aristotle believed that we obtain all knowledge 
ultimately by an intuitive grasp of the essences of things. 'We can know a 
thing only by knowing its essence', Aristotle writes—, and 'to know a 
thing is to know its essence'. A 'basic premise' is, according to him, 
nothing but a statement describing the essence of a thing. But such a 
statement is just what he calls— a definition. Thus all 'basic premises oj 



proofs ' are definitions. 

What does a definition look like? An example of a definition would be: 
'A puppy is a young dog.' The subject of such a definition- sentence, the 
term 'puppy', is called the term to be defined (or defined term)', the words 
'young dog' are called the defining formula. As a rule, the defining 
formula is longer and more complicated than the defined term, and 
sometimes very much so. Aristotle considers— the term to be defined as a 
name of the essence of a thing, and the defining formula as the 
description of that essence. And he insists that the defining formula must 
give an exhaustive description of the essence or the essential properties 
of the thing in question; thus a statement like 'A puppy has four legs', 
although true, is not a satisfactory definition, since it does not exhaust 
what may be called the essence of puppiness, but holds true of a horse 
also; and similarly the statement 'A puppy is brown', although it may be 
true of some, is not true of all puppies; and it describes what is not an 
essential but merely an accidental property of the defined term. 

But the most difficult question is how we can get hold of definitions or 
basic premises, and make sure that they are correct — that we have not 
erred, not grasped the wrong essence. Although Aristotle is not very clear 
on this point—, there can be little doubt that, in the main, he again 
follows Plato. Plato taught— that we can grasp the Ideas with the help of 
some kind of unerring intellectual intuition] that is to say, we visualize or 
look at them with our 'mental eye', a process which he conceived as 
analogous to seeing, but dependent purely upon our intellect, and 
excluding any element that depends upon our senses. Aristotle's view is 
less radical and less inspired than Plato's, but in the end it amounts to the 
same—. For although he teaches that we arrive at the definition only after 
we have made many observations, he admits that sense-experience does 
not in itself grasp the universal essence, and that it cannot, therefore, 
fully determine a definition. Eventually he simply postulates that we 



possess an intellectual intuition, a mental or intellectual faculty which 
enables us unerringly to grasp the essences of things, and to know them. 
And he further assumes that if we know an essence intuitively, we must 
be capable of describing it and therefore of defining it. (His arguments in 
thQ Posterior Analytic in favour of this theory are surprisingly weak. 
They consist merely in pointing out that our knowledge of the basic 
premises cannot be demonstrative, since this would lead to an infinite 
regress, and that the basic premises must be at least as true and as certain 
as the conclusions based upon them. 'It follows from this', he writes, 
'that there cannot be demonstrative knowledge of the primary premises; 
and since nothing but intellectual intuition can be more true than 
demonstrative knowledge, it follows that it must be intellectual intuition 
that grasps the basic premises.' In the De Anima, and in the theological 
part of the Metaphysics, we find more of an argument; for here we have a 
theory of intellectual intuition — ^that it comes into contact with its object, 
the essence, and that it even becomes one with its object. 'Actual 
knowledge is identical with its object.') 

Summing up this brief analysis, we can give, I believe, a fair 
description of the Aristotelian ideal of perfect and complete knowledge if 
we say that he saw the ultimate aim of all inquiry in the compilation of an 
encyclopaedia containing the intuitive definitions of all essences, that is 
to say, their names together with their defining formulae; and that he 
considered the progress of knowledge as consisting in the gradual 
accumulation of such an encyclopaedia, in expanding it as well as in 
filling up the gaps in it and, of course, in the syllogistic derivation from it 
of 'the whole body of facts' which constitute demonstrative knowledge. 

Now there can be little doubt that all these essentialist views stand in 
the strongest possible contrast to the methods of modern science. (I have 
the empirical sciences in mind, not perhaps pure mathematics.) First, 
although in science we do our best to find the truth, we are conscious of 



the fact that we can never be sure whether we have got it. We have 
learned in the past, from many disappointments, that we must not expect 
finality. And we have learned not to be disappointed any longer if our 
scientific theories are overthrown; for we can, in most cases, determine 
with great confidence which of any two theories is the better one. We can 
therefore know that we are making progress; and it is this knowledge that 
to most of us atones for the loss of the illusion of finality and certainty. 
In other words, we know that our scientific theories must always remain 
hypotheses, but that, in many important cases, we can find out whether or 
not a new hypothesis is superior to an old one. For if they are different, 
then they will lead to different predictions, which can often be tested 
experimentally; and on the basis of such a crucial experiment, we can 
sometimes find out that the new theory leads to satisfactory results where 
the old one breaks down. Thus we can say that in our search for truth, we 
have replaced scientific certainty by scientific progress. And this view of 
scientific method is corroborated by the development of science. For 
science does not develop by a gradual encyclopaedic accumulation of 
essential information, as Aristotle thought, but by a much more 
revolutionary method; it progresses by bold ideas, by the advancement of 
new and very strange theories (such as the theory that the earth is not flat, 
or that 'metrical space' is not flat), and by the overthrow of the old ones. 

But this view of scientific method means— that in science there is no 
'knowledge', in the sense in which Plato and Aristotle understood the 
word, in the sense which implies finality; in science, we never have 
sufficient reason for the belief that we have attained the truth. What we 
usually call 'scientific knowledge' is, as a rule, not knowledge in this 
sense, but rather information regarding the various competing hypotheses 
and the way in which they have stood up to various tests; it is, using the 
language of Plato and Aristotle, information concerning the latest, and 
the best tested, scientific 'opinion'. This view means, furthermore, that 



we have no proofs in science (excepting, of course, pure mathematics and 
logic). In the empirical sciences, which alone can furnish us with 
information about the world we live in, proofs do not occur, if we mean 
by 'proof an argument which establishes once and for ever the truth of a 
theory. (What may occur, however, are refutations of scientific theories.) 
On the other hand, pure mathematics and logic, which permit of proofs, 
give us no information about the world, but only develop the means of 
describing it. Thus we could say (as I have pointed out elsewhere—): 'In 
so far as scientific statements refer to the world of experience, they must 
be refutable; and, in so far as they are irrefutable, they do not refer to the 
world of experience.' But although proof does not play any part in the 
empirical sciences, argument still does—; indeed, its part is at least as 
important as that played by observation and experiment. 

The role of definitions in science, especially, is also very different 
from what Aristotle had in mind. Aristotle taught that in a definition we 
have first pointed to the essence — ^perhaps by naming it — and that we 
then describe it with the help of the defining formula; just as in an 
ordinary sentence like 'This puppy is brown', we first point to a certain 
thing by saying 'this puppy', and then describe it as 'brown'. And he 
taught that by thus describing the essence to which the term points which 
is to be defined, we determine or explain the meaning— of the term also. 
Accordingly, the definition may at one time answer two very closely 
related questions. The one is 'What is it?', for example, 'What is a 
puppy?'; it asks what the essence is which is denoted by the defined term. 
The other is 'What does it mean?', for example, 'What does "puppy" 
mean?'; it asks for the meaning of a term (namely, of the term that 
denotes the essence). In the present context, it is not necessary to 
distinguish between these two questions; rather, it is important to see 
what they have in common; and I wish, especially, to draw attention to 
the fact that both questions are raised by the term that stands, in the 



definition, on the left side and answered by the defining formula which 
stands on the right side. This fact characterizes the essentialist view, 
from which the scientific method of definition radically differs. 

While we may say that the essentialist interpretation reads a definition 
'normally', that is to say, from the left to the right, we can say that a 
definition, as it is normally used in modern science, must be read back to 
front, or from the right to the left', for it starts with the defining formula, 
and asks for a short label to it. Thus the scientific view of the definition 
'A puppy is a young dog' would be that it is an answer to the question 
'What shall we call a young dog?' rather than an answer to the question 
'What is a puppy?'. (Questions like 'What is life?' or ' What is gravity?' 
do not play any role in science.) The scientific use of definitions, 
characterized by the approach 'from the right to the left', may be called 
its nominalist interpretation, as opposed to its Aristotelian or essentialist 
interpretation—. In modern science, only— nominalist definitions occur, 
that is to say, shorthand symbols or labels are introduced in order to cut a 
long story short. And we can at once see from this that definitions do not 
play any very important part in science. For shorthand symbols can 
always, of course, be replaced by the longer expressions, the defining 
formula, for which they stand. In some cases this would make our 
scientific language very cumbersome; we should waste time and paper. 
But we should never lose the slightest piece of factual information. Our 
'scientific knowledge', in the sense in which this term may be properly 
used, remains entirely unaffected if we eliminate all definitions; the only 
effect is upon our language, which would lose, not precision—, but 
merely brevity. (This must not be taken to mean that in science there 
cannot be an urgent practical need for introducing definitions, for 
brevity's sake.) There could hardly be a greater contrast than that 
between this view of the part played by definitions, and Aristotle's view. 
For Aristotle's essentialist definitions are the principles from which all 



our knowledge is derived; they thus contain all our knowledge; and they 
serve to substitute a long formula for a short one. As opposed to this, the 
scientific or nominalist definitions do not contain any knowledge 
whatever, not even any 'opinion'; they do nothing but introduce new 
arbitrary shorthand labels; they cut a long story short. 

In practice, these labels are of the greatest usefulness. In order to see 
this, we only need to consider the extreme difficulties that would arise if 
a bacteriologist, whenever he spoke of a certain strain of bacteria, had to 
repeat its whole description (including the methods of dyeing, etc., by 
which it is distinguished from a number of similar species). And we may 
also understand, by a similar consideration, why it has so often been 
forgotten, even by scientists, that scientific definitions must be read 
'from the right to the left', as explained above. For most people, when 
first studying a science, say bacteriology, must try to find out the 
meanings of all these new technical terms with which they are faced. In 
this way, they really learn the definition 'from the left to the right', 
substituting, as if it were an essentialist definition, a very long story for a 
very short one. But this is merely a psychological accident, and a teacher 
or writer of a textbook may indeed proceed quite differently; that is to 
say, he may introduce a technical term only after the need for it has 

41 

arisen—. 

So far I have tried to show that the scientific or nominalist use of 
definitions is entirely different from Aristotle's essentialist method of 
definitions. But it can also be shown that the essentialist view of 
definitions is simply untenable in itself. In order not to prolong this 
digression unduly—, I shall criticize two only of the essentialist 
doctrines; two doctrines which are of significance because some 
influential modern schools are still based upon them. One is the esoteric 
doctrine of intellectual intuition, and the other the very popular doctrine 
that 'we must define our terms', if we wish to be precise. 



Aristotle held with Plato that we possess a faculty, intellectual 
intuition, by which we can visualize essences and find out which 
definition is the correct one, and many modern essentialists have repeated 
this doctrine. Other philosophers, following Kant, maintain that we do not 
possess anything of the sort. My opinion is that we can readily admit that 
we possess something which may be described as 'intellectual intuition'; 
or more precisely, that certain of our intellectual experiences may be thus 
described. Everybody who 'understands' an idea, or a point of view, or an 
arithmetical method, for instance, multiplication, in the sense that he has 
'got the feel of it', might be said to understand that thing intuitively; and 
there are countless intellectual experiences of that kind. But I would 
insist, on the other hand, that these experiences, important as they may be 
for our scientific endeavours, can never serve to establish the truth of any 
idea or theory, however strongly somebody may feel, intuitively, that it 
must be true, or that it is 'self-evident'—. Such intuitions cannot even 
serve as an argument, although they may encourage us to look for 
arguments. For somebody else may have just as strong an intuition that 
the same theory is false. The way of science is paved with discarded 
theories which were once declared self-evident; Francis Bacon, for 
example, sneered at those who denied the self-evident truth that the sun 
and the stars rotated round the earth, which was obviously at rest. 
Intuition undoubtedly plays a great part in the life of a scientist, just as it 
does in the life of a poet. It leads him to his discoveries. But it may also 
lead him to his failures. And it always remains his private affair, as it 
were. Science does not ask how he has got his ideas, it is only interested 
in arguments that can be tested by everybody. The great mathematician. 
Gauss, described this situation very neatly once when he exclaimed: 'I 
have got my result; but I do not know yet how to get it.' All this applies, 
of course, to Aristotle's doctrine of intellectual intuition of so-called 
essences—, which was propagated by Hegel, and in our own time by E. 



Husserl and his numerous pupils; and it indicates that the 'intellectual 
intuition of essences' or 'pure phenomenology', as Husserl calls it, is a 
method of neither science nor philosophy. (The much debated question 
whether it is a new invention, as the pure phenomenologists think, or 
perhaps a version of Cartesianism or Hegelianism, can be easily decided; 
it is a version of Aristotelianism.) 

The second doctrine to be criticized has even more important 
connections with modern views; and it bears especially upon the problem 
of verbalism. Since Aristotle, it has become widely known that one 
cannot prove all statements, and that an attempt to do so would break 
down because it would lead only to an infinite regression of proofs. But 
neither he— nor, apparently, a great many modern writers seem to realize 
that the analogous attempt to define the meaning of all our terms must, in 
the same way, lead to an infinite regression of definitions. The following 
passage from Grossman's Plato To-Day is characteristic of a view which 
by implication is held by many contemporary philosophers of repute, for 
example, by Wittgenstein—: '... if we do not know precisely the 
meanings of the words we use, we cannot discuss anything profitably. 
Most of the futile arguments on which we all waste time are largely due 
to the fact that we each have our own vague meanings for the words we 
use and assume that our opponents are using them in the same senses. If 
we defined our terms to start with, we could have far more profitable 
discussions. Again, we have only to read the daily papers to observe that 
propaganda (the modern counterpart of rhetoric) depends largely for its 
success on confusing the meaning of the terms. If politicians were 
compelled by law to define any term they wished to use, they would lose 
most of their popular appeal, their speeches would be shorter, and many 
of their disagreements would be found to be purely verbal.' This passage 
is very characteristic of one of the prejudices which we owe to Aristotle, 
of the prejudice that language can be made more precise by the use of 



definitions. Let us consider whether this can really be done. 

First, we can see clearly that if 'politicians' (or anybody else) 'were 
compelled by law to define any term they wished to use', their speeches 
would not be shorter, but infinitely long. For a definition cannot establish 
the meaning of a term any more than a logical derivation— can establish 
the truth of a statement; both can only shift this problem back. The 
derivation shifts the problem of truth back to the premises, the definition 
shifts the problem of meaning back to the defining terms (i.e., the terms 
that make up the defining formula). But these, for many reasons—, are 
likely to be just as vague and confusing as the terms we started with; and 
in any case, we should have to go on to define them in turn; which leads 
to new terms which too must be defined. And so on, to infinity. One sees 
that the demand that all our terms should be defined is just as untenable 
as the demand that all our statements should be proved. 

At first sight this criticism may seem unfair. It may be said that what 
people have in mind, if they demand definitions, is the elimination of the 
ambiguities so often connected with words such as— 'democracy', 
'liberty', 'duty', 'religion', etc.; that it is clearly impossible to define all 
our terms, but possible to define some of these more dangerous terms and 
to leave it at that; and that the defining terms have just to be accepted, 
i.e., that we must stop after a step or two in order to avoid an infinite 
regression. This defence, however, is untenable. Admittedly, the terms 
mentioned are much misused. But I deny that the attempt to define them 
can improve matters. It can only make matters worse. That by 'defining 
their terms' even once, and leaving the defining terms undefined, the 
politicians would not be able to make their speeches shorter, is clear; for 
any essentialist definition, i.e. one that 'defines our terms' (as opposed to 
the nominalist one which introduces new technical terms), means the 
substitution of a long story for a short one, as we have seen. Besides, the 
attempt to define terms would only increase the vagueness and confusion. 



For since we cannot demand that all the defining terms should be defined 
in their turn, a clever politician or philosopher could easily satisfy the 
demand for definitions. If asked what he means by 'democracy', for 
example, he could say 'the rule of the general will' or 'the rule of the 
spirit of the people'; and since he has now given a definition, and so 
satisfied the highest standards of precision, nobody will dare to criticize 
him any longer. And, indeed, how could he be criticized, since the 
demand that 'rule' or 'people' or 'will' or 'spirit' should be defined in 
their turn, puts us well on the way to an infinite regression so that 
everybody would hesitate to raise it? But should it be raised in spite of all 
that, then it can be equally easily satisfied. On the other hand, a quarrel 
about the question whether the definition was correct, or true, can only 
lead to an empty controversy about words. 

Thus the essentialist view of definition breaks down, even if it does 
not, with Aristotle, attempt to establish the 'principles' of our knowledge, 
but only makes the apparently more modest demand that we should 
'define the meaning of our terms'. 

But undoubtedly, the demand that we speak clearly and without 
ambiguity is very important, and must be satisfied. Can the nominalist 
view satisfy it? And can nominalism escape the infinite regression? 

It can. For the nominalist position there is no difficulty which 
corresponds to the infinite regression. As we have seen, science does not 
use definitions in order to determine the meaning of its terms, but only in 
order to introduce handy shorthand labels. And it does not depend on 
definitions; all definitions can be omitted without loss to the information 
imparted. It follows from this that in science, all the terms that are really 
needed must be undefined terms. How then do the sciences make sure of 
the meanings of their terms? Various replies to this question have been 
suggested—, but I do not think that any of them are satisfactory. The 
situation seems to be this. Aristotelianism and related philosophies have 



told us for such a long time how important it is to get a precise 
knowledge of the meaning of our terms that we are all inclined to believe 
it. And we continue to cling to this creed in spite of the unquestionable 
fact that philosophy, which for twenty centuries has worried about the 
meaning of its terms, is not only full of verbalism but also appallingly 
vague and ambiguous, while a science like physics which worries hardly 
at all about terms and their meaning, but about facts instead, has achieved 
great precision. This, surely, should be taken as indicating that, under 
Aristotelian influence, the importance of the meaning of terms has been 
grossly exaggerated. But I think that it indicates even more. For not only 
does this concentration on the problem of meaning fail to establish 
precision; it is itself the main source of vagueness, ambiguity, and 
confusion. 

In science, we take care that the statements we make should never 
depend upon the meaning of our terms. Even where the terms are defined, 
we never try to derive any information from the definition, or to base any 
argument upon it. This is why our terms make so little trouble. We do not 
overburden them. We try to attach to them as little weight as possible. 
We do not take their 'meaning' too seriously. We are always conscious 
that our terms are a little vague (since we have learned to use them only 
in practical applications) and we reach precision not by reducing their 
penumbra of vagueness, but rather by keeping well within it, by carefully 
phrasing our sentences in such a way that the possible shades of meaning 
of our terms do not matter. This is how we avoid quarrelling about words. 

The view that the precision of science and of scientific language 
depends upon the precision of its terms is certainly very plausible, but it 
is none the less, I believe, a mere prejudice. The precision of a language 
depends, rather, just upon the fact that it takes care not to burden its 
terms with the task of being precise. A term like 'sand-dune' or 'wind' is 
certainly very vague. (How many inches high must a little sand-hill be in 



order to be called 'sand-dune'? How quickly must the air move in order 
to be called 'wind'?) However, for many of the geologist's purposes, 
these terms are quite sufficiently precise; and for other purposes, when a 
higher degree of differentiation is needed, he can always say 'dunes 
between 4 and 30 feet high' or 'wind of a velocity of between 20 and 40 
miles an hour'. And the position in the more exact sciences is analogous. 
In physical measurements, for instance, we always take care to consider 
the range within which there may be an error; and precision does not 
consist in trying to reduce this range to nothing, or in pretending that 
there is no such range, but rather in its explicit recognition. 

Even where a term has made trouble, as for instance the term 
'simultaneity' in physics, it was not because its meaning was unprecise or 
ambiguous, but rather because of some intuitive theory which induced us 
to burden the term with too much meaning, or with too 'precise' a 
meaning, rather than with too little. What Einstein found in his analysis 
of simultaneity was that, when speaking of simultaneous events, 
physicists made a false assumption which would have been 
unchallengeable were there signals of infinite velocity. The fault was not 
that they did not mean anything, or that their meaning was ambiguous, or 
the term not precise enough; what Einstein found was, rather, that the 
elimination of a theoretical assumption, unnoticed so far because of its 
intuitive self-evidence, was able to remove a difficulty which had arisen 
in science. Accordingly, he was not really concerned with a question of 
the meaning of a term, but rather with the truth of a theory. It is very 
unlikely that it would have led to much if someone had started, apart 
from a definite physical problem, to improve the concept of simultaneity 
by analysing its 'essential meaning', or even by analysing what physicists 
'really mean' when they speak of simultaneity. 

I think we can learn from this example that we should not attempt to 
cross our bridges before we come to them. And I also think that the 



preoccupation with questions concerning the meaning of terms, such as 
their vagueness or their ambiguity, can certainly not be justified by an 
appeal to Einstein's example. Such a preoccupation rests, rather, on the 
assumption that much depends upon the meaning of our terms, and that 
we operate with this meaning; and therefore it must lead to verbalism and 
scholasticism. From this point of view, we may criticize a doctrine like 
that of Wittgenstein—, who holds that while science investigates matters 
of fact, it is the business of philosophy to clarify the meaning of terms, 
thereby purging our language, and eliminating linguistic puzzles. It is 
characteristic of the views of this school that they do not lead to any 
chain of argument that could be rationally criticized; the school therefore 
addresses its subtle analyses— exclusively to the small esoteric circle of 
the initiated. This seems to suggest that any preoccupation with meaning 
tends to lead to that result which is so typical of Aristotelianism: 
scholasticism and mysticism. 

Let us consider briefly how these two typical results of Aristotelianism 
have arisen. Aristotle insisted that demonstration or proof, and definition, 
are the two fundamental methods of obtaining knowledge. Considering 
the doctrine of proof first, it cannot be denied that it has led to countless 
attempts to prove more than can be proved; medieval philosophy is full 
of this scholasticism and the same tendency can be observed, on the 
Continent, down to Kant. It was Kant's criticism of all attempts to prove 
the existence of God which led to the romantic reaction of Fichte, 
Schelling, and Hegel. The new tendency is to discard proofs, and with 
them, any kind of rational argument. With the romantics, a new kind of 
dogmatism becomes fashionable, in philosophy as well as in the social 
sciences. It confronts us with its dictum. And we can take it or leave it. 
This romantic period of an oracular philosophy, called by Schopenhauer 
the 'age of dishonesty', is described by him as follows—: 'The character 
of honesty, that spirit of undertaking an inquiry together with the reader. 



which permeates the works of all previous philosophers, disappears here 
completely. Every page witnesses that these so-called philosophers do not 
attempt to teach, but to bewitch the reader.' 

A similar result was produced by Aristotle's doctrine of definition. 
First it led to a good deal of hairsplitting. But later, philosophers began to 
feel that one cannot argue about definitions. In this way, essentialism not 
only encouraged verbalism, but it also led to the disillusionment with 
argument, that is, with reason. Scholasticism and mysticism and despair 
in reason, these are the unavoidable results of the essentialism of Plato 
and Aristotle. And Plato's open revolt against freedom becomes, with 
Aristotle, a secret revolt against reason. 

As we know from Aristotle himself, essentialism and the theory of 
definition met with strong opposition when they were first proposed, 
especially from Socrates' old companion Antisthenes, whose criticism 
seems to have been most sensible—. But this opposition was 
unfortunately defeated. The consequences of this defeat for the 
intellectual development of mankind can hardly be overrated. Some of 
them will be discussed in the next chapter. With this I conclude my 
digression, the criticism of the Platonic-Aristotelian theory of definition. 

Ill 

It will hardly be necessary again to stress the fact that my treatment of 
Aristotle is most sketchy — much more so than my treatment of Plato. The 
main purpose of what has been said about both of them is to show the role 
they have played in the rise of historicism and in the fight against the 
open society, and to show their influence on problems of our own time — 
on the rise of the oracular philosophy of Hegel, the father of modern 



historicism and totalitarianism. The developments between Aristotle and 
Hegel cannot be treated here at all. In order to do anything like justice to 
them, at least another volume would be needed. In the remaining few 
pages of this chapter I shall, however, attempt to indicate how this period 
might be interpreted in terms of the conflict between the open and the 
closed society. 

The conflict between the Platonic-Aristotelian speculation and the 
spirit of the Great Generation, of Pericles, of Socrates, and of 
Democritus, can be traced throughout the ages. This spirit was preserved, 
more or less purely, in the movement of the Cynics who, like the early 
Christians, preached the brotherhood of man, which they connected with 
a monotheistic belief in the fatherhood of God. Alexander's empire as 
well as that of Augustus was influenced by these ideas which had first 
taken shape in the imperialist Athens of Pericles, and which had always 
been stimulated by the contact between West and East. It is very likely 
that these ideas, and perhaps the Cynic movement itself, influenced the 
rise of Christianity also. 

In its beginning, Christianity, like the Cynic movement, was opposed 
to the highbrow Platonizing Idealism and intellectualism of the 'scribes', 
the learned men. ('Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent 
and hast revealed them unto the babes.') I do not doubt that it was, in 
part, a protest against what may be described as Jewish Platonism in the 
wider sense—, the abstract worship of God and His Word. And it was 
certainly a protest against Jewish tribalism, against its rigid and empty 
tribal taboos, and against its tribal exclusiveness which expressed itself, 
for example, in the doctrine of the chosen people, i.e. in an interpretation 
of the deity as a tribal god. Such an emphasis upon tribal laws and tribal 
unity appears to be characteristic not so much of a primitive tribal society 
as of a desperate attempt to restore and arrest the old forms of tribal life; 
and in the case of Jewry, it seems to have originated as a reaction to the 



impact of the Babylonian conquest on Jewish tribal life. But side by side 
with this movement towards greater rigidity we find another movement 
which apparently originated at the same time, and which produced 
humanitarian ideas that resembled the response of the Great Generation 
to the dissolution of Greek tribalism. This process, it appears, repeated 
itself when Jewish independence was ultimately destroyed by Rome. It 
led to a new and deeper schism between these two possible solutions, the 
return to the tribe, as represented by orthodox Jewry, and the 
humanitarianism of the new sect of Christians, which embraced 
barbarians (or gentiles) as well as slaves. We can see from the Acts— how 
urgent these problems were, the social problem as well as the national 
problem. And we can see this from the development of Jewry as well; for 
its conservative part reacted to the same challenge by another movement 
towards arresting and petrifying their tribal form of life, and by clinging 
to their 'laws' with a tenacity which would have won the approval of 
Plato. It can hardly be doubted that this development was, like that of 
Plato's ideas, inspired by a strong antagonism to the new creed of the 
open society; in this case, of Christianity. 

But the parallelism between the creed of the Great Generation, 
especially of Socrates, and that of early Christianity goes deeper. There is 
little doubt that the strength of the early Christians lay in their moral 
courage. It lay in the fact that they refused to accept Rome's claim 'that it 
was entitled to compel its subjects to act against their conscience'—. The 
Christian martyrs who rejected the claims of might to set the standards of 
right suffered for the same cause for which Socrates had died. 

It is clear that these matters changed very considerably when the 
Christian faith itself became powerful in the Roman empire. The question 
arises whether this official recognition of the Christian Church (and its 
later organization after the model of Julian the Apostate's Neo-Platonic 
Anti- Church— ) was not an ingenious political move on the part of the 



ruling powers, designed to break the tremendous moral influence of an 
equalitarian religion — a religion which they had in vain attempted to 
combat by force as well as by accusations of atheism and impiety. In 
other words, the question arises whether (especially after Julian) Rome 
did not find it necessary to apply Pareto's advice, 'to take advantage of 
sentiments, not wasting one's energies in futile efforts to destroy them'. 
This question is hard to answer; but it certainly cannot be dismissed by 
appealing (as Toynbee does—) to our 'historical sense that warns us 
against attributing', to the period of Constantine and his followers, '... 
motives that are anachronistically cynical', that is to say, motives that are 
more in keeping with our own 'modern Western attitude to life'. For we 
have seen that such motives are openly and 'cynically', or more 
precisely, shamelessly, expressed as early as in the fifth century B.C., by 
Critias, the leader of the Thirty Tyrants; and similar statements can be 
found frequently during the history of Greek philosophy—. However this 
may be, it can hardly be doubted that with Justinian's persecution of non- 
Christians, heretics, and philosophers (a.d. 529), the dark ages began. The 
Church followed in the wake of Platonic- Aristotelian totalitarianism, a 
development that culminated in the Inquisition. The theory of the 
Inquisition, more especially, can be described as purely Platonic. It is set 
out in the last three books of the Laws, where Plato shows that it is the 
duty of the shepherd rulers to protect their sheep at all costs by 
preserving the rigidity of the laws and especially of religious practice and 
theory, even if they have to kill the wolf, who may admittedly be an 
honest and honourable man whose diseased conscience unfortunately 
does not permit him to bow to the threats of the mighty. 

It is one of the characteristic reactions to the strain of civilization in 
our own time that the allegedly 'Christian' authoritarianism of the 
Middle Ages has, in certain intellectualist circles, become one of the 



latest fashions of the day—. This, no doubt, is due not only to the 
idealization of an indeed more 'organic' and 'integrated' past, but also to 
an understandable revulsion against modern agnosticism which has 
increased this strain beyond measure. Men believed God to rule the 
world. This belief limited their responsibility. The new belief that they 
had to rule it themselves created for many a well-nigh intolerable burden 
of responsibility. All this has to be admitted. But I do not doubt that the 
Middle Ages were, even from the point of view of Christianity, not better 
ruled than our Western democracies. For we can read in the Gospels that 
the founder of Christianity was questioned by a certain 'doctor of the 
law' about a criterion by which to distinguish between a true and a false 
interpretation of His words. To this He replied by telling the parable of 
the priest and the Levite who both, seeing a wounded man in great 
distress, 'passed by on the other side', while the Samaritan bound up his 
wounds, and looked after his material needs. This parable, I think, should 
be remembered by those 'Christians' who long not only for a time when 
the Church suppressed freedom and conscience, but also for a time in 
which, under the eye and with the authority of the Church, untold 
oppression drove the people to despair. As a moving comment upon the 
suffering of the people in those days and, at the same time, upon the 
'Christianity' of the now so fashionable romantic medievalism which 
wants to bring these days back, a passage may be quoted here from H. 
Zinsser's book. Rats, Lice, and History,— in which he speaks about 
epidemics of dancing mania in the Middle Ages, known as 'St. John's 
dance', 'St. Vitus' dance', etc. (I do not wish to invoke Zinsser as an 
authority on the Middle Ages — there is no need to do so since the facts at 
issue are hardly controversial. But his comments have the rare and 
peculiar touch of the practical Samaritan — of a great and humane 
physician.) 'These strange seizures, though not unheard of in earlier 
times, became common during and immediately after the dreadful 



miseries of the Black Death. For the most part, the dancing manias 
present none of the characteristics which we associate with epidemic 
infectious diseases of the nervous system. They seem, rather, like mass 
hysterias, brought on by terror and despair, in populations oppressed, 
famished, and wretched to a degree almost unimaginable to-day. To the 
miseries of constant war, political and social disintegration, there was 
added the dreadful affliction of inescapable, mysterious, and deadly 
disease. Mankind stood helpless as though trapped in a world of terror 
and peril against which there was no defence. God and the devil were 
living conceptions to the men of those days who cowered under the 
afflictions which they believed imposed by supernatural forces. For those 
who broke down under the strain there was no road of escape except to 
the inward refuge of mental derangement which, under the circumstances 
of the times, took the direction of religious fanaticism.' Zinsser then goes 
on to draw some parallels between these events and certain reactions of 
our time in which, he says, 'economic and political hysterias are 
substituted for the religious ones of the earlier times'; and after this, he 
sums up his characterization of the people who lived in those days of 
authoritarianism as 'a terror-stricken and wretched population, which had 
broken down under the stress of almost incredible hardship and danger'. 
Is it necessary to ask which attitude is more Christian, one that longs to 
return to the 'unbroken harmony and unity' of the Middle Ages, or one 
that wishes to use reason in order to free mankind from pestilence and 
oppression? 

But some part at least of the authoritarian Church of the Middle Ages 
succeeded in branding such practical humanitarianism as 'worldly', as 
characteristic of 'Epicureanism', and of men who desire only to 'fill their 
bellies like the beasts'. The terms 'Epicureanism', 'materialism', and 
'empiricism', that is to say, the philosophy of Democritus, one of the 
greatest of the Great Generation, became in this way the synonyms of 



wickedness, and the tribal Idealism of Plato and Aristotle was exalted as 
a kind of Christianity before Christ. Indeed, this is the source of the 
immense authority of Plato and Aristotle, even in our own day, that their 
philosophy was adopted by medieval authoritarianism. But it must not be 
forgotten that, outside the totalitarian camp, their fame has outlived their 
practical influence upon our lives. And although the name of Democritus 
is seldom remembered, his science as well as his morals still live with us. 



12 

Hegel and the New Tribalism 



The philosophy of Hegel, then, was... a scrutiny of thought so profound that it was for the 
most part unintelligible. . . 

J. H. Stirling. 



I 

Hegel, the source of all contemporary historicism, was a direct follower 
of Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle. Hegel achieved the most miraculous 
things. A master logician, it was child's play for his powerful dialectical 
methods to draw real physical rabbits out of purely metaphysical silk- 
hats. Thus, starting from Plato's Timaeus and its number-mysticism, 
Hegel succeeded in 'proving' by purely philosophical methods (114 years 
after Newton's Principid) that the planets must move according to 
Kepler's laws. He even accomplished- the deduction of the actual 
position of the planets, thereby proving that no planet could be situated 
between Mars and Jupiter (unfortunately, it had escaped his notice that 
such a planet had been discovered a few months earlier). Similarly, he 
proved that magnetizing iron means increasing its weight, that Newton's 
theories of inertia and of gravity contradict each other (of course, he 
could not foresee that Einstein would show the identity of inert and 
gravitating mass), and many other things of this kind. That such a 



surprisingly powerful philosophical method was taken seriously can be 
only partially explained by the backwardness of German natural science 
in those days. For the truth is, I think, that it was not at first taken really 
seriously by serious men (such as Schopenhauer, or J. F. Fries), not at any 
rate by those scientists who, like Democritus-, 'would rather find a single 
causal law than be the king of Persia'. Hegel's fame was made by those 
who prefer a quick initiation into the deeper secrets of this world to the 
laborious technicalities of a science which, after all, may only disappoint 
them by its lack of power to unveil all mysteries. For they soon found out 
that nothing could be applied with such ease to any problem whatsoever, 
and at the same time with such impressive (though only apparent) 
difficulty, and with such quick and sure but imposing success, nothing 
could be used as cheaply and with so little scientific training and 
knowledge, and nothing would give such a spectacular scientific air, as 
did Hegelian dialectics, the mystery method that replaced 'barren formal 
logic'. Hegel's success was the beginning of the 'age of dishonesty' (as 
Schopenhauer- described the period of German Idealism) and of the 'age 
of irresponsibility' (as K. Heiden characterizes the age of modern 
totalitarianism); first of intellectual, and later, as one of its consequences, 
of moral irresponsibility; of a new age controlled by the magic of high- 
sounding words, and by the power of jargon. 

In order to discourage the reader beforehand from taking Hegel's 
bombastic and mystifying cant too seriously, I shall quote some of the 
amazing details which he discovered about sound, and especially about 
the relations between sound and heat. I have tried hard to translate this 
gibberish from Hegel's Philosophy of Nature- as faithfully as possible; 
he writes: '§302. Sound is the change in the specific condition of 
segregation of the material parts, and in the negation of this condition; — 
merely an abstract or an ideal ideality, as it were, of that specification. 
But this change, accordingly, is itself immediately the negation of the 



material specific subsistence; which is, therefore, real ideality of specific 
gravity and cohesion, i.e. — heat. The heating up of sounding bodies, just 
as of beaten or rubbed ones, is the appearance of heat, originating 
conceptually together with sound.' There are some who still believe in 
Hegel's sincerity, or who still doubt whether his secret might not be 
profundity, fullness of thought, rather than emptiness. I should like them 
to read carefully the last sentence — the only intelligible one — of this 
quotation, because in this sentence, Hegel gives himself away. For clearly 
it means nothing but: 'The heating up of sounding bodies ... is heat ... 
together with sound.' The question arises whether Hegel deceived 
himself, hypnotized by his own inspiring jargon, or whether he boldly set 
out to deceive and bewitch others. I am satisfied that the latter was the 
case, especially in view of what Hegel wrote in one of his letters. In this 
letter, dated a few years before the publication of his Philosophy oj 
Nature, Hegel referred to another Philosophy of Nature, written by his 
former friend Schelling: 'I have had too much to do ... with mathematics 
... differential calculus, chemistry', Hegel boasts in this letter (but this is 
just bluff), 'to let myself be taken in by the humbug of the Philosophy of 
Nature, by this philosophizing without knowledge of fact . . . and by the 
treatment of mere fancies, even imbecile fancies, as ideas.' This is a very 
fair characterization of Schelling 's method, that is to say, of that 
audacious way of bluffing which Hegel himself copied, or rather 
aggravated, as soon as he realized that, if it reached its proper audience, it 
meant success. 

In spite of all this it seems improbable that Hegel would ever have 
become the most influential figure in German philosophy without the 
authority of the Prussian state behind him. As it happened, he became the 
first official philosopher of Prussianism, appointed in the period of feudal 
'restoration' after the Napoleonic wars. Later, the state also backed his 
pupils (Germany had, and still has, only state-controlled Universities), 



and they in their turn backed one another. And although Hegelianism was 
officially renounced by most of them, Hegelianizing philosophers have 
dominated philosophical teaching and thereby indirectly even the 
secondary schools of Germany ever since. (Of German- speaking 
Universities, those of Roman Catholic Austria remained fairly 
unmolested, like islands in a flood.) Having thus become a tremendous 
success on the continent, Hegelianism could hardly fail to obtain support 
in Britain from those who, feeling that such a powerful movement must 
after all have something to offer, began to search for what Stirling called 
The Secret of Hegel. They were attracted, of course, by Hegel's 'higher' 
idealism and by his claims to 'higher' morality, and they were also 
somewhat afraid of being branded as immoral by the chorus of the 
disciples; for even the more modest Hegelians claimed- of their doctrines 
that 'they are acquisitions which must ... ever be reconquered in the face 
of assault from the powers eternally hostile to spiritual and moral 
values'. Some really brilliant men (I am thinking mainly of McTaggart) 
made great efforts in constructive idealistic thought, well above the level 
of Hegel; but they did not get very far beyond providing targets for 
equally brilliant critics. And one can say that outside the continent of 
Europe, especially in the last twenty years, the interest of philosophers in 
Hegel has slowly been vanishing. 

But if that is so, why worry any more about Hegel? The answer is that 
Hegel's influence has remained a most powerful force, in spite of the fact 
that scientists never took him seriously, and that (apart from the 
'evolutionists'-) many philosophers are beginning to lose interest in him. 
Hegel's influence, and especially that of his cant, is still very powerful in 
moral and social philosophy and in the social and political sciences (with 
the sole exception of economics). Especially the philosophers of history, 
of politics, and of education are still to a very large extent under its sway. 
In politics, this is shown most drastically by the fact that the Marxist 



extreme left wing, as well as the conservative centre, and the fascist 
extreme right, all base their political philosophies on Hegel; the left wing 
replaces the war of nations which appears in Hegel's historicist scheme 
by the war of classes, the extreme right replaces it by the war of races; 
but both follow him more or less consciously. (The conservative centre is 
as a rule less conscious of its indebtedness to Hegel.) 

How can this immense influence be explained? My main intention is 
not so much to explain this phenomenon as to combat it. But I may make 
a few explanatory suggestions. For some reason, philosophers have kept 
around themselves, even in our day, something of the atmosphere of the 
magician. Philosophy is considered as a strange and abstruse kind of 
thing, dealing with those mysteries with which religion deals, but not in a 
way which can be 'revealed unto babes' or to common people; it is 
considered to be too profound for that, and to be the religion and theology 
of the intellectuals, of the learned and wise. Hegelianism fits these views 
admirably; it is exactly what this kind of popular superstition supposes 
philosophy to be. It knows all about everything. It has a ready answer to 
every question. And indeed, who can be sure that the answer is not true? 

But this is not the main reason for Hegel's success. His influence, and 
the need to combat it, can perhaps be better understood if we briefly 
consider the general historical situation. 

Medieval authoritarianism began to dissolve with the Renaissance. But 
on the Continent, its political counterpart, medieval feudalism, was not 
seriously threatened before the French Revolution. (The Reformation had 
only strengthened it.) The fight for the open society began again only 
with the ideas of 1789; and the feudal monarchies soon experienced the 
seriousness of this danger. When in 1815 the reactionary party began to 
resume its power in Prussia, it found itself in dire need of an ideology. 
Hegel was appointed to meet this demand, and he did so by reviving the 
ideas of the first great enemies of the open society, Heraclitus, Plato, and 



Aristotle. Just as the French Revolution rediscovered the perennial ideas 
of the Great Generation and of Christianity, freedom, equality, and the 
brotherhood of all men, so Hegel rediscovered the Platonic ideas which 
lie behind the perennial revolt against freedom and reason. Hegelianism 
is the renaissance of tribalism. The historical significance of Hegel may 
be seen in the fact that he represents the 'missing link', as it were, 
between Plato and the modern form of totalitarianism. Most of the 
modern totalitarians are quite unaware that their ideas can be traced back 
to Plato. But many know of their indebtedness to Hegel, and all of them 
have been brought up in the close atmosphere of Hegelianism. They have 
been taught to worship the state, history, and the nation. (My view of 
Hegel presupposes, of course, that he interpreted Plato's teaching in the 
same way as I did here, that is to say, as totalitarian, to use this modern 
label; and indeed, it can be shown-, from his criticism of Plato in the 
Philosophy of Law, that Hegel's interpretation agrees with ours.) 

In order to give the reader an immediate glimpse of Hegel's 
Platonizing worship of the state, I shall quote a few passages, even before 
I begin the analysis of his historicist philosophy. These passages show 
that Hegel's radical collectivism depends as much on Plato as it depends 
on Frederick William III, king of Prussia in the critical period during and 
after the French Revolution. Their doctrine is that the state is everything, 
and the individual nothing; for he owes everything to the state, his 
physical as well as his spiritual existence. This is the message of Plato, of 
Frederick William's Prussianism, and of Hegel. 'The Universal is to be 
found in the State', Hegel writes-. 'The State is the Divine Idea as it 
exists on earth ... We must therefore worship the State as the 
manifestation of the Divine on earth, and consider that, if it is difficult to 
comprehend Nature, it is infinitely harder to grasp the Essence of the 
State . . . The State is the march of God through the world . . . The State 
must be comprehended as an organism ... To the complete State belongs. 



essentially, consciousness and thought. The State knows what it wills . . . 
The State is real; and ... true reality is necessary. What is real is eternally 
necessary ... The State ... exists for its own sake ... The State is the 
actually existing, realized moral life.' This selection of utterances may 
suffice to show Hegel's Platonism and his insistence upon the absolute 
moral authority of the state, which overrules all personal morality, all 
conscience. It is, of course, a bombastic and hysterical Platonism, but this 
only makes more obvious the fact that it links Platonism with modern 
totalitarianism. 

One could ask whether by these services and by his influence upon 
history, Hegel has not proved his genius. I do not think this question very 
important, since it is only part of our romanticism that we think so much 
in terms of 'genius'; and apart from that, I do not believe that success 
proves anything, or that history is our judge-; these tenets are rather part 
of Hegelianism. But as far as Hegel is concerned, I do not even think that 
he was talented. He is an indigestible writer. As even his most ardent 
apologists must admit—, his style is 'unquestionably scandalous'. And as 
far as the content of his writing is concerned, he is supreme only in his 
outstanding lack of originality. There is nothing in Hegel's writing that 
has not been said better before him. There is nothing in his apologetic 
method that is not borrowed from his apologetic forerunners—. But he 
devoted these borrowed thoughts and methods with singleness of purpose, 
though without a trace of brilliancy, to one aim: to fight against the open 
society, and thus to serve his employer, Frederick William of Prussia. 
Hegel's confusion and debasement of reason is partly necessary as a 
means to this end, partly a more accidental but very natural expression of 
his state of mind. And the whole story of Hegel would indeed not be 
worth relating, were it not for its more sinister consequences, which show 
how easily a clown may be a 'maker of history'. The tragi-comedy of the 
rise of 'German Idealism', in spite of the hideous crimes to which it has 



led, resembles a comic opera much more than anything else; and these 
beginnings may help to explain why it is so hard to decide of its latter- 
day heroes whether they have escaped from the stage of Wagner's Grand 
Teutonic Operas or from Offenbach's farces. 

My assertion that Hegel's philosophy was inspired by ulterior motives, 
namely, by his interest in the restoration of the Prussian government of 
Frederick William III, and that it cannot therefore be taken seriously, is 
not new. The story was well known to all who knew the political 
situation, and it was freely told by the few who were independent enough 
to do so. The best witness is Schopenhauer, himself a Platonic idealist 
and a conservative if not a reactionary—, but a man of supreme integrity 
who cherished truth beyond anything else. There can be no doubt that he 
was as competent a judge in philosophical matters as could be found at 
the time. Schopenhauer, who had the pleasure of knowing Hegel 
personally and who suggested— the use of Shakespeare's words, 'such 
stuff as madmen tongue and brain not', as the motto of Hegel's 
philosophy, drew the following excellent picture of the master: 'Hegel, 
installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great 
Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, 
who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing 
up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily 
proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily 
accepted as such by all fools, who thus joined into as perfect a chorus of 
admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual 
influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled 
him to achieve the intellectual corruption of a whole generation.' And in 
another place, Schopenhauer describes the political game of Hegelianism 
as follows: 'Philosophy, brought afresh to repute by Kant ... had soon to 
become a tool of interests; of state interests from above, of personal 
interests from below ... The driving forces of this movement are. 



contrary to all these solemn airs and assertions, not ideal; they are very 
real purposes indeed, namely personal, official, clerical, political, in 
short, material interests ... Party interests are vehemently agitating the 
pens of so many pure lovers of wisdom . . . Truth is certainly the last thing 
they have in mind . . . Philosophy is misused, from the side of the state as 
a tool, from the other side as a means of gain . . . Who can really believe 
that truth also will thereby come to light, just as a by-product? ... 
Governments make of philosophy a means of serving their state interests, 
and scholars make of it a trade Schopenhauer's view of Hegel's 
status as the paid agent of the Prussian government is, to mention only 
one example, corroborated by Schwegler, an admiring disciple— of 
Hegel. Schwegler says of Hegel: 'The fullness of his fame and activity, 
however, properly dates only from his call to Berlin in 1818. Here there 
rose up around him a numerous, widely extended, and ... exceedingly 
active school; here too, he acquired, from his connections with the 
Prussian bureaucracy, political influence for himself as well as the 
recognition of his system as the official philosophy; not always to the 
advantage of the inner freedom of his philosophy, or of its moral worth.' 
Schwegler's editor, J. H. Stirling—, the first British apostle of 
Hegelianism, of course defends Hegel against Schwegler by warning his 
readers not to take too literally 'the little hint of Schwegler's against ... 
the philosophy of Hegel as a state-philosophy'. But a few pages later, 
Stirling quite unintentionally confirms Schwegler's representation of the 
facts as well as the view that Hegel himself was aware of the party- 
political and apologetic function of his philosophy. (The evidence 
quoted— by Stirling shows that Hegel expressed himself rather cynically 
on this function of his philosophy.) And a little later, Stirling unwittingly 
gives away the 'secret of Hegel' when he proceeds to the following poetic 
as well as prophetic revelations—, alluding to the lightning attack made 
by Prussia on Austria in 1866, the year before he wrote: 'Is it not indeed 



to Hegel, and especially his philosophy of ethics and politics, that Prussia 
owes that mighty life and organization she is now rapidly developing? Is 
it not indeed the grim Hegel that is the centre of that organization which, 
maturing counsel in an invisible brain, strikes, lightning-like, with a hand 
that is weighted from the mass? But as regards the value of this 
organization, it will be more palpable to many, should I say, that, while in 
constitutional England, Preference-holders and Debenture-holders are 
ruined by the prevailing commercial immorality, the ordinary owners of 
Stock in Prussian Railways can depend on a safe average of 8.33 per cent. 
This, surely, is saying something for Hegel at last! 

'The fundamental outlines of Hegel must now, I think, be evident to 
every reader. I have gained much from Hegel . . . ' Stirling continues his 
eulogy. I too hope that Hegel's outlines are now evident, and I trust that 
what Stirling had gained was saved from the menace of the commercial 
immorality prevailing in an un-Hegelian and constitutional England. 

(Who could resist mentioning in this context the fact that Marxist 
philosophers, always ready to point out how an opponent's theory is 
affected by his class interest, habitually fail to apply this method to 
Hegel? Instead of denouncing him as an apologist for Prussian 
absolutism, they regret— that the works of the originator of dialectics, 
and especially his works on logic, are not more widely read in Britain — in 
contrast to Russia, where the merits of Hegel's philosophy in general, and 
of his logic in particular, are officially recognized.) 

Returning to the problem of Hegel's political motives, we have, I 
think, more than sufficient reason to suspect that his philosophy was 
influenced by the interests of the Prussian government by which he was 
employed. But under the absolutism of Frederick William III, such an 
influence implied more than Schopenhauer or Schwegler could know; for 
only in the last decades have the documents been published that show the 
clarity and consistency with which this king insisted upon the complete 



subordination of all learning to state interest. 'Abstract sciences', we read 
in his educational programme—, 'that touch only the academic world, and 
serve only to enlighten this group, are of course without value to the 
welfare of the State; it would be foolish to restrict them entirely, but it is 
healthy to keep them within proper limits.' Hegel's call to Berlin in 1818 
came during the high tide of reaction, during the period which began with 
the king's purging his government of the reformers and national liberals 
who had contributed so much to his success in the 'War of Liberation'. 
Considering this fact, we may ask whether Hegel's appointment was not a 
move to 'keep philosophy within proper limits', so as to enable her to be 
healthy and to serve 'the welfare of the State', that is to say, of Frederick 
William and his absolute rule. The same question is suggested to us when 
we read what a great admirer says— of Hegel: 'And in Berlin he remained 
till his death in 1831, the acknowledged dictator of one of the most 
powerful philosophic schools in the history of thought.' (I think we 
should substitute 'lack of thought' for 'thought', because I cannot see 
what a dictator could possibly have to do with the history of thought, 
even if he were a dictator of philosophy. But otherwise, this revealing 
passage is only too true. For example, the concerted efforts of this 
powerful school succeeded, by a conspiracy of silence, in concealing 
from the world for forty years the very fact of Schopenhauer's existence.) 
We see that Hegel may indeed have had the power to 'keep philosophy 
within proper limits', so that our question may be quite to the point. 

In what follows, I shall try to show that Hegel's whole philosophy can 
be interpreted as an emphatic answer to this question; an answer in the 
affirmative, of course. And I shall try to show how much light is thrown 
upon Hegelianism if we interpret it in this way, that is to say, as an 
apology for Prussianism. My analysis will be divided into three parts, to 
be treated in sections II, III, and IV of this chapter. Section II deals with 
Hegel's historicism and moral positivism, together with the rather 



abstruse theoretical background of these doctrines, his dialectic method 
and his so-called philosophy of identity. Section III deals with the rise of 
nationalism. In section IV, a few words will be said on Hegel's relation to 
Burke. And section V deals with the dependence of modern 
totalitarianism upon the doctrines of Hegel. 



II 

I begin my analysis of Hegel's philosophy with a general comparison 
between Hegel's historicism and that of Plato. 

Plato believed that the Ideas or essences exist prior to the things in 
flux, and that the trend of all developments can be explained as a 
movement away from the perfection of the Ideas, and therefore as a 
descent, as a movement towards decay. The history of states, especially, 
is one of degeneration; and ultimately this degeneration is due to the 
racial degeneration of the ruling class. (We must here remember the close 
relationship between the Platonic notions of 'race', 'soul', 'nature', and 
'essence'—.) Hegel believes, with Aristotle, that the Ideas or essences are 
in the things in flux; or more precisely (as far as we can treat a Hegel 
with precision), Hegel teaches that they are identical with the things in 
flux: 'Everything actual is an Idea', he says—. But this does not mean that 
the gulf opened up by Plato between the essence of a thing and its 
sensible appearance is closed; for Hegel writes: 'Any mention of Essence 
implies that we distinguish it from the Being' (of the thing); ' . . . upon the 
latter, as compared with Essence, we rather look as mere appearance or 
semblance . . . Everything has an Essence, we have said; that is, things are 
not what they immediately show themselves to be.' Also like Plato and 
Aristotle, Hegel conceives the essences, at least those of organisms (and 



therefore also those of states), as souls, or 'Spirits'. 

But unlike Plato, Hegel does not teach that the trend of the 
development of the world in flux is a descent, away from the Idea, 
towards decay. Like Speusippus and Aristotle, Hegel teaches that the 
general trend is rather towards the Idea; it is progress. Although he 
says—, with Plato, that 'the perishable thing has its basis in Essence, and 
originates from it', Hegel insists, in opposition to Plato, that even the 
essences develop. In Hegel's world, as in Heraclitus', everything is in 
flux; and the essences, originally introduced by Plato in order to obtain 
something stable, are not exempted. But this flux is not decay. Hegel's 
historicism is optimistic. His essences and Spirits are, like Plato's souls, 
self-moving; they are self-developing, or, using more fashionable terms, 
they are 'emerging' and 'self-creating'. And they propel themselves in 
the direction of an Aristotelian 'final cause', or, as Hegel puts it—, 
towards a 'self-realizing and self-realized final cause in itself. This final 
cause or end of the development of the essences is what Hegel calls 'The 
absolute Idea' or 'The Idea'. (This Idea is, Hegel tells us, rather complex: 
it is, all in one, the Beautiful; Cognition and Practical Activity; 
Comprehension; the Highest Good; and the Scientifically Contemplated 
Universe. But we really need not worry about minor difficulties such as 
these.) We can say that Hegel's world of flux is in a state of 'emergent' 
or 'creative evolution'—; each of its stages contains the preceding ones, 
from which it originates; and each stage supersedes all previous stages, 
approaching nearer and nearer to perfection. The general law of 
development is thus one of progress; but, as we shall see, not of a simple 
and straightforward, but of a 'dialectic' progress. 

As previous quotations have shown, the collectivist Hegel, like Plato, 
visualizes the state as an organism; and following Rousseau who had 
furnished it with a collective 'general will', Hegel furnishes it with a 
conscious and thinking essence, its 'reason' or 'Spirit'. This Spirit, whose 



'very essence is activity' (which shows its dependence on Rousseau), is at 
the same time the collective Spirit of the Nation that forms the state. 

To an essentialist, knowledge or understanding of the state must 
clearly mean knowledge of its essence or Spirit. And as we have seen— in 
the last chapter, we can know the essence and its 'potentialities' only 
from its 'actual' history. Thus we arrive at the fundamental position of 
historicist method, that the way of obtaining knowledge of social 
institutions such as the state is to study its history, or the history of its 
'Spirit'. And the other two historicist consequences developed in the last 
chapter follow also. The Spirit of the nation determines its hidden 
historical destiny; and every nation that wishes 'to emerge into existence' 
must assert its individuality or soul by entering the 'Stage of History', 
that is to say, by fighting the other nations; the object of the fight is world 
domination. We can see from this that Hegel, like Heraclitus, believes 
that war is the father and king of all things. And like Heraclitus, he 
believes that war is just: 'The History of the World is the World's court 
of justice', writes Hegel. And like Heraclitus, Hegel generalizes this 
doctrine by extending it to the world of nature, interpreting the contrasts 
and oppositions of things, the polarity of opposites, etc., as a kind of war, 
and as a moving force of natural development. And like Heraclitus, Hegel 
believes in the unity or identity of opposites; indeed, the unity of 
opposites plays such an important part in the evolution, in the 
'dialectical' progress, that we can describe these two Heraclitean ideas, 
the war of opposites, and their unity or identity, as the main ideas of 
Hegel's dialectics. 

So far, this philosophy appears as a tolerably decent and honest 
historicism, although one that is perhaps a little unoriginal—; and there 
seems to be no reason to describe it, with Schopenhauer, as charlatanism. 
But this appearance begins to change if we now turn to an analysis of 
Hegel's dialectics. For he proffers this method with an eye to Kant, who. 



in his attack upon metaphysics (the violence of these attacks may be 
gauged from the motto to my 'Introduction'), had tried to show that all 
speculations of this kind are untenable. Hegel never attempted to refute 
Kant. He bowed, and twisted Kant's view into its opposite. This is how 
Kant's 'dialectics', the attack upon metaphysics, was converted into 
Hegelian 'dialectics', the main tool of metaphysics. 

Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, asserted under the influence of 
Hume that pure speculation or reason, whenever it ventures into a field in 
which it cannot possibly be checked by experience, is liable to get 
involved in contradictions or 'antinomies' and to produce what he 
unambiguously described as 'mere fancies'; 'nonsense'; 'illusions'; 'a 
sterile dogmatism'; and 'a superficial pretension to the knowledge of 
everything'—. He tried to show that to every metaphysical assertion or 
thesis, concerning for example the beginning of the world in time, or the 
existence of God, there can be contrasted a counter-assertion or 
antithesis', and both, he held, may proceed from the same assumptions, 
and can be proved with an equal degree of 'evidence'. In other words, 
when leaving the field of experience, our speculation can have no 
scientific status, since to every argument there must be an equally valid 
counter-argument. Kant's intention was to stop once and forever the 
'accursed fertility' of the scribblers on metaphysics. But unfortunately, 
the effect was very different. What Kant stopped was only the attempts of 
the scribblers to use rational argument; they only gave up the attempt to 
teach, but not the attempt to bewitch the public (as Schopenhauer puts 
it—). For this development, Kant himself undoubtedly bears a very 
considerable share of the blame; for the obscure style of his work (which 
he wrote in a great hurry, although only after long years of meditation) 
contributed considerably to a further lowering of the low standard of 
clarity in German theoretical writing—. 

None of the metaphysical scribblers who came after Kant made any 



attempt to refute him—; and Hegel, more particularly, even had the 
audacity to patronize Kant for 'reviving the name of Dialectics, which he 
restored to their post of honour'. He taught that Kant was quite right in 
pointing out the antinomies, but that he was wrong to worry about them. 
It just lies in the nature of reason that it must contradict itself, Hegel 
asserted; and it is not a weakness of our human faculties, but it is the very 
essence of all rationality that it must work with contradictions and 
antinomies; for this is just the way in which reason develops. Hegel 
asserted that Kant had analysed reason as if it were something static; that 
he forgot that mankind develops, and with it, our social heritage. But 
what we are pleased to call our own reason is nothing but the product of 
this social heritage, of the historical development of the social group in 
which we live, the nation. This development proceeds dialectically, that 
is to say, in a three-beat rhythm. First a thesis is proffered; but it will 
produce criticism, it will be contradicted by opponents who assert its 
opposite, an antithesis; and in the conflict of these views, a synthesis is 
attained, that is to say, a kind of unity of the opposites, a compromise or a 
reconciliation on a higher level. The synthesis absorbs, as it were, the two 
original opposite positions, by superseding them; it reduces them to 
components of itself, thereby negating, elevating, and preserving them. 
And once the synthesis has been established, the whole process can repeat 
itself on the higher level that has now been reached. This is, in brief, the 
three-beat rhythm of progress which Hegel called the 'dialectic triad'. 

I am quite prepared to admit that this is not a bad description of the 
way in which a critical discussion, and therefore also scientific thought, 
may sometimes progress. For all criticism consists in pointing out some 
contradictions or discrepancies, and scientific progress consists largely in 
the elimination of contradictions wherever we find them. This means, 
however, that science proceeds on the assumption that contradictions are 
impermissible and avoidable, so that the discovery of a contradiction 



forces the scientist to make every attempt to eliminate it; and indeed, 
once a contradiction is admitted, all science must collapse—. But Hegel 
derives a very different lesson from his dialectic triad. Since 
contradictions are the means by which science progresses, he concludes 
that contradictions are not only permissible and unavoidable but also 
highly desirable. This is a Hegelian doctrine which must destroy all 
argument and all progress. For if contradictions are unavoidable and 
desirable, there is no need to eliminate them, and so all progress must 
come to an end. 

But this doctrine is just one of the main tenets of Hegelianism. Hegel's 
intention is to operate freely with all contradictions. 'All things are 
contradictory in themselves', he insists—, in order to defend a position 
which means the end not only of all science, but of all rational argument. 
And the reason why he wishes to admit contradictions is that he wants to 
stop rational argument, and with it scientific and intellectual progress. By 
making argument and criticism impossible, he intends to make his own 
philosophy proof against all criticism, so that it may establish itself as a 
reinforced dogmatism , secure from every attack, and the unsurmountable 
summit of all philosophical development. (We have here a first example 
of a typical dialectical twist, the idea of progress, popular in a period 
which leads to Darwin, but not in keeping with conservative interests, is 
twisted into its opposite, that of a development which has arrived at an 
end — an arrested development.) 

So much for Hegel's dialectic triad, one of the two pillars on which his 
philosophy rests. The significance of the theory will be seen when I 
proceed to its application. 

The other of the two pillars of Hegelianism is his so-called philosophy 
of identity. It is, in its turn, an application of dialectics. I do not intend to 
waste the reader's time by attempting to make sense of it, especially 
since I have tried to do so elsewhere—; for in the main, the philosophy of 



identity is nothing but shameless equivocation, and, to use Hegel's own 
words, it consists of nothing but 'fancies, even imbecile fancies'. It is a 
maze in which are caught the shadows and echoes of past philosophies, of 
Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle, as well as of Rousseau and Kant, and in 
which they now celebrate a kind of witches' sabbath, madly trying to 
confuse and beguile the naive onlooker. The leading idea, and at the same 
time the link between Hegel's dialectics and his philosophy of identity, is 
Heraclitus' doctrine of the unity of opposites. 'The path that leads up and 
the path that leads down are identical', Heraclitus had said, and Hegel 
repeats this when he says: 'The way west and the way east are the same.' 
This Heraclitean doctrine of the identity of opposites is applied to a host 
of reminiscences from the old philosophies which are thereby 'reduced to 
components' of Hegel's own system. Essence and Idea, the one and the 
many, substance and accident, form and content, subject and object, being 
and becoming, everything and nothing, change and rest, actuality and 
potentiality, reality and appearance, matter and spirit, all these ghosts 
from the past seem to haunt the brain of the Great Dictator while he 
performs his dance with his balloon, with his puffed-up and fictitious 
problems of God and the World. But there is method in this madness, and 
even Prussian method. For behind the apparent confusion there lurk the 
interests of the absolute monarchy of Frederick William. The philosophy 
of identity serves to justify the existing order. Its main upshot is an 
ethical and juridical positivism, the doctrine that what is, is good, since 
there can be no standards but existing standards; it is the doctrine that 
might is right. 

How is this doctrine derived? Merely by a series of equivocations. 
Plato, whose Forms or Ideas, as we have seen, are entirely different from 
'ideas in the mind', had said that the Ideas alone are real, and that 
perishable things are unreal. Hegel adopts from this doctrine the equation 
Ideal =Real. Kant talked, in his dialectics, about the 'Ideas of pure 



Reason', using the term 'Idea' in the sense of 'ideas in the mind'. Hegel 
adopts from this the doctrine that the Ideas are something mental or 
spiritual or rational, which can be expressed in the equation /Jea = 
Reason. Combined, these two equations, or rather equivocations, yield 
Real = Reason; and this allows Hegel to maintain that everything that is 
reasonable must be real, and everything that is real must be reasonable, 
and that the development of reality is the same as that of reason. And 
since there can be no higher standard in existence than the latest 
development of Reason and of the Idea, everything that is now real or 
actual exists by necessity, and must be reasonable as well as good—. 
(Particularly good, as we shall see, is the actually existing Prussian state.) 

This is the philosophy of identity. Apart from ethical positivism a 
theory of truth also comes to light, just as a byproduct (to use 
Schopenhauer's words). And a very convenient theory it is. All that is 
reasonable is real, we have seen. This means, of course, that all that is 
reasonable must conform to reality, and therefore must be true. Truth 
develops in the same way as reason develops, and everything that appeals 
to reason in its latest stage of development must also be true for that 
stage. In other words, everything that seems certain to those whose reason 
is up to date, must be true. Self-evidence is the same as truth. Provided 
you are up to date, all you need is to believe in a doctrine; this makes it, 
by definition, true. In this way, the opposition between what Hegel calls 
'the Subjective', i.e. belief, and 'the Objective', i.e. truth, is turned into 
an identity; and this unity of opposites explains scientific knowledge 
also. 'The Idea is the union of Subjective and Objective ... Science 
presupposes that the separation between itself and Truth is already 
cancelled.'— 

So much on Hegel's philosophy of identity, the second pillar of 
wisdom on which his historicism is built. With its erection, the somewhat 
tiresome work of analysing Hegel's more abstract doctrines comes to an 



end. The rest of this chapter will be confined to the practical political 
applications made by Hegel of these abstract theories. And these practical 
applications will show us more clearly the apologetic purpose of all his 
labours. 

Hegel's dialectics, I assert, are very largely designed to pervert the 
ideas of 1789. Hegel was perfectly conscious of the fact that the dialectic 
method can be used for twisting an idea into its opposite. 'Dialectics', he 
writes—, 'are no novelty in philosophy. Socrates ... used to simulate the 
wish for some clearer knowledge about the subject under discussion, and 
after putting all sorts of questions with that intention, he brought those 
with whom he conversed round to the opposite of what their first 
impression had pronounced correct.' As a description of Socrates' 
intentions, this statement of Hegel's is perhaps not very fair (considering 
that Socrates' main aim was the exposure of cocksureness rather than the 
conversion of people to the opposite of what they believed before); but as 
a statement of Hegel's own intention, it is excellent, even though in 
practice Hegel's method turns out to be more clumsy than his programme 
indicates. 

As a first example of this use of dialectics, I shall select the problem of 
freedom of thought, of the independence of science, and of the standards 
of objective truth, as treated by Hegel in \hQ Philosophy of Law (§ 270). 
He begins with what can only be interpreted as a demand for freedom of 
thought, and for its protection by the state: 'The state', he writes, 'has ... 
thought as its essential principle. Thus freedom of thought, and science, 
can originate only in the state; it was the Church that burnt Giordano 
Bruno, and forced Galileo to recant ... Science, therefore, must seek 
protection from the state, since ... the aim of science is knowledge of 
objective truth.' After this promising start which we may take as 
representing the 'first impressions' of his opponents, Hegel proceeds to 
bring them 'to the opposite of what their first impressions pronounced 



correct', covering his change of front by another sham attack on the 
Church: 'But such knowledge does, of course, not always conform with 
the standards of science, it may degenerate into mere opinion . . . ; and for 
these opinions ... it' (i.e. science) 'may raise the same pretentious 
demand as the Church — the demand to be free in its opinions and 
convictions.' Thus the demand for freedom of thought, and of the claim 
of science to judge for itself, is described as 'pretentious'; but this is 
merely the first step in Hegel's twist. We next hear that, if faced with 
subversive opinions, 'the state must protect objective truth'; which raises 
the fundamental question: who is to judge what is, and what is not, 
objective truth? Hegel replies: 'The state has, in general, ... to make up 
its own mind concerning what is to be considered as objective truth.' 
With this reply, freedom of thought, and the claims of science to set its 
own standards, give way, finally, to their opposites. 

As a second example of this use of dialectics, I select Hegel's 
treatment of the demand for a political constitution, which he combines 
with his treatment of equality and liberty. In order to appreciate the 
problem of the constitution, it must be remembered that Prussian 
absolutism knew no constitutional law (apart from such principles as the 
full sovereignty of the king) and that the slogan of the campaign for 
democratic reform in the various German principalities was that the 
prince should 'grant the country a constitution'. But Frederick William 
agreed with his councillor Ancillon in the conviction that he must never 
give way to 'the hotheads, that very active and loud-voiced group of 
persons who for some years have set themselves up as the nation and 
have cried for a constitution'—. And although, under great pressure, the 
king promised a constitution, he never fulfilled his word. (There is a story 
that an innocent comment on the king's 'constitution' led to the dismissal 
of his unfortunate court-physician.) Now how does Hegel treat this 
ticklish problem? 'As a living mind', he writes, 'the state is an organized 



whole, articulated into various agencies . . . The constitution is this 
articulation or organization of state power . . . The constitution is existent 
justice ... Liberty and equality are ... the final aims and results of the 
constitution.' This, of course, is only the introduction. But before 
proceeding to the dialectical transformation of the demand for a 
constitution into one for an absolute monarchy, we must first show how 
Hegel transforms the two 'aims and results', liberty and equality, into 
their opposites. 

Let us first see how Hegel twists equality into inequality: 'That the 
citizens are equal before the law', Hegel admits—, 'contains a great truth. 
But expressed in this way, it is only a tautology; it only states in general 
that a legal status exists, that the laws rule. But to be more concrete, the 
citizens . . . are equal before the law only in the points in which they are 
equal outside the law also. Only that equality which they possess in 
property, age, ... etc., can deserve equal treatment before the law ... The 
laws themselves . . . presuppose unequal conditions ... It should be said 
that it is just the great development and maturity of form in modern 
states which produces the supreme concrete inequality of individuals in 
actuality. ' 

In this outline of Hegel's twist of the 'great truth' of equalitarianism 
into its opposite, I have radically abbreviated his argument; and I must 
warn the reader that I shall have to do the same throughout the chapter; 
for only in this way is it at all possible to present, in a readable manner, 
his verbosity and the flight of his thoughts (which, I do not doubt, is 
pathological—). 

We may consider liberty next. 'As regards liberty', Hegel writes, 'in 
former times, the legally defined rights, the private as well as public 
rights of a city, etc., were called its "liberties". Really, every genuine law 
is a liberty; for it contains a reasonable principle ...; which means, in 
other words, that it embodies a liberty . . . ' Now this argument which tries 



to show that 'liberty' is the same as 'a liberty' and therefore the same as 
'law', from which it follows that the more laws, the more liberty, is 
clearly nothing but a clumsy statement (clumsy because it relies on a 
kind of pun) of the paradox of freedom, first discovered by Plato, and 
briefly discussed above—; a paradox that can be expressed by saying that 
unlimited freedom leads to its opposite, since without its protection and 
restriction by law, freedom must lead to a tyranny of the strong over the 
weak. This paradox, vaguely restated by Rousseau, was solved by Kant, 
who demanded that the freedom of each man should be restricted, but not 
beyond what is necessary to safeguard an equal degree of freedom for all. 
Hegel of course knows Kant's solution, but he does not like it, and he 
presents it, without mentioning its author, in the following disparaging 
way: 'To-day, nothing is more familiar than the idea that each must 
restrict his liberty in relation to the liberty of others; that the state is a 
condition of such reciprocal restrictions; and that the laws are 
restrictions. But', he goes on to criticize Kant's theory, 'this expresses 
the kind of outlook that views freedom as casual good-pleasure and self- 
will.' With this cryptic remark, Kant's equalitarian theory of justice is 
dismissed. 

But Hegel himself feels that the little jest by which he equates liberty 
and law is not quite sufficient for his purpose; and somewhat hesitatingly 
he turns back to his original problem, that of the constitution. 'The term 
political liberty', he says—, 'is often used to mean a formal participation 
in the public affairs of the state by ... those who otherwise find their 
chief function in the particular aims and business of civil society' (in 
other words, by the ordinary citizen). 'And it has ... become a custom to 
give the title "constitution" only to that side of the state which establishes 
such participation and to regard a state in which this is not formally 
done as a state without a constitution.' Indeed, this has become a custom. 
But how to get out of it? By a merely verbal trick — ^by a definition: 



'About this use of the term, the only thing to say is that by a constitution 
we must understand the determination of laws in general, that is to say, of 
liberties . . . ' But again, Hegel himself feels the appalling poverty of the 
argument, and in despair he dives into a collectivist mysticism (of 
Rousseau's making) and into historicism— : 'The question "To whom ... 
belongs the power of making a constitution?" is the same as "Who has to 
make the Spirit of a Nation?". Separate your idea of a constitution', 
Hegel exclaims, 'from that of a collective Spirit, as if the latter exists, or 
has existed, without a constitution, and your fancy proves how 
superficially you have apprehended the nexus' (namely, that between the 
Spirit and the constitution). '... It is the indwelling Spirit and the history 
of the Nation — ^which only is that Spirit's history — ^by which 
constitutions have been and are made.' But this mysticism is still too 
vague to justify absolutism. One must be more specific; and Hegel now 
hastens to be so: 'The really living totality,' he writes, 'that which 
preserves, and continually produces, the State and its constitution, is the 
Government ... In the Government, regarded as an organic totality, the 
Sovereign Power or Principate is ... the all- sustaining, all-decreeing Will 
of the State, its highest Peak and all-pervasive Unity. In the perfect form 
of the State in which each and every element . . . has reached its free 
existence, this will is that of one actual decreeing Individual (not merely 
of a majority in which the unity of the decreeing will has no actual 
existence); it is monarchy. The monarchical constitution is therefore the 
constitution of developed reason; and all other constitutions belong to 
lower grades of the development and the self-realization of reason.' And 
to be still more specific, Hegel explains in a parallel passage of his 
Philosophy of Law — the foregoing quotations are all taken from his 
Encyclopcedia — that 'ultimate decision . . . absolute self-determination 
constitutes the power of the prince as such', and that 'the absolutely 
decisive element in the whole ... is a single individual, the monarch.' 



Now we have it. How can anybody be so stupid as to demand a 
'constitution' for a country that is blessed with an absolute monarchy, the 
highest possible grade of all constitutions anyway? Those who make such 
demands obviously know not what they do and what they are talking 
about, just as those who demand freedom are too blind to see that in the 
Prussian absolute monarchy, 'each and every element has reached its free 
existence'. In other words, we have here Hegel's absolute dialectical 
proof that Prussia is the 'highest peak', and the very stronghold, of 
freedom; that its absolutist constitution is the goal (not as some might 
think, the gaol) towards which humanity moves; and that its government 
preserves and keeps, as it were, the purest spirit of freedom — in 
concentration. 

Plato's philosophy, which once had claimed mastership in the state, 
becomes with Hegel its most servile lackey. 

These despicable services—, it is important to note, were rendered 
voluntarily. There was no totalitarian intimidation in those happy days of 
absolute monarchy; nor was the censorship very effective, as countless 
liberal publications show. When Hegel published his Encyclopcedia he 
was professor in Heidelberg. And immediately after the publication, he 
was called to Berlin to become, as his admirers say, the 'acknowledged 
dictator' of philosophy. But, some may contend, all this, even if it is true, 
does not prove anything against the excellence of Hegel's dialectic 
philosophy, or against his greatness as a philosopher. To this contention, 
Schopenhauer's reply has already been given: 'Philosophy is misused, 
from the side of the state as a tool, from the other side as a means of gain. 
Who can really believe that truth also will thereby come to light, just as a 
by-product?' 

These passages give us a glimpse of the way in which Hegel's dialectic 
method is applied in practice. I now proceed to the combined application 
of dialectics and the philosophy of identity. 



Hegel, we have seen, teaches that everything is in flux, even essences. 
Essences and Ideas and Spirits develop; and their development is, of 
course, self-moving and dialectical—. And the latest stage of every 
development must be reasonable, and therefore good and true, for it is the 
apex of all past developments, superseding all previous stages. (Thus 
things can only get better and better.) Every real development, since it is 
a real process, must, according to the philosophy of identity, be a rational 
and reasonable process. It is clear that this must hold for history also. 

Heraclitus had maintained that there is a hidden reason in history. For 
Hegel, history becomes an open book. The book is pure apologetics. By 
its appeal to the wisdom of Providence it offers an apology for the 
excellence of Prussian monarchism; by its appeal to the excellence of 
Prussian monarchism it offers an apology for the wisdom of Providence. 

History is the development of something real. According to the 
philosophy of identity, it must therefore be something rational. The 
evolution of the real world, of which history is the most important part, is 
taken by Hegel to be 'identical' with a kind of logical operation, or with a 
process of reasoning. History, as he sees it, is the thought process of the 
'Absolute Spirit' or 'World Spirit'. It is the manifestation of this Spirit. It 
is a kind of huge dialectical syllogism—; reasoned out, as it were, by 
Providence. The syllogism is the plan which Providence follows; and the 
logical conclusion arrived at is the end which Providence pursues — the 
perfection of the world. 'The only thought', Hegel writes in his 
Philosophy of History, 'with which Philosophy approaches History, is the 
simple conception of Reason; it is the doctrine that Reason is the 
Sovereign of the World, and that the History of the World, therefore, 
presents us with a rational process. This conviction and intuition is ... no 
hypothesis in the domain of Philosophy. It is there proven . . . that Reason 
. . . is Substance', as well as Infinite Power; . . . Infinite Matter . . .; Infinite 
Form ...; Infinite Energy ... That this "Idea" or "Reason" is the True, the 



Eternal, the absolutely Power/i// Essence; that it reveals itself in the 
World, and that in that World nothing else is revealed but this and its 
honour and glory — this is a thesis which, as we have said, has been 
proved in Philosophy, and is here regarded as demonstrated.' This gush 
does not carry us far. But if we look up the passage in 'Philosophy' (i.e., 
in his Encyclopcedid) to which Hegel refers, then we see a little more of 
his apologetic purpose. For here we read: 'That History, and above all 
Universal History, is founded on an essential and actual aim, which 
actually is, and will be, realized in it — the Plan of Providence; that, in 
short, there is Reason in History, must be decided on strictly 
philosophical grounds, and thus shown to be essential and in fact 
necessary.' Now since the aim of Providence 'actually is realized' in the 
results of history, it might be suspected that this realization has taken 
place in the actual Prussia. And so it has; we are even shown how this aim 
i s reached, in three dialectical steps of the historical development of 
reason, or, as Hegel says, of 'Spirit', whose 'life ... is a cycle of 
progressive embodiments'—. The first of these steps is Oriental 
despotism, the second is formed by the Greek and Roman democracies 
and aristocracies, and the third, and highest, is the Germanic Monarchy, 
which of course is an absolute monarchy. And Hegel makes it quite clear 
that he does not mean a Utopian monarchy of the future: 'Spirit . . . has no 
past, no future,' he writes, 'but is essentially now, this necessarily 
implies that the present form of the Spirit contains and surpasses all 
earlier steps.' 

But Hegel can be even more outspoken than that. He subdivided the 
third period of history, Germanic Monarchy, or 'the German World', into 
three divisions too, of which he says—: 'First, we have to consider 
Reformation in itself — the all-enlightening Sun, following on that blush 
of dawn which we observed at the termination of the medieval period; 
next, the unfolding of that state of things which succeeded the 



Reformation; and lastly, Modern Times, dating from the end of the last 
century', i.e. the period from 1800 down to 1830 (the last year in which 
these lectures were delivered). And Hegel proves again that this present 
Prussia is the pinnacle and the stronghold and the goal of freedom. 'On 
the Stage of Universal History', Hegel writes 'on which we can observe 
and grasp it. Spirit displays itself in its most concrete reality.' And the 
essence of Spirit, Hegel teaches, is freedom. 'Freedom is the sole truth of 
Spirit.' Accordingly, the development of Spirit must be the development 
of freedom, and the highest freedom must have been achieved in those 
thirty years of the Germanic Monarchy which represent the last 
subdivision of historical development. And indeed, we read—: 'The 
German Spirit is the Spirit of the new World. Its aim is the realization of 
absolute Truth as the unlimited self-determination of Freedom.' And 
after a eulogy of Prussia, the government of which, Hegel assures us, 
'rests with the official world, whose apex is the personal decision of the 
Monarch; for a final decision is, as shown above, an absolute necessity', 
Hegel reaches the crowning conclusion of his work: 'This is the point', he 
says, 'which consciousness has attained, and these are the principal 
phases of that form in which Freedom has realized itself; for the History 
of the World is nothing but the development of the Idea of Freedom . . . 
That the History of the World ... is the realization of Spirit, this is the 
true Theodicy, the justification of God in History . . . What has happened 
and is happening ... is essentially His Work . . . ' 

I ask whether I was not justified when I said that Hegel presents us 
with an apology for God and for Prussia at the same time, and whether it 
is not clear that the state which Hegel commands us to worship as the 
Divine Idea on earth is not simply Frederick William's Prussia from 1800 
to 1830. And I ask whether it is possible to outdo this despicable 
perversion of everything that is decent; a perversion not only of reason, 
freedom, equality, and the other ideas of the open society, but also of a 



sincere belief in God, and even of a sincere patriotism. 

I have described how, starting from a point that appears to be 
progressive and even revolutionary, and proceeding by that general 
dialectical method of twisting things which by now will be familiar to the 
reader, Hegel finally reaches a surprisingly conservative result. At the 
same time, he connects his philosophy of history with his ethical and 
juridical positivism, giving the latter a kind of historicist justification. 
History is our judge. Since History and Providence have brought the 
existing powers into being, their might must be right, even Divine right. 

But this moral positivism does not fully satisfy Hegel. He wants more. 
Just as he opposes liberty and equality, so he opposes the brotherhood of 
man, humanitarianism, or, as he says, 'philanthropy'. Conscience must be 
replaced by blind obedience and by a romantic Heraclitean ethics of fame 
and fate, and the brotherhood of man by a totalitarian nationalism. How 
this is done will be shown in section III and especially— in section IV of 
this chapter. 

Ill 

I now proceed to a very brief sketch of a rather strange story — the story 
of the rise of German nationalism. Undoubtedly the tendencies denoted 
by this term have a strong affinity with the revolt against reason and the 
open society. Nationalism appeals to our tribal instincts, to passion and to 
prejudice, and to our nostalgic desire to be relieved from the strain of 
individual responsibility which it attempts to replace by a collective or 
group responsibility. It is in keeping with these tendencies that we find 
that the oldest works on political theory, even that of the Old Oligarch, 
but more markedly those of Plato and of Aristotle, express decidedly 



nationalist views; for these works were written in an attempt to combat 
the open society and the new ideas of imperialism, cosmopolitanism, and 
equalitarianism— . But this early development of a nationalist political 
theory stops short with Aristotle. With Alexander's empire, genuine 
tribal nationalism disappears for ever from political practice, and for a 
long time from political theory. From Alexander onward, all the civilized 
states of Europe and Asia were empires, embracing populations of 
infinitely mixed origin. European civilization and all the political units 
belonging to it have remained international or, more precisely, inter- 
tribal ever since. (It seems that about as long before Alexander as 
Alexander was before us, the empire of ancient Sumer had created the 
first international civilization.) And what holds good of political practice 
holds good of political theory; until about a hundred years ago, the 
Platonic-Aristotelian nationalism had practically disappeared from 
political doctrines. (Of course, tribal and parochial feelings were always 
strong.) When nationalism was revived a hundred years ago, it was in one 
of the most mixed of all the thoroughly mixed regions of Europe, in 
Germany, and especially in Prussia with its largely Slav population. (It is 
not well known that barely a century ago, Prussia, with its then 
predominantly Slav population, was not considered a German state at all; 
though its kings, who as princes of Brandenburg were 'Electors' of the 
German Empire, were considered German princes. At the Congress of 
Vienna, Prussia was registered as a 'Slav kingdom'; and in 1830 Hegel 
still spoke— even of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg as being populated 
by 'Germanized Slavs'.) 

Thus it is only a short time since the principle of the national state was 
reintroduced into political theory. In spite of this fact, it is so widely 
accepted in our day that it is usually taken for granted, and very often 
unconsciously so. It now forms, as it were, an implicit assumption of 
popular political thought. It is even considered by many to be the basic 



postulate of political ethics, especially since Wilson's well-meant but 
less well-considered principle of national self-determination. How 
anybody who had the slightest knowledge of European history, of the 
shifting and mixing of all kinds of tribes, of the countless waves of 
peoples who had come forth from their original Asian habitat and split up 
and mingled when reaching the maze of peninsulas called the European 
continent, how anybody who knew this could ever have put forward such 
an inapplicable principle, is hard to understand. The explanation is that 
Wilson, who was a sincere democrat (and Masaryk also, one of the 
greatest of all fighters for the open society—), fell a victim to a 
movement that sprang from the most reactionary and servile political 
philosophy that had ever been imposed upon meek and long-suffering 
mankind. He fell a victim to his upbringing in the metaphysical political 
theories of Plato and of Hegel, and to the nationalist movement based 
upon them. 

The principle of the national state, that is to say, the political demand 
that the territory of every state should coincide with the territory 
inhabited by one nation, is by no means so self-evident as it seems to 
appear to many people to-day. Even if anyone knew what he meant when 
he spoke of nationality, it would be not at all clear why nationality should 
be accepted as a fundamental political category, more important for 
instance than religion, or birth within a certain geographical region, or 
loyalty to a dynasty, or a political creed like democracy (which forms, 
one might say, the uniting factor of multi-lingual Switzerland). But while 
religion, territory, or a political creed can be more or less clearly 
determined, nobody has ever been able to explain what he means by a 
nation, in a way that could be used as a basis for practical politics. (Of 
course, if we say that a nation is a number of people who live or have 
been born in a certain state, then everything is clear; but this would mean 
giving up the principle of the national state which demands that the state 



should be determined by the nation, and not the other way round.) None 
of the theories which maintain that a nation is united by a common 
origin, or a common language, or a common history, is acceptable, or 
applicable in practice. The principle of the national state is not only 
inapplicable but it has never been clearly conceived. It is a myth. It is an 
irrational, a romantic and Utopian dream, a dream of naturalism and of 
tribal collectivism. 

In spite of its inherent reactionary and irrational tendencies, modern 
nationalism, strangely enough, was in its short history before Hegel a 
revolutionary and liberal creed. By something like an historical accident 
— the invasion of German lands by the first national army, the French 
army under Napoleon, and the reaction caused by this event — it had made 
its way into the camp of freedom. It is not without interest to sketch the 
history of this development, and of the way in which Hegel brought 
nationalism back into the totalitarian camp where it had belonged from 
the time when Plato first maintained that Greeks are related to barbarians 
like masters to slaves. 

Plato, it will be remembered—, unfortunately formulated his 
fundamental political problem by asking: Who should rule? Whose will 
should be law? Before Rousseau, the usual answer to this question was: 
The prince. Rousseau gave a new and most revolutionary answer. Not the 
prince, he maintained, but the people should rule; not the will of one man 
but the will of all. In this way, he was led to invent the people's will, the 
collective will, or the 'general will', as he called it; and the people, once 
endowed with a will, had to be exalted into a super-personality; 'in 
relation to what is external to it' (i.e. in relation to other peoples), 
Rousseau says, 'it becomes one single being, one individual'. There was a 
good deal of romantic collectivism in this invention, but no tendency 
towards nationalism. But Rousseau's theories clearly contained the germ 
of nationalism, whose most characteristic doctrine is that the various 



nations must be conceived as personalities. And a great practical step in 
the nationalist direction was made when the French Revolution 
inaugurated a people's army, based on national conscription. 

One of the next to contribute to the theory of nationalism was J. G. 
Herder, a former pupil and at the time a personal friend of Kant. Herder 
maintained that a good state should have natural borders, namely those 
which coincide with the places inhabited by its 'nation'; a theory which 
he first proffered in his Ideas towards a Philosophy of the History oj 
Mankind (1785). 'The most natural state', he wrote—, 'is a state 
composed of a single people with a single national character ... A people 
is a natural growth like a family, only spread more widely ... As in all 
human communities, ... so, in the case of the state, the natural order is 
the best — that is to say, the order in which everyone fulfils that function 
for which nature intended him.' This theory, which tries to give an 
answer to the problem of the 'natural' borders of the state—, an answer 
that only raises the new problem of the 'natural' borders of the nation, 
did not at first exert much influence. It is interesting to see that Kant at 
once realized the dangerous irrational romanticism in this work of 
Herder's, of whom he made a sworn enemy by his outspoken criticism. I 
shall quote a passage from this criticism, because it excellently sums up, 
once and for all, not only Herder, but also the later oracular philosophers 
like Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, together with all their modern followers: 'A 
sagacity quick in picking up analogies', Kant wrote, 'and an imagination 
audacious in the use it makes of them are combined with a capability for 
enlisting emotions and passions in order to obtain interest for its object — 
an object that is always veiled in mystery. These emotions are easily 
mistaken for the efforts of powerful and profound thoughts, or at least of 
deeply significant allusions; and they thus arouse higher expectations 
than cool judgement would find justified . . . Synonyms are passed off as 
explanations, and allegories are offered as truths.' 



It was Fichte who provided German nationalism with its first theory. 
The borders of a nation, he contended, are determined by language. (This 
does not improve matters. Where do differences of dialect become 
differences of language? How many different languages do the Slavs or 
the Teutons speak, or are the differences merely dialects?) 

Fichte's opinions had a most curious development, especially if we 
consider that he was one of the founders of German nationalism. In 1793, 
he defended Rousseau and the French Revolution, and in 1799 he still 
declared—: 'It is plain that from now on the French Republic alone can be 
the fatherland of the upright man, that he can devote his powers to this 
country alone of all, since not only the dearest hopes of humanity but also 
its very existence are bound up with the victory of France ... I dedicate 
myself and all my abilities to the Republic' It may be noted that when 
Fichte made these remarks he was negotiating for a university position in 
Mainz, a place then controlled by the French. 'In 1804', E. N. Anderson 
writes in his interesting study on nationalism, 'Fichte ... was eager to 
leave Prussian service and to accept a call from Russia. The Prussian 
government had not appreciated him to the desired financial extent and 
he hoped for more recognition from Russia, writing to the Russian 
negotiator that if the government would make him a member of the St. 
Petersburg Academy of Science and pay him a salary of not less than four 
hundred roubles, "I would be theirs until death" ... Two years later', 
Anderson continues, 'the transformation of Fichte the cosmopolitan into 
Fichte the nationalist was completed.' 

When Berlin was occupied by the French, Fichte left, out of patriotism; 
an act which, as Anderson says 'he did not allow ... to remain unnoticed 
by the Prussian king and government'. When A. Mueller and W. von 
Humboldt had been received by Napoleon, Fichte wrote indignantly to his 
wife: 'I do not envy Mueller and Humboldt; I am glad that I did not 
obtain that shameful honour ... It makes a difference to one's conscience 



and apparently also to one s later success if . . . one has openly shown 
devotion to the good cause.' On this, Anderson comments: 'As a matter 
of fact, he did profit; undoubtedly his call to the University of Berlin 
resulted from this episode. This does not detract from the patriotism of 
his act, but merely places it in its proper light.' To all this we must add 
that Fichte's career as a philosopher was from the beginning based on a 
fraud. His first book was published anonymously, when Kant's 
philosophy of religion was expected, under the title Critique of All 
Revelation. It was an extremely dull book, which did not prevent it from 
being a clever copy of Kant's style; and everything was set in motion, 
including rumours, to make people believe that it was Kant's work. The 
matter appears in its right light if we realize that Fichte only obtained a 
publisher through the kindheartedness of Kant (who was never able to 
read more than the first few pages of the book). When the press extolled 
Fichte's work as one of Kant's, Kant was forced to make a public 
statement that the work was Fichte's, and Fichte, upon whom fame had 
suddenly descended, was made professor in Jena. But Kant was later 
forced to make another declaration, in order to dissociate himself from 
this man, a declaration in which occur the words—: 'May God protect us 
from our friends. From our enemies, we can try to protect ourselves.' 

These are a few episodes in the career of the man whose 'windbaggery' 
has given rise to modern nationalism as well as to modern Idealist 
philosophy, erected upon the perversion of Kant's teaching. (I follow 
Schopenhauer in distinguishing between Fichte's 'windbaggery' and 
Hegel's 'charlatanry', although I must admit that to insist on this 
distinction is perhaps a little pedantic.) The whole story is interesting 
mainly because of the light it throws upon the 'history of philosophy' and 
upon 'history' in general. I mean not only the perhaps more humorous 
than scandalous fact that such clowns are taken seriously, and that they 
are made the objects of a kind of worship, of solemn although often 



boring studies (and of examination papers to match). I mean not only the 
appalling fact that the windbag Fichte and the charlatan Hegel are treated 
on a level with men like Democritus, Pascal, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, 
Hume, Kant, J. S. Mill, and Bertrand Russell, and that their moral 
teaching is taken seriously and perhaps even considered superior to that 
of these other men. But I mean that many of these eulogist historians of 
philosophy, unable to discriminate between thought and fancy, not to 
mention good and bad, dare to pronounce that their history is our judge, 
or that their history of philosophy is an implicit criticism of the different 
'systems of thought'. For it is clear, I think, that their adulation can only 
be an implicit criticism of their histories of philosophy, and of that 
pomposity and conspiracy of noise by which the business of philosophy is 
glorified. It seems to be a law of what these people are pleased to call 
'human nature' that bumptiousness grows in direct proportion to 
deficiency of thought and inversely to the amount of service rendered to 
human welfare. 

At the time when Fichte became the apostle of nationalism, an 
instinctive and revolutionary nationalism was rising in Germany as a 
reaction to the Napoleonic invasion. (It was one of those typical tribal 
reactions against the expansion of a super-national empire.) The people 
demanded democratic reforms which they understood in the sense of 
Rousseau and of the French Revolution, but which they wanted without 
their French conquerors. They turned against their own princes and 
against the emperor at the same time. This early nationalism arose with 
the force of a new religion, as a kind of cloak in which a humanitarian 
desire for freedom and equality was clad. 'Nationalism', Anderson 
writes—, 'grew as orthodox Christianity declined, replacing the latter 
with belief in a mystical experience of its own.' It is the mystical 
experience of community with the other members of the oppressed tribe, 
an experience which replaced not only Christianity but especially the 



feeling of trust and loyalty to the king which the abuses of absolutism had 
destroyed. It is clear that such an untamed new and democratic religion 
was a source of great irritation, and even of danger, to the ruling class, 
and especially to the king of Prussia. How was this danger to be met? 
After the wars of liberation, Frederick William met it first by dismissing 
his nationalist advisers, and then by appointing Hegel. For the French 
Revolution had proved the influence of philosophy, a point duly 
emphasized by Hegel (since it is the basis of his own services): 'The 
Spiritual', he says—, 'is now the essential basis of the potential fabric, 
dind Philosophy has thereby become dominant. It has been said that the 
French Revolution resulted from Philosophy, and it is not without reason 
that Philosophy has been described as World Wisdom; Philosophy is not 
only Truth in and for itself ... but also Truth as exhibited in worldly 
matters. We should not, therefore, contradict the assertion that the 
Revolution received its first impulse from Philosophy.' This is an 
indication of Hegel's insight into his immediate task, to give a counter 
impulse; an impulse, though not the first, by which philosophy might 
strengthen the forces of reaction. Part of this task was the perversion of 
the ideas of freedom, equality, etc. But perhaps an even more urgent task 
was the taming of the revolutionary nationalist religion. Hegel fulfilled 
this task in the spirit of Pareto's advice 'to take advantage of sentiments, 
not wasting one's energies in futile efforts to destroy them'. He tamed 
nationalism not by outspoken opposition but by transforming it into a 
well-disciplined Prussian authoritarianism. And it so happened that he 
brought back a powerful weapon into the camp of the closed society, 
where it fundamentally belonged. 

All this was done rather clumsily. Hegel, in his desire to please the 
government, sometimes attacked the nationalists much too openly. 'Some 
men', he wrote— in thQ Philosophy of Law, 'have recently begun to talk 
of the "sovereignty of the people" in opposition to the sovereignty of the 



monarch. But when it is contrasted with the sovereignty of the monarch, 
then the phrase "sovereignty of the people" turns out to be merely one of 
those confused notions which arise from a wild idea of the "people". 
Without its monarch ... the people are just a formless multitude.' Earlier, 
in the Encyclopcedia, he wrote: 'The aggregate of private persons is often 
spoken of as the nation. But such an aggregate is a rabble, not a people; 
and with regard to it, it is the one aim of the state that a nation should not 
come into existence, to power and action, as such an aggregate. Such a 
condition of a nation is a condition of lawlessness, demoralization, 
brutishness. In it, the nation would only be a shapeless wild blind force, 
like that of a stormy elemental sea, which however is not self-destructive, 
as the nation — a spiritual element — would be. Yet one can often hear 
such a condition described as pure freedom.' There is here an 
unmistakable allusion to the liberal nationalists, whom the king hated 
like the plague. And this is even clearer when we see Hegel's reference to 
the early nationalists' dreams of rebuilding the German empire: 'The 
fiction of an Empire', he says in his eulogy of the latest developments in 
Prussia, 'has utterly vanished. It is broken into Sovereign States.' His 
anti-liberal tendencies induced Hegel to refer to England as the most 
characteristic example of a nation in the bad sense. 'Take the case of 
England,' he writes, 'which, because private persons have a predominant 
share in public affairs, has been regarded as having the freest of all 
constitutions. Experience shows that that country, as compared with the 
other civilized states of Europe, is the most backward in civil and 
criminal legislation, in the law and liberty of property, and in 
arrangements for the arts and sciences, and that objective freedom or 
rational right is sacrificed to formal— right and particular private 
interest: and that this happens even in the institutions and possessions 
dedicated to religion.' An astonishing statement indeed, especially when 
the 'arts and sciences' are considered, for nothing could have been more 



backward than Prussia, where the University of Berlin had been founded 
only under the influence of the Napoleonic wars, and with the idea, as the 
king said—, that 'the state must replace with intellectual prowess what it 
has lost in physical strength'. A few pages later, Hegel forgets what he 
has said about the arts and sciences in England; for he speaks there of 
'England, where the art of historical writing has undergone a process of 
purification and arrived at a firmer and more mature character'. 

We see that Hegel knew that his task was to combat the liberal and 
even the imperialist leanings of nationalism. He did it by persuading the 
nationalists that their coUectivist demands are automatically realized by 
an almighty state, and that all they need do is to help to strengthen the 
power of the state. 'The Nation State is Spirit in its substantive rationality 
and immediate actuality', he writes—; 'it is therefore the absolute power 
on earth . . . The state is the Spirit of the People itself. The actual State is 
animated by this spirit, in all its particular affairs, its Wars, and its 
Institutions ... The self-consciousness of one particular Nation is the 
vehicle for the . . . development of the collective spirit; ... in it, the Spirit 
of the Time invests its Will. Against this Will, the other national minds 
have no rights: that Nation dominates the World.' It is thus the nation and 
its spirit and its will that act on the stage of history. History is the contest 
of the various national spirits for world domination. From this it follows 
that the reforms advocated by the liberal nationalists are unnecessary, 
since the nation and its spirit are the leading actors anyway; besides, 
'every nation ... has the constitution which is appropriate to it and 
belongs to it'. (Juridical positivism.) We see that Hegel replaces the 
liberal elements in nationalism not only by a Platonic-Prussianist worship 
of the state, but also by a worship of history, of historical success. 
(Frederick William had been successful against Napoleon.) In this way, 
Hegel not only began a new chapter in the history of nationalism, but he 
also provided nationalism with a new theory. Fichte, we have seen, had 



provided it with the theory that it was based on language. Hegel 
introduced the historical theory of the nation. A nation, according to 
Hegel, is united by a spirit that acts in history. It is united by the common 
foe, and by the comradeship of the wars it has fought. (It has been said 
that a race is a collection of men united not by their origin but by a 
common error in regard to their origin. In a similar way, we could say 
that a nation in Hegel's sense is a number of men united by a common 
error in regard to their history.) It is clear how this theory is connected 
with Hegel's historicist essentialism. The history of a nation is the 
history of its essence or 'Spirit', asserting itself on the 'Stage of History'. 

In concluding this sketch of the rise of nationalism, I may make a 
remark on the events down to the foundation of Bismarck's German 
empire. Hegel's policy had been to take advantage of nationalist 
sentiments, instead of wasting energy in futile efforts to destroy them. 
But sometimes this celebrated technique appears to have rather strange 
consequences. The medieval conversion of Christianity into an 
authoritarian creed could not fully suppress its humanitarian tendencies; 
again and again, Christianity breaks through the authoritarian cloak (and 
is persecuted as heresy). In this way, Pareto's advice not only serves to 
neutralize tendencies that endanger the ruling class, but can also 
unintentionally help to preserve these very tendencies. A similar thing 
happened to nationalism. Hegel had tamed it, and had tried to replace 
German nationalism by a Prussian nationalism. But by thus 'reducing 
nationalism to a component' of his Prussianism (to use his own jargon) 
Hegel 'preserved' it; and Prussia found itself forced to proceed on the 
way of taking advantage of the sentiments of German nationalism. When 
it fought Austria in 1866 it had to do so in the name of German 
nationalism, and under the pretext of securing the leadership of 
'Germany'. And it had to advertise the vastly enlarged Prussia of 1871 as 
the new 'German Empire', a new 'German Nation' — welded by war into a 



unit, in accordance with Hegel's historical theory of the nation. 



IV 

In our own time, Hegel's hysterical historicism is still the fertilizer to 
which modem totalitarianism owes its rapid growth. Its use has prepared 
the ground, and has educated the intelligentsia to intellectual dishonesty, 
as will be shown in section V of this chapter. We have to learn the lesson 
that intellectual honesty is fundamental for everything we cherish. 

But is this all? And is it just? Is there nothing in the claim that Hegel's 
greatness lies in the fact that he was the creator of a new, of a historical 
way of thinking — of a new historical sense? 

Many of my friends have criticized me for my attitude towards Hegel, 
and for my inability to see his greatness. They were, of course, quite 
right, since I was indeed unable to see it. (I am so still.) In order to 
remedy this fault, I made a fairly systematic inquiry into the question. 
Wherein lies Hegel's greatness? 

The result was disappointing. No doubt, Hegel's talk about the vastness 
and greatness of the historical drama created an atmosphere of interest in 
history. No doubt, his vast historicist generalizations, periodizations, and 
interpretations fascinated some historians and challenged them to 
produce valuable and detailed historical studies (which nearly invariably 
showed the weakness of Hegel's findings as well as of his method). But 
was this challenging influence the achievement of either a historian or a 
philosopher? Was it not, rather, that of a propagandist? Historians, I 
found, tend to value Hegel (if at all) as a philosopher, and philosophers 
tend to believe that his contributions (if any) were to the understanding of 
history. But historicism is not history, and to believe in it reveals neither 



historical understanding nor historical sense. And if we wish to evaluate 
Hegel's greatness, as a historian or as a philosopher, we should not ask 
ourselves whether some people found his vision of history inspiring, but 
whether there was much truth in this vision. 

I found only one idea which was important and which might be 
claimed to be implicit in Hegel's philosophy. It is the idea which leads 
Hegel to attack abstract rationalism and intellectualism which does not 
appreciate the indebtedness of reason to tradition. It is a certain 
awareness of the fact (which, however, Hegel forgets in his Logic) that 
men cannot start with a blank, creating a world of thought from nothing; 
but that their thoughts are, largely, the product of an intellectual 
inheritance. 

I am ready to admit that this is an important point, and one which 
might be found in Hegel if one is willing to search for it. But I deny that 
it was Hegel's own contribution. It was the common property of the 
Romantics. That all social entities are products of history; not inventions, 
planned by reason, but formations emerging from the vagaries of 
historical events, from the interplay of ideas and interests, from 
sufferings and from passions, all this is older than Hegel. It goes back to 
Edmund Burke, whose appreciation of the significance of tradition for the 
functioning of all social institutions had immensely influenced the 
political thought of the German Romantic Movement. The trace of his 
influence can be found in Hegel, but only in the exaggerated and 
untenable form of an historical and evolutionary relativism — in the form 
of the dangerous doctrine that what is believed to-day is, in fact, true to- 
day, and in the equally dangerous corollary that what was true yesterday 
{true, and not merely 'believed') may be false to-morrow — a doctrine 
which, surely, is not likely to encourage an appreciation of the 
significance of tradition. 



V 



I now proceed to the last part of my treatment of Hegelianism, to the 
analysis of the dependence of the new tribalism or totalitarianism upon 
the doctrines of Hegel. 

If it were my aim to write a history of the rise of totalitarianism, I 
should have to deal with Marxism first; for fascism grew partly out of the 
spiritual and political breakdown of Marxism. (And, as we shall see, a 
similar statement may be made about the relationship between Leninism 
and Marxism.) Since my main issue, however, is historicism, I propose to 
deal with Marxism later, as the purest form of historicism that has so far 
arisen, and to tackle fascism first. 

Modern totalitarianism is only an episode within the perennial revolt 
against freedom and reason. From older episodes it is distinguished not 
so much by its ideology, as by the fact that its leaders succeeded in 
realizing one of the boldest dreams of their predecessors; they made the 
revolt against freedom a popular movement. (Its popularity, of course, 
must not be overrated; the intelligentsia are only a part of the people.) It 
was made possible only by the breakdown, in the countries concerned, of 
another popular movement. Social Democracy or the democratic version 
of Marxism, which in the minds of the working people stood for the ideas 
of freedom and equality. When it became obvious that it was not just by 
chance that this movement had failed in 1914 to make a determined stand 
against war; when it became clear that it was helpless to cope with the 
problems of peace, most of all with unemployment and economic 
depression; and when, at last, this movement defended itself only half- 
heartedly against fascist aggression, then the belief in the value of 
freedom and in the possibility of equality was seriously threatened, and 



the perennial revolt against freedom could by hook or by crook acquire a 
more or less popular backing. 

The fact that fascism had to take over part of the heritage of Marxism 
accounts for the one 'original' feature of fascist ideology, for the one 
point in which it deviates from the traditional make-up of the revolt 
against freedom. The point I have in mind is that fascism has not much 
use for an open appeal to the supernatural. Not that it is necessarily 
atheistic or lacking in mystical or religious elements. But the spread of 
agnosticism through Marxism led to a situation in which no political 
creed aiming at popularity among the working class could bind itself to 
any of the traditional religious forms. This is why fascism added to its 
official ideology, in its early stages at least, some admixture of 
nineteenth-century evolutionist materialism. 

Thus the formula of the fascist brew is in all countries the same: Hegel 
plus a dash of nineteenth-century materialism (especially Darwinism in 
the somewhat crude form given to it by Haeckel— ). The 'scientific' 
element in racialism can be traced back to Haeckel, who was responsible, 
in 1900, for a prize-competition whose subject was: 'What can we learn 
from the principles of Darwinism in respect of the internal and political 
development of a state?' The first prize was allotted to a voluminous 
racialist work by W. Schallmeyer, who thus became the grandfather of 
racial biology. It is interesting to observe how strongly this materialist 
racialism, despite its very different origin, resembles the naturalism of 
Plato. In both cases, the basic idea is that degeneration, particularly of the 
upper classes, is at the root of political decay (read: of the advance of the 
open society). Moreover, the modern myth of Blood and Soil has its exact 
counterpart in Plato's Myth of the Earthborn. Nevertheless, not 'Hegel + 
Plato', but 'Hegel + Haeckel' is the formula of modern racialism. As we 
shall see, Marx replaced Hegel's 'Spirit' by matter, and by material and 
economic interests. In the same way, racialism substitutes for Hegel's 



'Spirit' something material, the quasi-biological conception of Blood or 
Race. Instead of 'Spirit', Blood is the self-developing essence; instead of 
'Spirit', Blood is the Sovereign of the world, and displays itself on the 
Stage of History; and instead of its 'Spirit', the Blood of a nation 
determines its essential destiny. 

The transubstantiation of Hegelianism into racialism or of Spirit into 
Blood does not greatly alter the main tendency of Hegelianism. It only 
gives it a tinge of biology and of modern evolutionism. The outcome is a 
materialistic and at the same time mystical religion of a self-developing 
biological essence, very closely reminiscent of the religion of creative 
evolution (whose prophet was the Hegelian— Bergson), a religion which 
G. B. Shaw, more prophetically than profoundly, once characterized as 'a 
faith which complied with the first condition of all religions that have 
ever taken hold of humanity: namely, that it must be ... a meta-biology\ 
And indeed, this new religion of racialism clearly shows a meta- 
component and a Z?/o/ogy-component, as it were, or Hegelian mystical 
metaphysics and Haeckelian materialist biology. 

So much about the difference between modern totalitarianism and 
Hegelianism. In spite of its significance from the point of view of 
popularity, this difference is unimportant so far as their main political 
tendencies are concerned. But if we now turn to the similarities, then we 
get another picture. Nearly all the more important ideas of modern 
totalitarianism are directly inherited from Hegel, who collected and 
preserved what A. Zimmern calls— the 'armoury of weapons for 
authoritarian movements'. Although most of these weapons were not 
forged by Hegel himself, but discovered by him in the various ancient 
war treasuries of the perennial revolt against freedom, it is undoubtedly 
his effort which rediscovered them and placed them in the hands of his 
modern followers. Here is a brief list of some of the most precious of 
these ideas. (I omit Platonic totalitarianism and tribalism, which have 



already been discussed, as well as the theory of master and slave.) 

(a) Nationalism, in the form of the historicist idea that the state is the 
incarnation of the Spirit (or now, of the Blood) of the state-creating 
nation (or race); one chosen nation (now, the chosen race) is destined for 
world domination, (b) The state as the natural enemy of all other states 
must assert its existence in war. (c) The state is exempt from any kind of 
moral obligation; history, that is, historical success, is the sole judge; 
collective utility is the sole principle of personal conduct; propagandist 
lying and distortion of the truth is permissible, (d) The 'ethical' idea of 
war (total and collectivist), particularly of young nations against older 
ones; war, fate and fame as most desirable goods, (e) The creative role of 
the Great Man, the world-historical personality, the man of deep 
knowledge and great passion (now, the principle of leadership). (/) The 
ideal of the heroic life ('live dangerously') and of the 'heroic man' as 
opposed to the petty bourgeois and his life of shallow mediocrity. 

This list of spiritual treasures is neither systematic nor complete. All 
of them are part and parcel of an old patrimony. And they were stored up, 
and made ready for use, not only in the works of Hegel and his followers, 
but also in the minds of an intelligentsia fed exclusively for three long 
generations on such debased spiritual food, early recognized by 
Schopenhauer— as an 'intelligence-destroying pseudo-philosophy' and as 
a 'mischievous and criminal misuse of language'. I now proceed to a 
more detailed examination of the various points in this list. 

(a) According to modern totalitarian doctrines, the state as such is not 
the highest end. This is, rather, the Blood, and the People, the Race. The 
higher races possess the power to create states. The highest aim of a race 
or nation is to form a mighty state which can serve as a powerful 
instrument of its self-preservation. This teaching (but for the substitution 
of Blood for Spirit) is due to Hegel, who wrote—: 'In the existence of a 
Nation, the substantial aim is to be a State and preserve itself as such. A 



Nation that has not formed itself into a State — a mere Nation — has 
strictly speaking no history, like the Nations ... which existed in a 
condition of savagery. What happens to a Nation ... has its essential 
significance in relation to the State.' The state which is thus formed is to 
be totalitarian, that is to say, its might must permeate and control the 
whole life of the people in all its functions: 'The State is therefore the 
basis and centre of all the concrete elements in the life of a people: of 
Art, Law, Morals, Religion, and Science . . . The substance that . . . exists 
in that concrete reality which is the state, is the Spirit of the People itself. 
The actual State is animated by this Spirit in all its particular affairs, in 
its Wars, Institutions, etc' Since the state must be powerful, it must 
contest the powers of other states. It must assert itself on the 'Stage of 
History', must prove its peculiar essence or Spirit and its 'strictly 
defined' national character by its historical deeds, and must ultimately 
aim at world domination. Here is an outline of this historicist 
essentialism in Hegel's words: 'The very essence of Spirit is activity; it 
actualizes its potentiality, and makes itself its own deed, its own work . . . 
Thus it is with the Spirit of a Nation; it is a Spirit having strictly defined 
characteristics which exist and persist ... in the events and transitions 
that make up its history. That is its work — ^that is what this particular 
Nation/^. Nations are what their deeds are ... A Nation is moral, 
virtuous, vigorous, as long as it is engaged in realizing its grand objects 
. . . The constitutions under which World-Historical Peoples have reached 
their culminations are peculiar to them ... Therefore, from ... the 
political institutions of the ancient World-Historical Peoples, nothing can 
be learned . . . Each particular National Genius is to be treated as only One 
Individual in the process of Universal History.' The Spirit or National 
Genius must finally prove itself in World-Domination: 'The self- 
consciousness of a particular Nation ... is the objective actuality in which 
the Spirit of the Time invests its Will. Against this absolute Will the 



other particular national minds have no rights: that Nation dominates the 
World . . . ' 

But Hegel not only developed the historical and totalitarian theory of 
nationalism, he also clearly foresaw the psychological possibilities of 
nationalism. He saw that nationalism answers a need — the desire of men 
to find and to know their definite place in the world, and to belong to a 
powerful collective body. At the same time he exhibits that remarkable 
characteristic of German nationalism, its strongly developed feelings of 
inferiority (to use a more recent terminology), especially towards the 
English. And he consciously appeals, with his nationalism or tribalism, to 
those feelings which I have described (in chapter 10) as \hQ strain oj 
civilization: 'Every Englishman', Hegel writes—, 'will say: We are the 
men who navigate the ocean, and who have the commerce of the world; to 
whom the East Indies belong and their riches ... The relation of the 
individual man to that Spirit is . . . that it . . . enables him to have a definite 
place in the world — to hQ something. For he finds in ... the people to 
which he belongs an already established, firm world . . . with which he has 
to incorporate himself. In this its work, and therefore its world, the Spirit 
of the people enjoys its existence and finds satisfaction.' 

(Z?) A theory common to both Hegel and his racialist followers is that 
the state by its very essence can exist only through its contrast to other 
individual states. H. Freyer, one of the leading sociologists of present-day 
Germany, writes—: 'A being that draws itself round its own core creates, 
even unintentionally, the boundary-line. And the frontier — even though it 
be unintentionally — creates the enemy.' Similarly Hegel: 'Just as the 
individual is not a real person unless related to other persons so the State 
is no real individuality unless related to other States . . . The relation of 
one particular State to another presents . . . the most shifting play of . . . 
passions, interests, aims, talents, virtues, power, injustice, vice, and mere 
external chance. It is a play in which even the Ethical Whole, the 



Independence of the State, is exposed to accident.' Should we not, 
therefore, attempt to regulate this unfortunate state of affairs by adopting 
Kant's plans for the establishment of eternal peace by means of a federal 
union? Certainly not, says Hegel, commenting on Kant's plan for peace: 
'Kant proposed an alliance of princes', Hegel says rather inexactly (for 
Kant proposed a federation of what we now call democratic states), 
'which should settle the controversies of States; and the Holy Alliance 
probably aspired to be an institution of this kind. The State, however, is 
an individual; and in individuality, negation is essentially contained. A 
number of States may constitute themselves into a family, but this 
confederation, as an individuality, must create opposition and so beget an 
enemy.' For in Hegel's dialectics, negation equals limitation, and 
therefore means not only the boundary-line, the frontier, but also the 
creation of an opposition, of an enemy: 'The fortunes and deeds of States 
in their relation to one another reveal the dialectic of the finite nature of 
these Spirits.' These quotations are taken from the Philosophy of Law, yet 
in his QdixXiQx Encyclopcedia, Hegel's theory anticipates the modern 
theories, for instance that of Freyer, even more closely: 'The final aspect 
of the State is to appear in immediate actuality as a single nation ... As a 
single individual it is exclusive of other like individuals. In their mutual 
relations, waywardness and chance have a place . . . This independency . . . 
reduces disputes between them to terms of mutual violence, to a state oj 
war ... It is this state of war in which the omnipotence of the State 
manifests itself ...' Thus the Prussian historian Treitschke only shows 
how well he understands Hegelian dialectic essentialism when he repeats: 
'War is not only a practical necessity, it is also a theoretical necessity, an 
exigency of logic. The concept of the State implies the concept of war, 
for the essence of the State is Power. The State is the People organized in 
sovereign Power. ' 

(c) The State is the Law, the moral law as well as the juridical law. 



Thus it cannot be subject to any other standard, and especially not to the 
yardstick of civil morality. Its historical responsibilities are deeper. Its 
only judge is the History of the World. The only possible standard of a 
judgement upon the state is the world historical success of its actions. 
And this success, the power and expansion of the state, must overrule all 
other considerations in the private life of the citizens; right is what serves 
the might of the state. This is the theory of Plato; it is the theory of 
modern totalitarianism; and it is the theory of Hegel: it is the Platonic- 
Prussian morality. 'The State', Hegel writes—, 'is the realization of the 
ethical Idea. It is the ethical Spirit as revealed, self-conscious, substantial 
Will.' Consequently, there can be no ethical idea above the state. 'When 
the particular Wills of the States can come to no agreement, their 
controversy can be decided only by war. What offence shall be regarded 
as a breach of treaty, or as a violation of respect and honour, must remain 
indefinite . . . The State may identify its infinitude and honour with every 
one of its aspects.' For '... the relation among States fluctuates, and no 
judge exists to adjust their differences.' In other words: 'Against the 
State there is no power to decide what is . . . right . . . States . . . may enter 
into mutual agreements, but they are, at the same time, superior to these 
agreements' (i.e. they need not keep them)... 'Treaties between states ... 
depend ultimately on the particular sovereign wills, and for that reason, 
they must remain unreliable.' 

Thus only one kind of 'judgement' can be passed on World-Historical 
deeds and events: their result, their success. Hegel can therefore 
identify— 'the essential destiny — the absolute aim, or, what amounts to 
the same — the true result of the World's History'. To be successful, that 
is, to emerge as the strongest from the dialectical struggle of the different 
National Spirits for power, for world-domination, is thus the only and 
ultimate aim and the only basis of judgement; or as Hegel puts it more 
poetically: 'Out of this dialectic rises the universal Spirit, the unlimited 



World-Spirit, pronouncing its judgement — and its judgement is the 
highest — upon the finite Nations of the World's History; for the History 
of the World is the World's court of justice.' 

Freyer has very similar ideas, but he expresses them more frankly—: 
'A manly, a bold tone prevails in history. He who has the grip has the 
booty. He who makes a faulty move is done for ... he who wishes to hit 
his mark must know how to shoot.' But all these ideas are, in the last 
instance, only repetitions of Heraclitus: 'War ... proves some to be gods 
and others to be mere men, by turning the latter into slaves and the 
former into masters .... War is just.' According to these theories, there 
can be no moral difference between a war in which we are attacked, and 
one in which we attack our neighbours; the only possible difference is 
success. F. Haiser, author of the book Slavery: Its Biological Foundation 
and Moral Justification (1923), a prophet of a master race and of a 
master morality, argues: 'If we are to defend ourselves, then there must 
also be aggressors . . . ; if so, why then should we not be the aggressors 
ourselves?' But even this doctrine (its predecessor is Clausewitz's 
famous doctrine that an attack is always the most effective defence) is 
Hegelian; for Hegel, when speaking about offences that lead to war, not 
only shows the necessity for a 'war of defence' to turn into a 'war of 
conquest', but he informs us that some states which have a strong 
individuality 'will naturally be more inclined to irritability', in order to 
find an occasion and a field for what he euphemistically calls 'intense 
activity'. 

With the establishment of historical success as the sole judge in 
matters relating to states or nations, and with the attempt to break down 
such moral distinctions as those between attack and defence, it becomes 
necessary to argue against the morality of conscience. Hegel does it by 
establishing what he calls 'true morality or rather social virtue' in 
opposition to 'false morality'. Needless to say, this 'true morality' is the 



Platonic totalitarian morality, combined with a dose of historicism, while 
the 'false morality' which he also describes as 'mere formal rectitude' is 
that of personal conscience. 'We may fairly', Hegel writes—, 'establish 
the true principles of morality, or rather of social virtue, in opposition to 
false morality; for the History of the World occupies a higher ground 
than that morality which is personal in character — the conscience of 
individuals, their particular will and mode of action . . . What the absolute 
aim of Spirit requires and accomplishes, what Providence does, 
transcends . . . the imputation of good and bad motives . . . Consequently it 
is only formal rectitude, deserted by the living Spirit and by God, which 
those who take their stand upon ancient right and order maintain. ' (That 
is to say, the moralists who refer, for example, to the New Testament.) 
'The deeds of Great Men, of the Personalities of World History, ... must 
not be brought into collision with irrelevant moral claims. The Litany oj 
private virtues, of modesty, humility, philanthropy, and forbearance, must 
not be raised against them. The History of the World can, in principle, 
entirely ignore the circle within which morality ... lies.' Here, at last, we 
have the perversion of the third of the ideas of 1789, that of fraternity, or, 
as Hegel says, of philanthropy, together with the ethics of conscience. 
This Platonic-Hegelian historicist moral theory has been repeated over 
and over again. The famous historian E. Meyer, for example, speaks of 
the 'flat and moralizing evaluation, which judges great political 
undertakings with the yardstick of civil morality, ignoring the deeper, the 
truly moral factors of the State and of historical responsibilities'. 

When such views are held, then all hesitation regarding propagandist 
lying and distortion of the truth must disappear, particularly if it is 
successful in furthering the power of the state. Hegel's approach to this 
problem, however, is rather subtle: 'A great mind has publicly raised the 
question', he writes—, 'whether it is permissible to deceive the People. 
The answer is that the People will not permit themselves to be deceived 



concerning their substantial basis' (F. Haiser, the master moralist, says: 
'no error is possible where the racial soul dictates') 'but it deceives 
itself , Hegel continues, 'about the way it knows this ... Public opinion 
deserves therefore to be esteemed as much as to be despised . . . Thus to 
be independent of public opinion is the first condition of achieving 
anything great . . . And great achievements are certain to be subsequently 
recognized and accepted by public opinion ...' In brief, it is always 
success that counts. If the lie was successful, then it was no lie, since the 
People were not deceived concerning their substantial basis. 

{d) We have seen that the State, particularly in its relation to other 
states, is exempt from morality — it is a-moral. We may therefore expect 
to hear that war is not a moral evil, but morally neutral. However, 
Hegel's theory defies this expectation; it implies that war is good in 
itself. 'There is an ethical element in war', we read—. 'It is necessary to 
recognize that the Finite, such as property and life, is accidental. This 
necessity appears first under the form of a force of nature, for all things 
finite are mortal and transient. In the ethical order, in the State, however, 
. . . this necessity is exalted to a work of freedom, to an ethical law . . . 
War ... now becomes an element ... of ... right ... War has the deep 
meaning that by it the ethical health of a nation is preserved and their 
finite aims uprooted ... War protects the people from the corruption 
which an everlasting peace would bring upon it. History shows phases 
which illustrate how successful wars have checked internal unrest .... 
These Nations, torn by internal strife, win peace at home as a result of 
war abroad.' This passage, taken from the Philosophy of Law, shows the 
influence of Plato's and Aristotle's teaching on the 'dangers of 
prosperity'; at the same time, the passage is a good instance of the 
identification of the moral with the healthy, of ethics with political 
hygiene, or of right with might; this leads directly, as will be seen, to the 
identification of virtue and vigour, as the following passage from Hegel's 



Philosophy of History shows. (It follows immediately after the passage 
already mentioned, dealing with nationalism as a means of getting over 
one's feelings of inferiority, and thereby suggests that even a war can be 
an appropriate means to that noble end.) At the same time, the modern 
theory of the virtuous aggressiveness of the young or have-not countries 
against the wicked old possessor countries is clearly implied. 'A Nation', 
Hegel writes, 'is moral, virtuous, vigorous while it is engaged in realizing 
its grand objects ... But this having been attained, the activity displayed 
by the Spirit of the People ... is no longer needed . . . The Nation can still 
accomplish much in war and peace . . . but the living substantial soul itself 
may be said to have ceased its activity . . . The Nation lives the same kind 
of life as the individual when passing from maturity to old age . . . This 
mere customary life (the watch wound up and going of itself) is that 
which brings on natural death ... Thus perish individuals, thus perish 
peoples by a natural death ... A people can only die a violent death when 
it has become naturally dead in itself.' (The last remarks belong to the 
decline-and-fall tradition.) 

Hegel's ideas on war are surprisingly modern; he even visualizes the 
moral consequences of mechanization; or rather, he sees in mechanical 
warfare the consequences of the ethical Spirit of totalitarianism or 
collectivism—: 'There are different kinds of bravery. The courage of the 
animal, or the robber, the bravery that arises from a sense of honour, 
chivalrous bravery, are not yet the true forms of bravery. In civilized 
nations true bravery consists in the readiness to give oneself wholly to the 
service of the State so that the individual counts but as one among many.' 
(An allusion to universal conscription.) 'Not personal valour is 
significant; the important aspect lies m self-subordination to the 
universal. This higher form causes . . . bravery to appear more mechanical 
... Hostility is directed not against separate individuals, but against a 
hostile whole' (here we have an anticipation of the principle of total 



war); personal valour appears as impersonal. This principle has 
caused the invention of the gun; it is not a chance invention In a 
similar vein, Hegel says of the invention of gunpowder: 'Humanity 
needed it, and it made its appearance forthwith.' (How kind of 
Providence!) 

It is thus purest Hegelianism when the philosopher E. Kaufmann, in 
1911, argues against the Kantian ideal of a community of free men: 'Not 
a community of men of free will but a victorious war is the social ideal 
... it is in war that the State displays its true nature'—; or when E. Banse, 
the famous 'military scientist', writes in 1933: 'War means the highest 
intensification ... of all spiritual energies of an age ... it means the 
utmost effort of the people's Spiritual power ... Spirit and Action linked 
together. Indeed, war provides the basis on which the human soul may 
manifest itself at its fullest height . . . Nowhere else can the Will ... of the 
Race ... rise into being thus integrally as in war.' And General 
Ludendorff continues in 1935: 'During the years of the so-called peace, 
politics ... have only a meaning inasmuch as they prepare for total war.' 
He thus only formulates more precisely an idea voiced by the famous 
essentialist philosopher Max Scheler in 1915: 'War means the State in its 
most actual growth and rise: it means politics.' The same Hegelian 
doctrine is reformulated by Freyer in 1935: 'The State, from the first 
moment of its existence, takes its stand in the sphere of war . . . War is not 
only the most perfect form of State activity, it is the very element in 
which the State is embedded; war delayed, prevented, disguised, avoided, 
must of course be included in the term.' But the boldest conclusion is 
drawn by F. Lenz, who, in his book The Race as the Principle of Value, 
tentatively raises the question: 'But if humanity were to be the goal of 
morality, then have not we, after all, taken the wrong side?' and who, of 
course, immediately dispels this absurd suggestion by replying: 'Far be it 
from us to think that humanity should condemn war: nay, it is war that 



condemns humanity.' This idea is linked up with historicism by E. Jung, 
who remarks: 'Humanitarianism, or the idea of mankind ... is no 
regulator of history.' But it was Hegel's predecessor, Fichte, called by 
Schopenhauer the 'wind-bag', who must be credited with the original 
anti-humanitarian argument. Speaking of the word 'humanity', Fichte 
wrote: 'If one had presented, to the German, instead of the Roman word 
"humaneness'' its proper translation, the word "manhood\ then ... he 
would have said: "It is after all not so very much to be a man instead of a 
wild beast!" This is how a German would have spoken — in a manner 
which would have been impossible for a Roman. For in the German 
language, "manhood" has remained a merely phenomenal notion; it has 
never become a super-phenomenal idea, as it did among the Romans. 
Whoever might attempt to smuggle, cunningly, this alien Roman symbol' 
(viz., the word 'humaneness') 'into the language of the Germans, would 
thereby manifestly debase their ethical standards ...' Fichte's doctrine is 
repeated by Spengler, who writes: 'Manhood is either a zoological 
expression or an empty word'; and also by Rosenberg, who writes: 
'Man's inner life became debased when ... an alien motive was 
impressed upon his mind: salvation, humanitarianism, and the culture of 
humanity. ' 

Kolnai, to whose book I am deeply indebted for a great deal of material 
to which I would otherwise have had no access, says— most strikingly: 
'All of us ... who stand for ... rational, civilized methods of government 
and social organization, agree that war is in itself an evil . . . ' Adding that 
in the opinion of most of us (except the pacifists) it might become, under 
certain circumstances, a necessary evil, he continues: 'The nationalist 
attitude is different, though it need not imply a desire for perpetual or 
frequent warfare. It sees in a war a good rather than an evil, even if it be a 
dangerous good, like an exceedingly heady wine that is best reserved for 
rare occasions of high festivity.' War is not a common and abundant evil 



but a precious though rare good: — this sums up the views of Hegel and of 
his followers. 

One of Hegel's feats was the revival of the Heraclitean idea of fate; 
and he insisted— that this glorious Greek idea of fate as expressive of the 
essence of a person, or of a nation, is opposed to the nominalist Jewish 
idea of universal laws, whether of nature, or of morals. The essentialist 
doctrine of fate can be derived (as shown in the last chapter) from the 
view that the essence of a nation can reveal itself only in its history. It is 
not 'fatalistic' in the sense that it encourages inactivity; 'destiny' is not 
to be identified with 'predestination'. The opposite is the case. Oneself, 
one's real essence, one's innermost soul, the stuff one is made of (will 
and passion rather than reason) are of decisive importance in the 
formation of one's fate. Since Hegel's amplification of this theory, the 
idea of fate or destiny has become a favourite obsession, as it were, of the 
revolt against freedom. Kolnai rightly stresses the connection between 
racialism (it is fate that makes one a member of one's race) and hostility 
to freedom: 'The principle of Race', Kolnai says—, 'is meant to embody 
and express the utter negation of human freedom, the denial of equal 
rights, a challenge in the face of mankind.' And he rightly insists that 
racialism tends 'to opposQ Liberty by Fate, individual consciousness by 
the compelling urge of the Blood beyond control and argument'. Even 
this tendency is expressed by Hegel, although as usual in a somewhat 
obscure manner: 'What we call principle, aim, destiny, or the nature or 
idea of Spirit', Hegel writes, 'is a hidden, undeveloped essence, which as 
such — however true in itself — is not completely real ... The motive 
power that ... gives them ... existence is the need, instinct, inclination 
and passion of men.' The modern philosopher of total education, E. 
Krieck, goes further in the direction of fatalism: 'All rational will and 
activity of the individual is confined to his everyday life; beyond this 
range he can only achieve a higher destiny and fulfilment in so far as he 



is gripped by superior powers of fate.' It sounds like personal experience 
when he continues: 'Not through his own rational scheming will he be 
made a creative and relevant being, only through forces that work above 
and beneath him, that do not originate in his own self but sweep and work 
their way through his self . . . ' (But it is an unwarranted generalization of 
the most intimate personal experiences when the same philosopher thinks 
that not only 'the epoch of "objective" or "free" science is ended', but 
also that of 'pure reason'.) 

Together with the idea of fate, its counterpart, that of fame is also 
revived by Hegel: 'Individuals ... slyq instruments ... What they 
personally gain ... through the individual share they take in the 
substantial business (prepared and appointed independently of them) is 
... Fame, which is their reward.'— And Stapel, a propagator of the new 
paganized Christianity, promptly repeats: 'All great deeds were done for 
the sake of fame or glory.' But this 'Christian' moralist is even more 
radical than Hegel: 'Metaphysical glory is the one true morality', he 
teaches, and the 'Categorical Imperative' of this one true morality runs 
accordingly: 'Do such deeds as spell glory!' 

(e) Yet glory cannot be acquired by everybody; the religion of glory 
implies anti-equalitarianism — it implies a religion of 'Great Men'. 
Modern racialism accordingly 'knows no equality between souls, no 
equality between men'— (Rosenberg). Thus there are no obstacles to 
adopting the Leader Principle from the arsenal of the perennial revolt 
against freedom, or as Hegel calls it, the idea of the World Historical 
Personality. This Idea is one of Hegel's favourite themes. In discussing 
the blasphemous 'question whether it is permissible to deceive a people' 
(see above), he says: 'In public opinion all is false and true, but to 
discover the truth in it is the business of the Great Man. The Great Man 
of his time is he who expresses the will of his time; who tells his time 
what it wills; and who carries it out. He acts according to the inner Spirit 



and Essence of his time, which he realizes. And he who does not 
understand how to despise public opinion, as it makes itself heard here 
and there, will never accomplish anything great.' This excellent 
description of the Leader — ^the Great Dictator — as a publicist is combined 
with an elaborate myth of the Greatness of the Great Man, that consists in 
his being the foremost instrument of the Spirit in history. In this 
discussion of 'Historical Men — World Historical Individuals' Hegel 
says: 'They were practical, political men. But at the same time they were 
thinking men, who had an insight into the requirements of the time — into 
what was ripe for development . . . World Historical Men — the Heroes of 
an epoch — must therefore be recognized as its clear-sighted ones; their 
dQQds, their words are the best of that time ... It was they who best 
understood affairs; from whom others learned, and approved, or at least 
acquiesced in — their policy. For the Spirit which has taken this fresh step 
in History is the inmost soul of all individuals; but in a state of 
unconsciousness which aroused the Great Men ... Their fellows, 
therefore, follow those Soul-Leaders, for they feel the irresistible power 
of their own inner Spirit thus embodied.' But the Great Man is not only 
the man of greatest understanding and wisdom but also the Man of Great 
Passions — foremost, of course, of political passions and ambitions. He is 
thereby able to arouse passions in others. 'Great Men have formed 
purposes to satisfy themselves, not others . . . They are Great Men because 
they willed and accomplished something great ... Nothing Great in the 
World has been accomplished without passion ... This may be called the 
cunning of reason — that it sets the passions to work for itself . . . Passion, 
it is true, is not quite the suitable word for what I wish to express. I mean 
here nothing more than human activity as resulting from private interests 
— particular, or if you will, self-seeking designs — with the qualification 
that the whole energy of will and character is devoted to their attainment 
... Passions, private aims, and the satisfaction of selfish desires are ... 



most effective springs of action. Their power lies in the fact that they 
respect none of the limitations which justice and morality would impose 
on them; and that these natural impulses have a more direct influence 
over their fellow-men than the artificial and tedious discipline that tends 
to order and self-restraint, law and morality.' From Rousseau onwards, 
the Romantic school of thought realized that man is not mainly rational. 
But while the humanitarians cling to rationality as an aim, the revolt 
against reason exploits this psychological insight into the irrationality of 
man for its political aims. The fascist appeal to 'human nature' is to our 
passions, to our coUectivist mystical needs, to 'man the unknown'. 
Adopting Hegel's words just quoted, this appeal may be called the 
cunning of the revolt against reason. But the height of this cunning is 
reached by Hegel in this boldest dialectical twist of his. While paying lip- 
service to rationalism, while talking more loudly about 'reason' than any 
man before or after him, he ends up in irrationalism; in an apotheosis not 
only of passion, but of brutal force: 'It is', Hegel writes, 'the absolute 
interest of Reason that this Moral Whole' (i.e. the State) 'should exist; 
and herein lies the justification and merit of heroes, the founders of 
States — however cruel they may have been . . . Such men may treat other 
great and even sacred interests inconsiderately . . . But so mighty a form 
must trample down many an innocent flower; it must crush to pieces 
many an object on its path.' 

if) The conception of man as being not so much a rational as an heroic 
animal was not invented by the revolt against reason; it is a typical 
tribalist ideal. We have to distinguish between this ideal of the Heroic 
Man and a more reasonable respect for heroism. Heroism is, and always 
will be, admirable; but our admiration should depend, I think, very 
largely on our appreciation of the cause to which the hero has devoted 
himself. The heroic element in gangsterism, I think, deserves little 
appreciation. But we should admire Captain Scott and his party, and if 



possible even more, the heroes of X-ray or of Yellow Fever research; and 
certainly those who defend freedom. 

The tribal ideal of the Heroic Man, especially in its fascist form, is 
based upon different views. It is a direct attack upon those things which 
make heroism admirable to most of us — such things as the furthering of 
civilization. For it is an attack on the idea of civil life itself; this is 
denounced as shallow and materialistic, because of the idea of security 
which it cherishes. Live dangerously! is its imperative; the cause for 
which you undertake to follow this imperative is of secondary 
importance; or as W. Best says—: 'Good fighting as such, not a "good 
cause" ... is the thing that turns the scale ... It merely matters how, not 
for what object we fight'. Again we find that this argument is an 
elaboration of Hegelian ideas: 'In peace', Hegel writes, 'civil life 
becomes more extended, every sphere is hedged in . . . and at last all men 
stagnate . . . From the pulpits much is preached concerning the insecurity, 
vanity, and instability of temporal things, and yet everyone . . . thinks that 
he, at least, will manage to hold on to his possessions ... It is necessary to 
recognize ... property and life as accidental ... Let insecurity finally 
come in the form of Hussars with glistening sabres, and show its earnest 
activity! ' In another place, Hegel paints a gloomy picture of what he calls 
'mere customary life'; he seems to mean by it something like the normal 
life of a civilized community: 'Custom is activity without opposition ... 
in which fullness and zest is out of the question — a merely external and 
sensuous' (i.e. what some people in our day like to call 'materialist') 
'existence which has ceased to throw itself enthusiastically into its object 
. . ., an existence without intellect or vitality.' Hegel, always faithful to his 
historicism, bases his anti-utilitarian attitude (in distinction to Aristotle's 
utilitarian comments upon the 'dangers of prosperity') on his 
interpretation of history: 'The History of the World is no theatre of 
happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods 



of harmony.' Thus, liberalism, freedom and reason are, as usual, objects 
of Hegel's attacks. The hysterical cries: We want our history! We want 
our destiny! We want our fight! We want our chains! resound through the 
edifice of Hegelianism, through this stronghold of the closed society and 
of the revolt against freedom. 

In spite of Hegel's, as it were, official optimism, based on his theory 
that what is rational is real, there are features in him to which one can 
trace the pessimism which is so characteristic of the more intelligent 
among the modern racial philosophers; not so much, perhaps, of the 
earlier ones (as Lagarde, Treitschke, or Moeller van den Bruck) but of 
those who came after Spengler, the famous historicist. Neither Spengler's 
biological holism, intuitive understanding. Group- Spirit and Spirit of the 
Age, nor even his Romanticism, helps this fortune-teller to escape a very 
pessimistic outlook. An element of blank despair is unmistakable in the 
'grim' activism that is left to those who foresee the future and feel 
instrumental in its arrival. It is interesting to observe that this gloomy 
view of affairs is equally shared by both wings of the racialists, the 
'Atheist' as well as the 'Christian' wing. 

Stapel, who belongs to the latter (but there are others, for example 
Gogarten), writes—: 'Man is under the sway of original sin in his totality 
... The Christian knows that it is strictly impossible for him to live 
except in sin . . . Therefore he steers clear of the pettiness of moral hair- 
splitting ... An ethicized Christianity is a counter-Christianity through 
and through ... God has made this world perishable, it is doomed to 
destruction. May it, then, go to the dogs according to destiny! Men who 
imagine themselves capable of making it better, who want to create a 
"higher" morality, are starting a ridiculous petty revolt against God . . . 
The hope of Heaven does not mean the expectation of a happiness of the 
blessed; it means obedience and War-Comradeship.' (The return to the 
tribe.) 'If God orders His man to go to hell, then his sworn adherent ... 



will accordingly go to hell ... If He allots to him eternal pain, this has to 
be borne too . . . Faith is but another word for victory. It is victory that the 
Lord demands . . . ' 

A very similar spirit lives in the work of the two leading philosophers 
of contemporary Germany, the 'existentialists' Heidegger and Jaspers, 
both originally followers of the essentialist philosophers Husserl and 
Scheler. Heidegger has gained fame by reviving the Hegelian Philosophy 
of Nothingness: Hegel had 'established' the theory— that 'Pure Being' 
and 'Pure Nothingness' are identical; he had said that if you try to think 
out the notion of a pure being, you must abstract from it all particular 
'determinations of an object', and therefore, as Hegel puts it — 'nothing 
remains'. (This Heraclitean method might be used for proving all kinds 
of pretty identities, such as that of pure wealth and pure poverty, pure 
mastership and pure servitude, pure Aryanism and pure Judaism.) 
Heidegger ingeniously applies the Hegelian theory of Nothingness to a 
practical Philosophy of Life, or of 'Existence'. Life, Existence, can be 
understood only by understanding Nothingness. In his What is 
Metaphysics? Heidegger says: 'The enquiry should be into the Existing or 
else into — nothing; ... into the existing alone, and beyond it into — 
Nothingness.' The enquiry into nothingness ('Where do we search for 
Nothingness? Where can we find Nothingness?') is made possible by the 
fact that 'we know Nothingness'; we know it through fear: 'Fear reveals 
Nothingness.' 

Fear; the fear of nothingness; the anguish of death; these are the basic 
categories of Heidegger's Philosophy of Existence; of a life whose true 
meaning it is— 'to be cast down into existence, directed towards death'. 
Human existence is to be interpreted as a 'Thunderstorm of Steel'; the 
'determined existence' of a man is 'to be a self, passionately free to die 
...in full self-consciousness and anguish'. But these gloomy confessions 
are not entirely without their comforting aspect. The reader need not be 



quite overwhelmed by Heidegger's passion to die. For the will to power 
and the will to live appear to be no less developed in him than in his 
master, Hegel. 'The German University's Will to the Essence', Heidegger 
writes in 1933, 'is a Will to Science; it is a Will to the historico-spiritual 
mission of the German Nation, as a Nation experiencing itself in its State. 
Science and German Destiny must attain Power, especially in the 
essential Will.' This passage, though not a monument of originality or 
clarity, is certainly one of loyalty to his masters; and those admirers of 
Heidegger who in spite of all this continue to believe in the profundity of 
his 'Philosophy of Existence' might be reminded of Schopenhauer's 
words: 'Who can really believe that truth also will come to light, just as a 
by-product?' And in view of the last of Heidegger's quotations, they 
should ask themselves whether Schopenhauer's advice to a dishonest 
guardian has not been successfully administered by many educationists to 
many promising youths, inside and outside of Germany. I have in mind 
the passage: 'Should you ever intend to dull the wits of a young man and 
to incapacitate his brains for any kind of thought whatever, then you 
cannot do better than give him Hegel to read. For these monstrous 
accumulations of words that annul and contradict one another drive the 
mind into tormenting itself with vain attempts to think anything whatever 
in connection with them, until finally it collapses from sheer exhaustion. 
Thus any ability to think is so thoroughly destroyed that the young man 
will ultimately mistake empty and hollow verbiage for real thought. A 
guardian fearing that his ward might become too intelligent for his 
schemes might prevent this misfortune by innocently suggesting the 
reading of Hegel.' 

Jaspers declares— his nihilist tendencies more frankly even, if that is 
possible, than Heidegger. Only when you are faced with Nothingness, 
with annihilation, Jaspers teaches, will you be able to experience and 
appreciate Existence. In order to live in the essential sense, one must live 



in a crisis. In order to taste life one has not only to risk, but to lose! — 
Jaspers carries the historicist idea of change and destiny recklessly to its 
most gloomy extreme. All things must perish; everything ends in failure: 
in this way does the historicist law of development present itself to his 
disillusioned intellect. But face destruction — and you will get the thrill of 
your life! Only in the 'marginal situations', on the edge between 
existence and nothingness, do we really live. The bliss of life always 
coincides with the end of its intelligibility, particularly with extreme 
situations of the body, above all with bodily danger. You cannot taste life 
without tasting failure. Enjoy yourself perishing! 

This is the philosophy of the gambler — of the gangster. Needless to 
say, this demoniac 'religion of Urge and Fear, of the Triumphant or else 
the Hunted Beast' (Kolnai— ), this absolute nihilism in the fullest sense of 
the word, is not a popular creed. It is a confession characteristic of an 
esoteric group of intellectuals who have surrendered their reason, and 
with it, their humanity. 

There is another Germany, that of the ordinary people whose brains 
have not been poisoned by a devastating system of higher education. But 
this 'other' Germany is certainly not that of her thinkers. It is true, 
Germany had also some 'other' thinkers (foremost among them, Kant); 
however, the survey just finished is not encouraging, and I fully 
sympathize with Kolnai's remark—: 'Perhaps it is not ... a paradox to 
solace our despair at German culture with the consideration that, after all, 
there is another Germany of Prussian Generals besides the Germany of 
Prussian Thinkers.' 



VI 



I have tried to show the identity of Hegelian historicism with the 
philosophy of modern totalitarianism. This identity is seldom clearly 
enough realized. Hegelian historicism has become the language of wide 
circles of intellectuals, even of candid 'anti-fascists' and 'leftists'. It is so 
much a part of their intellectual atmosphere that, for many, it is no more 
noticeable, and its appalling dishonesty no more remarkable, than the air 
they breathe. Yet some racial philosophers are fully conscious of their 
indebtedness to Hegel. An example is H. O. Ziegler, who in his study. The 
Modern Nation, rightly describes— the introduction of Hegel's (and A. 
Mueller's) idea of 'collective Spirits conceived as Personalities', as the 
'Copernican revolution in the Philosophy of the Nation'. Another 
illustration of this awareness of the significance of Hegelianism, which 
might specially interest British readers, can be found in the judgements 
passed in a recent German history of British philosophy (by R. Metz, 
1935). A man of the excellence of T. H. Green is here criticized, not of 
course because he was influenced by Hegel, but because he 'fell back into 
the typical individualism of the English ... He shrank from such radical 
consequences as Hegel has drawn'. Hobhouse, who fought bravely against 
Hegelianism, is contemptuously described as representing 'a typical form 
of bourgeois liberalism, defending itself against the omnipotence of the 
State because it feels its freedom threatened thereby' — a feeling which to 
some people might appear well founded. Bosanquet of course is praised 
for his genuine Hegelianism. But the significant fact is that this is all 
taken perfectly seriously by most of the British reviewers. 

I mention this fact mainly because I wish to show how difficult and, at 
the same time, how urgent it is to continue Schopenhauer's fight against 
this shallow cant (which Hegel himself accurately fathomed when 
describing his own philosophy as of 'the most lofty depth'). At least the 
new generation should be helped to free themselves from this intellectual 
fraud, the greatest, perhaps, in the history of our civilization and its 



quarrels with its enemies. Perhaps they will live up to the expectations of 
Schopenhauer, who in 1840 prophesied— that 'this colossal mystification 
will furnish posterity with an inexhaustible source of sarcasm'. (So far 
the great pessimist has proved a wild optimist concerning posterity.) The 
Hegelian farce has done enough harm. We must stop it. We must speak — 
even at the price of soiling ourselves by touching this scandalous thing 
which, unfortunately without success, was so clearly exposed a hundred 
years ago. Too many philosophers have neglected Schopenhauer's 
incessantly repeated warnings; they neglected them not so much at their 
own peril (they did not fare badly) as at the peril of those whom they 
taught, and at the peril of mankind. 

It seems to me a fitting conclusion to this chapter if I leave the last 
word to Schopenhauer, the anti-nationalist who said of Hegel a hundred 
years ago: 'He exerted, not on philosophy alone but on all forms of 
German literature, a devastating, or more strictly speaking, a stupefying, 
one could also say, a pestiferous, influence. To combat this influence 
forcefully and on every occasion is the duty of everybody who is able to 
judge independently. For if we are silent, who will speak?' 



Marx's Method 



13 

Marx's Sociological Determinism 



The collectivists . . . have the zest for progress, the sympathy for the poor, the burning sense 
of wrong, the impulse for great deeds, which have been lacking in latter-day liberalism. But 
their science is founded on a profound misunderstanding and their actions, therefore, are 
deeply destructive and reactionary. So men's hearts are torn, their minds divided, they are 
offered impossible choices. 

Walter Lippmann. 

It has always been the strategy of the revolt against freedom 'to take 
advantage of sentiments, not wasting one's energies in futile efforts to 
destroy them'-. The most cherished ideas of the humanitarians were often 
loudly acclaimed by their deadliest enemies, who in this way penetrated 
into the humanitarian camp under the guise of allies, causing disunion 
and thorough confusion. This strategy has often been highly successful, 
as is shown by the fact that many genuine humanitarians still revere 
Plato's idea of 'justice', the medieval idea of 'Christian' 
authoritarianism, Rousseau's idea of the 'general will', or Fichte's and 
Hegel's ideas of 'national freedom'.- Yet this method of penetrating 
dividing and confusing the humanitarian camp and of building up a 
largely unwitting and therefore doubly effective intellectual fifth column 
achieved its greatest success only after Hegelianism had established itself 
as the basis of a truly humanitarian movement: of Marxism, so far the 
purest, the most developed and the most dangerous form of historicism. 
It is tempting to dwell upon the similarities between Marxism, the 



Hegelian left-wing, and its fascist counterpart. Yet it would be utterly 
unfair to overlook the difference between them. Although their 
intellectual origin is nearly identical, there can be no doubt of the 
humanitarian impulse of Marxism. Moreover, in contrast to the Hegelians 
of the right-wing, Marx made an honest attempt to apply rational 
methods to the most urgent problems of social life. The value of this 
attempt is unimpaired by the fact that it was, as I shall try to show, 
largely unsuccessful. Science progresses through trial and error. Marx 
tried, and although he erred in his main doctrines, he did not try in vain. 
He opened and sharpened our eyes in many ways. A return to pre- 
Marxian social science is inconceivable. All modern writers are indebted 
to Marx, even if they do not know it. This is especially true of those who 
disagree with his doctrines, as I do; and I readily admit that my 
treatment, for example of Plato- and Hegel, bears the stamp of his 
influence. 

One cannot do justice to Marx without recognizing his sincerity. His 
open-mindedness, his sense of facts, his distrust of verbiage, and 
especially of moralizing verbiage, made him one of the world's most 
influential fighters against hypocrisy and pharisaism. He had a burning 
desire to help the oppressed, and was fully conscious of the need for 
proving himself in deeds, and not only in words. His main talents being 
theoretical, he devoted immense labour to forging what he believed to be 
scientific weapons for the fight to improve the lot of the vast majority of 
men. His sincerity in his search for truth and his intellectual honesty 
distinguish him, I believe, from many of his followers (although 
unfortunately he did not altogether escape the corrupting influence of an 
upbringing in the atmosphere of Hegelian dialectics, described by 
Schopenhauer as 'destructive of all intelligence'-). Marx's interest in 
social science and social philosophy was fundamentally a practical 
interest. He saw in knowledge a means of promoting the progress of 



man-. 

Why, then, attack Marx? In spite of his merits, Marx was, I believe, a 
false prophet. He was a prophet of the course of history, and his 
prophecies did not come true; but this is not my main accusation. It is 
much more important that he misled scores of intelligent people into 
believing that historical prophecy is the scientific way of approaching 
social problems. Marx is responsible for the devastating influence of the 
historicist method of thought within the ranks of those who wish to 
advance the cause of the open society. 

But is it true that Marxism is a pure brand of historicism? Are there not 
some elements of social technology in Marxism? The fact that Russia is 
making bold and often successful experiments in social engineering has 
led many to infer that Marxism, as the science or creed which underlies 
the Russian experiment, must be a kind of social technology, or at least 
favourable to it. But nobody who knows anything about the history of 
Marxism can make this mistake. Marxism is a purely historical theory, a 
theory which aims at predicting the future course of economic and power- 
political developments and especially of revolutions. As such, it certainly 
did not furnish the basis of the policy of the Russian Communist Party 
after its rise to political power. Since Marx had practically forbidden all 
social technology, which he denounced as Utopian-, his Russian disciples 
found themselves at first entirely unprepared for their great tasks in the 
field of social engineering. As Lenin was quick to realize, Marxism was 
unable to help in matters of practical economics. 'I do not know of any 
socialist who has dealt with these problems', said Lenin-, after his rise to 
power; 'there was nothing written about such matters in the Bolshevik 
textbooks, or in those of the Mensheviks.' After a period of unsuccessful 
experiment, the so-called 'period of war-communism', Lenin decided to 
adopt measures which meant in fact a limited and temporary return to 
private enterprise. This so-called NEP (New Economic Policy) and the 



later experiments — five-year plans, etc. — have nothing whatever to do 
with the theories of 'Scientific Socialism' once propounded by Marx and 
Engels. Neither the peculiar situation in which Lenin found himself 
before he introduced the NEP, nor his achievements, can be appreciated 
without due consideration of this point. The vast economic researches of 
Marx did not even touch the problems of a constructive economic policy, 
for example, economic planning. As Lenin admits, there is hardly a word 
on the economics of socialism to be found in Marx's work — apart from 
such useless- slogans as 'from each according to his ability, to each 
according to his needs'. The reason is that the economic research of Marx 
is completely subservient to his historical prophecy. But we must say 
even more. Marx strongly emphasized the opposition between his purely 
historicist method and any attempt to make an economic analysis with a 
view to rational planning. Such attempts he denounced as Utopian, and as 
illegitimate. In consequence, Marxists did not even study what the so- 
called 'bourgeois economists' attained in this field. They were by their 
training even less prepared for constructive work than some of the 
'bourgeois economists' themselves. 

Marx saw his specific mission in the freeing of socialism from its 
sentimental, moralist, and visionary background. Socialism was to be 
developed from its Utopian stage to its scientific stage-; it was to be 
based upon the scientific method of analysing cause and effect, and upon 
scientific prediction. And since he assumed prediction in the field of 
society to be the same as historical prophecy, scientific socialism was to 
be based upon a study of historical causes and historical effects, and 
finally upon the prophecy of its own advent. 

Marxists, when they find their theories attacked, often withdraw to the 
position that Marxism is primarily not so much a doctrine as a method. 
They say that even if some particular part of the doctrines of Marx, or of 
some of his followers, were superseded, his method would still remain 



unassailable. I believe that it is quite correct to insist that Marxism is, 
fundamentally, a method. But it is wrong to believe that, as a method, it 
must be secure from attacks. The position is, simply, that whoever wishes 
to judge Marxism has to probe it and to criticize it as a method, that is to 
say, he must measure it by methodological standards. He must ask 
whether it is a fruitful method or a poor one, i.e. whether or not it is 
capable of furthering the task of science. The standards by which we must 
judge the Marxist method are thus of a practical nature. By describing 
Marxism as purest historicism, I have indicated that I hold the Marxist 
method to be very poor indeed—. 

Marx himself would have agreed with such a practical approach to the 
criticism of his method, for he was one of the first philosophers to 
develop the views which later were called 'pragmatism'. He was led to 
this position, I believe, by his conviction that a scientific background was 
urgently needed by the practical politician, which of course meant the 
socialist politician. Science, he taught, should yield practical results. 
Always look at the fruits, the practical consequences of a theory! They 
tell something even of its scientific structure. A philosophy or a science 
that does not yield practical results merely interprets the world we live 
in; but it can and it should do more; it should change the world. 'The 
philosophers', wrote Marx— early in his career, 'have only interpreted 
the world in various ways; the point however is to change it.' It was 
perhaps this pragmatic attitude that made him anticipate the important 
methodological doctrine of the later pragmatists that the most 
characteristic task of science is not to gain knowledge of past facts, but to 
predict the future. 

This stress on scientific prediction, in itself an important and 
progressive methodological discovery, unfortunately led Marx astray. For 
the plausible argument that science can predict the future only if the 
future is predetermined — if, as it were, the future is present in the past. 



telescoped in it — led him to adhere to the false belief that a rigidly 
scientific method must be based on a rigid determinism. Marx's 
'inexorable laws' of nature and of historical development show clearly 
the influence of the Laplacean atmosphere and that of the French 
Materialists. But the belief that the terms 'scientific' and 'determinist' 
are, if not synonymous, at least inseparably connected, can now be said to 
be one of the superstitions of a time that has not yet entirely passed 
away—. Since I am interested mainly in questions of method, I am glad 
that, when discussing its methodological aspect, it is quite unnecessary to 
enter into a dispute concerning the metaphysical problem of determinism. 
For whatever may be the outcome of such metaphysical controversies as, 
for example, the bearing of the Quantum theory on 'free- will', one thing, 
I should say, is settled. No kind of determinism, whether it be expressed 
as the principle of the uniformity of nature or as the law of universal 
causation, can be considered any longer a necessary assumption of 
scientific method; for physics, the most advanced of all sciences, has 
shown not only that it can do without such assumptions, but also that to 
some extent it contradicts them. Determinism is not a necessary pre- 
requisite of a science which can make predictions. Scientific method 
cannot, therefore, be said to favour the adoption of strict determinism. 
Science can be rigidly scientific without this assumption. Marx, of 
course, cannot be blamed for having held the opposite view, since the 
best scientists of his day did the same. 

It must be noted that it is not so much the abstract, theoretical doctrine 
of determinism which led Marx astray, but rather the practical influence 
of this doctrine upon his view of scientific method, upon his view of the 
aims and possibilities of a social science. The abstract idea of 'causes' 
which 'determine' social developments is as such quite harmless as long 
as it does not lead to historicism. And indeed, there is no reason whatever 
why this idea should lead us to adopt a historicist attitude towards social 



institutions, in strange contrast to the obviously technological attitude 
taken up by everybody, and especially by determinists, towards 
mechanical or electrical machinery. There is no reason why we should 
believe that, of all sciences, social science is capable of realizing the age- 
old dream of revealing what the future has in store for us. This belief in 
scientific fortune-telling is not founded on determinism alone; its other 
foundation is the confusion bQtwQQn scientific prediction, as we know it 
from physics or astronomy, and large-scale historical prophecy, which 
foretells in broad lines the main tendencies of the future development of 
society. These two kinds of prediction are very different (as I have tried 
to show elsewhere—), and the scientific character of the first is no 
argument in favour of the scientific character of the second. 

Marx's historicist view of the aims of social science greatly upset the 
pragmatism which had originally led him to stress the predictive function 
of science. It forced him to modify his earlier view that science should, 
and that it could, change the world. For if there was to be a social science, 
and accordingly, historical prophecy, the main course of history must be 
predetermined, and neither good-will nor reason had power to alter it. All 
that was left to us in the way of reasonable interference was to make sure, 
by historical prophecy, of the impending course of development, and to 
remove the worst obstacles in its path. 'When a society has discovered', 
Marx writes in Capital—, 'the natural law that determines its own 
movement, . . . even then it can neither overleap the natural phases of its 
evolution, nor shuffle them out of the world by a stroke of the pen. But 
this much it can do; it can shorten and lessen its birth-pangs.' These are 
the views that led Marx to denounce as 'Utopianists' all who looked upon 
social institutions with the eyes of the social engineer, holding them to be 
amenable to human reason and will, and to be a possible field of rational 
planning. These 'Utopianists' appeared to him to attempt with fragile 
human hands to steer the colossal ship of society against the natural 



currents and storms of history. All a scientist could do, he thought, was to 
forecast the gusts and vortices ahead. The practical service he could 
achieve would thus be confined to issuing a warning against the next 
storm that threatened to take the ship off the right course (the right course 
was of course the left!) or to advising the passengers as to the side of the 
boat on which they had better assemble. Marx saw the real task of 
scientific socialism in the annunciation of the impending socialist 
millennium. Only by way of this annunciation, he holds, can scientific 
socialist teaching contribute to bringing about a socialist world, whose 
coming it can further by making men conscious of the impending change, 
and of the parts allotted to them in the play of history. Thus scientific 
socialism is not a social technology; it does not teach the ways and means 
of constructing socialist institutions. Marx's views of the relation 
between socialist theory and practice show the purity of his historicist 
views. 

Marx's thought was in many respects a product of his time, when the 
remembrance of that great historical earthquake, the French Revolution, 
was still fresh. (It was revived by the revolution of 1848.) Such a 
revolution could not, he felt, be planned and staged by human reason. But 
it could have been foreseen by a historicist social science; sufficient 
insight into the social situation would have revealed its causes. That this 
historicist attitude was rather typical of the period can be seen from the 
close similarity between the historicism of Marx and that of J.S. Mill. (It 
is analogous to the similarity between the historicist philosophies of their 
predecessors, Hegel and Comte.) Marx did not think very highly of 
'bourgeois economists such as ... J.S. Mill'— whom he viewed as a 
typical representative of 'an insipid, brainless syncretism'. Although it is 
true that in some places Marx shows a certain respect for the 'modern 
tendencies' of the 'philanthropic economist' Mill, it seems to me that 
there is ample circumstantial evidence against the conjecture that Marx 



was directly influenced by Mill's (or rather by Comte's) views on the 
methods of social science. The agreement between the views of Marx and 
of Mill is therefore the more striking. Thus when Marx says in the 
preface to Capital, 'It is the ultimate aim of this work to lay bare the ... 
law of motion of modern society'—, he might be said to carry out Mill's 
programme: 'The fundamental problem ... of the social science, is to find 
the law according to which any state of society produces the state which 
succeeds it and takes its place.' Mill distinguished fairly clearly the 
possibility of what he called 'two kinds of sociological inquiry', the first 
closely corresponding to what I call social technology, the second 
corresponding to historicist prophecy, and he took sides with the latter, 
characterizing it as the 'general Science of Society by which the 
conclusions of the other and more special kind of inquiry must be limited 
and controlled'. This general science of society is based upon the 
principle of causality, in accordance with Mill's view of scientific 
method; and he describes this causal analysis of society as the 'Historical 
Method'. Mill's 'states of society'— with 'properties ... changeable ... 
from age to age' correspond exactly to Marxist 'historical periods', and 
Mill's optimistic belief in progress resembles Marx's, although it is of 
course much more naive than its dialectical counterpart. (Mill thought 
that the type of movement 'to which human affairs must conform ... 
must be ... one or the other' of two possible astronomical movements, 
viz., 'an orbit' or 'a trajectory'. Marxist dialectics is less certain of the 
simplicity of the laws of historical development; it adopts a combination, 
as it were, of Mill's two movements — something like a wave or a 
corkscrew movement.) 

There are more similarities between Marx and Mill; for example, both 
were dissatisfied with laissez-faire liberalism, and both tried to provide 
better foundations for carrying into practice the fundamental idea of 
liberty. But in their views on the method of sociology, there is one very 



important difference. Mill believed that the study of society, in the last 
analysis, must be reducible to psychology; that the laws of historical 
development must be explicable in terms of human nature, of the 'laws of 
the mind', and in particular, of its progressiveness. 'The progressiveness 
of the human race', says Mill, 'is the foundation on which a method of . . . 
social science has been ... erected, far superior to ... the modes ... 
previously . . . prevalent . . . '— The theory that sociology must in principle 
be reducible to social psychology, difficult though the reduction may be 
because of the complications arising from the interaction of countless 
individuals, has been widely held by many thinkers; indeed, it is one of 
the theories which are often simply taken for granted. I shall call this 
approach to sociology (methodological) psychologism—. Mill, we can 
now say, believed in psychologism. But Marx challenged it. 'Legal 
relationships', he asserted—, 'and the various political structures cannot 
... be explained by . . . what has been called the general "progressiveness 
of the human mind".' To have questioned psychologism is perhaps the 
greatest achievement of Marx as a sociologist. By doing so he opened the 
way to the more penetrating conception of a specific realm of 
sociological laws, and of a sociology which was at least partly 
autonomous. 

In the following chapters, I shall explain some points of Marx's 
method, and I shall try always to emphasize especially such of his views 
as I believe to be of lasting merit. Thus I shall deal next with Marx's 
attack on psychologism, i.e. with his arguments in favour of an 
autonomous social science, irreducible to psychology. And only later 
shall I attempt to show the fatal weakness and the destructive 
consequences of his historicism. 



14 

The Autonomy of Sociology 



A concise formulation of Marx's opposition to psychologism-, i.e. to the 
plausible doctrine that all laws of social life must be ultimately reducible 
to the psychological laws of 'human nature', is his famous epigram: 'It is 
not the consciousness of man that determines his existence — rather, it is 
his social existence that determines his consciousness.'- The function of 
the present chapter as well as of the two following ones is mainly to 
elucidate this epigram. And I may state at once that in developing what I 
believe to be Marx's anti-psychologism, I am developing a view to which 
I subscribe myself. 

As an elementary illustration, and a first step in our examination, we 
may refer to the problem of the so-called rules of exogamy, i.e. the 
problem of explaining the wide distribution, among the most diverse 
cultures, of marriage laws apparently designed to prevent inbreeding. 
Mill and his psychologistic school of sociology (it was joined later by 
many psychoanalysts) would try to explain these rules by an appeal to 
'human nature', for instance to some sort of instinctive aversion against 
incest (developed perhaps through natural selection, or else through 
'repression'); and something like this would also be the naive or popular 
explanation. Adopting the point of view expressed in Marx's epigram, 
however, one could ask whether it is not the other way round, that is to 
say, whether the apparent instinct is not rather a product of education, the 
effect rather than the cause of the social rules and traditions demanding 



exogamy and forbidding incest-. It is clear that these two approaches 
correspond exactly to the very ancient problem whether social laws are 
'natural' or 'conventional' (dealt with at length in chapter 5). In a 
question such as the one chosen here as an illustration, it would be 
difficult to determine which of the two theories is the correct one, the 
explanation of the traditional social rules by instinct or the explanation of 
an apparent instinct by traditional social rules. The possibility of deciding 
such questions by experiment has, however, been shown in a similar case, 
that of the apparently instinctive aversion to snakes. This aversion has a 
greater semblance of being instinctive or 'natural' in that it is exhibited 
not only by men but also by all anthropoid apes and by most monkeys as 
well. But experiments seem to indicate that this fear is conventional. It 
appears to be a product of education, not only in the human race but also 
for instance in chimpanzees, since- both young children and young 
chimpanzees who have not been taught to fear snakes do not exhibit the 
alleged instinct. This example should be taken as a warning. We are faced 
here with an aversion which is apparently universal, even beyond the 
human race. But although from the fact that a habit is not universal we 
might perhaps argue against its being based on an instinct (but even this 
argument is dangerous since there are social customs enforcing the 
suppression of instincts), we see that the converse is certainly not true. 
The universal occurrence of a certain behaviour is not a decisive 
argument in favour of its instinctive character, or of its being rooted in 
'human nature'. 

Such considerations may show how naive it is to assume that all social 
laws must be derivable, in principle, from the psychology of 'human 
nature'. But this analysis is still rather crude. In order to proceed one step 
further, we may try to analyse more directly the main thesis of 
psychologism, the doctrine that, society being the product of interacting 
minds, social laws must ultimately be reducible to psychological laws. 



since the events of social life, including its conventions, must be the 
outcome of motives springing from the minds of individual men. 

Against this doctrine of psychologism, the defenders of an autonomous 
sociology can advance institutionalist views-. They can point out, first of 
all, that no action can ever be explained by motive alone; if motives (or 
any other psychological or behaviourist concepts) are to be used in the 
explanation, then they must be supplemented by a reference to the 
general situation, and especially to the environment. In the case of human 
actions, this environment is very largely of a social nature; thus our 
actions cannot be explained without reference to our social environment, 
to social institutions and to their manner of functioning. It is therefore 
impossible, the institutionalist may contend, to reduce sociology to a 
psychological or behaviouristic analysis of our actions; rather, every such 
analysis presupposes sociology, which therefore cannot wholly depend on 
psychological analysis. Sociology, or at least a very important part of it, 
must be autonomous. 

Against this view, the followers of psychologism may retort that they 
are quite ready to admit the great importance of environmental factors, 
whether natural or social; but the structure (they may prefer the 
fashionable word 'pattern') of the social environment, as opposed to the 
natural environment, is man-made; and therefore it must be explicable in 
terms of human nature, in accordance with the doctrine of psychologism. 
For instance, the characteristic institution which economists call 'the 
market', and whose functioning is the main object of their studies, can be 
derived in the last analysis from the psychology of 'economic man', or, 
to use Mill's phraseology, from the psychological 'phenomena ... of the 
pursuit of wealth'-. Moreover, the followers of psychologism insist that it 
is because of the peculiar psychological structure of human nature that 
institutions play such an important role in our society, and that, once 
established, they show a tendency to become a traditional and a 



comparatively fixed part of our environment. Finally — and this is their 
decisive point — the origin as well as the development of traditions must 
be explicable in terms of human nature. When tracing back traditions and 
institutions to their origin, we must find that their introduction is 
explicable in psychological terms, since they have been introduced by 
man for some purpose or other, and under the influence of certain 
motives. And even if these motives have been forgotten in the course of 
time, then that forgetfulness, as well as our readiness to put up with 
institutions whose purpose is obscure, is in its turn based on human 
nature. Thus 'all phenomena of society are phenomena of human 
nature'-, as Mill said; and 'the Laws of the phenomena of society are, and 
can be, nothing but the laws of the actions and passions of human beings', 
that is to say, 'the laws of individual human nature. Men are not, when 
brought together, converted into another kind of substance . . . '- 

This last remark of Mill's exhibits one of the most praiseworthy 
aspects of psychologism, namely, its sane opposition to collectivism and 
holism, its refusal to be impressed by Rousseau's or Hegel's romanticism 
— by a general will or a national spirit, or perhaps, by a group mind. 
Psychologism is, I believe, correct only in so far as it insists upon what 
may be called 'methodological individualism' as opposed to 
'methodological collectivism'; it rightly insists that the 'behaviour' and 
the 'actions' of collectives, such as states or social groups, must be 
reduced to the behaviour and to the actions of human individuals. But the 
belief that the choice of such an individualistic method implies the choice 
of a psychological method is mistaken (as will be shown below in this 
chapter), even though it may appear very convincing at first sight. And 
that psychologism as such moves on rather dangerous ground, apart from 
its commendable individualistic method, can be seen from some further 
passages of Mill's argument. For they show that psychologism is forced 
to adopt historicist methods. The attempt to reduce the facts of our social 



environment to psychological facts forces us into speculations about 
origins and developments. When analysing Plato's sociology, we had an 
opportunity of gauging the dubious merits of such an approach to social 
science (compare chapter 5). In criticizing Mill, we shall now try to deal 
it a decisive blow. 

It is undoubtedly Mill's psychologism which forces him to adopt a 
historicist method; and he is even vaguely aware of the barrenness or 
poverty of historicism, since he tries to account for this barrenness by 
pointing out the difficulties arising from the tremendous complexity of 
the interaction of so many individual minds. 'While it is ... imperative', 
he says, never to introduce any generalization ... into the social 
sciences until sufficient grounds can be pointed out in human nature, I do 
not think any one will contend that it would have been possible, setting 
out from the principle of human nature and from the general 
circumstances of the position of our species, to determine a priori the 
order in which human development must take place, and to predict, 
consequently, the general facts of history up to the present time.'- The 
reason he gives is that 'after the first few terms of the series, the 
influence exercised over each generation by the generations which 
preceded it becomes ... more and more preponderant over all other 
influences'. (In other words, the social environment becomes a dominant 
influence.) 'So long a series of actions and reactions ... could not 
possibly be computed by human faculties . . . ' 

This argument, and especially Mill's remark on 'the first few terms of 
the series', are a striking revelation of the weakness of the psychologistic 
version of historicism. If all regularities in social life, the laws of our 
social environment, of all institutions, etc., are ultimately to be explained 
by, and reduced to, the 'actions and passions of human beings', then such 
an approach forces upon us not only the idea of historico-causal 
development, but also the idea of the first steps of such a development. 



For the stress on the psychological origin of social rules or institutions 
can only mean that they can be traced back to a state when their 
introduction was dependent solely upon psychological factors, or more 
precisely, when it was independent of any established social institutions. 
Psychologism is thus forced, whether it likes it or not, to operate with the 
idea of a beginning of society, and with the idea of a human nature and a 
human psychology as they existed prior to society. In other words. Mill's 
remark concerning the 'first few terms of the series' of social 
development is not an accidental slip, as one might perhaps believe, but 
the appropriate expression of the desperate position forced upon him. It is 
a desperate position because this theory of a pre-social human nature 
which explains the foundation of society — a psychologistic version of the 
'social contract' — is not only an historical myth, but also, as it were, a 
methodological myth. It can hardly be seriously discussed, for we have 
every reason to believe that man or rather his ancestor was social prior to 
being human (considering, for example, that language presupposes 
society). But this implies that social institutions, and with them, typical 
social regularities or sociological laws—, must have existed prior to what 
some people are pleased to call 'human nature', and to human 
psychology. If a reduction is to be attempted at all, it would therefore be 
more hopeful to attempt a reduction or interpretation of psychology in 
terms of sociology than the other way round. 

This brings us back to Marx's epigram at the beginning of this chapter. 
Men — i.e. human minds, the needs, the hopes, fears, and expectations, the 
motives and aspirations of human individuals — are, if anything, the 
product of life in society rather than its creators. It must be admitted that 
the structure of our social environment is man-made in a certain sense; 
that its institutions and traditions are neither the work of God nor of 
nature, but the results of human actions and decisions, and alterable by 
human actions and decisions. But this does not mean that they are all 



consciously designed, and explicable in terms of needs, hopes, or 
motives. On the contrary, even those which arise as the result of 
conscious and intentional human actions are, as a rule, the indirect, the 
unintended and often the unwanted by-products of such actions. 'Only a 
minority of social institutions are consciously designed, while the vast 
majority have just "grown", as the undesigned results of human actions', 
as I have said before—; and we can add that even most of the few 
institutions which were consciously and successfully designed (say, a 
newly founded University, or a trade union) do not turn out according to 
plan — again because of the unintended social repercussions resulting 
from their intentional creation. For their creation affects not only many 
other social institutions but also 'human nature' — hopes, fears, and 
ambitions, first of those more immediately involved, and later often of all 
members of the society. One of the consequences of this is that the moral 
values of a society — the demands and proposals recognized by all, or by 
very nearly all, of its members — are closely bound up with its institutions 
and traditions, and that they cannot survive the destruction of the 
institutions and traditions of a society (as indicated in chapter 9 when we 
discussed the 'canvas-cleaning' of the radical revolutionary). 

All this holds most emphatically for the more ancient periods of social 
development, i.e. for the closed society, in which the conscious design of 
institutions is a most exceptional event, if it happens at all. To-day, 
things may begin to be different, owing to our slowly increasing 
knowledge of society, i.e. owing to the study of the unintended 
repercussions of our plans and actions; and one day, men may even 
become the conscious creators of an open society, and thereby of a 
greater part of their own fate. (Marx entertained this hope, as will be 
shown in the next chapter.) But all this is partly a matter of degree, and 
although we may learn to foresee many of the unintended consequences 
of our actions (the main aim of all social technology), there will always 



be many which we did not foresee. 

The fact that psychologism is forced to operate with the idea of a 
psychological origin of society constitutes in my opinion a decisive 
argument against it. But it is not the only one. Perhaps the most important 
criticism of psychologism is that it fails to understand the main task of 
the explanatory social sciences. 

This task is not, as the historicist believes, the prophecy of the future 
course of history. It is, rather, the discovery and explanation of the less 
obvious dependences within the social sphere. It is the discovery of the 
difficulties which stand in the way of social action — the study, as it were, 
of the unwieldiness, the resilience or the brittleness of the social stuff, of 
its resistance to our attempts to mould it and to work with it. 

In order to make my point clear, I shall briefly describe a theory which 
is widely held but which assumes what I consider the very opposite of the 
true aim of the social sciences; I call it the 'conspiracy theory of society'. 
It is the view that an explanation of a social phenomenon consists in the 
discovery of the men or groups who are interested in the occurrence of 
this phenomenon (sometimes it is a hidden interest which has first to be 
revealed), and who have planned and conspired to bring it about. 

This view of the aims of the social sciences arises, of course, from the 
mistaken theory that, whatever happens in society — especially 
happenings such as war, unemployment, poverty, shortages, which people 
as a rule dislike — is the result of direct design by some powerful 
individuals and groups. This theory is widely held; it is older even than 
historicism (which, as shown by its primitive theistic form, is a 
derivative of the conspiracy theory). In its modern forms it is, like 
modem historicism, and a certain modem attitude towards 'natural laws', 
a typical result of the secularization of a religious superstition. The belief 
in the Homeric gods whose conspiracies explain the history of the Trojan 
War is gone. The gods are abandoned. But their place is filled by 



powerful men or groups — sinister pressure groups whose wickedness is 
responsible for all the evils we suffer from — such as the Learned Elders 
of Zion, or the monopolists, or the capitalists, or the imperialists. 

I do not wish to imply that conspiracies never happen. On the contrary, 
they are typical social phenomena. They become important, for example, 
whenever people who believe in the conspiracy theory get into power. 
And people who sincerely believe that they know how to make heaven on 
earth are most likely to adopt the conspiracy theory, and to get involved 
in a counter-conspiracy against non-existing conspirators. For the only 
explanation of their failure to produce their heaven is the evil intention of 
the Devil, who has a vested interest in hell. 

Conspiracies occur, it must be admitted. But the striking fact which, in 
spite of their occurrence, disproves the conspiracy theory is that few of 
these conspiracies are ultimately successful. Conspirators rarely 
consummate their conspiracy. 

Why is this so? Why do achievements differ so widely from 
aspirations? Because this is usually the case in social life, conspiracy or 
no conspiracy. Social life is not only a trial of strength between opposing 
groups: it is action within a more or less resilient or brittle framework of 
institutions and traditions, and it creates — apart from any conscious 
counter- act ion — many unforeseen reactions in this framework, some of 
them perhaps even unforeseeable. 

To try to analyse these reactions and to foresee them as far as possible 
is, I believe, the main task of the social sciences. It is the task of 
analysing the unintended social repercussions of intentional human 
actions — those repercussions whose significance is neglected both by the 
conspiracy theory and by psychologism, as already indicated. An action 
which proceeds precisely according to intention does not create a 
problem for social science (except that there may be a need to explain 
why in this particular case no unintended repercussions occurred). One of 



the most primitive economic actions may serve as an example in order to 
make the idea of unintended consequences of our actions quite clear. If a 
man wishes urgently to buy a house, we can safely assume that he does 
not wish to raise the market price of houses. But the very fact that he 
appears on the market as a buyer will tend to raise market prices. And 
analogous remarks hold for the seller. Or to take an example from a very 
different field, if a man decides to insure his life, he is unlikely to have 
the intention of encouraging some people to invest their money in 
insurance shares. But he will do so nevertheless. We see here clearly that 
not all consequences of our actions are intended consequences; and 
accordingly, that the conspiracy theory of society cannot be true because 
it amounts to the assertion that all results, even those which at first sight 
do not seem to be intended by anybody, are the intended results of the 
actions of people who are interested in these results. 

The examples given do not refute psychologism as easily as they refute 
the conspiracy theory, for one can argue that it is the sellers' knowledge 
of a buyer's presence in the market, and their hope of getting a higher 
price — in other words, psychological factors — ^which explain the 
repercussions described. This, of course, is quite true; but we must not 
forget that this knowledge and this hope are not ultimate data of human 
nature, and that they are, in their turn, explicable in terms of the social 
situation — ^the market situation. 

This social situation is hardly reducible to motives and to the general 
laws of 'human nature'. Indeed, the interference of certain 'traits of 
human nature', such as our susceptibility to propaganda, may sometimes 
lead to deviations from the economic behaviour just mentioned. 
Furthermore, if the social situation is different from the one envisaged, 
then it is possible that the consumer, by the action of buying, may 
indirectly contribute to a cheapening of the article; for instance, by 
making its mass-production more profitable. And although this effect 



happens to further his interest as a consumer, it may have been caused 
just as involuntarily as the opposite effect, and altogether under precisely 
similar psychological conditions. It seems clear that the social situations 
which may lead to such widely different unwanted or unintended 
repercussions must be studied by a social science which is not bound to 
the prejudice that 'it is imperative never to introduce any generalization 
into the social sciences until sufficient grounds can be pointed out in 
human nature', as Mill said—. They must be studied by an autonomous 
social science. 

Continuing this argument against psychologism we may say that our 
actions are to a very large extent explicable in terms of the situation in 
which they occur. Of course, they are never fully explicable in terms of 
the situation alone; an explanation of the way in which a man, when 
crossing a street, dodges the cars which move on it may go beyond the 
situation, and may refer his motives, to an 'instinct' of self-preservation, 
or to his wish to avoid pain, etc. But this 'psychological' part of the 
explanation is very often trivial, as compared with the detailed 
determination of his action by what we may call the logic of the situation', 
and besides, it is impossible to include all psychological factors in the 
description of the situation. The analysis of situations, the situational 
logic, plays a very important part in social life as well as in the social 
sciences. It is, in fact, the method of economic analysis. As to an example 
outside economics, I refer to the 'logic of power'—, which we may use in 
order to explain the moves of power politics as well as the working of 
certain political institutions. The method of applying a situational logic 
to the social sciences is not based on any psychological assumption 
concerning the rationality (or otherwise) of 'human nature'. On the 
contrary: when we speak of 'rational behaviour' or of 'irrational 
behaviour' then we mean behaviour which is, or which is not, in 
accordance with the logic of that situation. In fact, the psychological 



analysis of an action in terms of its (rational or irrational) motives 
presupposes — as has been pointed out by Max Weber — that we have 
previously developed some standard of what is to be considered as 
rational in the situation in question. 

My arguments against psychologism should not be misunderstood—. 
They are not, of course, intended to show that psychological studies and 
discoveries are of little importance for the social scientist. They mean, 
rather, that psychology — the psychology of the individual — is one of the 
social sciences, even though it is not the basis of all social science. 
Nobody would deny the importance for political science of psychological 
facts such as the craving for power, and the various neurotic phenomena 
connected with it. But 'craving for power' is undoubtedly a social notion 
as well as a psychological one: we must not forget that, if we study, for 
example, the first appearance in childhood of this craving, then we study 
it in the setting of a certain social institution, for example, that of our 
modern family. (The Eskimo family may give rise to rather different 
phenomena.) Another psychological fact which is significant for 
sociology, and which raises grave political and institutional problems, is 
that to live in the haven of a tribe, or of a 'community' approaching a 
tribe, is for many men an emotional necessity (especially for young 
people who, perhaps in accordance with a parallelism between 
ontogenetic and phylogenetic development, seem to have to pass through 
a tribal or 'American-Indian' stage). That my attack on psychologism is 
not intended as an attack on all psychological considerations may be seen 
from the use I have made (in chapter 10) of such a concept as the 'strain 
of civilization' which is partly the result of this unsatisfied emotional 
need. This concept refers to certain feelings of uneasiness, and is 
therefore a psychological concept. But at the same time, it is a 
sociological concept also; for it characterizes these feelings not only as 
unpleasant and unsettling, etc., but relates them to a certain social 



situation, and to the contrast between an open and a closed society. 
(Many psychological concepts such as ambition or love have an 
analogous status.) Also, we must not overlook the great merits which 
psychologism has acquired by advocating a methodological 
individualism and by opposing a methodological collectivism; for it 
lends support to the important doctrine that all social phenomena, and 
especially the functioning of all social institutions, should always be 
understood as resulting from the decisions, actions, attitudes, etc., of 
human individuals, and that we should never be satisfied by an 
explanation in terms of so-called 'collectives' (states, nations, races, 
etc.). The mistake of psychologism is its presumption that this 
methodological individualism in the field of social science implies the 
programme of reducing all social phenomena and all social regularities to 
psychological phenomena and psychological laws. The danger of this 
presumption is its inclination towards historicism, as we have seen. That 
it is unwarranted is shown by the need for a theory of the unintended 
social repercussions of our actions, and by the need for what I have 
described as the logic of social situations. 

In defending and developing Marx's view that the problems of society 
are irreducible to those of 'human nature', I have permitted myself to go 
beyond the arguments actually propounded by Marx. Marx did not speak 
of 'psychologism', nor did he criticize it systematically; nor was it Mill 
whom he had in mind in the epigram quoted at the beginning of this 
chapter. The force of this epigram is directed, rather, against 'idealism', 
in its Hegelian form. Yet so far as the problem of the psychological 
nature of society is concerned. Mill's psychologism can be said to 
coincide with the idealist theory combated by Marx—. As it happened, 
however, it was just the influence of another element in Hegelianism, 
namely Hegel's Platonizing collectivism, his theory that the state and the 
nation is more 'real' than the individual who owes everything to them. 



that led Marx to the view expounded in this chapter. (An instance of the 
fact that one can sometimes extract a valuable suggestion even from an 
absurd philosophical theory.) Thus, historically, Marx developed certain 
of Hegel's views concerning the superiority of society over the 
individual, and used them as arguments against other views of Hegel. Yet 
since I consider Mill a worthier opponent than Hegel, I have not kept to 
the history of Marx's ideas, but have tried to develop them in the form of 
an argument against Mill. 



15 

Economic Historicism 



To see Marx presented in this way, that is to say, as an opponent of any 
psychological theory of society, may possibly surprise some Marxists as 
well as some anti-Marxists. For there seem to be many who believe in a 
very different story. Marx, they think, taught the all-pervading influence 
of the economic motive in the life of men; he succeeded in explaining its 
overpowering strength by showing that 'man's overmastering need was to 
get the means of living'-; he thus demonstrated the fundamental 
importance of such categories as the profit motive or the motive of class 
interest for the actions not only of individuals but also of social groups; 
and he showed how to use these categories for explaining the course of 
history. Indeed, they think that the very essence of Marxism is the 
doctrine that economic motives and especially class interest are the 
driving forces of history, and that it is precisely this doctrine to which the 
name 'materialistic interpretation of history' or 'historical materialism' 
alludes, a name by which Marx and Engels tried to characterize the 
essence of their teaching. 

Such opinions are very common; but I have no doubt that they 
misinterpret Marx. Those who admire him for having held them, I may 
call Vulgar Marxists (alluding to the name 'Vulgar Economist' given by 
Marx to certain of his opponents-). The average Vulgar Marxist believes 
that Marxism lays bare the sinister secrets of social life by revealing the 
hidden motives of greed and lust for material gain which actuate the 



powers behind the scenes of history; powers that cunningly and 
consciously create war, depression, unemployment, hunger in the midst 
of plenty, and all the other forms of social misery, in order to gratify their 
vile desires for profit. (And the Vulgar Marxist is sometimes seriously 
concerned with the problem of reconciling the claims of Marx with those 
of Freud and Adler; and if he does not choose the one or the other of 
them, he may perhaps decide that hunger, love and lust for power- are the 
Three Great Hidden Motives of Human Nature brought to light by Marx, 
Freud, and Adler, the Three Great Makers of the modern man's 
philosophy. ...) 

Whether or not such views are tenable and attractive, they certainly 
seem to have very little to do with the doctrine which Marx called 
'historical materialism'. It must be admitted that he sometimes speaks of 
such psychological phenomena as greed and the profit motive, etc., but 
never in order to explain history. He interpreted them, rather, as 
symptoms of the corrupting influence of the social system, i.e. of a 
system of institutions developed during the course of history; as effects 
rather than causes of corruption; as repercussions rather than moving 
forces of history. Rightly or wrongly, he saw in such phenomena as war, 
depression, unemployment, and hunger in the midst of plenty, not the 
result of a cunning conspiracy on the part of 'big business' or of 
'imperialist war-mongers', but the unwanted social consequences of 
actions, directed towards different results, by agents who are caught in 
the network of the social system. He looked upon the human actors on the 
stage of history, including the 'big' ones, as mere puppets, irresistibly 
pulled by economic wires — by historical forces over which they have no 
control. The stage of history, he taught, is set in a social system which 
binds us all; it is set in the 'kingdom of necessity'. (But one day the 
puppets will destroy this system and attain the 'kingdom of freedom'.) 

This doctrine of Marx's has been abandoned by most of his followers 



— perhaps for propagandist reasons, perhaps because they did not 
understand him — and a Vulgar Marxist Conspiracy Theory has very 
largely replaced the ingenious and highly original Marxian doctrine. It is 
a sad intellectual come-down, this come-down from the level of Capital 
to that of The Myth of the 20th Century. 

Yet such was Marx's own philosophy of history, usually called 
'historical materialism'. It will be the main theme of these chapters. In 
the present chapter, I shall explain in broad outlines its 'materialist' or 
economic emphasis; after that, I shall discuss in more detail the role of 
class war and class interest and the Marxist conception of a 'social 
system'. 



I 

The exposition of Marx's economic historicism- can be conveniently 
linked up with our comparison between Marx and Mill. Marx agrees with 
Mill in the belief that social phenomena must be explained historically, 
and that we must try to understand any historical period as a historical 
product of previous developments. The point where he departs from Mill 
is, as we have seen. Mill's psychologism (corresponding to Hegel's 
idealism). This is replaced in Marx's teaching by what he calls 
materialism. 

Much has been said about Marx's materialism that is quite untenable. 
The often repeated claim that Marx does not recognize anything beyond 
the 'lower' or 'material' aspects of human life is an especially ridiculous 
distortion. (It is another repetition of that most ancient of all reactionary 
libels against the defenders of freedom, Heraclitus' slogan that 'they fill 
their bellies like the beasts'-.) But in this sense, Marx cannot be called a 



materialist at all, even though he was strongly influenced by the 
eighteenth- century French Materialists, and even though he used to call 
himself a materialist, which is well in keeping with a good number of his 
doctrines. For there are some important passages which can hardly be 
interpreted as materialistic. The truth is, I think, that he was not much 
concerned with purely philosophical issues — less than Engels or Lenin, 
for instance — and that it was mainly the sociological and methodological 
side of the problem in which he was interested. 

There is a well-known passage in Capital-, where Marx says that 'in 
Hegel's writing, dialectics stands on its head; one must turn it the right 
way up again Its tendency is clear. Marx wished to show that the 
'head', i.e. human thought, is not itself the basis of human life but rather 
a kind of superstructure, on a physical basis. A similar tendency is 
expressed in the passage: 'The ideal is nothing other than the material 
when it has been transposed and translated inside the human head. ' But it 
has not, perhaps, been sufficiently recognized that these passages do not 
exhibit a radical form of materialism; rather, they indicate a certain 
leaning towards a dualism of body and mind. It is, so to speak, a practical 
dualism. Although, theoretically, mind was to Marx apparently only 
another form (or another aspect, or perhaps an epi-phenomenon) of 
matter, in practice it is different from matter, since it is another form of 
it. The passages quoted indicate that although our feet have to be kept, as 
it were, on the firm ground of the material world, our heads — and Marx 
thought highly of human heads — are concerned with thoughts or ideas. In 
my opinion, Marxism and its influence cannot be appreciated unless we 
recognize this dualism. 

Marx loved freedom, real freedom (not Hegel's 'real freedom'). And 
as far as I am able to see he followed Hegel's famous equation of 
freedom with spirit, in so far as he believed that we can be free only as 
spiritual beings. At the same time he recognized in practice (as a 



practical dualist) that we are spirit and flesh, and, realistically enough, 
that the flesh is the fundamental one of these two. This is why he turned 
against Hegel, and why he said that Hegel puts things upside down. But 
although he recognized that the material world and its necessities are 
fundamental, he did not feel any love for the 'kingdom of necessity', as 
he called a society which is in bondage to its material needs. He 
cherished the spiritual world, the 'kingdom of freedom', and the spiritual 
side of 'human nature', as much as any Christian dualist; and in his 
writings there are even traces of hatred and contempt for the material. 
What follows may show that this interpretation of Marx's views can be 
supported by his own text. 

In a passage of the third volume of Capital-, Marx very aptly describes 
the material side of social life, and especially its economic side, that of 
production and consumption, as an extension of human metabolism, i.e. 
of man's exchange of matter with nature. He clearly states that our 
freedom must always be limited by the necessities of this metabolism. 
All that can be achieved in the direction of making us more free, he says, 
is 'to conduct this metabolism rationally, . . . with a minimum expenditure 
of energy and under conditions most dignified and adequate to human 
nature. Yet it will still remain the kingdom of necessity. Only outside and 
beyond it can that development of human faculties begin which 
constitutes an end in itself — the true kingdom of freedom. But this can 
flourish only on the ground occupied by the kingdom of necessity, which 
remains its basis ...' Immediately before this, Marx says: 'The kingdom 
of freedom actually begins only where drudgery, enforced by hardship 
and by external purposes, ends; it thus lies, quite naturally, beyond the 
sphere of proper material production. ' And he ends the whole passage by 
drawing a practical conclusion which clearly shows that it was his sole 
aim to open the way into that non-materialist kingdom of freedom for all 
men alike: 'The shortening of the labour day is the fundamental pre- 



requisite.' 

In my opinion this passage leaves no doubt regarding what I have 
called the dualism of Marx's practical view of life. With Hegel he thinks 
that freedom is the aim of historical development. With Hegel he 
identifies the realm of freedom with that of man's mental life. But he 
recognizes that we are not purely spiritual beings; that we are not fully 
free, nor capable of ever achieving full freedom, unable as we shall 
always be to emancipate ourselves entirely from the necessities of our 
metabolism, and thus from productive toil. All we can achieve is to 
improve upon the exhausting and undignified conditions of labour, to 
make them more worthy of man, to equalize them, and to reduce 
drudgery to such an extent that all of us can be free for some part of our 
lives. This, I believe, is the central idea of Marx's 'view of life'; central 
also in so far as it seems to me to be the most influential of his doctrines. 

With this view, we must now combine the methodological determinism 
which has been discussed above (in chapter 13). According to this 
doctrine, the scientific treatment of society, and scientific historical 
prediction, are possible only in so far as society is determined by its past. 
But this implies that science can deal only with the kingdom of necessity. 
If it were possible for men ever to become perfectly free, then historical 
prophecy, and with it, social science, would come to an end. 'Free' 
spiritual activity as such, if it existed, would lie beyond the reach of 
science, which must always ask for causes, for determinants. It can 
therefore deal with our mental life only in so far as our thoughts and 
ideas are caused or determined or necessitated by the 'kingdom of 
necessity', by the material, and especially by the economic conditions of 
our life, by our metabolism. Thoughts and ideas can be treated 
scientifically only by considering, on the one hand, the material 
conditions under which they originated, i.e. the economic conditions of 
the life of the men who originated them, and on the other hand, the 



material conditions under which they were assimilated, i.e. the economic 
conditions of the men who adopted them. Hence from the scientific or 
causal point of view, thoughts and ideas must be treated as 'ideological 
superstructures on the basis of economic conditions'. Marx, in opposition 
to Hegel, contended that the clue to history, even to the history of ideas, 
is to be found in the development of the relations between man and his 
natural environment, the material world; that is to say, in his economic 
life, and not in his spiritual life. This is why we may describe Marx's 
brand of historicism as economism, as opposed to Hegel's idealism or to 
Mill's psychologism. But it signifies a complete misunderstanding if we 
identify Marx's economism with that kind of materialism which implies 
a depreciatory attitude towards man's mental life. Marx's vision of the 
'kingdom of freedom', i.e. of a partial but equitable liberation of men 
from the bondage of their material nature, might rather be described as 
idealistic. 

Considered in this way, the Marxist view of life appears to be 
consistent enough; and I believe that such apparent contradictions and 
difficulties as have been found in its partly determinist and partly 
libertarian view of human activities disappear. 



II 

The bearing of what I have called Marx's dualism and his scientific 
determinism on his view of history is plain. Scientific history, which to 
him is identical with social science as a whole, must explore the laws 
according to which man's exchange of matter with nature develops. Its 
central task must be the explanation of the development of the conditions 
of production. Social relationships have historical and scientific 



significance only in proportion to the degree in which they are bound up 
with the productive process — affecting it, or perhaps affected by it. 'Just 
as the savage must wrestle with nature in order to satisfy his needs, to 
keep alive, and to reproduce, so must the civilized man; and he must 
continue to do so in all forms of society and under all possible forms of 
production. This kingdom of necessity expands with its development, and 
so does the range of human needs. Yet at the same time, there is an 
expansion of the productive forces which satisfy these needs.'- This, in 
brief, is Marx's view of man's history. 

Similar views are expressed by Engels. The expansion of modern 
means of production, according to Engels, has created 'for the first time 
... the possibility of securing for every member of society ... an 
existence not only . . . sufficient from a material point of view, but also . . . 
warranting the . . . development and exercise of his physical and mental 
faculties'-. With this, freedom becomes possible, i.e. the emancipation 
from the flesh. 'At this point ... man finally cuts himself off from the 
animal world, leaves ... animal existence behind him and enters 
conditions which are really human.' Man is in fetters exactly in so far as 
he is dominated by economics; when 'the domination of the product over 
producers disappears man ... becomes, for the first time, the 
conscious and real master of nature, by becoming master of his own 
social environment ... Not until then will man himself, in full 
consciousness, make his own history ... It is humanity's leap from the 
realm of necessity into the realm of freedom.' 

If now again we compare Marx's version of historicism with that of 
Mill, then we find that Marx's economism can easily solve the difficulty 
which I have shown to be fatal to Mill's psychologism. I have in mind the 
rather monstrous doctrine of a beginning of society which can be 
explained in psychological terms — a doctrine which I have described as 
the psychologistic version of the social contract. This idea has no parallel 



in Marx's theory. To replace the priority of psychology by the priority of 
economics creates no analogous difficulty, since 'economics' covers 
man's metabolism, the exchange of matter between man and nature. 
Whether this metabolism has always been socially organized, even in 
pre-human times, or whether it was once dependent solely on the 
individual, can be left an open question. No more is assumed than that the 
science of society must coincide with the history of the development of 
the economic conditions of society, usually called by Marx 'the 
conditions of production' . 

It may be noted, in parentheses, that the Marxist term 'production' was 
certainly intended to be used in a wide sense, covering the whole 
economic process, including distribution and consumption. But these 
latter never received much attention from Marx and the Marxists. Their 
prevailing interest remained production in the narrow sense of the word. 
This is just another example of the naive historico-genetic attitude, of the 
belief that science must only ask for causes, so that, even in the realm of 
man-made things, it must ask 'Who has made it?' and 'What is it made 
of?' rather than 'Who is going to use it?' and 'What is it made for?' 



Ill 

If we now proceed to a criticism as well as to an appreciation of Marx's 
'historical materialism', or of so much of it as has been presented so far, 
then we may distinguish two different aspects. The first is historicism, 
the claim that the realm of social sciences coincides with that of the 
historical or evolutionary method, and especially with historical 
prophecy. This claim, I think, must be dismissed. The second is 
economism (or 'materialism'), i.e. the claim that the economic 



organization of society, the organization of our exchange of matter with 
nature, is fundamental for all social institutions and especially for their 
historical development. This claim, I believe, is perfectly sound, so long 
as we take the term 'fundamental' in an ordinary vague sense, not laying 
too much stress upon it. In other words, there can be no doubt that 
practically all social studies, whether institutional or historical, may 
profit if they are carried out with an eye to the 'economic conditions' of 
society. Even the history of an abstract science such as mathematics is no 
exception—. In this sense, Marx's economism can be said to represent an 
extremely valuable advance in the methods of social science. 

But, as I said before, we must not take the term 'fundamental' too 
seriously. Marx himself undoubtedly did so. Owing to his Hegelian 
upbringing, he was influenced by the ancient distinction between 'reality' 
and 'appearance', and by the corresponding distinction between what is 
'essential' and what is 'accidental'. His own improvement upon Hegel 
(and Kant) he was inclined to see in the identification of 'reality' with the 
material world— (including man's metabolism), and of 'appearance' with 
the world of thoughts or ideas. Thus all thoughts and ideas would have to 
be explained by reducing them to the underlying essential reality, i.e. to 
economic conditions. This philosophical view is certainly not much 
better— than any other form of essentialism. And its repercussions in the 
field of method must result in an over-emphasis upon economism. For 
although the general importance of Marx's economism can hardly be 
overrated, it is very easy to overrate the importance of the economic 
conditions in any particular case. Some knowledge of economic 
conditions may contribute considerably, for example, to a history of the 
problems of mathematics, but a knowledge of the problems of 
mathematics themselves is much more important for that purpose; and it 
is even possible to write a very good history of mathematical problems 
without referring at all to their 'economic background'. (In my opinion. 



the 'economic conditions' or the 'social relations' of science are themes 
which can easily be overdone, and which are liable to degenerate into 
platitude.) 

This, however, is only a minor example of the danger of over- stressing 
economism. Often it is sweepingly interpreted as the doctrine that all 
social development depends upon that of economic conditions, and 
especially upon the development of the physical means of production. 
But such a doctrine is palpably false. There is an interaction between 
economic conditions and ideas, and not simply a unilateral dependence of 
the latter on the former. If anything, we might even assert that certain 
'ideas', those which constitute our knowledge, are more fundamental than 
the more complex material means of production, as may be seen from the 
following consideration. Imagine that our economic system, including all 
machinery and all social organizations, was destroyed one day, but that 
technical and scientific knowledge was preserved. In such a case it might 
conceivably not take very long before it was reconstructed (on a smaller 
scale, and after many had starved). But imagine all knowledge of these 
matters to disappear, while the material things were preserved. This 
would be tantamount to what would happen if a savage tribe occupied a 
highly industrialized but deserted country. It would soon lead to the 
complete disappearance of all the material relics of civilization. 

It is ironical that the history of Marxism itself furnishes an example 
that clearly falsifies this exaggerated economism. Marx's idea 'Workers 
of all countries, unite!' was of the greatest significance down to the eve 
of the Russian Revolution, and it had its influence upon economic 
conditions. But with the revolution, the situation became very difficult, 
simply because, as Lenin himself admitted, there were no further 
constructive ideas. (See chapter 13 .) Then Lenin had some new ideas 
which may be briefly summarized in the slogan: 'Socialism is the 
dictatorship of the proletariat, plus the widest introduction of the most 



modern electrical machinery.' It was this new idea that became the basis 
of a development which changed the whole economic and material 
background of one- sixth of the world. In a fight against tremendous odds, 
uncounted material difficulties were overcome, uncounted material 
sacrifices were made, in order to alter, or rather, to build up from 
nothing, the conditions of production. And the driving power of this 
development was the enthusiasm for an idea. This example shows that in 
certain circumstances, ideas may revolutionize the economic conditions 
of a country, instead of being moulded by these conditions. Using Marx's 
terminology, we could say that he had underrated the power of the 
kingdom of freedom and its chances of conquering the kingdom of 
necessity. 

The glaring contrast between the development of the Russian 
Revolution and Marx's metaphysical theory of an economic reality and 
its ideological appearance can best be seen from the following passages: 
'In considering such revolutions', Marx writes, 'it is necessary always to 
distinguish between the material revolution in the economic conditions of 
production, which fall within the scope of exact scientific determination, 
and the juridical, political, religious, aesthetic, or philosophic — in a word, 
ideological forms of appearance . . .'— In Marx's view, it is vain to expect 
that any important change can be achieved by the use of legal or political 
means; a political revolution can only lead to one set of rulers giving way 
to another set — a mere exchange of the persons who act as rulers. Only 
the evolution of the underlying essence, the economic reality, can 
produce any essential or real change — a social revolution. And only when 
such a social revolution has become a reality, only then can a political 
revolution be of any significance. But even in this case, the political 
revolution is only the outward expression of the essential or real change 
that has occurred before. In accordance with this theory, Marx asserts that 
every social revolution develops in the following way. The material 



conditions of production grow and mature until they begin to conflict 
with the social and legal relations, outgrowing them like clothes, until 
they burst. 'Then an epoch of social revolution opens', Marx writes. 
'With the change in the economic foundation, the whole vast super- 
structure is more or less rapidly transformed ... New, more highly 
productive relationships' (within the superstructure) 'never come into 
being before the material conditions for their existence have been brought 
to maturity within the womb of the old society itself.' In view of this 
statement, it is, I believe, impossible to identify the Russian Revolution 
with the social revolution prophesied by Marx; it has, in fact, no 
similarity with it whatever—. 

It may be noted in this connection that Marx's friend, the poet H. 
Heine, thought very differently about these matters. 'Mark this, ye proud 
men of action', he writes; 'ye are nothing but unconscious instruments of 
the men of thought who, often in humblest seclusion, have appointed you 
to your inevitable task. Maximilian Robespierre was merely the hand of 
Jean- Jacques Rousseau ...'— (Something like this might perhaps be said 
of the relationship between Lenin and Marx.) We see that Heine was, in 
Marx's terminology, an idealist, and that he applied his idealistic 
interpretation of history to the French Revolution, which was one of the 
most important instances used by Marx in favour of his economism, and 
which indeed seemed to fit this doctrine not so badly — especially if we 
compare it now with the Russian Revolution. Yet in spite of this heresy, 
Heine remained Marx's friend—; for in those happy days, 
excommunication for heresy was still rather uncommon among those who 
fought for the open society, and tolerance was still tolerated. 

My criticism of Marx's 'historical materialism' must certainly not be 
interpreted as expressing any preference for Hegelian 'idealism' over 
Marx's 'materialism'; I hope I have made it clear that in this conflict 
between idealism and materialism my sympathies are with Marx. What I 



wish to show is that Marx's 'materialist interpretation of history', 
valuable as it may be, must not be taken too seriously; that we must 
regard it as nothing more than a most valuable suggestion to us to 
consider things in their relation to their economic background. 



16 

The Classes 



An important place among the various formulations of Marx's 'historical 
materialism' is occupied by his (and Engels') statement: 'The history of 
all hitherto existing society is a history of class struggle.'- The tendency 
of this statement is clear. It implies that history is propelled and the fate 
of man determined by the war of classes and not by the war of nations (as 
opposed to the views of Hegel and of the majority of historians). In the 
causal explanation of historical developments, including national wars, 
class interest must take the place of that allegedly national interest which, 
in reality, is only the interest of a nation's ruling class. But over and 
above this, class struggle and class interest are capable of explaining 
phenomena which traditional history may in general not even attempt to 
explain. An example of such a phenomenon which is of great significance 
for Marxist theory is the historical trend towards increasing productivity. 
Even though it may perhaps record such a trend, traditional history, with 
its fundamental category of military power, is quite unable to explain this 
phenomenon. Class interest and class war, however, can explain it fully, 
according to Marx; indeed, a considerable part of Capital is devoted to 
the analysis of the mechanism by which, within the period called by Marx 
'capitalism', an increase in productivity is brought about by these forces. 

How is the doctrine of class war related to the institutionalist doctrine 
of the autonomy of sociology discussed above-? At first sight it may 
seem that these two doctrines are in open conflict, for in the doctrine of 



class war, a fundamental part is played by class interest, which apparently 
is a kind of motive. But I do not think that there is any serious 
inconsistency in this part of Marx's theory. And I should even say that 
nobody has understood Marx, and particularly that major achievement of 
his, anti-psychologism, who does not see how it can be reconciled with 
the theory of class struggle. We need not assume, as Vulgar Marxists do, 
that class interest must be interpreted psychologically. There may be a 
few passages in Marx's own writings that savour a little of this Vulgar 
Marxism, but wherever he makes serious use of anything like class 
interest, he always means a thing within the realm of autonomous 
sociology, and not a psychological category. He means a thing, a 
situation, and not a state of mind, a thought, or a feeling of being 
interested in a thing. It is simply that thing or that social institution or 
situation which is advantageous to a class. The interest of a class is 
simply everything that furthers its power or its prosperity. 

According to Marx, class interest in this institutional, or, if we may say 
so, 'objective', sense exerts a decisive influence on human minds. Using 
Hegelian jargon, we might say that the objective interest of a class 
becomes conscious in the subjective minds of its members; it makes 
them class-interested and class-conscious, and it makes them act 
accordingly. Class interest as an institutional or objective social situation, 
and its influence upon human minds, is described by Marx in the epigram 
which I have quoted (at the beginning of chapter 14): 'It is not the 
consciousness of man that determines his existence — ^rather, it is his 
social existence that determines his consciousness.' To this epigram we 
need add only the remark that it is, more precisely, the place where man 
stands in society, his class situation, by which, according to Marxism, his 
consciousness is determined. 

Marx gives some indication of how this process of determination 
works. As we learned from him in the last chapter, we can be free only in 



so far as we emancipate ourselves from the productive process. But now 
we shall learn that, in any hitherto existing society, we were not free even 
to that extent. For how could we, he asks, emancipate ourselves from the 
productive process? Only by making others do the dirty work for us. We 
are thus forced to use them as means for our ends; we must degrade them. 
We can buy a greater degree of freedom only at the cost of enslaving 
other men, by splitting mankind into classes', the ruling class gains 
freedom at the cost of the ruled class, the slaves. But this fact has the 
consequence that the members of the ruling class must pay for their 
freedom by a new kind of bondage. They are bound to oppress and to 
fight the ruled, if they wish to preserve their own freedom and their own 
status; they are compelled to do this, since he who does not do so ceases 
to belong to the ruling class. Thus the rulers are determined by their class 
situation; they cannot escape from their social relation to the ruled; they 
are bound to them, since they are bound to the social metabolism. Thus 
all, rulers as well as ruled, are caught in the net, and forced to fight one 
another. According to Marx, it is this bondage, this determination, which 
brings their struggle within the reach of scientific method, and of 
scientific historical prophecy; which makes it possible to treat the history 
of society scientifically, as the history of class struggle. This social net in 
which the classes are caught, and forced to struggle against one another, 
is what Marxism calls the economic structure of society, or the social 
system. 

According to this theory, social systems or class systems change with 
the conditions of production, since on these conditions depends the way 
in which the rulers can exploit and fight the ruled. To every particular 
period of economic development corresponds a particular social system, 
and a historical period is best characterized by its social system of 
classes; this is why we speak of 'feudalism', 'capitalism', etc. 'The hand- 
mill', Marx writes-, 'gives you a society with the feudal lord; the steam- 



mill gives you a society with the industrial capitalist.' The class relations 
that characterize the social system are independent of the individual 
man's will. The social system thus resembles a vast machine in which the 
individuals are caught and crushed. 'In the social production of their 
means of existence', Marx writes-, 'men enter into definite and 
unavoidable relations which are independent of their will. These 
productive relationships correspond to the particular stage in the 
development of their material productive forces. The system of all these 
productive relationships constitutes the economic structure of society', 
i.e. the social system. 

Although it has a kind of logic of its own, this social system works 
blindly, not reasonably. Those who are caught in its machinery are, in 
general, blind too — or nearly so. They cannot even foresee some of the 
most important repercussions of their actions. One man may make it 
impossible for many to procure an article which is available in large 
quantities; he may buy just a trifle and thereby prevent a slight decrease 
of price at a critical moment. Another may in the goodness of his heart 
distribute his riches, but by thus contributing to a lessening of the class 
struggle, he may cause a delay in the liberation of the oppressed. Since it 
is quite impossible to foresee the more remote social repercussions of our 
actions, since we are one and all caught in the network, we cannot 
seriously attempt to cope with it. We obviously cannot influence it from 
outside; but blind as we are, we cannot even make any plan for its 
improvement from within. Social engineering is impossible, and a social 
technology therefore useless. We cannot impose our interests upon the 
social system; instead, the system forces upon us what we are led to 
believe to be our interests. It does so by forcing us to act in accordance 
with our class interest. It is vain to lay on the individual, even on the 
individual 'capitalist' or 'bourgeois', the blame for the injustice, for the 
immorality of social conditions, since it is this very system of conditions 



that forces the capitalist to act as he does. And it is also vain to hope that 
circumstances may be improved by improving men; rather, men will be 
better if the system in which they live is better. 'Only in so far', Marx 
writes in Capital-, 'as the capitalist is personified capital does he play a 
historical role ... But exactly to that extent, his motive is not to obtain 
and to enjoy useful commodities, but to increase the production of 
commodities for exchange' (his real historical task). 'Fanatically bent 
upon the expansion of value, he ruthlessly drives human beings to 
produce for production's sake . . . With the miser, he shares the passion 
for wealth. But what is a kind of mania in the miser is in the capitalist the 
effect of the social mechanism in which he is only a driving-wheel ... 
Capitalism subjects any individual capitalist to the immanent laws of 
capitalist production, laws which are external and coercive. Without 
respite, competition forces him to extend his capital for the sake of 
maintaining it.' 

This is the way in which, according to Marx, the social system 
determines the actions of the individual; the ruler as well as the ruled; 
capitalist or bourgeois as well as proletarian. It is an illustration of what 
has been called above the 'logic of a social situation'. To a considerable 
degree, all the actions of a capitalist are 'a mere function of the capital 
which, through his instrumentality, is endowed with will and 
consciousness', as Marx puts it-, in his Hegelian style. But this means 
that the social system determines their thoughts too; for thoughts, or 
ideas, are partly instruments of actions, and partly — that is, if they are 
publicly expressed — an important kind of social action; for in this case, 
they are immediately aimed at influencing the actions of other members 
of the society. By thus determining human thoughts, the social system, 
and especially the 'objective interest' of a class, becomes conscious in 
the subjective minds of its members (as we said before in Hegelian 
jargon-). Class struggle, as well as competition between the members of 



the same class, are the means by which this is achieved. 

We have seen why, according to Marx, social engineering, and 
consequently, a social technology, are impossible; it is because the causal 
chain of dependence binds us to the social system, and not vice versa. But 
although we cannot alter the social system at will-, capitalists as well as 
workers are bound to contribute to its transformation, and to our ultimate 
liberation from its fetters. By driving 'human beings to produce for 
production's sake'-, the capitalist coerces them 'to develop the forces of 
social productivity, and to create those material conditions of production 
which alone can form the material bases of a higher type of society whose 
fundamental principle is the full and free development of every human 
individual.' In this way, even the members of the capitalist class must 
play their role on the stage of history and further the ultimate coming of 
socialism. 

In view of subsequent arguments, a linguistic remark may be added 
here on the Marxist terms usually translated by the words 'class- 
conscious' and 'class consciousness'. These terms indicate, first of all, 
the result of the process analysed above, by which the objective class 
situation (class interest as well as class struggle) gains consciousness in 
the minds of its members, or, to express the same thought in a language 
less dependent on Hegel, by which members of a class become conscious 
of their class situation. Being class-conscious, they know not only their 
place but their true class interest as well. But over and above this, the 
original German word used by Marx suggests something which is usually 
lost in the translation. The term is derived from, and alludes to, a 
common German word which became part of Hegel's jargon. Though its 
literal translation would be 'self-conscious', this word has even in 
common use rather the meaning of being conscious of one s worth and 
powers, i.e. of being proud and fully assured of oneself, and even self- 
satisfied. Accordingly, the term translated as 'class-conscious' means in 



German not simply this, but rather, 'assured or proud of one's class', and 
bound to it by the consciousness of the need for solidarity. This is why 
Marx and the Marxists apply it nearly exclusively to the workers, and 
hardly ever to the 'bourgeoisie'. The class-conscious proletarian — ^this is 
the worker who is not only aware of his class situation, but who is also 
class-proud, fully assured of the historical mission of his class, and 
believing that its unflinching fight will bring about a better world. 

How does he know that this will happen? Because being class- 
conscious, he must be a Marxist. The Marxist theory itself and its 
scientific prophecy of the advent of socialism are part and parcel of the 
historical process by which the class situation 'emerges into 
consciousness', establishing itself in the minds of the workers. 



II 

My criticism of Marx's theory of the classes, as far as its historicist 
emphasis goes, follows the lines taken up in the last chapter. The formula 
'all history is a history of class struggle' is very valuable as a suggestion 
that we should look into the important part played by class struggle in 
power politics as well as in other developments; this suggestion is the 
more valuable since Plato's brilliant analysis of the part played by class 
struggle in the history of Greek city states was only rarely taken up in 
later times. But again, we must not, of course, take Marx's word 'all' too 
seriously. Not even the history of class issues is always a history of class 
struggle in the Marxian sense, considering the important part played by 
dissension within the classes themselves. Indeed, the divergence of 
interests within both the ruling and the ruled classes goes so far that 
Marx's theory of classes must be considered as a dangerous over- 



simplification, even if we admit that the issue between the rich and the 
poor is always of fundamental importance. One of the great themes of 
medieval history, the fight between popes and emperors, is an example of 
dissension within the ruling class. It would be palpably false to interpret 
this quarrel as one between exploiter and exploited. (Of course, one can 
widen Marx's concept 'class' so as to cover this and similar cases, and 
narrow the concept 'history', until ultimately Marx's doctrine becomes 
trivially true — a mere tautology; but this would rob it of any 
significance.) 

One of the dangers of Marx's formula is that if taken too seriously, it 
misleads Marxists into interpreting all political conflicts as struggles 
between exploiters and exploited (or else as attempts to cover up the 'real 
issue', the underlying class conflict). As a consequence there were 
Marxists, especially in Germany, who interpreted a war such as the First 
World War as one between the revolutionary or 'have-not' Central 
Powers and an alliance of conservative or 'have' countries — a kind of 
interpretation which might be used to excuse any aggression. This is only 
one example of the danger inherent in Marx's sweeping historicist 
generalization. 

On the other hand, his attempt to use what may be called the 'logic of 
the class situation' to explain the working of the institutions of the 
industrial system seems to me admirable, in spite of certain 
exaggerations and the neglect of some important aspects of the situation; 
admirable, at least, as a sociological analysis of that stage of the 
industrial system which Marx has mainly in mind: the system of 
'unrestrained capitalism' (as I shall call it—) of one hundred years ago. 



17 

The Legal and the Social System 



We are now ready to approach what is probably the most crucial point in 
our analysis as well as in our criticism of Marxism; it is Marx's theory of 
the state and — ^paradoxical as it may sound to some — of the impotence of 
all politics. 



I 



Marx's theory of the state can be presented by combining the results of 
the last two chapters. The legal or juridico-political system — the system 
of legal institutions enforced by the state — has to be understood, 
according to Marx, as one of the superstructures erected upon, and giving 
expression to, the actual productive forces of the economic system; Marx 
speaks- in this connection of 'juridical and political superstructures'. It is 
not, of course, the only way in which the economic or material reality and 
the relations between the classes which correspond to it make their 
appearance in the world of ideologies and ideas. Another example of such 
a superstructure would be, according to Marxist views, the prevailing 
moral system. This, as opposed to the legal system, is not enforced by 
state power, but sanctioned by an ideology created and controlled by the 
ruling class. The difference is, roughly, one between persuasion and force 



(as Plato- would have said); and it is the state, the legal or political 
system, which uses force. It is, as Engels- puts it, 'a special repressive 
force' for the coercion of the ruled by the rulers. 'Political power, 
properly so called,' says the Manifesto-, 'is merely the organized power 
of one class for oppressing the other.' A similar description is given by 
Lenin-: 'According to Marx, the state is an organ of class domination, din 
organ for the oppression of one class by another; its aim is the creation of 
an "order" which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression . . . ' The state, 
in brief, is just part of the machinery by which the ruling class carries on 
its struggle. 

Before proceeding to develop the consequences of this view of the 
state, it may be pointed out that it is partly an institutional and partly an 
essentialist theory. It is institutional in so far as Marx tries to ascertain 
what practical functions legal institutions have in social life. But it is 
essentialist in so far as Marx neither inquires into the variety of ends 
which these institutions may possibly serve (or be made to serve), nor 
suggests what institutional reforms are necessary in order to make the 
state serve those ends which he himself might deem desirable. Instead of 
making his demands or proposals concerning the functions which he 
wants the state, the legal institutions or the government to perform, he 
asks, 'What is the state?'; that is to say, he tries to discover the essential 
function of legal institutions. It has been shown before- that such a 
typically essentialist question cannot be answered in a satisfactory way; 
yet this question, undoubtedly, is in keeping with Marx's essentialist and 
metaphysical approach which interprets the field of ideas and norms as 
the appearance of an economic reality. 

What are the consequences of this theory of the state? The most 
important consequence is that all politics, all legal and political 
institutions as well as all political struggles, can never be of primary 
importance. Politics are impotent. They can never alter decisively the 



economic reality. The main if not the only task of any enlightened 
political activity is to see that the alternations in the juridico-political 
cloak keep pace with the changes in the social reality, that is to say, in the 
means of production and in the relations between the classes; in this way, 
such difficulties as must arise if politics lag behind these developments 
can be avoided. Or in other words, political developments are either 
superficial, unconditioned by the deeper reality of the social system, in 
which case they are doomed to be unimportant, and can never be of real 
help to the suppressed and exploited; or else they give expression to a 
change in the economic background and the class situation, in which case 
they are of the character of volcanic eruptions, of complete revolutions 
which can perhaps be foreseen, as they arise from the social system, and 
whose ferocity might then be mitigated by non-resistance to the eruptive 
forces, but which can be neither caused nor suppressed by political 
action. 

These consequences show again the unity of Marx's historicist system 
of thought. Yet considering that few movements have done as much as 
Marxism to stimulate interest in political action, the theory of the 
fundamental impotence of politics appears somewhat paradoxical. 
(Marxists might, of course, meet this remark with either of two 
arguments. The one is that in the theory expounded, political action has 
its function; for even though the workers' party cannot, by its actions, 
improve the lot of the exploited masses, its fight awakens class 
consciousness and thereby prepares for the revolution. This would be the 
argument of the radical wing. The other argument, used by the moderate 
wing, asserts that there may exist historical periods in which political 
action can be directly helpful; the periods, namely, in which the forces of 
the two opposing classes are approximately in equilibrium. In such 
periods, political effort and energy may be decisive in achieving very 
significant improvements for the workers. — It is clear that this second 



argument sacrifices some of the fundamental positions of the theory, but 
without realizing this, and consequently without going to the root of the 
matter.) 

It is worth noting that according to Marxist theory, the workers' party 
can hardly make political mistakes of any importance, as long as the 
party continues to play its assigned role, and to press the claims of the 
workers energetically. For political mistakes cannot materially affect the 
actual class situation, and even less the economic reality on which 
everything else ultimately depends. 

Another important consequence of the theory is that, in principle, all 
government, even democratic government, is a dictatorship of the ruling 
class over the ruled. 'The executive of the modern state', says the 
Manifesto-, 'is merely a committee for managing the economic affairs of 
the whole bourgeoisie . . .' What we call a democracy is, according to this 
theory, nothing but that form of class dictatorship which happens to be 
most convenient in a certain historical situation. (This doctrine does not 
agree very well with the class equilibrium theory of the moderate wing 
mentioned above.) And just as the state, under capitalism, is a 
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, so, after the social revolution, it will at 
first be a dictatorship of the proletariat. But this proletarian state must 
lose its function as soon as the resistance of the old bourgeoisie has 
broken down. For the proletarian revolution leads to a one-class society, 
and therefore to a classless society in which there can be no class- 
dictatorship. Thus the state, deprived of any function, must disappear. 'It 
withers away\ as Engels said-. 



II 



I am very far from defending Marx's theory of the state. His theory of the 
impotence of all politics, more particularly, and his view of democracy, 
appear to me to be not only mistakes, but fatal mistakes. But it must be 
admitted that behind these grim as well as ingenious theories, there stood 
a grim and depressing experience. And although Marx, in my opinion, 
failed to understand the future which he so keenly wished to foresee, it 
seems to me that even his mistaken theories are proof of his keen 
sociological insight into the conditions of his own time, and of his 
invincible humanitarianism and sense of justice. 

Marx's theory of the state, in spite of its abstract and philosophical 
character, undoubtedly furnishes an enlightening interpretation of his 
own historical period. It is at least a tenable view that the so-called 
'industrial revolution' developed at first mainly as a revolution of the 
'material means of production', i.e. of machinery; that this led, next, to a 
transformation of the class structure of society, and thus to a new social 
system; and that political revolutions and other transformations of the 
legal system came only as a third step. Even though this Marxist 
interpretation of the 'rise of capitalism' has been challenged by historians 
who were able to lay bare some of its deep-lying ideological foundations 
(which were perhaps not quite unsuspected by Marx-, although 
destructive to his theory), there can be little doubt about the value of the 
Marxist interpretation as a first approximation, and about the service 
rendered to his successors in this field. And even though some of the 
developments studied by Marx were deliberately fostered by legislative 
measures, and indeed made possible only by legislation (as Marx himself 
says—), it was he who first discussed the influence of economic 
developments and economic interests upon legislation, and the function 
of legislative measures as weapons in the class struggle, and especially as 
means for the creation of a 'surplus population', and with it, of the 
industrial proletariat. 



It is clear from many of Marx's passages that these observations 
confirmed him in his belief that the juridico-political system is a mere 
'superstructure'— on the social, i.e. the economic, system; a theory 
which, although undoubtedly refuted by subsequent experience—, not 
only remains interesting, but also, I suggest, contains a grain of truth. 

But it was not only Marx's general views of the relations between the 
economic and the political system that were in this way influenced by his 
historical experience; his views on liberalism and democracy, more 
particularly, which he considered to be nothing but veils for the 
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, furnished an interpretation of the social 
situation of his time which appeared to fit only too well, corroborated as 
it was by sad experience. For Marx lived, especially in his younger years, 
in a period of the most shameless and cruel exploitation. And this 
shameless exploitation was cynically defended by hypocritical apologists 
who appealed to the principle of human freedom, to the right of man to 
determinate his own fate, and to enter freely into any contract he 
considers favourable to his interests. 

Using the slogan 'equal and free competition for all', the unrestrained 
capitalism of this period resisted successfully all labour legislation until 
the year 1833, and its practical execution for many years more—. The 
consequence was a life of desolation and misery which can hardly be 
imagined in our day. Especially the exploitation of women and children 
led to incredible suffering. Here are two examples, quoted from Marx's 
Capital: 'William Wood, 9 years old, was 7 years and 10 months when he 
began to work ... He came to work every day in the week at 6 a.m., and 
left off about 9 p.m ...' 'Fifteen hours of labour for a child 7 years old!' 
exclaims an official report— of the Children's Employment Commission 
of 1863. Other children were forced to start work at 4 a.m., or to work 
throughout the night until 6 a.m., and it was not unusual for children of 
only six years to be forced to a daily toil of 15 hours. — 'Mary Anne 



Walkley had worked without pause 26V2 hours, together with sixty other 
girls, thirty of them in one room ... A doctor, Mr. Keys, called in too late, 
testified before the coroner's jury that "Mary Anne Walkley had died 
from long hours of work in an overcrowded workroom ..." Wishing to 
give this gentleman a lecture in good manners, the coroner's jury brought 
in a verdict to the effect that "the deceased had died of apoplexy, but 
there is reason to fear that her death had been accelerated by overwork in 
an overcrowded workroom".'— Such were the conditions of the working 
class even in 1863, when Marx was writing Capital', his burning protest 
against these crimes, which were then tolerated, and sometimes even 
defended, not only by professional economists but also by churchmen, 
will secure him forever a place among the liberators of mankind. 

In view of such experiences, we need not wonder that Marx did not 
think very highly of liberalism, and that he saw in parliamentary 
democracy nothing but a veiled dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. And it 
was easy for him to interpret these facts as supporting his analysis of the 
relationship between the legal and the social system. According to the 
legal system, equality and freedom were established, at least 
approximately. But what did this mean in reality! Indeed, we must not 
blame Marx for insisting that the economic facts alone are 'real' and that 
the legal system may be a mere superstructure, a cloak for this reality, 
and an instrument of class domination. 

The opposition between the legal and the social system is most clearly 
developed in Capital. In one of its theoretical parts (treated more fully in 
chapter 20), Marx approaches the analysis of the capitalist economic 
system by using the simplifying and idealizing assumption that the legal 
system is perfect in every respect. Freedom, equality before the law, 
justice, are all assumed to be guaranteed to everybody. There are no 
privileged classes before the law. Over and above that, he assumes that 
not even in the economic realm is there any kind of 'robbery'; he 



assumes that a 'just price' is paid for all commodities, including the 
labour power which the worker sells to the capitalist on the labour 
market. The price for all these commodities is 'just', in the sense that all 
commodities are bought and sold in proportion to the average amount of 
labour needed for their reproduction (or using Marx's terminology, they 
are bought and sold according to their true 'value'—). Of course, Marx 
knows that all this is an over- simplification, for it is his opinion that the 
workers are hardly ever treated as fairly as that; in other words, that they 
are usually cheated. But arguing from these idealized premises, he 
attempts to show that even under so excellent a legal system, the 
economic system would function in such a way that the workers would 
not be able to enjoy their freedom. In spite of all this 'justice', they 
would not be very much better off than slaves—. For if they are poor, they 
can only sell themselves, their wives and their children on the labour 
market, for as much as is necessary for the reproduction of their labour 
power. That is to say, for the whole of their labour power, they will not 
get more than the barest means of existence. This shows that exploitation 
is not merely robbery. It cannot be eliminated by merely legal means. 
(And Proudhon's criticism that 'property is theft' is much too 
superficial—.) 

In consequence of this, Marx was led to hold that the workers cannot 
hope much from the improvement of a legal system which as everybody 
knows grants to rich and poor alike the freedom of sleeping on park 
benches, and which threatens them alike with punishment for the attempt 
to live 'without visible means of support'. In this way Marx arrived at 
what may be termed (in Hegelian language) the distinction between 
formal and material freedom. Formal— or legal freedom, although Marx 
does not rate it low, turns out to be quite insufficient for securing to us 
that freedom which he considered to be the aim of the historical 



development of mankind. What matters is real, i.e. economic or material, 
freedom. This can be achieved only by an equal emancipation from 
drudgery. For this emancipation, 'the shortening of the labour day is the 
fundamental prerequisite'. 

Ill 

What have we to say to Marx's analysis? Are we to believe that politics, 
or the framework of legal institutions, are intrinsically impotent to 
remedy such a situation, and that only a complete social revolution, a 
complete change of the 'social system', can help? Or are we to believe 
the defenders of an unrestrained 'capitalist' system who emphasize 
(rightly, I think) the tremendous benefit to be derived from the 
mechanism of free markets, and who conclude from this that a truly free 
labour market would be of the greatest benefit to all concerned? 

I believe that the injustice and inhumanity of the unrestrained 
'capitalist system' described by Marx cannot be questioned; but it can be 
interpreted in terms of what we called, in a previous chapter—, the 
paradox of freedom. Freedom, we have seen, defeats itself, if it is 
unlimited. Unlimited freedom means that a strong man is free to bully 
one who is weak and to rob him of his freedom. This is why we demand 
that the state should limit freedom to a certain extent, so that everyone's 
freedom is protected by law. Nobody should be at the mercy of others, but 
all should have a right to be protected by the state. 

Now I believe that these considerations, originally meant to apply to 
the realm of brute-force, of physical intimidation, must be applied to the 
economic realm also. Even if the state protects its citizens from being 
bullied by physical violence (as it does, in principle, under the system of 



unrestrained capitalism), it may defeat our ends by its failure to protect 
them from the misuse of economic power. In such a state, the 
economically strong is still free to bully one who is economically weak, 
and to rob him of his freedom. Under these circumstances, unlimited 
economic freedom can be just as self-defeating as unlimited physical 
freedom, and economic power may be nearly as dangerous as physical 
violence; for those who possess a surplus of food can force those who are 
starving into a 'freely' accepted servitude, without using violence. And 
assuming that the state limits its activities to the suppression of violence 
(and to the protection of property), a minority which is economically 
strong may in this way exploit the majority of those who are 
economically weak. 

If this analysis is correct—, then the nature of the remedy is clear. It 
must be a political remedy — a remedy similar to the one which we use 
against physical violence. We must construct social institutions, enforced 
by the power of the state, for the protection of the economically weak 
from the economically strong. The state must see to it that nobody need 
enter into an inequitable arrangement out of fear of starvation, or 
economic ruin. 

This, of course, means that the principle of non-intervention, of an 
unrestrained economic system, has to be given up; if we wish freedom to 
be safeguarded, then we must demand that the policy of unlimited 
economic freedom be replaced by the planned economic intervention of 
the state. We must demand that unrestrained capitalism give way to an 
economic interventionism—. And this is precisely what has happened. The 
economic system described and criticized by Marx has everywhere 
ceased to exist. It has been replaced, not by a system in which the state 
begins to lose its functions and consequently 'shows signs of withering 
away', but by various interventionist systems, in which the functions of 
the state in the economic realm are extended far beyond the protection of 



property and of 'free contracts'. (This development will be discussed in 
the next chapters.) 

IV 

I should like to characterize the point here reached as the most central 
point in our analysis. It is only here that we can begin to realize the 
significance of the clash between historicism and social engineering, and 
its effect upon the policy of the friends of the open society. 

Marxism claims to be more than a science. It does more than make a 
historical prophecy. It claims to be the basis for practical political action. 
It criticizes existing society, and it asserts that it can lead the way to a 
better world. But according to Marx's own theory, we cannot at will alter 
the economic reality by, for example, legal reforms. Politics can do no 
more than 'shorten and lessen the birth-pangs'.— This, I think, is an 
extremely poor political programme, and its poverty is a consequence of 
the third-rate place which it attributes to political power in the hierarchy 
of powers. For according to Marx, the real power lies in the evolution of 
machinery; next in importance is the system of economic class- 
relationships; and the least important influence is that of politics. 

A directly opposite view is implied in the position we have reached in 
our analysis. It considers political power as fundamental. Political power, 
from this point of view, can control economic power. This means an 
immense extension of the field of political activities. We can ask what we 
wish to achieve and how to achieve it. We can, for instance, develop a 
rational political programme for the protection of the economically weak. 
We can make laws to limit exploitation. We can limit the working day; 
but we can do much more. By law, we can insure the workers (or better 



still, all citizens) against disability, unemployment, and old age. In this 
way we can make impossible such forms of exploitation as are based 
upon the helpless economic position of a worker who must yield to 
anything in order not to starve. And when we are able by law to guarantee 
a livelihood to everybody willing to work, and there is no reason why we 
should not achieve that, then the protection of the freedom of the citizen 
from economic fear and economic intimidation will approach 
completeness. From this point of view, political power is the key to 
economic protection. Political power and its control is everything. 
Economic power must not be permitted to dominate political power; if 
necessary, it must be fought and brought under control by political power. 

From the point of view reached, we can say that Marx's disparaging 
attitude towards political power not only means that he neglects to 
develop a theory of the most important potential means of bettering the 
lot of the economically weak, but also that he neglected the greatest 
potential danger to human freedom. His naive view that, in a classless 
society, state power would lose its function and 'wither away' shows very 
clearly that he never grasped the paradox of freedom, and that he never 
understood the function which state power could and should perform, in 
the service of freedom and humanity. (Yet this view of Marx stands 
witness to the fact that he was, ultimately, an individualist, in spite of his 
coUectivist appeal to class consciousness.) In this way, the Marxian view 
is analogous to the liberal belief that all we need is 'equality of 
opportunity'. We certainly need this. But it is not enough. It does not 
protect those who are less gifted, or less ruthless, or less lucky, from 
becoming objects of exploitation for those who are more gifted, or 
ruthless, or lucky. 

Moreover, from the point of view we have reached, what Marxists 
describe disparagingly as 'mere formal freedom' becomes the basis of 
everything else. This 'mere formal freedom', i.e. democracy, the right of 



the people to judge and to dismiss their government, is the only known 
device by which we can try to protect ourselves against the misuse of 
political power—; it is the control of the rulers by the ruled. And since 
political power can control economic power, political democracy is also 
the only means for the control of economic power by the ruled. Without 
democratic control, there can be no earthly reason why any government 
should not use its political and economic power for purposes very 
different from the protection of the freedom of its citizens. 

V 

It is the fundamental role of 'formal freedom' which is overlooked by 
Marxists who think that formal democracy is not enough and wish to 
supplement it by what they usually call 'economic democracy'; a vague 
and utterly superficial phrase which obscures the fact that 'merely formal 
freedom' is the only guarantee of a democratic economic policy. 

Marx discovered the significance of economic power; and it is 
understandable that he exaggerated its status. He and the Marxists see 
economic power everywhere. Their argument runs: he who has the money 
has the power; for if necessary, he can buy guns and even gangsters. But 
this is a roundabout argument. In fact, it contains an admission that the 
man who has the gun has the power. And if he who has the gun becomes 
aware of this, then it may not be long until he has both the gun and the 
money. But under an unrestrained capitalism, Marx's argument applies, 
to some extent; for a rule which develops institutions for the control of 
guns and gangsters but not of the power of money is liable to come under 
the influence of this power. In such a state, an uncontrolled gangsterism 
of wealth may rule. But Marx himself, I think, would have been the first 



to admit that this is not true of all states; that there have been times in 
history when, for example, all exploitation was looting, directly based 
upon the power of the mailed fist. And to-day there will be few to support 
the na'ive view that the 'progress of history' has once and for all put an 
end to these more direct ways of exploiting men, and that, once formal 
freedom has been achieved, it is impossible for us to fall again under the 
sway of such primitive forms of exploitation. 

These considerations would be sufficient for refuting the dogmatic 
doctrine that economic power is more fundamental than physical power, 
or the power of the state. But there are other considerations as well. As 
has been rightly emphasized by various writers (among them Bertrand 
Russell and Walter Lippmann— ), it is only the active intervention of the 
state — the protection of property by laws backed by physical sanctions — 
which makes of wealth a potential source of power; for without this 
intervention, a man would soon be without his wealth. Economic power is 
therefore entirely dependent on political and physical power. Russell 
gives historical examples which illustrate this dependence, and 
sometimes even helplessness, of wealth: 'Economic power within the 
state,' he writes—, 'although ultimately derived from law and public 
opinion, easily acquires a certain independence. It can influence law by 
corruption and public opinion by propaganda. It can put politicians under 
obligations which interfere with their freedom. It can threaten to cause a 
financial crisis. But there are very definite limits to what it can achieve. 
Caesar was helped to power by his creditors, who saw no hope of 
repayment except through his success; but when he had succeeded he was 
powerful enough to defy them. Charles V borrowed from the Fuggers the 
money required to buy the position of Emperor, but when he had become 
Emperor he snapped his fingers at them and they lost what they had lent.' 

The dogma that economic power is at the root of all evil must be 
discarded. Its place must be taken by an understanding of the dangers of 



any form of uncontrolled power. Money as such is not particularly 
dangerous. It becomes dangerous only if it can buy power, either directly, 
or by enslaving the economically weak who must sell themselves in order 
to live. 

We must think in these matters in even more materialist terms, as it 
were, than Marx did. We must realize that the control of physical power 
and of physical exploitation remains the central political problem. In 
order to establish this control, we must establish 'merely formal 
freedom'. Once we have achieved this, and have learned how to use it for 
the control of political power, everything rests with us. We must not 
blame anybody else any longer, nor cry out against the sinister economic 
demons behind the scenes. For in a democracy, we hold the keys to the 
control of the demons. We can tame them. We must realize this and use 
the keys; we must construct institutions for the democratic control of 
economic power, and for our protection from economic exploitation. 

Much has been made by Marxists of the possibility of buying votes, 
either directly or by buying propaganda. But closer consideration shows 
that we have here a good example of the power-political situation 
analysed above. Once we have achieved formal freedom, we can control 
vote-buying in every form. There are laws to limit the expenditure on 
electioneering, and it rests entirely with us to see that much more 
stringent laws of this kind are introduced—. The legal system can be 
made a powerful instrument for its own protection. In addition, we can 
influence public opinion, and insist upon a much more rigid moral code 
in political matters. All this we can do; but we must first realize that 
social engineering of this kind is our task, that it is in our power, and that 
we must not wait for economic earthquakes miraculously to produce a 
new economic world for us, so that all we shall have to do will be to 
unveil it, to remove the old political cloak. 



VI 



Of course, in practice Marxists never fully relied on the doctrine of the 
impotence of political power. So far as they had an opportunity to act, or 
to plan action, they usually assumed, like everybody else, that political 
power can be used for the control of economic power. But their plans and 
actions were never based on a clear refutation of their original theory, nor 
upon any well-considered view of that most fundamental problem of all 
politics: the control of the controller, of the dangerous accumulation of 
power represented in the state. They never realized the full significance 
of democracy as the only known means to achieve this control. 

As a consequence they never realized the danger inherent in a policy of 
increasing the power of the state. Although they abandoned more or less 
unconsciously the doctrine of the impotence of politics, they retained the 
view that state power presents no important problem, and that it is bad 
only if it is in the hands of the bourgeoisie. They did not realize that all 
power, and political power at least as much as economic power, is 
dangerous. Thus they retained their formula of the dictatorship of the 
proletariat. They did not understand the principle (cp. chapter 8) that all 
large-scale politics must be institutional, not personal; and when 
clamouring for the extension of state powers (in contrast to Marx's view 
of the state) they never considered that the wrong persons might one day 
get hold of these extended powers. This is part of the reason why, as far 
as they proceeded to consider state-intervention, they planned to give the 
state practically limitless powers in the economic realm. They retained 
Marx's holistic and Utopian belief that only a brand-new 'social system' 
can improve matters. 

I have criticized this Utopian and Romantic approach to social 



engineering in a previous chapter ( chapter 9 ). But I wish to add here that 
economic intervention, even the piecemeal methods advocated here, will 
tend to increase the power of the state. Interventionism is therefore 
extremely dangerous. This is not a decisive argument against it; state 
power must always remain a dangerous though necessary evil. But it 
should be a warning that if we relax our watchfulness, and if we do not 
strengthen our democratic institutions while giving more power to the 
state by interventionist 'planning', then we may lose our freedom. And if 
freedom is lost, everything is lost, including 'planning'. For why should 
plans for the welfare of the people be carried out if the people have no 
power to enforce them? Only freedom can make security secure. 

We thus see that there is not only a paradox of freedom but also a 
paradox of state planning. If we plan too much, if we give too much 
power to the state, then freedom will be lost, and that will be the end of 
planning. 

Such considerations lead us back to our plea for piecemeal, and against 
Utopian or holistic, methods of social engineering. And they lead us back 
to our demand that measures should be planned to fight concrete evils 
rather than to establish some ideal good. State intervention should be 
limited to what is really necessary for the protection of freedom. 

But it is not enough to say that our solution should be a minimum 
solution; that we should be watchful; and that we should not give more 
power to the state than is necessary for the protection of freedom. These 
remarks may raise problems, but they do not show a way to a solution. It 
is even conceivable that there is no solution; that the acquisition of new 
economic powers by a state — whose powers, as compared to those of its 
citizens, are always dangerously great — will make it irresistible. So far, 
we have shown neither that freedom can be preserved, nor how it can be 
preserved. 

Under these circumstances it may be useful to remember our 



considerations of chapter 7 concerning the question of the control of 
political power and the paradox of freedom. 

VII 

The important distinction which we made there was that between persons 
and institutions. We pointed out that, while the political question of the 
day may demand a personal solution, all long-term policy — and 
especially all democratic long-term policy — must be conceived in terms 
of impersonal institutions. And we pointed out that, more especially, the 
problem of controlling the rulers, and of checking their powers, was in 
the main an institutional problem — the problem, in short, of designing 
institutions for preventing even bad rulers from doing too much damage. 

Analogous considerations will apply to the problem of the control of 
the economic power of the state. What we shall have to guard against is 
an increase in the power of the rulers. We must guard against persons and 
against their arbitrariness. Some types of institution may confer arbitrary 
powers upon a person; but other types will deny them to that person. 

If we look upon our labour legislation from this point of view, then we 
shall find both types of institution. Many of these laws add very little 
power to the executive organs of the state. It is conceivable, to be sure, 
that the laws against child labour, for example, may be misused, by a 
civil servant, to intimidate, and to dominate over, an innocent citizen. But 
dangers of this kind are hardly serious if compared with those which are 
inherent in a legislation that confers upon the rulers discretionary powers, 
such as the power of directing labour—. Similarly, a law establishing that 
a citizen's misuse of his property should be punished by its forfeiture will 
be incomparably less dangerous than one which gives the rulers, or the 



servants of the state, discretionary powers of requisitioning a citizen's 
property. 

We thus arrive at a distinction between two entirely different 
methods— by which the economic intervention of the state may proceed. 
The first is that of designing a 'legal framework' of protective 
institutions (laws restricting the powers of the owner of an animal, or of a 
landowner, are an example). The second is that of empowering organs of 
the state to act — within certain limits — as they consider necessary for 
achieving the ends laid down by the rulers for the time being. We may 
describe the first procedure as 'institutional' or 'indirect' intervention, 
and the second as 'personal' or 'direct' intervention. (Of course, 
intermediate cases exist.) 

There can be no doubt, from the point of view of democratic control, 
which of these methods is preferable. The obvious policy for all 
democratic intervention is to make use of the first method wherever this 
is possible, and to restrict the use of the second method to cases for which 
the first method is inadequate. (Such cases exist. The classical example is 
the Budget — this expression of the Chancellor's discretion and sense of 
what is equitable and just. And it is conceivable although highly 
undesirable that a counter-cycle measure may have to be of a similar 
character.) 

From the point of view of piecemeal social engineering, the difference 
between the two methods is highly important. Only the first, the 
institutional method, makes it possible to make adjustments in the light 
of discussion and experience. It alone makes it possible to apply the 
method of trial and error to our political actions. It is long-term; yet the 
permanent legal framework can be slowly changed, in order to make 
allowances for unforeseen and undesired consequences, for changes in 
other parts of the framework, etc. It alone allows us to find out, by 
experience and analysis, what we actually were doing when we intervened 



with a certain aim in mind. Discretionary decisions of the rulers or civil 
servants are outside these rational methods. They are short-term 
decisions, transitory, changing from day to day, or at best, from year to 
year. As a rule (the Budget is the great exception) they cannot even be 
publicly discussed, both because necessary information is lacking, and 
because the principles on which the decision is taken are obscure. If they 
exist at all, they are usually not institutionalized, but part of an internal 
departmental tradition. 

But it is not only in this sense that the first method can be described as 
rational and the second as irrational. It is also in an entirely different and 
highly important sense. The legal framework can be known and 
understood by the individual citizen; and it should be designed to be so 
understandable. Its functioning is predictable. It introduces a factor of 
certainty and security into social life. When it is altered, allowances can 
be made, during a transitional period, for those individuals who have laid 
their plans in the expectation of its constancy. 

As opposed to this, the method of personal intervention must introduce 
an ever-growing element of unpredictability into social life, and with it 
will develop the feeling that social life is irrational and insecure. The use 
of discretionary powers is liable to grow quickly, once it has become an 
accepted method, since adjustments will be necessary, and adjustments to 
discretionary short-term decisions can hardly be carried out by 
institutional means. This tendency must greatly increase the irrationality 
of the system, creating in many the impression that there are hidden 
powers behind the scenes, and making them susceptible to the conspiracy 
theory of society with all its consequences — heresy hunts, national, 
social, and class hostility. 

In spite of all this, the obvious policy of preferring where possible the 
institutional method is far from being generally accepted. The failure to 
accept it is, I suppose, due to different reasons. One is that it needs a 



certain detachment to embark on the long-term task of re-designing the 
'legal framework'. But governments live from hand to mouth, and 
discretionary powers belong to this style of living — quite apart from the 
fact that rulers are inclined to love those powers for their own sake. But 
the most important reason is, undoubtedly, that the significance of the 
distinction between the two methods is not understood. The way to its 
understanding is blocked to the followers of Plato, Hegel, and Marx. They 
will never see that the old question 'Who shall be the rulers?' must be 
superseded by the more real one 'How can we tame them?' 



VIII 



If we now look back at Marx's theory of the impotence of politics and of 
the power of historical forces, then we must admit that it is an imposing 
edifice. It is the direct result of his sociological method; of his economic 
historicism, of the doctrine that the development of the economic system, 
or of man's metabolism, determines his social and political development. 
The experience of his time, his humanitarian indignation, and the need of 
bringing to the oppressed the consolation of a prophecy, the hope, or even 
the certainty, of their victory, all this is united in one grandiose 
philosophic system, comparable or even superior to the holistic systems 
of Plato and Hegel. It is only due to the accident that he was not a 
reactionary that the history of philosophy takes so little notice of him and 
assumes that he was mainly a propagandist. The reviewer of Capital who 
wrote: 'At the first glance ... we come to the conclusion that the author is 
one of the greatest among the idealist philosophers, in the German, that is 
to say, the bad sense of the word "idealist". But in actual fact, he is 
enormously more realistic than any of his predecessors ...'—, this 



reviewer hit the nail on the head. Marx was the last of the great holistic 
system builders. We should take care to leave it at that, and not to replace 
his by another Great System. What we need is not holism. It is piecemeal 
social engineering. 

With this, I conclude my critical analysis of Marx's philosophy of the 
method of social science, of his economic determinism as well as of his 
prophetic historicism. The final test of a method, however, must be its 
practical results. I therefore proceed now to a more detailed examination 
of the main result of his method, the prophecy of the impending advent of 
a classless society. 



Marx's Prophecy 



18 

The Coming of Socialism 



I 

Economic historicism is the method applied by Marx to an analysis of the 
impending changes in our society. According to Marx, every particular 
social system must destroy itself, simply because it must create the 
forces which produce the next historical period. A sufficiently 
penetrating analysis of the feudal system, undertaken shortly before the 
industrial revolution, might have led to the detection of the forces which 
were about to destroy feudalism, and to the prediction of the most 
important characteristics of the coming period, capitalism. Similarly, an 
analysis of the development of capitalism might enable us to detect the 
forces which work for its destruction, and to predict the most important 
characteristics of the new historical period which lies ahead of us. For 
there is surely no reason to believe that capitalism, of all social systems, 
will last for ever. On the contrary, the material conditions of production, 
and with them, the ways of human life, have never changed so quickly as 
they have done under capitalism. By changing its own foundations in this 
way, capitalism is bound to transform itself, and to produce a new period 
in the history of mankind. 

According to Marx's method, the principles of which have been 
discussed above, the fundamental or essential- forces which will destroy 



or transform capitalism must be searched for in the evolution of the 
material means of production. Once these fundamental forces have been 
discovered, it is possible to trace their influence upon the social 
relationships between classes as well as upon the juridical and political 
systems. 

The analysis of the fundamental economic forces and the suicidal 
historical tendencies of the period which he called 'capitalism' was 
undertaken by Marx in Capital, the great work of his life. The historical 
period and the economic system he dealt with was that of western Europe 
and especially England, from about the middle of the eighteenth century 
to 1867 (the year of the first publication of Capital). The 'ultimate aim of 
this work', as Marx explained in his preface-, was 'to lay bare the 
economic law of motion of modern society', in order to prophesy its fate. 
A secondary aim- was the refutation of the apologists of capitalism, of 
the economists who presented the laws of the capitalist mode of 
production as if they were inexorable laws of nature, declaring with 
Burke: 'The laws of commerce are the laws of nature, and therefore the 
laws of God. ' Marx contrasted these allegedly inexorable laws with those 
which he maintained to be the only inexorable laws of society, namely, 
its laws of development; and he tried to show that what the economists 
declared to be eternal and immutable laws were in fact merely temporary 
regularities, doomed to be destroyed together with capitalism itself. 

Marx's historical prophecy can be described as a closely knit 
argument. But Capital elaborates only what I shall call the 'first step' of 
this argument, the analysis of the fundamental economic forces of 
capitalism and their influence upon the relations between the classes. The 
'second step', which leads to the conclusion that a social revolution is 
inevitable, and the 'third step', which leads to the prediction of the 
emergence of a classless, i.e. socialist, society, are only sketched. In this 
chapter, I shall first explain more clearly what I call the three steps of the 



Marxist argument, and then discuss the third of these steps in detail. In 
the two following chapters, I shall discuss the second and the first steps. 
To reverse the order of the steps in this way turns out to be best for a 
detailed critical discussion; the advantage lies in the fact that it is then 
easier to assume without prejudice the truth of the premises of each step 
in the argument, and to concentrate entirely upon the question whether 
the conclusion reached in this particular step follows from its premises. 
Here are the three steps. 

In the first step of his argument, Marx analyses the method of 
capitalist production. He finds that there is a tendency towards an 
increase in the productivity of work, connected with technical 
improvements as well as with what he calls the increasing accumulation 
of the means of production. Starting from here, the argument leads him to 
the conclusion that in the realm of the social relations between the classes 
this tendency must lead to the accumulation of more and more wealth in 
fewer and fewer hands; that is to say, the conclusion is reached that there 
will be a tendency towards an increase of wealth and misery; of wealth in 
the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, and of misery in the ruled class, the 
workers. This first step will be treated in chapter 20 ('Capitalism and its 

Fate'). 

In the second step of the argument, the result of the first step is taken 
for granted. From it, two conclusions are drawn; first, that all classes 
except a small ruling bourgeoisie and a large exploited working class are 
bound to disappear, or to become insignificant; secondly, that the 
increasing tension between these two classes must lead to social 
revolution. This step will be analysed in chapter 19 ('The Social 
Revolution'). 

In the third step of the argument, the conclusions of the second step are 
taken for granted in their turn; and the final conclusion reached is that, 
after the victory of the workers over the bourgeoisie, there will be a 



society consisting of one class only, and, therefore, a classless society, a 
society without exploitation; that is to say, socialism. 

II 

I now proceed to the discussion of the third step, of the final prophecy of 
the coming of socialism. 

The main premises of this step, to be criticized in the next chapter but 
here to be taken for granted, are these: the development of capitalism has 
led to the elimination of all classes but two, a small bourgeoisie and a 
huge proletariat; and the increase of misery has forced the latter to revolt 
against its exploiters. The conclusions are, first, that the workers must 
win the struggle, secondly that, by eliminating the bourgeoisie, they must 
establish a classless society, since only one class remains. 

Now I am prepared to grant that the first conclusion follows from the 
premises (in conjunction with a few premises of minor importance which 
we need not question). Not only is the number of the bourgeoisie small, 
but their physical existence, their 'metabolism', depends upon the 
proletariat. The exploiter, the drone, starves without the exploited; in any 
case, if he destroys the exploited then he ends his own career as a drone. 
Thus he cannot win; he can, at the best, put up a prolonged struggle. The 
worker, on the other hand, does not depend for his material subsistence 
on his exploiter; once the worker revolts, once he has decided to 
challenge the existing order, the exploiter has no essential social function 
any longer. The worker can destroy his class enemy without endangering 
his own existence. Accordingly, there is only one outcome possible. The 
bourgeoisie will disappear. 

But does the second conclusion follow? Is it true that the workers' 



victory must lead to a classless society? I do not think so. From the fact 
that of two classes only one remains, it does not follow that there will be 
a classless society. Classes are not like individuals , even if we admit that 
they behave nearly like individuals so long as there are two classes who 
are joined in battle. The unity or solidarity of a class, according to Marx's 
own analysis, is part of their class consciousness-, which in turn is very 
largely a product of the class struggle. There is no earthly reason why the 
individuals who form the proletariat should retain their class unity once 
the pressure of the struggle against the common class enemy has ceased. 
Any latent conflict of interests is now likely to divide the formerly united 
proletariat into new classes, and to develop into a new class struggle. 
(The principles of dialectics would suggest that a new antithesis, a new 
class antagonism, must soon develop. Yet, of course, dialectics is 
sufficiently vague and adaptable to explain anything at all, and therefore 
a classless society also, as a dialectically necessary synthesis of an 
antithetical development-.) 

The most likely development is, of course, that those actually in power 
at the moment of victory — those of the revolutionary leaders who have 
survived the struggle for power and the various purges, together with 
their staff — will form a New Class: the new ruling class of the new 
society, a kind of new aristocracy or bureaucracy-; and it is most likely 
that they will attempt to hide this fact. This they can do, most 
conveniently, by retaining as much as possible of the revolutionary 
ideology, taking advantage of these sentiments instead of wasting their 
time in efforts to destroy them (in accordance with Pareto's advice to all 
rulers). And it seems likely enough that they will be able to make fullest 
use of the revolutionary ideology if at the same time they exploit the fear 
of counter-revolutionary developments. In this way, the revolutionary 
ideology will serve them for apologetic purposes: it will serve them both 
as a vindication of the use they make of their power, and as a means of 



stabilizing it; in short, as a new 'opium for the people'. 

Something of this kind are the events which, on Marx's own premises, 
are likely to happen. Yet it is not my task here to make historical 
prophecies (or to interpret the past history of many revolutions). I merely 
wish to show that Marx's conclusion, the prophecy of the coming of a 
classless society, does not follow from the premises. The third step of 
Marx's argument must be pronounced to be inconclusive. 

More than this I do not maintain. I do not think, more particularly, that 
it is possible to prophesy that socialism will not come, or to say that the 
premises of the argument make the introduction of socialism very 
unlikely. It is, for instance, possible that the prolonged struggle and the 
enthusiasm of victory may contribute to a feeling of solidarity strong 
enough to continue until laws preventing exploitation and the misuse of 
power are established. (The establishment of institutions for the 
democratic control of the rulers is the only guarantee for the elimination 
of exploitation.) The chances of founding such a society will depend, in 
my opinion, very largely upon the devotion of the workers to the ideas of 
socialism and freedom, as opposed to the immediate interests of their 
class. These are matters which cannot be easily foreseen; all that can 
certainly be said is that class struggle as such does not always produce 
lasting solidarity among the oppressed. There are examples of such 
solidarity and great devotion to the common cause; but there are also 
examples of groups of workers who pursue their particular group interest 
even where it is in open conflict with the interest of the other workers, 
and with the idea of the solidarity of the oppressed. Exploitation need not 
disappear with the bourgeoisie, since it is quite possible that groups of 
workers may obtain privileges which amount to an exploitation of less 
fortunate groups-. 

We see that a whole host of possible historical developments may 
follow upon a victorious proletarian revolution. There are certainly too 



many possibilities for the application of the method of historical 
prophecy. And in particular it must be emphasized that it would be most 
unscientific to close our eyes to some possibilities because we do not like 
them. Wishful thinking is apparently a thing that cannot be avoided. But 
it should not be mistaken for scientific thinking. And we should also 
recognize that the allegedly scientific prophecy provides, for a great 
number of people, a form of escape. It provides an escape from our 
present responsibilities into a future paradise; and it provides the fitting 
complement of this paradise by overstressing the helplessness of the 
individual in face of what it describes as the overwhelming and 
demoniacal economic forces of the present moment. 



Ill 



If we now look a little more closely at these forces, and at our own 
present economic system, then we can see that our theoretical criticism is 
borne out by experience. But we must be on our guard against 
misinterpreting experience in the light of the Marxist prejudice that 
'socialism' or 'communism' is the only alternative and the only possible 
successor to 'capitalism'. Neither Marx nor anybody else has ever shown 
that socialism, in the sense of a classless society, of 'an association in 
which the free development of each is the warrant for the free 
development of all'-, is the only possible alternative to the ruthless 
exploitation of that economic system which he first described a century 
ago (in 1845), and to which he gave the name 'capitalism'-. And indeed, 
if anybody were attempting to prove that socialism is the only possible 
successor to Marx's unrestrained 'capitalism', then we could simply 
refute him by pointing to historical facts. For laissez-faire has 



disappeared from the face of the earth, but it has not been replaced by a 
socialist or communist system as Marx understood it. Only in the Russian 
sixth of the earth do we find an economic system where, in accordance 
with Marx's prophecy, the means of production are owned by the state, 
whose political might however shows, in opposition to Marx's prophecy, 
no inclination to wither away. But all over the earth, organized political 
power has begun to perform far-reaching economic functions. 
Unrestrained capitalism has given way to a new historical period, to our 
own period of political interventionism, of the economic interference of 
the state. Interventionism has assumed various forms. There is the 
Russian variety; there is the fascist form of totalitarianism; and there is 
the democratic interventionism of England, of the United States, and of 
the 'Smaller Democracies', led by Sweden—, where the technology of 
democratic intervention has reached its highest level so far. The 
development which led to this intervention started in Marx's own day, 
with British factory legislation. It made its first decisive advances with 
the introduction of the 48-hour week, and later with the introduction of 
unemployment insurance and other forms of social insurance. How 
utterly absurd it is to identify the economic system of the modern 
democracies with the system Marx called 'capitalism' can be seen at a 
glance, by comparing it with his 10-point programme for the communist 
revolution. If we omit the rather insignificant points of this programme 
(for instance, '4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and 
rebels'), then we can say that in the democracies most of these points 
have been put into practice, either completely, or to a considerable 
degree; and with them, many more important steps, which Marx had 
never thought of, have been made in the direction of social security. I 
mention only the following points in his programme: 2. A heavy 
progressive or graduated income tax. (Carried out.) 3. Abolition of all 
right of inheritance. (Largely realized by heavy death duties. Whether 



more would be desirable is at least doubtful.) 6. Central control by the 
state of the means of communication and transport. (For military reasons 
this was carried out in Central Europe before the war of 1914, without 
very beneficial results. It has also been achieved by most of the Smaller 
Democracies.) 7. Increase in the number and size of factories and 
instruments of production owned by the state . . . (Realized in the Smaller 
Democracies; whether this is always very beneficial is at least doubtful.) 
10. Free education for all children in public (i.e. state) schools. Abolition 
of children's factory labour in its present form ... (The first demand is 
fulfilled in the Smaller Democracies, and to some extent practically 
everywhere; the second has been exceeded.) 

A number of points in Marx's programme— (for instance: '1. Abolition 
of all property in land') have not been realized in the democratic 
countries. This is why Marxists rightly claim that these countries have 
not established 'socialism'. But if they infer from this that these 
countries are still 'capitalist' in Marx's sense, then they only demonstrate 
the dogmatic character of their presupposition that there is no further 
alternative. This shows how it is possible to be blinded by the glare of a 
preconceived system. Not only is Marxism a bad guide to the future, but 
it also renders its followers incapable of seeing what is happening before 
their own eyes, in their own historical period, and sometimes even with 
their own co-operation. 

IV 

But it could be asked whether this criticism speaks in any way against the 
method of large-scale historical prophecy as such. Could we not, in 
principle, so strengthen the premises of the prophetic argument as to 



obtain a valid conclusion? Of course we could do this. It is always 
possible to obtain any conclusion we like if only we make our premises 
sufficiently strong. But the situation is such that, for nearly every large- 
scale historical prophecy, we would have to make such assumptions 
concerning moral and other factors of the kind called by Marx 
'ideological' as are beyond our ability to reduce to economic factors. But 
Marx would have been the first to admit that this would be a highly 
unscientific proceeding. His whole method of prophecy depends on the 
assumption that ideological influences need not be treated as independent 
and unpredictable elements, but that they are reducible to, and dependent 
on, observable economic conditions, and therefore predictable. 

It is sometimes admitted even by certain unorthodox Marxists that the 
coming of socialism is not merely a matter of historical development; 
Marx's statement that 'we can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs' of the 
coming of socialism is sufficiently vague to be interpreted as stating that 
a mistaken policy might delay the advent of socialism even for centuries, 
as compared with the proper policy which would shorten the time of the 
development to a minimum. This interpretation makes it possible even 
for Marxists to admit that it will depend largely upon ourselves whether 
or not the outcome of a revolution will be a socialist society; that is to 
say, it will depend upon our aims, upon our devotion and sincerity, and 
upon our intelligence, in other words, upon moral or 'ideological' factors. 
Marx's prophecy, they may add, is a great source of moral 
encouragement, and it is therefore likely to further the development of 
socialism. What Marx really tries to show is that there are only two 
possibilities: that a terrible world should continue forever, or that a better 
world should eventually emerge; and it is hardly worth our while to 
contemplate the first alternative seriously. Therefore Marx's prophecy is 
fully justified. For the more clearly men realize that they can achieve the 
second alternative, the more surely will they make a decisive leap from 



capitalism to socialism; but a more definite prophecy cannot be made. 

This is an argument which admits the influence of irreducible moral 
and ideological factors upon the course of history, and with it, the 
inapplicability of the Marxist method. Concerning that part of the 
argument which tries to defend Marxism, we must repeat that nobody has 
ever shown that there are only two possibilities, 'capitalism' and 
'socialism'. With the view that we should not waste our time in 
contemplating the eternal continuation of a very unsatisfactory world, I 
quite agree. But the alternative need not be to contemplate the prophesied 
advent of a better world, or to assist its birth by propaganda and other 
irrational means, perhaps even by violence. It can be, for instance, the 
development of a technology for the immediate improvement of the 
world we live in, the development of a method for piecemeal engineering, 
for democratic intervention—. Marxists would of course contend that this 
kind of intervention is impossible since history cannot be made according 
to rational plans for improving the world. But this theory has very strange 
consequences. For if things cannot be improved by the use of reason, then 
it would be indeed an historical or political miracle if the irrational 
powers of history by themselves were to produce a better and more 
rational world—. 

Thus we are thrown back to the position that moral and other 
ideological factors which do not fall within the scope of scientific 
prophecy exert a far-reaching influence upon the course of history. One 
of these unpredictable factors is just the influence of social technology 
and of political intervention in economic matters. The social technologist 
and the piecemeal engineer may plan the construction of new institutions, 
or the transformation of old ones; they may even plan the ways and 
means of bringing these changes about; but 'history' does not become 
more predictable by their doing so. For they do not plan for the whole of 
society, nor can they know whether their plans will be carried out; in fact. 



they will hardly ever be carried out without great modification, partly 
because our experience grows during construction, partly because we 
must compromise—. Thus Marx was quite right when he insisted that 
'history' cannot be planned on paper. But institutions can be planned; and 
they are being planned. Only by planning—, step by step, for institutions 
to safeguard freedom, especially freedom from exploitation, can we hope 
to achieve a better world. 



V 

In order to show the practical political significance of Marx's historicist 
theory, I intend to illustrate each of the three chapters dealing with the 
three steps of his prophetic argument by a few remarks on the effects of 
his historical prophecy upon recent European history. For these effects 
have been far-reaching, because of the influence exercised, in Central and 
Eastern Europe, by the two great Marxist parties, the Communists and the 
Social Democrats. 

Both these parties were entirely unprepared for such a task as the 
transformation of society. The Russian Communists, who found 
themselves first within reach of power, went ahead, entirely unaware of 
the grave problems and the immensity of sacrifice as well as of suffering 
which lay ahead. The Social Democrats of Central Europe, whose chance 
came a little later, shrank for many years from the responsibilities which 
the Communists had so readily taken upon themselves. They doubted, 
probably rightly, whether any people but that of Russia, which had been 
most savagely oppressed by Tsarism, would have stood up to the 
sufferings and sacrifices demanded from them by revolution, civil war, 
and a long period of at first often unsuccessful experiments. Moreover, 



during the critical years from 1918 to 1926, the outcome of the Russian 
experiment appeared to them most uncertain. And, indeed, there was 
surely no basis for judging its prospects. One can say that the split 
between the Central European Communists and Social Democrats was 
one between those Marxists who had a kind of irrational faith in the final 
success of the Russian experiment, and those who were, more reasonably, 
sceptical of it. When I say 'irrational' and 'more reasonably', I judge 
them by their own standard, by Marxism; for according to Marxism, the 
proletarian revolution should have been the final outcome of 
industrialization, and not vice versa—; and it should have come first in 
the highly industrialized countries, and only much later in Russia—. 

This remark is not, however, intended as a defence of the Social 
Democratic leaders— whose policy was fully determined by the Marxist 
prophecy, by their implicit belief that socialism must come. But this 
belief was often combined, in the leaders, with a hopeless scepticism 
concerning their own immediate functions and tasks, and what lay 
immediately ahead—. They had learned from Marxism to organize the 
workers, and to inspire them with a truly wonderful faith in their task, the 
liberation of mankind—. But they were unable to prepare for the 
realization of their promises. They had learned their textbooks well, they 
knew all about 'scientific socialism', and they knew that the preparation 
of recipes for the future was unscientific Utopianism. Had not Marx 
himself ridiculed a follower of Comte who had criticized him in the 
Revue Positiviste for his neglect of practical programmes? 'ThQ Revue 
Positiviste accuses me', Marx had said— scornfully, 'of a metaphysical 
treatment of economics, and further — ^you would hardly guess it — of 
confining myself to a merely critical analysis of actual facts, instead of 
prescribing recipes (Comtist ones, perhaps?) for the kitchen in which the 
future is cooked.' Thus the Marxist leaders knew better than to waste 
their time on such matters as technology. 'Workers of all countries. 



unite!' — that exhausted their practical programme. When the workers of 
their countries were united, when there was an opportunity of assuming 
the responsibility of government and laying the foundations for a better 
world, when their hour had struck, they left the workers high and dry. The 
leaders did not know what to do. They waited for the promised suicide of 
capitalism. After the inevitable capitalist collapse, when things had gone 
thoroughly wrong, when everything was in dissolution and the risk of 
discredit and disgrace to themselves considerably diminished, then they 
hoped to become the saviours of mankind. (And, indeed, we should keep 
in mind the fact that the success of the Communists in Russia was 
undoubtedly made possible, in part, by the terrible things that had 
happened before their rise to power.) But when the great depression, 
which they first welcomed as the promised collapse, was running its 
course, they began to realize that the workers were growing tired of being 
fed and put off with interpretations of history—; that it was not enough to 
tell them that according to the infallible scientific socialism of Marx 
fascism was definitely the last stand of capitalism before its impending 
collapse. The suffering masses needed more than that. Slowly the leaders 
began to realize the terrible consequences of a policy of waiting and 
hoping for the great political miracle. But it was too late. Their 
opportunity was gone. 

These remarks are very sketchy. But they give some indication of the 
practical consequences of Marx's prophecy of the coming of socialism. 



19 

The Social Revolution 



The second step of Marx's prophetic argument has as its most relevant 
premise the assumption that capitalism must lead to an increase of wealth 
and misery; of wealth in the numerically declining bourgeoisie, and of 
misery in the numerically increasing working class. This assumption will 
be criticized in the next chapter but is here taken for granted. The 
conclusions drawn from it can be divided into two parts. The first part is 
a prophecy concerning the development of the class structure of 
capitalism. It affirms that all classes apart from the bourgeoisie and the 
proletariat, and especially the so-called middle classes, are bound to 
disappear, and that, in consequence of the increasing tension between the 
bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the latter will become increasingly class- 
conscious and united. The second part is the prophecy that this tension 
cannot possibly be removed, and that it will lead to a proletarian social 
revolution. 

I believe that neither of the two conclusions follows from the premise. 
My criticism will be, in the main, similar to that propounded in the last 
chapter; that is to say, I shall try to show that Marx's argument neglects a 
great number of possible developments. 



I 



Let us consider at once the first conclusion, i.e. the prophecy that all 
classes are bound to disappear, or to become insignificant, except the 
bourgeoisie and the proletariat whose class consciousness and solidarity 
must increase. It must be admitted that the premise, Marx's theory of 
increasing wealth and misery, provides indeed for the disappearance of a 
certain middle class, that of the weaker capitalists and the petty 
bourgeoisie. 'Each capitalist lays many of his fellows low', as Marx puts 
it-; and these fellow capitalists may indeed be reduced to the position of 
wage-earners, which for Marx is the same as proletarians. This movement 
is part of the increase of wealth, the accumulation of more and more 
capital, and its concentration and centralization in fewer and fewer hands. 
An analogous fate is meted out to 'the lower strata of the middle class', 
as Marx says-. 'The small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired 
tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and the peasants, all these sink 
gradually into the proletariat; partly because their small capital, 
insufficient as it is for the scale on which modern industry is conducted, 
is overwhelmed in the competition with the bigger capitalists; partly 
because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new means of 
production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the 
population.' This description is certainly fairly accurate, especially so far 
as handicrafts are concerned; and it is also true that many proletarians 
come from peasant stock. 

But admirable as Marx's observations are, the picture is defective. The 
movement he investigated is an industrial movement; his 'capitalist' is 
the industrial capitalist, his 'proletarian' the industrial worker. And in 
spite of the fact that many industrial workers come from peasant stock, 
this does not mean that the farmers and peasants, for instance, are all 
gradually reduced to the position of industrial workers. Even the 
agricultural labourers are not necessarily united with the industrial 
workers by a common feeling of solidarity and class consciousness. 'The 



dispersion of the rural workers over large areas', Marx admits-, 'breaks 
down their power of resistance at the very time when the concentration of 
capital in a few hands increases the power of resistance of the urban 
workers.' This hardly suggests unification in one class-conscious whole. 
It shows, rather, that there is at least a possibility of division, and that the 
agricultural worker might sometimes be too dependent upon his master, 
the farmer or peasant, to make common cause with the industrial 
proletariat. But that farmers or peasants may easily choose to support the 
bourgeoisie rather than the workers was mentioned by Marx himself-; 
and a workers' programme such as the one of the Manifesto-, whose first 
demand is the 'abolition of all property in land', is hardly designed to 
counteract this tendency. 

This shows that it is at least possible that the rural middle classes may 
not disappear, and that the rural proletariat may not merge with the 
industrial proletariat. But this is not all. Marx's own analysis shows that 
it is vitally important for the bourgeoisie to foment division among the 
wage-earners; and as Marx himself has seen, this might be achieved in at 
least two ways. One way is the creation of a new middle class, of a 
privileged group of wage-earners who would feel superior to the manual 
worker- and at the same time dependent upon the rulers' mercy. The 
other way is the utilization of that lowest stratum of society which Marx 
christened the 'rabble-proletariat'. This is, as pointed out by Marx, the 
recruiting ground for criminals who may be ready to sell themselves to 
the class enemy. Increasing misery must tend, as he admits, to swell the 
numbers of this class; a development which will hardly contribute to the 
solidarity of all the oppressed. 

But even the solidarity of the class of industrial workers is not a 
necessary consequence of increasing misery. Admittedly, increasing 
misery must produce resistance, and it is even likely to produce 
rebellious outbreaks. But the assumption of our argument is that the 



misery cannot be alleviated until victory has been won in the social 
revolution. This implies that the resisting workers will be beaten again 
and again in their fruitless attempts to better their lot. But such a 
development need not make the workers class-conscious in the Marxist 
sense-, i.e. proud of their class and assured of their mission; it may make 
them, rather, class-conscious in the sense of being conscious of the fact 
that they belong to a beaten army. And it probably will do so, if the 
workers do not find strength in the realization that their numbers as well 
as their potential economic powers continue to grow. This might be the 
case if, as Marx prophesied, all classes, apart from their own and that of 
the capitalists, were to show a tendency to disappear. But since, as we 
have seen, this prophecy need not come true, it is possible that the 
solidarity of even the industrial workers may be undermined by 
defeatism. 

Thus, as opposed to Marx's prophecy which insists that there must 
develop a neat division between two classes, we find that on his own 
assumptions, the following class structure may possibly develop: (1) 
bourgeoisie, (2) big landed proprietors, (3) other landowners, (4) rural 
workers, (5) new middle class, (6) industrial workers, (7) rabble 
proletariat. (Any other combination of these classes may, of course, 
develop too.) And we find, furthermore, that such a development may 
possibly undermine the unity of (6). 

We can say, therefore, that the first conclusion of the second step in 
Marx's argument does not follow. But as in my criticism of the third step, 
here also I must say that I do not intend to replace Marx's prophecy by 
another one. I do not assert that the prophecy cannot come true, or that 
the alternative developments I have described will come to pass. I only 
assert that they may come to pass. (And, indeed, this possibility can 
hardly be denied by members of the radical Marxist wings who use the 
accusation of treachery, bribery, and insufficient class solidarity as 



favourite devices for explaining away developments which do not 
conform to the prophetic schedule.) That such things may happen should 
be clear to anybody who has observed the development which has led to 
fascism, in which all the possibilities I have mentioned played a part. But 
the mere possibility is sufficient to destroy the first conclusion reached in 
the second step of Marx's argument. 

This of course affects the second conclusion, the prophecy of the 
coming social revolution. But before I can enter into a criticism of the 
way in which this prophecy is arrived at, it is necessary to discuss at 
some length the role played by it within the whole argument, as well as 
Marx's use of the term 'social revolution'. 



II 

What Marx meant when he spoke of the social revolution seems at first 
sight clear enough. His 'social revolution of the proletariat' is a historical 
concept. It denotes the more or less rapid transition from the historical 
period of capitalism to that of socialism. In other words, it is the name of 
a transitional period of class struggle between the two main classes, down 
to the ultimate victory of the workers. When asked whether the term 
'social revolution' implied a violent civil war between the two classes, 
Marx answered- that this was not necessarily implied, adding, however, 
that the prospects of avoiding civil war were, unfortunately, not very 
bright. And he might have added further that, from the point of view of 
historical prophecy, the question appears to be perhaps not quite 
irrelevant, but at any rate of secondary importance. Social life is violent, 
Marxism insists, and the class war claims its victims every day-. What 
really matters is the result, socialism. To achieve this result is the 



essential characteristic of the 'social revolution'. 

Now if we could take it as established, or as intuitively certain, that 
capitalism will be followed by socialism, then this explanation of the 
term 'social revolution' might be quite satisfactory. But since we must 
make use of the doctrine of social revolution as a part of that scientific 
argument by which we try to establish the coming of socialism, the 
explanation is very unsatisfactory indeed. If in such an argument we try 
to characterize the social revolution as the transition to socialism, then 
the argument becomes as circular as that of the doctor who was asked to 
justify his prediction of the death of a patient, and had to confess that he 
knew neither the symptoms nor anything else of the malady — only that it 
would turn into a 'fatal malady'. (If the patient did not die, then it was 
not yet the 'fatal malady'; and if a revolution does not lead to socialism, 
then it is not yet the 'social revolution'.) We can also give to this 
criticism the simple form that in none of the three steps of the prophetic 
argument must we assume anything whatever that is deduced only in a 
later step. 

These considerations show that, for a proper reconstruction of Marx's 
argument, we must find such a characterization of the social revolution as 
does not refer to socialism, and as permits the social revolution to play its 
part in this argument as well as possible. A characterization which fulfils 
these conditions appears to be this. The social revolution is an attempt of 
a largely united proletariat to conquer complete political power, 
undertaken with the firm resolution not to shrink from violence, should 
violence be necessary for achieving this aim, and to resist any effort of its 
opponents to regain political influence. This characterization is free from 
the difficulties just mentioned; it fits the third step of the argument in so 
far as this third step is valid, giving it that degree of plausibility which 
the step undoubtedly possesses; and it is, as will be shown, in agreement 
with Marxism, and especially with its historicist tendency to avoid a 



definite— statement about whether or not violence will actually be used 
in this phase of history. 

But although if regarded as an historical prophecy the proposed 
characterization is indefinite about the use of violence, it is important to 
realize that it is not so from a moral or legal point of view. Considered 
from such a point of view, the characterization of the social revolution 
here proposed undoubtedly makes of it a violent uprising', for the 
question whether or not violence is actually used is less significant than 
the intention; and we have assumed a firm resolution not to shrink from 
violence should it be necessary for achieving the aims of the movement. 
To say that the resolution not to shrink from violence is decisive for the 
character of the social revolution as a violent uprising is in agreement not 
only with the moral or legal point of view, but also with the ordinary 
view of the matter. For if a man is determined to use violence in order to 
achieve his aims, then we may say that to all intents and purposes he 
adopts a violent attitude, whether or not violence is actually used in a 
particular case. Admittedly, in trying to predict a future action of this 
man, we should have to be just as indefinite as Marxism, stating that we 
do not know whether or not he will actually resort to force. (Thus our 
characterization agrees in this point with the Marxist view.) But this lack 
of definiteness clearly disappears if we do not attempt historical 
prophecy, but try to characterize his attitude in the ordinary way. 

Now I wish to make it quite clear that it is this prophecy of a possibly 
violent revolution which I consider, from the point of view of practical 
politics, by far the most harmful element in Marxism; and I think it will 
be better if I briefly explain the reason for my opinion before I proceed 
with my analysis. 

I am not in all cases and under all circumstances against a violent 
revolution. I believe with some medieval and Renaissance Christian 
thinkers who taught the admissibility of tyrannicide that there may 



indeed, under a tyranny, be no other possibility, and that a violent 
revolution may be justified. But I also believe that any such revolution 
should have as its only aim the establishment of a democracy; and by a 
democracy I do not mean something as vague as 'the rule of the people' 
or 'the rule of the majority', but a set of institutions (among them 
especially general elections, i.e. the right of the people to dismiss their 
government) which permit public control of the rulers and their dismissal 
by the ruled, and which make it possible for the ruled to obtain reforms 
without using violence, even against the will of the rulers. In other words, 
the use of violence is justified only under a tyranny which makes reforms 
without violence impossible, and it should have only one aim, that is, to 
bring about a state of affairs which makes reforms without violence 
possible. 

I do not believe that we should ever attempt to achieve more than that 
by violent means. For I believe that such an attempt would involve the 
risk of destroying all prospects of reasonable reform. The prolonged use 
of violence may lead in the end to the loss of freedom, since it is liable to 
bring about not a dispassionate rule of reason, but the rule of the strong 
man. A violent revolution which tries to attempt more than the 
destruction of tyranny is at least as likely to bring about another tyranny 
as it is likely to achieve its real aims. 

There is only one further use of violence in political quarrels which I 
should consider justified. I mean the resistance, once democracy has been 
attained, to any attack (whether from within or without the state) against 
the democratic constitution and the use of democratic methods. Any such 
attack, especially if it comes from the government in power, or if it is 
tolerated by it, should be resisted by all loyal citizens, even to the use of 
violence. In fact, the working of democracy rests largely upon the 
understanding that a government which attempts to misuse its powers and 
to establish itself as a tyranny (or which tolerates the establishment of a 



tyranny by anybody else) outlaws itself, and that the citizens have not 
only a right but also a duty to consider the action of such a government as 
a crime, and its members as a dangerous gang of criminals. But I hold 
that such violent resistance to attempts to overthrow democracy should 
be unambiguously defensive. No shadow of doubt must be left that the 
only aim of the resistance is to save democracy. A threat of making use 
of the situation for the establishment of a counter-tyranny is just as 
criminal as the original attempt to introduce a tyranny; the use of such a 
threat, even if made with the candid intention of saving democracy by 
deterring its enemies, would therefore be a very bad method of defending 
democracy; indeed, such a threat would confuse the ranks of its defenders 
in an hour of peril, and would therefore be likely to help the enemy. 

These remarks indicate that a successful democratic policy demands 
from the defenders the observance of certain rules. A few such rules will 
be listed later in this chapter; here I only wish to make it clear why I 
consider the Marxist attitude towards violence one of the most important 
points to be dealt with in any analysis of Marx. 



Ill 

According to their interpretation of the social revolution, we may 
distinguish between two main groups of Marxists, a radical wing and a 
moderate wing (corresponding roughly, but not precisely—, to the 
Communist and the Social Democratic parties). 

Marxists often decline to discuss the question whether or not a violent 
revolution would be 'justified'; they say that they are not moralists, but 
scientists, and that they do not deal with speculations about what ought to 
be, but with the facts of what is or will be. In other words, they are 



historical prophets who confine themselves to the question of what will 
happen. But let us assume that we have succeeded in persuading them to 
discuss the justification of the social revolution. In this case, I believe 
that we should find all Marxists agreeing, in principle, with the old view 
that violent revolutions are justified only if they are directed against a 
tyranny. From here on, the opinions of the two wings differ. 

The radical wing insists that, according to Marx, all class rule is 
necessarily a dictatorship, i.e. a tyranny—. A real democracy can 
therefore be attained only by the establishment of a classless society, by 
overthrowing, if necessary violently, the capitalist dictatorship. The 
moderate wing does not agree with this view, but insists that democracy 
can to some extent be realized even under capitalism, and that it is 
therefore possible to conduct the social revolution by peaceful and 
gradual reforms. But even this moderate wing insists that such a peaceful 
development is uncertain; it points out that it is the bourgeoisie which is 
likely to resort to force, if faced with the prospect of being defeated by 
the workers on the democratic battlefield; and it contends that in this case 
the workers would be justified in retaliating, and in establishing their rule 
by violent means—. Both wings claim to represent the true Marxism of 
Marx, and in a way, both are right. For, as mentioned above, Marx's 
views in this matter were somewhat ambiguous, because of his historicist 
approach; over and above this, he seems to have changed his views during 
the course of his life, starting as a radical and later adopting a more 
moderate position—. 

I shall examine the radical position first, since it appears to me the 
only one which fits in with Capital and the whole trend of Marx's 
prophetic argument. For it is the main doctrine of Capital that the 
antagonism between capitalist and worker must necessarily increase, and 
that there is no compromise possible, so that capitalism can only be 
destroyed, not improved. It will be best to quote the fundamental passage 



o f Capital in which Marx finally sums up the 'historical tendency of 
capitalist accumulation'. He writes—: 'Along with the steady decrease in 
the number of capitalist magnates who usurp and monopolize all the 
advantages of this development, there grows the extent of misery, 
oppression, servitude, degradation, and exploitation; but at the same time, 
there rises the rebellious indignation of the working class which is 
steadily growing in number, and which is being disciplined, unified, and 
organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist method of production. 
Ultimately, the monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of 
production which has flourished with it, and under it. Both the 
centralization in a few hands of the means of production, and the social 
organization of labour, reach a point where their capitalist cloak becomes 
a strait-jacket. It bursts asunder. The hour of capitalist private property 
has struck. The expropriators are expropriated. ' 

In view of this fundamental passage, there can be little doubt that the 
core of Marx's teaching in Capital was the impossibility of reforming 
capitalism, and the prophecy of its violent overthrow; a doctrine 
corresponding to that of the radical wing. And this doctrine fits into our 
prophetic argument as well as can be. For if we grant not only the 
premise of the second step but the first conclusion as well, then the 
prophecy of the social revolution would indeed follow, in accordance 
with the passage we have quoted from Capital. (And the victory of the 
workers would follow too, as pointed out in the last chapter.) Indeed, it 
seems hard to envisage a fully united and class-conscious working class 
which would not in the end, if their misery cannot be mitigated by any 
other means, make a determined attempt to overthrow the social order. 
But this does not, of course, save the second conclusion. For we have 
already shown that the first conclusion is invalid; and from the premise 
alone, from the theory of increasing wealth and misery, the inevitability 
of the social revolution cannot be derived. As pointed out in our analysis 



of the first conclusion, all we can say is that rebellious outbreaks may be 
unavoidable; but since we can be sure neither of class unity nor of a 
developed class consciousness among the workers, we cannot identify 
such outbreaks with the social revolution. (They need not be victorious 
either, so that the assumption that they represent the social revolution 
would not fit in with the third step.) 

As opposed to the radical position which at least fits quite well into the 
prophetic argument, the moderate position destroys it completely. But as 
was said before, it too has the support of Marx's authority. Marx lived 
long enough to see reforms carried out which, according to his theory, 
should have been impossible. But it never occurred to him that these 
improvements in the workers' lot were at the same time refutations of his 
theory. His ambiguous historicist view of the social revolution permitted 
him to interpret these reforms as its prelude— or even as its beginning. 
As Engels tells us—, Marx reached the conclusion that in England, at any 
rate, 'the inevitable social revolution might be effected entirely by 
peaceful and legal means. He certainly never forgot to add that he hardly 
expected the English ruling class to submit, without a "pro-slavery 
rebellion", to this peaceful and legal revolution' . This report agrees with 
a letter— in which Marx wrote, only three years before his death: 'My 
party . . . considers an English revolution not necessary but — according to 
historic precedents — possible.' It should be noted that in the first at least 
of these statements, the theory of the 'moderate wing' is clearly 
expressed; the theory, namely, that should the ruling class not submit, 
violence would be unavoidable. 

These moderate theories seem to me to destroy the whole prophetic 
argument—. They imply the possibility of a compromise, of a gradual 
reform of capitalism, and therefore, of a decreasing class-antagonism. 
But the sole basis of the prophetic argument is the assumption of an 
increasing class-antagonism. There is no logical necessity why a gradual 



reform, achieved by compromise, should lead to the complete destruction 
of the capitalist system; why the workers, who have learned by 
experience that they can improve their lot by gradual reform, should not 
prefer to stick to this method, even if it does not yield 'complete victory', 
i.e. the submission of the ruling class; why they should not compromise 
with the bourgeoisie and leave it in possession of the means of production 
rather than risk all their gains by making demands liable to lead to 
violent clashes. Only if we assume that 'the proletarians have nothing to 
lose but their fetters'—, only if we assume that the law of increasing 
misery is valid, or that it at least makes improvements impossible, only 
then can we prophesy that the workers will be forced to make an attempt 
to overthrow the whole system. An evolutionary interpretation of the 
'social revolution' thus destroys the whole Marxist argument, from the 
first step to the last; all that is left of Marxism would be the historicist 
approach. If an historical prophecy is still attempted, then it must be 
based upon an entirely new argument. 

If we try to construct such a modified argument in accordance with 
Marx's later views and with those of the moderate wing, preserving as 
much of the original theory as possible, then we arrive at an argument 
based entirely upon the claim that the working class represents now, or 
will one day represent, the majority of the people. The argument would 
run like this. Capitalism will be transformed by a 'social revolution', by 
which we now mean nothing but the advance of the class struggle 
between capitalists and workers. This revolution may either proceed by 
gradual and democratic methods, or it may be violent, or it may be 
gradual and violent in alternate stages. All this will depend upon the 
resistance of the bourgeoisie. But in any case, and particularly if the 
development is a peaceful one, it must end with the workers assuming 
'the position of the ruling class'—, as the Manifesto says; they must 'win 
the battle of democracy'; for 'the proletarian movement is the self- 



conscious independent movement of the immense majority, in the 
interest of the immense majority'. 

It is important to realize that even in this moderate and modified form, 
the prediction is untenable. The reason is this. The theory of increasing 
misery must be given up if the possibility of gradual reform is admitted; 
but with it, even the semblance of a justification for the assertion that the 
industrial w^orkers must one day form the 'immense majority' disappears. 
I do not wish to imply that this assertion would really follow from the 
Marxist theory of increasing misery, since this theory has never taken 
sufficient heed of the farmers and peasants. But if the law of increasing 
misery, supposed to reduce the middle class to the level of the proletariat, 
is invalid, then we must be prepared to find that a very considerable 
middle class continues to exist (or that a new middle class has arisen) and 
that it may co-operate with the other non-proletarian classes against a bid 
for power by the workers; and nobody can say for certain what the 
outcome of such a contest would be. Indeed, statistics no longer show any 
tendency for the number of industrial workers to increase in relation to 
the other classes of the population. There is, rather, the opposite 
tendency, in spite of the fact that the accumulation of instruments of 
production continues. This fact alone refutes the validity of the modified 
prophetic argument. All that remains of it is the important observation 
(which is, however, not up to the pretentious standards of a historicist 
prophecy) that social reforms are carried out largely— under the pressure 
of the oppressed, or (if this term is preferred) under the pressure of class 
struggle; that is to say, that the emancipation of the oppressed will be 
largely the achievement of the oppressed themselves—. 



IV 



The prophetic argument is untenable, and irreparable, in all its 
interpretations, whether radical or moderate. But for a full understanding 
of this situation, it is not enough to refute the modified prophecy; it is 
also necessary to examine the ambiguous attitude towards the problem of 
violence which we can observe in both the radical and the moderate 
Marxist parties. This attitude has, I assert, a considerable influence upon 
the question whether or not the 'battle of democracy' will be won; for 
wherever the moderate Marxist wing has won a general election, or come 
close to it, one of the reasons seems to have been that they attracted large 
sections of the middle class. This was due to their humanitarianism, to 
their stand for freedom and against oppression. But the systematic 
ambiguity of their attitude towards violence not only tends to neutralize 
this attraction, but it also directly furthers the interest of the anti- 
democrats, the anti-humanitarians, the fascists. 

There are two closely connected ambiguities in the Marxist doctrine, 
and both are important from this point of view. The one is an ambiguous 
attitude towards violence, founded upon the historicist approach. The 
other is the ambiguous way in which Marxists speak about 'the conquest 
of political power by the proletariat', as Wyq Manifesto puts it—. What 
does this mean? It may mean, and it is sometimes so interpreted, that the 
workers' party has the harmless and obvious aim of every democratic 
party, that of obtaining a majority, and of forming a government. But it 
may mean, and it is often hinted by Marxists that it does mean, that the 
party, once in power, intends to entrench itself in this position; that is to 
say, that it will use its majority vote in such a way as to make it very 
difficult for others ever to regain power by ordinary democratic means. 
The difference between these two interpretations is most important. If a 
party which is at a certain time in the minority plans to suppress the other 
party, whether by violence or by means of a majority vote, then it 
recognizes by implication the right of the present majority party to do the 



same. It loses any moral right to complain about oppression; and, indeed, 
it plays into the hands of those groups within the present ruling party who 
wish to suppress the opposition by force. 

I may call these two ambiguities briefly the ambiguity of violence and 
the ambiguity of power-conquest. Both are rooted not only in the 
vagueness of the historicist approach, but also in the Marxist theory of 
the state. If the state is, essentially, a class tyranny, then, on the one hand, 
violence is permissible, and on the other, all that can be done is to replace 
the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by that of the proletariat. To worry 
much about formal democracy merely shows lack of historical sense; 
after all 'democracy is ... only one of the stages in the course of the 
historical development', as Lenin says—. 

The two ambiguities play their role in the tactical doctrines of both the 
radical and the moderate wings. This is understandable, since the 
systematic use of the ambiguity enables them to extend the realm from 
which prospective followers may be recruited. This is a tactical 
advantage which may, however, easily lead to a disadvantage at the most 
critical moment; it may lead to a split whenever the most radical 
members think that the hour has struck for taking violent action. The way 
in which the radical wing may make a systematic use of the ambiguity of 
violence may be illustrated by the following extracts taken from Parkes' 
recent critical dissection of Marxism—. 'Since the Communist Party of 
the United States now declares not only that it does not now advocate 
revolution, but also that it never did advocate revolution, it may be 
advisable to quote a few sentences from the program of the Communist 
International (drafted in 1928).' Parkes then quotes among others the 
following passages from this programme: 'The Conquest of power by the 
proletariat does not mean peacefully "capturing" the ready-made 
bourgeois state by means of parliamentary majority ... The conquest of 
power ... is the violent overthrow of bourgeois power, the destruction of 



the capitalist state apparatus . . . The Party ... is confronted with the task 
of leading the masses to a direct attack upon the bourgeois state. This is 
done by ... propaganda ... and ... mass action ... This mass action 
includes ... finally, the general strike conjointly with armed insurrection 
... The latter form ... which is the supreme form, must be conducted 
according to the rules of war One sees, from these quotations, that 
this part of the programme is quite unambiguous; but this does not 
prevent the party from making a systematic use of the ambiguity of 
violence, withdrawing, if the tactical situation— demands it, towards a 
non- violent interpretation of the term 'social revolution'; and this in spite 
of the concluding paragraph of the Manifesto— (which is retained by the 
programme of 1928): 'The Communists disdain to conceal their views 
and aims. They openly declare that their aims can be attained only by the 
forcible overthrow of all the existing social conditions . . . ' 

But the way in which the moderate wing has systematically used the 
ambiguity of violence as well as that of power-conquest is even more 
important. It has been developed especially by Engels, on the basis of 
Marx's more moderate views quoted above, and it has become a tactical 
doctrine which has greatly influenced later developments. The doctrine I 
have in mind might be presented as follows—: We Marxists much prefer 
a peaceful and democratic development towards socialism, if we can have 
it. But as political realists we foresee the probability that the bourgeoisie 
will not quietly stand by when we are within reach of attaining the 
majority. They will rather attempt to destroy democracy. In this case, we 
must not flinch, but fight back, and conquer political power. And since 
this development is a probable one, we must prepare the workers for it; 
otherwise we should betray our cause. Here is one of Engels' passages— 
on the matter: 'For the moment ... legality ... is working so well in our 
favour that we should be mad to abandon it as long as it lasts. It remains 
to be seen whether it will not be the bourgeoisie . . . which will abandon it 



first in order to crush us with violence. Take the first shot, gentlemen of 
the bourgeoisie! Never doubt it, they will be the first to fire. One fine day 
the . . . bourgeoisie will grow tired of . . . watching the rapidly increasing 
strength of socialism, and will have recourse to illegality and violence.' 
What will happen then is left systematically ambiguous. And this 
ambiguity is used as a threat; for in later passages, Engels addresses the 
'gentlemen of the bourgeoisie' in the following way: 'If . . . you break the 
constitution ... then the Social Democratic Party is free to act, or to 
refrain from acting, against you — whatever it likes best. What it is going 
to do, however, it will hardly give away to you to-day! ' 

It is interesting to see how widely this doctrine differs from the 
original conception of Marxism which predicted that the revolution 
would come as the result of the increasing pressure of capitalism upon 
the workers, and not as the result of the increasing pressure of a 
successful working-class movement upon capitalists. This most 
remarkable change of front— shows the influence of the actual social 
development which turned out to be one of decreasing misery. But 
Engels' new doctrine, which leaves the revolutionary, or more precisely, 
the counter-revolutionary, initiative to the ruling class, is tactically 
absurd, and doomed to failure. The original Marxist theory taught that the 
workers' revolution will break out at the depth of a depression, i.e. at a 
moment when the political system is weakened by the breakdown of the 
economic system, a situation which would contribute greatly to the 
victory of the workers. But if the 'gentlemen of the bourgeoisie' are 
invited to take the first shot, is it conceivable that they will be stupid 
enough not to choose their moment wisely? Will they not make proper 
preparations for the war they are going to wage? And since, according to 
the theory, they hold the power, will such a preparation not mean the 
mobilization of forces against which the workers can have no slightest 
chance of victory? Such criticism cannot be met by amending the theory 



so that the workers should not wait until the other side strikes but try to 
anticipate them, since, on its own assumption, it must always be easy for 
those in power to be ahead in their preparations — to prepare rifles, if the 
workers prepare sticks, guns if they prepare rifles, dive bombers if they 
prepare guns, etc. 

V 

But this criticism, practical as it is, and corroborated by experience, is 
only superficial. The main defects of the doctrine lie deeper. The 
criticism I now wish to offer attempts to show that both the 
presupposition of the doctrine and its tactical consequences are such that 
they are likely to produce exactly that anti-democratic reaction of the 
bourgeoisie which the theory predicts, yet claims (with ambiguity) to 
abhor: the strengthening of the anti-democratic element in the 
bourgeoisie, and, in consequence, civil war. And we know that this may 
lead to defeat, and to fascism. 

The criticism I have in mind is, briefly, that Engels' tactical doctrine, 
and, more generally, the ambiguities of violence and of power-conquest, 
make the working of democracy impossible, once they are adopted by an 
important political party. I base this criticism on the contention that 
democracy can work only if the main parties adhere to a view of its 
functions which may be summarized in some rules such as these (cp. also 
section II of chapter 7): 

1. Democracy cannot be fully characterized as the rule of the 
majority, although the institution of general elections is most 
important. For a majority might rule in a tyrannical way. (The 



majority of those who are less than 6 ft. high may decide that the 
minority of those over 6ft. shall pay all taxes.) In a democracy, 
the powers of the rulers must be limited; and the criterion of a 
democracy is this: In a democracy, the rulers — that is to say, the 
government — can be dismissed by the ruled without bloodshed. 
Thus if the men in power do not safeguard those institutions 
which secure to the minority the possibility of working for a 
peaceful change, then their rule is a tyranny. 

2. We need only distinguish between two forms of government, viz. 
such as possess institutions of this kind, and all others; i.e. 
democracies and tyrannies. 

3. A consistent democratic constitution should exclude only one 
type of change in the legal system, namely a change which would 
endanger its democratic character. 

4. In a democracy, the full protection of minorities should not 
extend to those who violate the law, and especially not to those 
who incite others to the violent overthrow of the democracy—. 

5. A policy of framing institutions to safeguard democracy must 
always proceed on the assumption that there may be anti- 
democratic tendencies latent among the ruled as well as among 
the rulers. 

6. If democracy is destroyed, all rights are destroyed. Even if 
certain economic advantages enjoyed by the ruled should persist, 
they would persist only on sufferance—. 

7. Democracy provides an invaluable battle-ground for any 
reasonable reform, since it permits reform without violence. But 
if the preservation of democracy is not made the first 
consideration in any particular battle fought out on this battle- 
ground, then the latent anti-democratic tendencies which are 
always present (and which appeal to those who suffer under the 



strain of civilization, as we called it in chapter 10) may bring 
about a breakdown of democracy. If an understanding of these 
principles is not yet developed, its development must be fought 
for. The opposite policy may prove fatal; it may bring about the 
loss of the most important battle, the battle for democracy itself. 

As opposed to such a policy, that of Marxist parties can be 
characterized as one of making the workers suspicious of democracy. 'In 
reality the state is nothing more', says Engels— , 'than a machine for the 
oppression of one class by another, and this holds for a democratic 
republic no less than for a monarchy.' But such views must produce: 

(a) A policy of blaming democracy for all the evils which it does not 
prevent, instead of recognizing that the democrats are to be 
blamed, and the opposition usually no less than the majority. 
(Every opposition has the majority it deserves.) 

(Z?) A policy of educating the ruled to consider the state not as theirs, 
but as belonging to the rulers. 

(c) A policy of telling them that there is only one way to improve 
things, that of the complete conquest of power. But this neglects 
the one really important thing about democracy, that it checks and 
balances power. 

Such a policy amounts to doing the work of the enemies of the open 
society; it provides them with an unwitting fifth column. And against the 
Manifesto which says— ambiguously: 'The first step in the revolution of 
the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling 
class — to win the battle of democracy', I assert that if this is accepted as 
the first step, then the battle of democracy will be lost. 

These are the general consequences of Engels' tactical doctrines, and 



of the ambiguities grounded in the theory of the social revolution. 
Ultimately, they are merely the last consequences of Plato's way of 
posing the problem of politics by asking 'who should rule the state?' (cp. 
chapter 7). It is high time for us to learn that the question 'who is to wield 
the power in the state?' matters only little as compared with the question 
'how is the power wielded?' and ' how much power is wielded?' We must 
learn that in the long run, all political problems are institutional 
problems, problems of the legal framework rather than of persons, and 
that progress towards more equality can be safeguarded only by the 
institutional control of power. 



VI 



As in the previous chapter, I shall now illustrate the second step by 
showing something of the way in which the prophecy has influenced 
recent historical developments. All political parties have some sort of 
'vested interest' in their opponent's unpopular moves. They live by them 
and are therefore liable to dwell upon, to emphasize, and even to look 
forward to them. They may even encourage the political mistakes of their 
opponents as long as they can do so without becoming involved in the 
responsibility for them. This, together with Engels' theory, has led some 
Marxist parties to look forward to the political moves made by their 
opponents against democracy. Instead of fighting such moves tooth and 
nail, they were pleased to tell their followers: 'See what these people do. 
That is what they call democracy. That is what they call freedom and 
equality! Remember it when the day of reckoning comes.' (An ambiguous 
phrase which may refer to election day or to the day of revolution.) This 
policy of letting one's opponents expose themselves must, if extended to 



moves against democracy, lead to disaster. It is a policy of talking big 
and doing nothing in the face of real and increasing danger to democratic 
institutions. It is a policy of talking war and acting peace; and it taught 
the fascists the invaluable method of talking peace and acting war. 

There is no doubt about the way in which the ambiguity just mentioned 
played into the hands of those fascist groups who wanted to destroy 
democracy. For we must reckon with the possibility that there will be 
such groups, and that their influence within the so-called bourgeoisie will 
depend largely on the policy adopted by the workers' parties. 

For instance, let us consider more closely the use made in the political 
struggle of the threat of revolution or even of political strikes (as opposed 
to wage disputes, etc.). As explained above, the decisive question here 
would be whether such means are used as offensive weapons or solely for 
the defence of democracy. Within a democracy, they would be justified 
as a purely defensive weapon, and when resolutely applied in connection 
with a defensive and unambiguous demand they have been successfully 
used in this way. (Remember the quick breakdown of Kapp's putsch.) But 
if used as an offensive weapon they must lead to a strengthening of the 
anti-democratic tendencies in the opponent's camp, since they clearly 
make democracy unworkable. Furthermore, such use must make the 
weapon ineffective for defence. If you use the whip even when the dog is 
good, then it won't work if you need it to deter him from being bad. The 
defence of democracy must consist in making anti-democratic 
experiments too costly for those who try them; much more costly than a 
democratic compromise . . . The use by the workers of any kind of non- 
democratic pressure is likely to lead to a similar, or even to an anti- 
democratic, counterpressure — ^to provoke a move against democracy. 
Such an anti-democratic move on the part of the rulers is, of course, a 
much more serious and dangerous thing than a similar move on the part 
of the ruled. It would be the task of the workers to fight this dangerous 



move resolutely, to stop it in its inconspicuous beginnings. But how can 
they now fight in the name of democracy? Their own anti- democratic 
action must provide their enemies, and those of democracy, with an 
opportunity. 

The facts of the development described can, if one wishes, be 
interpreted differently; they may lead to the conclusion that democracy is 
'no good'. This is indeed a conclusion which many Marxists have drawn. 
After having been defeated in what they believed to be the democratic 
struggle (which they had lost in the moment they formulated their tactical 
doctrine), they said: 'We have been too lenient, too humane — next time 
we will make a really bloody revolution! ' It is as if a man who loses a 
boxing match should conclude: boxing is no good — I should have used a 
club . . . The fact is that the Marxists taught the theory of class war to the 
workers, but the practice of it to the reactionary diehards of the 
bourgeoisie. Marx talked war. His opponents listened attentively; then 
they began to talk peace and accuse the workers of belligerency; this 
charge the Marxists could not deny, since class war was their slogan. And 
the fascists acted. 

So far, the analysis mainly covers certain more 'radical' Social 
Democratic parties who based their policy entirely upon Engels' 
ambiguous tactical doctrine. The disastrous effects of Engels' tactics 
were increased in their case by the lack of a practical programme 
discussed in the last chapter. But the Communists too adopted the tactics 
here criticized in certain countries and at certain periods, especially 
where the other workers' parties, for instance the Social Democrats or the 
Labour Party, observed the democratic rules. 

But the position was different with the Communists in so far as they 
had a programme. It was: 'Copy Russia!' This made them more definite 
in their revolutionary doctrines as well as in their assertion that 
democracy merely means the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie—. 



According to this assertion, not much could be lost and something would 
be gained if that hidden dictatorship became an open one, apparent to all; 
for this could only bring the revolution nearer—. They even hoped that a 
totalitarian dictatorship in Central Europe would speed up matters. After 
all, since the revolution was bound to come, fascism could only be one of 
the means of bringing it about; and this was more particularly so since 
the revolution was clearly long overdue. Russia had already had it in spite 
of its backward economic conditions. Only the vain hopes created by 
democracy— were holding it back in the more advanced countries. Thus 
the destruction of democracy through the fascists could only promote the 
revolution by achieving the ultimate disillusionment of the workers in 
regard to democratic methods. With this, the radical wing of Marxism- 
felt that it had discovered the 'essence' and the 'true historical role' of 
fascism. Fascism was, essentially, the last stand of the bourgeoisie. 
Accordingly, the Communists did not fight when the fascists seized 
power. (Nobody expected the Social Democrats to fight.) For the 
Communists were sure that the proletarian revolution was overdue and 
that the fascist interlude, necessary for its speeding up—, could not last 
longer than a few months. Thus no action was required from the 
Communists. They were harmless. There was never a 'communist 
danger' to the fascist conquest of power. As Einstein once emphasized, of 
all organized groups of the community, it was only the Church, or rather 
a section of the Church, which seriously offered resistance. 



20 

Capitalism and its Fate 



According to Marxist doctrine, capitalism is labouring under inner 
contradictions that threaten to bring about its downfall. A minute analysis 
of these contradictions and of the historical movement which they force 
upon society constitutes the first step of Marx's prophetic argument. This 
step is not only the most important of his whole theory, it is also the one 
on which he spent most of his labour, since practically the whole of the 
three volumes of Capital (over 2,200 pages in the original edition-) is 
devoted to its elaboration. It is also the least abstract step of the argument 
since it is based upon a descriptive analysis, supported by statistics, of 
the economic system of his time — that of unrestrained capitalism-. As 
Lenin puts it: 'Marx deduces the inevitability of the transformation of 
capitalist society into socialism wholly and exclusively from the 
economic law of the movement of contemporary society.' 

Before proceeding to explain in some detail the first step of Marx's 
prophetic argument, I shall try to describe its main ideas in the form of a 
very brief outline. 

Marx believes that capitalist competition forces the capitalist's hand. It 
forces the capitalist to accumulate capital. By doing so, he works against 
his own long-term economic interests (since the accumulation of capital 
is liable to bring about a fall of his profits). But although working against 
his own personal interest, he works in the interest of the historical 
development; he works, unwittingly, for economic progress, and for 



socialism. This is due to the fact that accumulation of capital means (a) 
increased productivity; increase of wealth; and concentration of wealth in 
a few hands; (b) increase of pauperism and misery; the workers are kept 
on subsistence or starvation wages, mainly by the fact that the surplus of 
workers, called the 'industrial reserve army', keeps the wages on the 
lowest possible level. The trade cycle prevents, for any length of time, the 
absorption of the surplus of workers by the growing industry. This cannot 
be altered by the capitalists, even if they wish to do so; for the falling rate 
of their profits makes their own economic position much too precarious 
for any effective action. In this way, capitalist accumulation turns out to 
be a suicidal and self-contradictory process, even though it fosters the 
technical, economic, and historical progress towards socialism. 



I 

The premises of the first step are the laws of capitalist competition, and 
of the accumulation of the means of production. The conclusion is the 
law of increasing wealth and misery. I begin my discussion with an 
explanation of these premises and conclusions. 

Under capitalism, competition between the capitalists plays an 
important role. 'The battle of competition', as analysed by Marx in 
Capital-, is carried out by selling the commodities produced, if possible 
at a lower price than the competitor could afford to accept. 'But the 
cheapness of a commodity', Marx explains, 'depends in its turn, other 
things being equal, upon the productivity of labour; and this, again, 
depends on the scale of production.' For production on a very large scale 
is in general capable of employing more specialized machinery, and a 
greater quantity of it; this increases the productivity of the workers, and 



permits the capitalist to produce, and to sell, at a lower price. 'Large 
capitalists, therefore, get the better of small ones . . . Competition always 
ends with the downfall of many lesser capitalists and with the transition 
of their capital into the hands of the conqueror.' (This movement is, as 
Marx points out, much accelerated by the credit system.) 

According to Marx's analysis, the process described, accumulation due 
to competition, has two different aspects. One of them is that the 
capitalist is forced to accumulate or concentrate more and more capital, 
in order to survive; this means in practice investing more and more 
capital in more and more as well as newer and newer machinery, thus 
continually increasing the productivity of his workers. The other aspect of 
the accumulation of capital is the concentration of more and more wealth 
in the hands of the various capitalists, and of the capitalist class; and 
along with it goes the reduction in the number of capitalists, a movement 
called by Marx the centralization- of capital (in contradistinction to mere 
accumulation or concentration). 

Now three of these terms, competition, accumulation, and increasing 
productivity, indicate the fundamental tendencies of all capitalist 
production , according to Marx; they are the tendencies to which I alluded 
when I described the premise of the first step as 'the laws of capitalist 
competition and of accumulation'. The fourth and the fifth terms, 
however, concentration and centralization, indicate a tendency which 
forms one part of the conclusion of the first step; for they describe a 
tendency towards a continuous increase of wealth, and its centralization 
in fewer and fewer hands. The other part of the conclusion, however, the 
law of increasing misery, is only reached by a much more complicated 
argument. But before beginning an explanation of this argument, I must 
first explain this second conclusion itself. 

The term 'increasing misery' may mean, as used by Marx, two 
different things. It may be used in order to describe the extent of misery. 



indicating that it is spread over an increasing number of people; or it may 
be used in order to indicate an increase in the intensity of the suffering of 
the people. Marx undoubtedly believed that misery was growing both in 
extent and in intensity. This, however, is more than he needed in order to 
carry his point. For the purpose of the prophetic argument, a wider 
interpretation of the term 'increasing misery' would do just as well (if 
not better-); an interpretation, namely, according to which the extent of 
misery increases, while its intensity may or may not increase, but at any 
rate does not show any marked decrease. 

But there is a further and much more important comment to be made. 
Increasing misery, to Marx, involves fundamentally an increasing 
exploitation of the employed workers; not only in numbers but also in 
intensity. It must be admitted that in addition it involves an increase in 
the suffering as well as in the numbers of the unemployed, called- by 
Marx the (relative) 'surplus population' or the 'industrial reserve army'. 
But the function of the unemployed, in this process, is to exert pressure 
upon the employed workers, thus assisting the capitalists in their efforts 
to make profit out of the employed workers, to exploit them. 'The 
industrial reserve army', Marx writes-, 'belongs to capitalism just as if 
its members had been reared by the capitalists at their own cost. For its 
own varying needs, capital creates an ever-ready supply of exploitable 
human material . . . During periods of depression and of semi-prosperity, 
the industrial reserve army keeps up its pressure upon the ranks of the 
employed workers; and during periods of excessive production and boom, 
it serves to bridle their aspirations.' Increasing misery, according to 
Marx, is essentially the increasing exploitation of labour power; and 
since labour power of the unemployed is not exploited, they can serve in 
this process only as unpaid assistants of the capitalists in the exploitation 
of the employed workers. The point is important since later Marxists 
have often referred to unemployment as one of the empirical facts that 



verify the prophecy that misery tends to increase; but unemployment can 
be claimed to corroborate Marx's theory only if it occurs together with 
increased exploitation of the employed workers, i.e. with long hours of 
work and with low real wages. 

This may suffice to explain the term 'increasing misery'. But it is still 
necessary to explain the law of increasing misery which Marx claimed to 
have discovered. By this I mean the doctrine of Marx on which the whole 
prophetic argument hinges; namely, the doctrine that capitalism cannot 
possibly afford to decrease the misery of the workers, since the 
mechanism of capitalist accumulation keeps the capitalist under a strong 
economic pressure which he is forced to pass on to the workers if he is 
not to succumb. This is why the capitalists cannot compromise, why they 
cannot meet any important demand of the workers, even if they wished to 
do so; this is why 'capitalism cannot be reformed but can only be 
destroyed'-. It is clear that this law is the decisive conclusion of the first 
step. The other conclusion, the law of increasing wealth, would be a 
harmless matter, if only it were possible for the increase of wealth to be 
shared by the workers. Marx's contention that this is impossible will 
therefore be the main subject of our critical analysis. But before 
proceeding to a presentation and criticism of Marx's arguments in favour 
of this contention, I may briefly comment on the first part of the 
conclusion, the theory of increasing wealth. 

The tendency towards the accumulation and concentration of wealth, 
which Marx observed, can hardly be questioned. His theory of increasing 
productivity is also, in the main, unexceptionable. Although there may be 
limits to the beneficial effects exerted by the growth of an enterprise 
upon its productivity, there are hardly any limits to the beneficial effects 
of the improvement and accumulation of machinery. But in regard to the 
tendency towards the centralization of capital in fewer and fewer hands, 
matters are not quite so simple. Undoubtedly, there is a tendency in that 



direction, and we may grant that under an unrestrained capitalist system 
there are few counteracting forces. Not much can be said against this part 
of Marx's analysis as a description of an unrestrained capitalism. But 
considered as a prophecy, it is less tenable. For we know that now there 
are many means by which legislation can intervene. Taxation and death 
duties can be used most effectively to counteract centralization, and they 
have been so used. And anti-trust legislation can also be used, although 
perhaps with less effect. To evaluate the force of Marx's prophetic 
argument we must consider the possibility of great improvements in this 
direction; and as in previous chapters, I must declare that the argument 
on which Marx bases this prophecy of centralization or of a decrease in 
the number of capitalists is inconclusive. 

Having explained the main premises and conclusions of the first step, 
and having disposed of the first conclusion, we can now concentrate our 
attention entirely upon Marx's derivation of the other conclusion, the 
prophetic law of increasing misery. Three different trends of thought may 
be distinguished in his attempts to establish this prophecy. They will be 
dealt with in the next four sections of this chapter under the headings: II: 
the theory of value; III: the effect of the surplus population upon wages; 
IV: the trade cycle; V: the effects of the falling rate of profit. 



II 

Marx's theory of value, usually considered by Marxists as well as by anti- 
Marxists as a corner-stone of the Marxist creed, is in my opinion one of 
its rather unimportant parts; indeed, the sole reason why I am going to 
treat of it, instead of proceeding at once to the next section, is that it is 
generally held to be important, and that I cannot defend my reasons for 



differing from this opinion without discussing the theory. But I wish to 
make it clear at once that in holding that the theory of value is a 
redundant part of Marxism, I am defending Marx rather than attacking 
him. For there is little doubt that the many critics who have shown that 
the theory of value is very weak in itself are in the main perfectly right. 
But even if they were wrong, it would only strengthen the position of 
Marxism if it could be established that its decisive historico-political 
doctrines can be developed entirely independently of such a controversial 
theory. 

The idea of the so-called labour theory of value-, adapted by Marx for 
his purposes from suggestions he found in his predecessors (he refers 
especially to Adam Smith and David Ricardo), is simple enough. If you 
need a carpenter, you must pay him by the hour. If you ask him why a 
certain job is more expensive than another one, he will point out that 
there is more work in it. In addition to the labour, you must pay of course 
for the timber. But if you go into this a little more closely, then you find 
that you are, indirectly, paying for the labour involved in foresting, 
felling, transporting, sawing, etc. This consideration suggests the general 
theory that you have to pay for the job, or for any commodity you may 
buy, roughly in proportion to the amount of work in it, i.e. to the number 
of labour hours necessary for its production. 

I say 'roughly' because the actual prices fluctuate. But there is, or so at 
least it appears, always something more stable behind these prices, a kind 
of average price about which the actual prices oscillate—, christened the 
'exchange- value' or, briefly, the 'value' of the thing. Using this general 
idea, Marx defined the value of a commodity as the average number of 
labour hours necessary for its production (or for its reproduction). 

The next idea, that of the theory of surplus value, is nearly as simple. It 
too was adapted by Marx from his predecessors. (Engels asserts^^- — 
perhaps mistakenly, but I shall follow his presentation of the matter — 



that Marx's main source was Ricardo.) The theory of surplus value is an 
attempt, within the limits of the labour theory of value, to answer the 
question: 'How does the capitalist make his profit?' If we assume that the 
commodities produced in his factory are sold on the market at their true 
value, i.e. according to the number of labour hours necessary for their 
production, then the only way in which the capitalist can make a profit is 
by paying his workers less than the full value of their product. Thus the 
wages received by the worker represent a value which is not equal to the 
number of hours he has worked. And we can accordingly divide his 
working day into two parts, the hours he has spent in producing value 
equivalent to his wages and the hours he has spent in producing value for 
the capitalist—. And correspondingly, we can divide the whole value 
produced by the worker into two parts, the value equal to his wages, and 
the rest, which is called surplus value. This surplus value is appropriated 
by the capitalist and is the sole basis for his profit. 

So far, the story is simple enough. But now there arises a theoretical 
difficulty. The whole value theory has been introduced in order to explain 
the actual prices at which all commodities are exchanged; and it is still 
assumed that the capitalist is able to obtain on the market the full value 
of his product, i.e. a price that corresponds to the total number of hours 
spent on it. But it looks as if the worker does not get the full price of the 
commodity which he sells to the capitalist on the labour market. It looks 
as if he is cheated, or robbed; at any rate, as if he is not paid according to 
the general law assumed by the value theory, namely, that all actual 
prices paid are, at least in a first approximation, determined by the value 
of the commodity. (Engels says that the problem was realized by the 
economists who belonged to what Marx called 'the school of Ricardo'; 
and he asserts— that their inability to solve it led to the breakdown of this 
school.) There appeared what seemed a rather obvious solution of the 
difficulty. The capitalist possesses a monopoly of the means of 



production, and this superior economic power can be used for bullying 
the worker into an agreement which violates the law of value. But this 
solution (which I consider quite a plausible description of the situation) 
utterly destroys the labour theory of value. For it now turns out that 
certain prices, namely, wages, do not correspond to their values, not even 
in a first approximation. And this opens up the possibility that this may 
be true of other prices for similar reasons. 

Such was the situation when Marx entered the scene in order to save 
the labour theory of value from destruction. With the help of another 
simple but brilliant idea he succeeded in showing that the theory of 
surplus value was not only compatible with the labour theory of value but 
that it could also be rigidly deduced from the latter. In order to achieve 
this deduction, we have only to ask ourselves: what is, precisely, the 
commodity which the worker sells to the capitalist? Marx's reply is: not 
his labour hours, but his whole labour power. What the capitalist buys or 
hires on the labour market is the labour power of the worker. Let us 
assume, tentatively, that this commodity is sold at its true value. What is 
its value? According to the definition of value, the value of labour power 
is the average number of labour hours necessary for its production or 
reproduction. But this is, clearly, nothing but the number of hours 
necessary for producing the worker's (and his family's) means oj 
subsistence. 

Marx thus arrived at the following result. The true value of the 
worker's whole labour power is equal to the labour hours needed for 
producing the means of his subsistence. Labour power is sold for this 
price to the capitalist. If the worker is able to work longer than that, then 
his surplus labour belongs to the buyer or hirer of his power. The greater 
the productivity of labour, that is to say, the more a worker can produce 
per hour, the fewer hours will be needed for the production of his 
subsistence, and the more hours remain for his exploitation. This shows 



that the basis of capitalist exploitation is a high productivity of labour. If 
the worker could produce in a day no more than his own daily needs, then 
exploitation would be impossible without violating the law of value; it 
would be possible only by means of cheating, robbery, or murder. But 
once the productivity of labour has, by the introduction of machinery, 
risen so high that one man can produce much more than he needs, 
capitalist exploitation becomes possible. It is possible even in a capitalist 
society which is 'ideal' in the sense that every commodity, including 
labour power, is bought and sold at its true value. In such a society, the 
injustice of exploitation does not lie in the fact that the worker is not paid 
a 'just price' for his labour power, but rather in the fact that he is so poor 
that he is forced to sell his labour power, while the capitalist is rich 
enough to buy labour power in great quantities, and to make profit out of 
it. 

By this derivation— of the theory of surplus value, Marx saved the 
labour theory of value from destruction for the time being; and in spite of 
the fact that I regard the whole 'value problem' (in the sense of an 
'objective' true value round which the prices oscillate) as irrelevant, I am 
very ready to admit that this was a theoretical success of the first order. 
But Marx had done more than save a theory originally advanced by 
'bourgeois economists'. With one stroke, he gave a theory of exploitation 
and a theory explaining why the workers' wages tend to oscillate about 
the subsistence (or starvation) level. But the greatest success was that he 
could now give an explanation, one in keeping with his economic theory 
of the legal system, of the fact that the capitalist mode of production 
tended to adopt the legal cloak of liberalism. For the new theory led him 
to the conclusion that once the introduction of new machinery had 
multiplied the productivity of labour, there arose the possibility of a new 
form of exploitation which used a free market instead of brutal force, and 
which was based on the 'formal' observance of justice, equality before 



the law, and freedom. The capitalist system, he asserted, was not only a 
system of 'free competition', but it was also 'maintained by the 
exploitation of the labour of others, but of labour which, in a formal 
sense, is free'—. 

It is impossible for me to enter here into a detailed account of the 
really astonishing number of further applications made by Marx of his 
value theory. But it is also unnecessary, since my criticism of the theory 
will show the way in which the value theory can be eliminated from all 
these investigations. I am now going to develop this criticism; its three 
main points are {a) that Marx's value theory does not suffice to explain 
exploitation, {b) that the additional assumptions which are necessary for 
such an explanation turn out to be sufficient, so that the theory of value 
turns out to be redundant, (c) that Marx's theory of value is an 
essentialist or metaphysical one. 

{a) The fundamental law of the theory of value is the law that the 
prices of practically all commodities, including wages, are determined by 
their values, or more precisely, that they are at least in a first 
approximation proportional to the labour hours necessary for their 
production. Now this 'law of value', as I may call it, at once raises a 
problem. Why does it hold? Obviously, neither the buyer nor the seller of 
the commodity can see, at a glance, how many hours are necessary for its 
production; and even if they could, it would not explain the law of value. 
For it is clear that the buyer simply buys as cheaply as he can, and that 
the seller charges as much as he can get. This, it appears, must be one of 
the fundamental assumptions of any theory of market prices. In order to 
explain the law of value, it would be our task to show why the buyer is 
unlikely to succeed in buying below, and the seller in selling above, the 
'value' of a commodity. This problem was seen more or less clearly by 
those who believed in the labour theory of value, and their reply was this. 
For the purpose of simplification, and in order to obtain a first 



approximation, let us assume perfectly free competition, and for the same 
reason let us consider only such commodities as can be manufactured in 
practically unlimited quantities (if only the labour were available). Now 
let us assume that the price of such a commodity is above its value; this 
would mean that excessive profits can be made in this particular branch 
of production. It would encourage various manufacturers to produce this 
commodity, and competition would lower the price. The opposite process 
would lead to an increase in the price of a commodity which is sold 
below its value. Thus there will be oscillations of price, and these will 
tend to centre about the values of commodities. In other words, it is a 
mechanism of supply and demand which, under free competition, tends to 
give force— to the law of value. 

Such considerations as these can be found frequently in Marx, for 
instance, in the third volume of Capital—, where he tries to explain why 
there is a tendency for all profits in the various branches of manufacture 
to approximate, and adjust themselves, to a certain average profit. And 
they are also used in the first volume, especially in order to show why 
wages are kept low, near subsistence level, or, what amounts to the same, 
just above starvation level. It is clear that with wages below this level, the 
workers would actually starve, and the supply of labour power on the 
labour market would disappear. But as long as men live, they will 
reproduce; and Marx attempts to show in detail (as we shall see in section 
IV), why the mechanism of capitalist accumulation must create a surplus 
population, an industrial reserve army. Thus as long as wages are just 
above starvation level there will always be not only a sufficient but even 
an excessive supply of labour power on the labour market; and it is this 
excessive supply which, according to Marx, prevents the rise of wages—: 
'The industrial reserve army keeps up its pressure upon the ranks of the 
employed workers; ... thus surplus population is the background in front 
of which there operates the law of supply and demand of labour. Surplus 



population restricts the range within which this law is permitted to 
operate to such limits as best suit the capitalist greed for exploitation and 
domination. ' 

(b) Now this passage shows that Marx himself realized the necessity of 
backing up the law of value by a more concrete theory; a theory which 
shows, in any particular case, how the laws of supply and demand bring 
about the effect which has to be explained; for instance, starvation wages. 
But if these laws are sufficient to explain these effects, then we do not 
need the labour theory of value at all, whether or not it may be tenable as 
a first approximation (which I do not think it is). Furthermore, as Marx 
realized, the laws of supply and demand are necessary for explaining all 
those cases in which there is no free competition, and in which his law of 
value is therefore clearly out of operation; for instance, where a 
monopoly can be used to keep prices constantly above their 'values'. 
Marx considered such cases as exceptions, which is hardly the right view; 
but however this may be, the case of monopolies shows not only that the 
laws of supply and demand are necessary to supplement his law of value, 
but also that they are more generally applicable. 

On the other hand, it is clear that the laws of supply and demand are 
not only necessary but also sufficient to explain all the phenomena of 
'exploitation' which Marx observed — the phenomena, more precisely, of 
the misery of the workers side by side with the wealth of the 
entrepreneurs — if we assume, as Marx did, a free labour market as well 
as a chronically excessive supply of labour. (Marx's theory of this 
excessive supply will be discussed more fully in section IV below.) As 
Marx shows, it is clear enough that the workers will be forced, under such 
circumstances, to work long hours at low wages, in other words, to permit 
the capitalist to 'appropriate the best part of the fruits of their labour'. 
And in this trivial argument, which is part of Marx's own, there is no 
need even to mention 'value'. 



Thus the value theory turns out to be a completely redundant part of 
Marx's theory of exploitation; and this holds independently of the 
question whether or not the value theory is true. But the part of Marx's 
theory of exploitation which remains after the value theory is eliminated 
is undoubtedly correct, provided we accept the doctrine of surplus 
population. It is unquestionably true that (in the absence of a 
redistribution of wealth through the state) the existence of a surplus 
population must lead to starvation wages, and to provocative differences 
in the standard of living. 

(What is not so clear, and not explained by Marx either, is why the 
supply of labour should continue to exceed the demand. For if it is so 
profitable to 'exploit' labour, how is it, then, that the capitalists are not 
forced, by competition, to try to raise their profits by employing more 
labour? In other words, why do they not compete against each other on 
the labour market, thereby raising the wages to the point where they 
begin to become no longer sufficiently profitable, so that it is no longer 
possible to speak of exploitation? Marx would have answered — see 
section V, below — 'Because competition forces them to invest more and 
more capital in machinery, so that they cannot increase that part of their 
capital which they use for wages'. But this answer is unsatisfactory since 
even if they spend their capital on machinery, they can do so only by 
buying labour to build machinery, or by causing others to buy such 
labour, thus increasing the demand for labour. It appears, for such 
reasons, that the phenomena of 'exploitation' which Marx observed were 
due, not, as he believed, to the mechanism of a perfectly competitive 
market, but to other factors — especially to a mixture of low productivity 
and imperfectly competitive markets. But a detailed and satisfactory 
explanation— of the phenomena appears still to be missing.) 

(c) Before leaving this discussion of the value theory and the part 
played by it in Marx's analysis, I wish to comment briefly upon another 



of its aspects. The whole idea — which was not Marx's invention — that 
there is something behind the prices, an objective or real or true value of 
which prices are only a 'form of appearance'—, shows clearly enough the 
influence of Platonic Idealism with its distinction between a hidden 
essential or true reality, and an accidental or delusive appearance. Marx, 
it must be said, made a great effort— to destroy this mystical character of 
objective 'value', but he did not succeed. He tried to be realistic, to 
accept only something observable and important — labour hours — as the 
reality which appears in the form of price; and it cannot be questioned 
that the number of labour hours necessary for producing a commodity, 
i.e. its Marxian 'value', is an important thing. And in a way, it surely is a 
purely verbal problem whether or not we should call these labour hours 
the 'value' of the commodity. But such a terminology may become most 
misleading and strangely unrealistic, especially if we assume with Marx 
that the productivity of labour increases. For it has been pointed out by 
Marx himself— that, with increasing productivity, the value of all 
commodities decreases, and that an increase is therefore possible in real 
wages as well as real profits, i.e. in the commodities consumed by 
workers and by capitalists respectively, together with a decrease in the 
'value' of wages and of profits, i.e. in the hours spent on them. Thus 
wherever we find real progress, such as shorter working hours and a 
greatly improved standard of living of the workers (quite apart from a 
higher income in money—, even if calculated in gold), then the workers 
could at the same time bitterly complain that the Marxian 'value', the 
real essence or substance of their income, is dwindling away, since the 
labour hours necessary for its production have been reduced. (An 
analogous complaint might be made by the capitalists.) All this is 
admitted by Marx himself; and it shows how misleading the value 
terminology must be, and how little it represents the real social 
experience of the workers. In the labour theory of value, the Platonic 



'essence' has become entirely divorced from experience— ... 

Ill 

After eliminating Marx's labour theory of value and his theory of surplus 
value, we can, of course, still retain his analysis (see the end of (a) in 
section II) of the pressure exerted by the surplus population upon the 
wages of the employed workers. It cannot be denied that, if there is a free 
labour market and a surplus population, i.e. widespread and chronic 
unemployment (and there can be no doubt that unemployment played its 
role in Marx's time and ever since), then wages cannot rise above 
starvation wages; and under the same assumption, together with the 
doctrine of accumulation developed above, Marx, although not justified 
in proclaiming a law of increasing misery, was right in asserting that, in a 
world of high profits and increasing wealth, starvation wages and a life of 
misery might be the permanent lot of the workers. 

I think that, even if Marx's analysis was defective, his effort to explain 
the phenomenon of 'exploitation' deserves the greatest respect. (As 
mentioned at the end of (b) in the foregoing section, no really satisfactory 
theory seems to exist even now.) It must be said, of course, that Marx was 
wrong when he prophesied that the conditions which he observed were to 
be permanent if not changed by a revolution, and even more when he 
prophesied that they would get worse. The facts have refuted these 
prophecies. Moreover, even if we could admit the validity of his analysis 
for an unrestrained, a noninterventionist system, even then would his 
prophetic argument be inconclusive. For the tendency towards increasing 
misery operates, according to Marx's own analysis, only under a system 
in which the labour market is free — in a perfectly unrestrained 



capitalism. But once we admit the possibility of trade unions, of 
collective bargaining, of strikes, then the assumptions of the analysis are 
no longer applicable, and the whole prophetic argument breaks down. 
According to Marx's own analysis, we should have to expect that such a 
development would either be suppressed, or that it would be equivalent to 
a social revolution. For collective bargaining can oppose capital by 
establishing a kind of monopoly of labour; it can prevent the capitalist 
from using the industrial reserve army for the purpose of keeping wages 
down; and in this way it can force the capitalists to content themselves 
with lower profits. We see here why the cry 'Workers, unite! ' was, from a 
Marxian point of view, indeed the only possible reply to an unrestrained 
capitalism. 

But we see, too, why this cry must open up the whole problem of state 
interference, and why it is likely to lead to the end of the unrestrained 
system, and to a new system, interventionism—, which may develop in 
very different directions. For it is almost inevitable that the capitalists 
will contest the workers' right to unite, maintaining that unions must 
endanger the freedom of competition on the labour market. Non- 
interventionism thus faces the problem (it is part of the paradox of 
freedom—): Which freedom should the state protect? The freedom of the 
labour market, or the freedom of the poor to unite? Whichever decision is 
taken, it leads to state intervention, to the use of organized political 
power, of the state as well as of unions, in the field of economic 
conditions. It leads, under all circumstances, to an extension of the 
economic responsibility of the state, whether or not this responsibility is 
consciously accepted. And this means that the assumptions on which 
Marx's analysis is based must disappear. 

The derivation of the historical law of increasing misery is thus 
invalid. All that remains is a moving description of the misery of the 
workers which prevailed a hundred years ago, and a valiant attempt to 



explain it with the help of what we may call, with Lenin—, Marx's 
'economic law of the movement of contemporary society' (that is, of the 
unrestrained capitalism of a hundred years ago). But in so far as it is 
meant as an historical prophecy, and in so far as it is used to deduce the 
'inevitability' of certain historical developments, the derivation is 
invalid. 



IV 

The significance of Marx's analysis rests very largely upon the fact that a 
surplus population actually existed at his time, and down to our own day 
(a fact which has hardly received a really satisfactory explanation yet, as 
I said before). So far, however, we have not yet discussed Marx's 
argument in support of his contention that it is the mechanism of 
capitalist production itself that always produces the surplus population 
which it needs for keeping down the wages of the employed workers. But 
this theory is not only ingenious and interesting in itself; it contains at the 
same time Marx's theory of the trade cycle and of general depressions, a 
theory which clearly bears upon the prophecy of the crash of the capitalist 
system because of the intolerable misery which it must produce. In order 
to make as strong a case for Marx's theory as I can, I have altered it 
slightly— (namely, by introducing a distinction between two kinds of 
machinery, the one for the mere extension, and the other for the 
intensification, of production). But this alteration need not arouse the 
suspicion of Marxist readers; for I am not going to criticize the theory at 
all. 

The amended theory of surplus population and of the trade cycle may 
be outlined as follows. The accumulation of capital means that the 



capitalist spends part of his profits on new machinery; this may also be 
expressed by saying that only a part of his real profits consists in goods 
for consumption, while part of it consists in machines. These machines, 
in turn, may be intended either for the expansion of industry, for new 
factories, etc., or they may be intended for intensifying production by 
increasing the productivity of labour in the existing industries. The 
former kind of machinery makes possible an increase of employment, the 
latter kind has the effect of making workers superfluous, of 'setting the 
workers at liberty' as this process was called in Marx's day. (Nowadays it 
is sometimes called 'technological unemployment'.) Now the mechanism 
of capitalist production, as envisaged by the amended Marxist theory of 
the trade cycle, works roughly like this. If we assume, to start with, that 
for some reason or other there is a general expansion of industry, then a 
part of the industrial reserve army will be absorbed, the pressure upon the 
labour market will be relieved, and wages will show a tendency to rise. A 
period of prosperity begins. But the moment wages rise, certain 
mechanical improvements which intensify production and which were 
previously unprofitable because of the low wages may become profitable 
(even though the cost of such machinery will begin to rise). Thus more 
machinery will be produced of the kind that 'sets the workers at liberty'. 
As long as these machines are only in the process of being produced, 
prosperity continues, or increases. But once the new machines are 
themselves beginning to produce, the picture changes. (This change is, 
according to Marx, accentuated by a fall in the rate of profit, to be 
discussed under (V), below.) Workers will be 'set at liberty', i.e. 
condemned to starvation. But the disappearance of many consumers must 
lead to a collapse of the home market. In consequence, great numbers of 
machines in the expanded factories become idle (the less efficient 
machinery first), and this leads to a further increase of unemployment 
and a further collapse of the market. The fact that much machinery now 



lies idle means that much capital has become worthless, that many 
capitalists cannot fulfil their obligations; thus a financial crisis develops, 
leading to complete stagnation in the production of capital goods, etc. But 
while the depression (or, as Marx calls it, the 'crisis') takes its course, the 
conditions are ripening for a recovery. These conditions mainly consist in 
the growth of the industrial reserve army and the consequent readiness of 
the workers to accept starvation wages. At very low wages, production 
becomes profitable even at the low prices of a depressed market; and 
once production starts, the capitalist begins again to accumulate, to buy 
machinery. Since wages are very low, he will find that it is not yet 
profitable to use new machinery (perhaps invented in the meanwhile) of 
the type which sets the workers at liberty. At first he will rather buy 
machinery with the plan of extending production. This leads slowly to an 
extension of employment and to a recovery of the home market. 
Prosperity is coming once again. Thus we are back at our starting point. 
The cycle is closed, and the process can start once more. 

This is the amended Marxist theory of unemployment and of the trade 
cycle. As I have promised, I am not going to criticize it. The theory of 
trade cycles is a very difficult affair, and we certainly do not yet know 
enough about it (at least I don't). It is very likely that the theory outlined 
is incomplete , and, especially, that such aspects as the existence of a 
monetary system based partly upon credit creation, and the effects of 
hoarding, are not sufficiently taken into account. But however this may 
be, the trade cycle is a fact which cannot easily be argued away, and it is 
one of the greatest of Marx's merits to have emphasized its significance 
as a social problem. But although all this must be admitted, we may 
criticize the prophecy which Marx attempts to base upon his theory of the 
trade cycle. First of all, he asserts that depressions will become 
increasingly worse, not only in their scope but also in the intensity of the 
workers' suffering. But he gives no argument to support this (apart. 



perhaps, from the theory of the fall in the rate of profit, which will be 
discussed presently). And if we look at actual developments, then we 
must say that terrible as are the effects and especially the psychological 
effects of unemployment even in those countries where the workers are 
now insured against it, there is no doubt that the workers' sufferings were 
incomparably worse in Marx's day. But this is not my main point. 

In Marx's day, nobody ever thought of that technique of state 
intervention which is now called 'counter cycle policy'; and, indeed, such 
a thought must be utterly foreign to an unrestrained capitalist system. 
(But even before Marx's time, we find the beginning of doubts about, and 
even of investigations into, the wisdom of the credit policy of the Bank of 
England during a depression—.) Unemployment insurance, however, 
means intervention, and therefore an increase in the responsibility of the 
state, and it is likely to lead to experiments in counter cycle policy. I do 
not maintain that these experiments must necessarily be successful 
(although I do believe that the problem may in the end prove not so very 
difficult, and that Sweden—, in particular, has already shown what can be 
done in this field). But I wish to assert most emphatically that the belief 
that it is impossible to abolish unemployment by piecemeal measures is 
on the same plane of dogmatism as the numerous physical proofs 
(proffered by men who lived even later than Marx) that the problems of 
aviation would always remain insoluble. When the Marxists say, as they 
sometimes do, that Marx has proved the uselessness of a counter cycle 
policy and of similar piecemeal measures, then they simply do not speak 
the truth; Marx investigated an unrestrained capitalism, and he never 
dreamt of interventionism. He therefore never investigated the possibility 
of a systematic interference with the trade cycle, much less did he offer a 
proof of its impossibility. It is strange to find that the same people who 
complain of the irresponsibility of the capitalists in the face of human 
suffering are irresponsible enough to oppose, with dogmatic assertions of 



this kind, experiments from which we may learn how to relieve human 
suffering (how to become masters of our social environment, as Marx 
would have said), and how to control some of the unwanted social 
repercussions of our actions. But the apologists of Marxism are quite 
unaware of the fact that in the name of their own vested interests they are 
fighting against progress; they do not see that it is the danger of any 
movement like Marxism that it soon comes to represent all kinds of 
vested interests, and that there are intellectual investments, as well as 
material ones. 

Another point must be stated here. Marx, as we have seen, believed 
that unemployment was fundamentally a gadget of the capitalist 
mechanism with the function of keeping wages low, and of making the 
exploitation of the employed workers easier; increasing misery always 
involved for him increasing misery of the employed workers too; and this 
is just the whole point of the plot. But even if we assume that this view 
was justified in his day, as a prophecy it has been definitely refuted by 
later experience. The standard of living of employed workers has risen 
everywhere since Marx's day; and (as Parkes— has emphasized in his 
criticism of Marx) the real wages of employed workers tend even to 
increase during a depression (they did so, for example, during the last 
great depression), owing to a more rapid fall in prices than in wages. This 
is a glaring refutation of Marx, especially since it proves that the main 
burden of unemployment insurance was borne not by the workers, but by 
the entrepreneurs, who therefore lost directly through unemployment, 
instead of profiting indirectly, as in Marx's scheme. 



V 



None of the Marxist theories so far discussed do even seriously attempt 
to prove the point which is the most decisive one within the first step; 
namely, that accumulation keeps the capitalist under a strong economic 
pressure which he is forced, on pain of his own destruction, to pass on to 
the workers; so that capitalism can only be destroyed, but not reformed. 
An attempt to prove this point is contained in that theory of Marx's which 
aims at establishing the law that the rate of profit tends to fall. 

What Marx calls the rate of profit corresponds to the rate of interest; it 
is the percentage of the yearly average of capitalist profit over the whole 
invested capital. This rate, Marx says, tends to fall owing to the rapid 
growth of capital investments; for these must accumulate more quickly 
than profits can rise. 

The argument by which Marx attempts to prove this is again rather 
ingenious. Capitalist competition, as we have seen, forces the capitalists 
to make investments that increase the productivity of labour. Marx even 
admitted that by this increase in productivity they render a great service 
to mankind—: 'It is one of the civilizing aspects of capitalism that it 
exacts surplus value in a manner and under circumstances which are more 
favourable than previous forms (such as slavery, serfdom, etc.) to the 
development of the productive powers, as well as to the social conditions 
for a reconstruction of society on a higher plane. For this, it even creates 
the elements; ... for the quantity of useful commodities produced in any 
given span of time depends upon the productivity of labour.' But this 
service to mankind is not only rendered without any intention by the 
capitalists; the action to which they are forced by competition also runs 
counter to their own interests, for the following reason. 

The capital of any industrialist can be divided into two parts. One is 
invested in land, machinery, raw materials, etc. The other is used for 
wages. Marx calls the first part 'constant capital' and the second 
'variable capital'; but since I consider this terminology rather 



misleading, I shall call the two parts 'immobilized capital' and 'wage 
capital'. The capitalist, according to Marx, can profit only by exploiting 
the workers; in other words, by using his wage capital. Immobilized 
capital is a kind of a dead weight which he is forced by competition to 
carry on with, and even to increase continually. This increase is not, 
however, accompanied by a corresponding increase in his profits; only an 
extension of the wage capital could have this wholesome effect. But the 
general tendency towards an increase in productivity means that the 
material part of capital increases relatively to its wage part. Therefore, 
the total capital increases also, and without a compensating increase in 
profits; that is to say, the rate of profit must fall. 

Now this argument has been often questioned; indeed, it was attacked, 
by implication, long before Marx—. In spite of these attacks, I believe 
that there may be something in Marx's argument; especially if we take it 
together with his theory of the trade cycle. (I shall return to this point 
briefly in the next chapter.) But what I wish to question here is the 
bearing of this argument upon the theory of increasing misery. 

Marx sees this connection as follows. If the rate of profit tends to fall, 
then the capitalist is faced with destruction. All he can do is to attempt to 
'take it out of the workers', i.e. to increase exploitation. This he can do by 
extending working hours; speeding up work; lowering wages; raising the 
workers' cost of living (inflation); exploiting more women and children. 
The inner contradictions of capitalism, based on the fact that competition 
and profit-making are in conflict, develop here into a climax. First, they 
force the capitalist to accumulate and to increase productivity, and so 
reduce the rate of profit. Next, they force him to increase exploitation to 
an intolerable degree, and with it the tension between the classes. Thus 
compromise is impossible. The contradictions cannot be removed. They 
must finally seal the fate of capitalism. 

This is the main argument. But can it be conclusive? We must 



remember that increased productivity is the very basis of capitalist 
exploitation; only if the worker can produce much more than he needs for 
himself and his family can the capitalist appropriate surplus labour. 
Increased productivity, in Marx's terminology, means increased surplus 
labour; it means both an increased number of hours available to the 
capitalist, and on top of this, an increased number of commodities 
produced per hour. It means, in other words, a greatly increased profit. 
This is admitted by Marx—. He does not hold that profits are dwindling; 
he only holds that the total capital increases much more quickly than the 
profits, so that the rate of profit falls. 

But if this is so, there is no reason why the capitalist should labour 
under an economic pressure which he is forced to pass on to the workers, 
whether he likes it or not. It is true, probably, that he does not like to see 
a fall in his rate of profit. But as long as his income does not fall, but, on 
the contrary, rises, there is no real danger. The situation for a successful 
average capitalist will be this: he sees his income rise quickly, and his 
capital still more quickly; that is to say, his savings rise more quickly 
than the part of his income which he consumes. I do not think that this is 
a situation which must force him to desperate measures, or which makes 
a compromise with the workers impossible. On the contrary, it seems to 
me quite tolerable. 

It is true, of course, that the situation contains an element of danger. 
Those capitalists who speculate on the assumption of a constant or of a 
rising rate of profit may get into trouble; and things such as these may 
indeed contribute to the trade cycle, accentuating the depression. But this 
has little to do with the sweeping consequences which Marx prophesied. 

This concludes my analysis of the third and last argument, propounded 
by Marx in order to prove the law of increasing misery. 



VI 



In order to show how completely wrong Marx was in his prophecies, and 
at the same time how justified he was in his glowing protest against the 
hell of an unrestrained capitalism as well as in his demand, 'Workers, 
unite!', I shall quote a few passages from the chapter of Capital in which 
he discusses the 'General Law of Capitalist Accumulation'—. 'In 
factories . . . young male workers are used up in masses before they reach 
the age of manhood; after that, only a very small proportion remains 
useful for industry, so that they are constantly dismissed in large 
numbers. They then form part of the floating surplus population which 
grows with the growth of industry . . . Labour power is so quickly used up 
by capital that the middle-aged worker is usually a worn-out man . . . Dr. 
Lee, medical officer of health, declared not long ago "that the average 
age at death of the Manchester upper middle class was 38, while the 
average age at death of the labouring class was 17; while at Liverpool 
those figures were represented as 35 against 15 ..." ... The exploitation 
of working-class children puts a premium upon their production . . . The 
higher the productivity of labour ... the more precarious become the 
worker's conditions of existence . . . Within the capitalist system, all the 
methods for raising the social productivity of labour . . . are transformed 
into means of domination and of exploitation; they mutilate the worker 
into a fragment of a human being, they degrade him to a mere cog in the 
machine, they make work a torture, ... and drag his wife and children 
beneath the wheels of the capitalist Juggernaut ...It follows that to the 
degree in which capital accumulates, the worker's condition must 
deteriorate, whatever his payment may be ... the greater the social 
wealth, the amount of capital at work, the extent and energy of its growth, 
... the larger is the surplus population ... The size of the industrial 



reserve army grows as the power of wealth grows. But ... the larger the 
industrial reserve army, the larger are the masses of the workers whose 
misery is relieved only by an increase in the agony of toil; and ... the 
larger is the number of those who are officially recognized as paupers. 
This is the absolute and general law of capitalist accumulation ... The 
accumulation of wealth at the one pole of society involves at the same 
time an accumulation of misery, of the agony of toil, of slavery, 
ignorance, brutalization, and of moral degradation, at the opposite pole 

Marx's terrible picture of the economy of his time is only too true. But 
his law that misery must increase together with accumulation does not 
hold. Means of production have accumulated and the productivity of 
labour has increased since his day to an extent which even he would 
hardly have thought possible. But child labour, working hours, the agony 
of toil, and the precariousness of the worker's existence, have not 
increased; they have declined. I do not say that this process must 
continue. There is no law of progress, and everything will depend on 
ourselves. But the actual situation is briefly and fairly summed up by 
Parkes— in one sentence: 'Low wages, long hours, and child labour have 
been characteristic of capitalism not, as Marx predicted, in its old age, 
but in its infancy. ' 

Unrestrained capitalism is gone. Since the day of Marx, democratic 
interventionism has made immense advances, and the improved 
productivity of labour — a consequence of the accumulation of capital — 
has made it possible virtually to stamp out misery. This shows that much 
has been achieved, in spite of undoubtedly grave mistakes, and it should 
encourage us to believe that more can be done. For much remains to be 
done and to be undone. Democratic interventionism can only make it 
possible. It rests with us to do it. 

I have no illusions concerning the force of my arguments. Experience 



shows that Marx's prophecies were false. But experience can always be 
explained away. And, indeed, Marx himself, and Engels, began with the 
elaboration of an auxiliary hypothesis designed to explain why the law of 
increasing misery does not work as they expected it to do. According to 
this hypothesis, the tendency towards a falling rate of profit, and with it, 
increasing misery, is counteracted by the effects of colonial exploitation, 
or, as it is usually called, by 'modern imperialism'. Colonial exploitation, 
according to this theory, is a method of passing on economic pressure to 
the colonial proletariat, a group which, economically as well as 
politically, is weaker still than the industrial proletariat at home. 'Capital 
invested in colonies', Marx writes—, 'may yield a higher rate of profit for 
the simple reason that the rate of profit is higher there where capitalist 
development is still in a backward stage, and for the added reason that 
slaves, coolies, etc., permit a better exploitation of labour. I can see no 
reason why these higher rates of profit . . . , when sent home, should not 
enter there as elements into the average rate of profit, and, in proportion, 
contribute to keeping it up.' (It is worth mentioning that the main idea 
behind this theory of 'modern' imperialism can be traced back for more 
than 160 years, to Adam Smith, who said of colonial trade that it 'has 
necessarily contributed to keep up the rate of profit'.) Engels went one 
step further than Marx in his development of the theory. Forced to admit 
that in Britain the prevailing tendency was not towards an increase in 
misery but rather towards a considerable improvement, he hints that this 
may be due to the fact that Britain 'is exploiting the whole world'; and he 
scornfully assails 'the British working class' which, instead of suffering 
as he expected them to do, 'is actually becoming more and more 
bourgeois'. And he continues—: 'It seems that this most bourgeois of all 
nations wants to bring matters to such a pass as to have a bourgeois 
aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat side by side with the bourgeoisie.' 
Now this change of front on Engels' part is at least as remarkable as that 



other one of his which I mentioned in the last chapter—; and like that, it 
was made under the influence of a social development which turned out 
to be one of decreasing misery. Marx blamed capitalism for 
'proletarianizing the middle class and the lower bourgeoisie', and for 
reducing the workers to pauperism. Engels now blames the system — it is 
still blamed — for making bourgeois out of workers. But the nicest touch 
in Engels' complaint is the indignation that makes him call the British 
who behave so inconsiderately as to falsify Marxist prophecies 'this most 
bourgeois of all nations'. According to Marxist doctrine, we should 
expect from the 'most bourgeois of all nations' a development of misery 
and class tension to an intolerable degree; instead, we hear that the 
opposite takes place. But the good Marxist's hair rises when he hears of 
the incredible wickedness of a capitalist system that transforms good 
proletarians into bad bourgeois; quite forgetting that Marx showed that 
the wickedness of the system consisted solely in the fact that it was 
working the other way round. Thus we read in Lenin's analysis— of the 
evil causes and dreadful effects of modern British imperialism: 'Causes: 
(1) exploitation of the whole world by this country; (2) its monopolistic 
position in the world market; (3) its colonial monopoly. Effects: (1) 
bourgeois ification of a part of the British proletariat \ (2) a part of the 
proletariat permits itself to be led by people who are bought by the 
bourgeoisie, or who are at least paid by it.' Having given such a pretty 
Marxist name, 'the bourgeoisification of the proletariat', to a hateful 
tendency — hateful mainly because it did not fit in with the way the world 
should go according to Marx — Lenin apparently believes that it has 
become a Marxist tendency. Marx himself held that the more quickly the 
whole world could go through the necessary historical period of capitalist 
industrialization, the better, and he was therefore inclined to support- 
imperialist developments. But Lenin came to a very different conclusion. 
Since Britain's possession of colonies was the reason why the workers at 



home followed 'leaders bought by the bourgeoisie' instead of the 
Communists, he saw in the colonial empire a potential trigger or fuse. A 
revolution there would make the law of increasing misery operative at 
home, and a revolution at home would follow. Thus the colonies were the 
place from which the fire would spread . . . 

I do not believe that the auxiliary hypothesis whose history I have 
sketched can save the law of increasing misery; for this hypothesis is 
itself refuted by experience. There are countries, for instance the 
Scandinavian democracies, Czechoslovakia, Canada, Australia, New 
Zealand, to say nothing of the United States, in which a democratic 
interventionism secured to the workers a high standard of living, in spite 
of the fact that colonial exploitation had no influence there, or was at any 
rate far too unimportant to support the hypothesis. Furthermore, if we 
compare certain countries that 'exploit' colonies, like Holland and 
Belgium, with Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Czechoslovakia which do 
not 'exploit' colonies, we do not find that the industrial workers profited 
from the possession of colonies, for the situation of the working classes 
in all those countries was strikingly similar. Furthermore, although the 
misery imposed upon the natives through colonization is one of the 
darkest chapters in the history of civilization, it cannot be asserted that 
their misery has tended to increase since the days of Marx. The exact 
opposite is the case; things have greatly improved. And yet, increasing 
misery would have to be very noticeable there if the auxiliary hypothesis 
and the original theory were both correct. 



VII 

As I did with the second and third steps in the previous chapters, I shall 



now illustrate the first step of Marx's prophetic argument by showing 
something of its practical influence upon the tactics of Marxist parties. 

The Social Democrats, under the pressure of obvious facts, tacitly 
dropped the theory that the intensity of misery increases; but their whole 
tactics remained based upon the assumption that the law of the increasing 
extent of misery was valid, that is to say, that the numerical strength of 
the industrial proletariat must continue to increase. This is why they 
based their policy exclusively upon representing the interests of the 
industrial workers, at the same time firmly believing that they were 
representing, or would very soon represent, 'the great majority of the 
population'—. They never doubted the assertion of the Manifesto that 'All 
previous historical movements were movements of minorities ... The 
proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of 
the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.' They 
waited confidently, therefore, for the day when the class consciousness 
and class assuredness of the industrial workers would win them the 
majority in the elections. 'There can be no doubt as to who will be 
victorious in the end — the few exploiters, or the immense majority, the 
workers.' They did not see that the industrial workers nowhere formed a 
majority, much less an 'immense majority', and that statistics no longer 
showed any tendency towards an increase in their numbers. They did not 
understand that the existence of a democratic workers' party was fully 
justified only as long as such a party was prepared to compromise or even 
to co-operate with other parties, for instance with some party 
representing the peasants, or the middle classes. And they did not see 
that, if they wanted to rule the state solely as the representatives of the 
majority of the population, they would have to change their whole policy 
and cease to represent mainly or exclusively the industrial workers. Of 
course, it is no substitute for this change of policy to assert naively that 
the proletarian policy as such may simply bring (as Marx said—) 'the 



rural producers under the intellectual leadership of the central towns of 
their districts, there securing to them, in the industrial worker, the natural 
trustee of their interests . . . ' 

The position of the Communist parties was different. They strictly 
adhered to the theory of increasing misery, believing in an increase not 
only of its extent but also of its intensity, once the causes of the 
temporary bourgeoisification of the workers were removed. This belief 
contributed considerably to what Marx would have called 'the inner 
contradictions' of their policy. 

The tactical situation seems simple enough. Thanks to Marx's 
prophecy, the Communists knew for certain that misery must soon 
increase. They also knew that the party could not win the confidence of 
the workers without fighting for them, and with them, for an 
improvement of their lot. These two fundamental assumptions clearly 
determined the principles of their general tactics. Make the workers 
demand their share, back them up in every particular episode in their 
unceasing fight for bread and shelter. Fight with them tenaciously for the 
fulfilment of their practical demands, whether economic or political. 
Thus you will win their confidence. At the same time, the workers will 
learn that it is impossible for them to better their lot by these petty fights, 
and that nothing short of a wholesale revolution can bring about an 
improvement. For all these petty fights are bound to be unsuccessful; we 
know from Marx that the capitalists simply cannot continue to 
compromise and that, ultimately, misery must increase. Accordingly, the 
only result — ^but a valuable one — of the workers' daily fight against their 
oppressors is an increase in their class consciousness; it is that feeling of 
unity which can be won only in battle, together with a desperate 
knowledge that only revolution can help them in their misery. When this 
stage is reached, then the hour has struck for the final show-down. 

This is the theory and the Communists acted accordingly. At first they 



support the workers in their fight to improve their lot. But, contrary to all 
expectations and prophecies, the fight is successful. The demands are 
granted. Obviously, the reason is that they had been too modest. 
Therefore one must demand more. But the demands are granted again—. 
And as misery decreases, the workers become less embittered, more 
ready to bargain for wages than to plot for revolution. 

Now the Communists find that their policy must be reversed. 
Something must be done to bring the law of increasing misery into 
operation. For instance, colonial unrest must be stirred up (even where 
there is no chance of a successful revolution), and with the general 
purpose of counteracting the bourgeoisification of the workers, a policy 
fomenting catastrophes of all sorts must be adopted. But this new policy 
destroys the confidence of the workers. The Communists lose their 
members, with the exception of those who are inexperienced in real 
political fights. They lose exactly those whom they describe as the 
'vanguard of the working class'; their tacitly implied principle: 'The 
worse things are, the better they are, since misery must precipitate 
revolution', makes the workers suspicious — the better the application of 
this principle, the worse are the suspicions entertained by the workers. 
For they are realists; to obtain their confidence, one must work to 
improve their lot. 

Thus the policy must be reversed again: one is forced to fight for the 
immediate betterment of the workers' lot and to hope at the same time 
for the opposite. 

With this, the 'inner contradictions' of the theory produce the last 
stage of confusion. It is the stage when it is hard to know who is the 
traitor, since treachery may be faithfulness and faithfulness treachery. It 
is the stage when those who followed the party not simply because it 
appeared to them (rightly, I am afraid) as the only vigorous movement 
with humanitarian ends, but especially because it was a movement based 



on a scientific theory, must either leave it, or sacrifice their intellectual 
integrity; for they must now learn to believe blindly in some authority. 
Ultimately, they must become mystics — hostile to reasonable argument. 

It seems that it is not only capitalism which is labouring under inner 
contradictions that threaten to bring about its downfall . . . 



21 

An Evaluation of the Prophecy 



The arguments underlying Marx's historical prophecy are invalid. His 
ingenious attempt to draw prophetic conclusions from observations of 
contemporary economic tendencies failed. The reason for this failure 
does not lie in any insufficiency of the empirical basis of the argument. 
Marx's sociological and economic analyses of contemporary society may 
have been somewhat one-sided, but in spite of their bias, they were 
excellent in so far as they were descriptive. The reason for his failure as a 
prophet lies entirely in the poverty of historicism as such, in the simple 
fact that even if we observe to-day what appears to be a historical 
tendency or trend, we cannot know whether it will have the same 
appearance to-morrow. 

We must admit that Marx saw many things in the right light. If we 
consider only his prophecy that the system of unrestrained capitalism, as 
he knew it, was not going to last much longer, and that its apologists who 
thought it would last forever were wrong, then we must say that he was 
right. He was right, too, in holding that it was largely the 'class struggle', 
i.e. the association of the workers, that was going to bring about its 
transformation into a new economic system. But we must not go so far as 
to say that Marx predicted that new system, interventionism-, under 
another name, socialism. The truth is that he had no inkling of what was 
lying ahead. What he called 'socialism' was very dissimilar from any 
form of interventionism, even from the Russian form; for he strongly 



believed that the impending development would diminish the influence, 
political as well as economic, of the state, while interventionism has 
increased it everywhere. 

Since I am criticizing Marx and, to some extent, praising democratic 
piecemeal interventionism (especially of the institutional kind explained 
in section VII to chapter 17), I wish to make it clear that I feel much 
sympathy with Marx's hope for a decrease in state influence. It is 
undoubtedly the greatest danger of interventionism — especially of any 
direct intervention — that it leads to an increase in state power and in 
bureaucracy. Most interventionists do not mind this, or they close their 
eyes to it, which increases the danger. But I believe that once the danger 
is faced squarely, it should be possible to master it. For this is again 
merely a problem of social technology and of social piecemeal 
engineering. But it is important to tackle it early, for it constitutes a 
danger to democracy. We must plan for freedom, and not only for 
security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security 
secure. 

But let us return to Marx's prophecy. One of the historical tendencies 
which he claimed to have discovered seems to be of a more persistent 
character than the others; I mean the tendency towards the accumulation 
of the means of production, and especially towards increasing the 
productivity of labour. It seems indeed that this tendency will continue 
for some time, provided, of course, that we continue to keep civilization 
going. But Marx did not merely recognize this tendency and its 
'civilizing aspects', he also saw its inherent dangers. More especially, he 
was one of the first (although he had some predecessors, for instance, 
Fourier-) to emphasize the connection between 'the development of the 
productive forces' in which he saw- 'the historical mission and 
justification of capital', and that most destructive phenomenon of the 
credit system — a system which seems to have encouraged the rapid rise 



of industrialism — the trade cycle. 

Marx's own theory of the trade cycle (discussed in section IV of the 
last chapter) may perhaps be paraphrased as follows: even if it is true that 
the inherent laws of the free market produce a tendency towards full 
employment, it is also true that every single approach towards full 
employment, i.e. towards a shortage of labour, stimulates inventors and 
investors to create and to introduce new labour-saving machinery, 
thereby giving rise (first to a short boom and then) to a new wave of 
unemployment and depression. Whether there is any truth in this theory, 
and how much, I do not know. As I said in the last chapter, the theory of 
the trade cycle is a rather difficult subject, and one upon which I do not 
intend to embark. But since Marx's contention that the increase of 
productivity is one of the factors contributing to the trade cycle seems to 
me important, I may be permitted to develop some rather obvious 
considerations in its support. 

The following list of possible developments is, of course, quite 
incomplete; but it is constructed in such a way that whenever the 
productivity of labour increases, then at least one of the following 
developments, and possibly many at a time, must commence and must 
proceed in a degree sufficient to balance the increase in productivity. 

(A) Investments increase, that is to say, such capital goods are 
produced as strengthen the power for producing other goods. 
(Since this leads to a further increase of productivity, it cannot 
alone balance its effects for any length of time.) 

(B) Consumption increases — the standard of living rises: 

{a) that of the whole population; 

(Z?) that of certain parts of it (for instance, of a certain class). 



(C) Labour time decreases: 



(a) the daily labour hours are reduced; 

(b) the number of people who are not industrial workers 
increases, and especially 

(b\) the number of scientists, physicians, artists, 
businessmen, etc., increases. 



(bi) the number of unemployed workers increases. 
(D) The quantity of goods produced but not consumed increases: 

(a) consumption goods are destroyed; 

(b) capital goods are not used (factories are idle); 

(c) goods, other than consumption goods and goods of the 
type (A), are produced, for instance, arms; 

(d) labour is used to destroy capital goods (and thereby to 
reduce productivity). 

I have listed these developments — the list could, of course, be 
elaborated — in such a way that down to the dotted line, i.e. down to (C, 
Z?i), the developments as such are generally recognized as desirable, 
whilst from (C, bi) onward come those which are generally taken to be 
undesirable; they indicate depression, the manufacture of armaments, and 
war. 

Now it is clear that since (A) alone cannot restore the balance for good, 
although it may be a very important factor, one or several of the other 
developments must set in. It seems, further, reasonable to assume that if 
no institutions exist which guarantee that the desirable developments 
proceed in a degree sufficient to balance the increased productivity, some 
of the undesirable developments will begin. But all of these, with the 



possible exception of armament production, are of such a character that 
they are likely to lead to a sharp reduction of (A), which must severely 
aggravate the situation. 

I do not think that such considerations as the above are able to 
'explain' armament or war in any sense of the word, although they may 
explain the success of totalitarian states in fighting unemployment. Nor 
do I think that they are able to 'explain' the trade cycle, although they 
may perhaps contribute something to such an explanation, in which 
problems of credit and money are likely to play a very important part; for 
the reduction of (A), for instance, may be equivalent to the hoarding of 
such savings as would otherwise probably be invested — a much-discussed 
and important factor-. And it is not quite impossible that the Marxist law 
of the falling rate of profit (if this law is at all tenable-) may also give a 
hint for the explanation of hoarding; for assuming that a period of quick 
accumulation may lead to such a fall, this might discourage investments 
and encourage hoarding, and reduce (A). 

But all this would not be a theory of the trade cycle. Such a theory 
would have a different task. Its main task would be to explain why the 
institution of the free market, as such a very efficient instrument for 
equalizing supply and demand, does not suffice to prevent depressions-, 
i.e. overproduction or underconsumption. In other words, we should have 
to show that the buying and selling on the market produces, as one of the 
unwanted social repercussions- of our actions, the trade cycle. The 
Marxist theory of the trade cycle has precisely this aim in view; and the 
considerations sketched here regarding the effects of a general tendency 
towards increasing productivity can at the best only supplement this 
theory. 

I am not going to pronounce judgement on the merits of all these 
speculations upon the trade cycle. But it seems to me quite clear that they 
are most valuable even if in the light of modern theories they should by 



now be entirely superseded. The mere fact that Marx treated this problem 
extensively is greatly to his credit. This much at least of his prophecy has 
come true, for the time being; the tendency towards an increase of 
productivity continues: the trade cycle also continues, and its 
continuation is likely to lead to interventionist counter-measures and 
therefore to a further restriction of the free market system; a development 
which conforms to Marx's prophecy that the trade cycle would be one of 
the factors that must bring about the downfall of the unrestrained system 
of capitalism. And to this, we must add that other piece of successful 
prophecy, namely, that the association of the workers would be another 
important factor in this process. 

In view of this list of important and largely successful prophecies, is it 
justifiable to speak of the poverty of historicism? If Marx's historical 
prophecies have been even partially successful, then we should certainly 
not dismiss his method lightly. But a closer view of Marx's successes 
shows that it was nowhere his historicist method which led him to 
success, but always the methods of institutional analysis. Thus it is not an 
historicist but a typical institutional analysis which leads to the 
conclusion that the capitalist is forced by competition to increase 
productivity. It is an institutional analysis on which Marx bases his 
theory of the trade cycle and of surplus population. And even the theory 
of class struggle is institutional; it is part of the mechanism by which the 
distribution of wealth as well as of power is controlled, a mechanism 
which makes possible collective bargaining in the widest sense. Nowhere 
in these analyses do the typical historicist 'laws of historical 
development', or stages, or periods, or tendencies, play any part 
whatever. On the other hand, none of Marx's more ambitious historicist 
conclusions, none of his 'inexorable laws of development' and his 'stages 
of history which cannot be leaped over', has ever turned out to be a 
successful prediction. Marx was successful only in so far as he was 



analysing institutions and their functions. And the opposite is true also: 
none of his more ambitious and sweeping historical prophecies falls 
within the scope of institutional analysis. Wherever the attempt is made 
to back them up by such an analysis, the derivation is invalid. Indeed, 
compared with Marx's own high standards, the more sweeping 
prophecies are on a rather low intellectual level. They contain not only a 
lot of wishful thinking, they are also lacking in political imagination. 
Roughly speaking, Marx shared the belief of the progressive industrialist, 
of the 'bourgeois' of his time: the belief in a law of progress. But this 
naive historicist optimism, of Hegel and Comte, of Marx and Mill, is no 
less superstitious than a pessimistic historicism like that of Plato and 
Spengler. And it is a very bad outfit for a prophet, since it must bridle 
historical imagination. Indeed, it is necessary to recognize as one of the 
principles of any unprejudiced view of politics that everything is possible 
in human affairs; and more particularly that no conceivable development 
can be excluded on the grounds that it may violate the so-called tendency 
of human progress, or any other of the alleged laws of 'human nature'. 
'The fact of progress', writes- H. A. L. Fisher, 'is written plain and large 
on the page of history; but progress is not a law of nature. The ground 
gained by one generation may be lost by the next.' 

In accordance with the principle that everything is possible it may be 
worth while to point out that Marx's prophecies might well have come 
true. A faith like the progressivist optimism of the nineteenth century can 
be a powerful political force; it can help to bring about what it has 
predicted. Thus even a correct prediction must not be accepted too readily 
as a corroboration of a theory, and of its scientific character. It may 
rather be a consequence of its religious character and a proof of the force 
of the religious faith which it has been able to inspire in men. And in 
Marxism more particularly the religious element is unmistakable. In the 
hour of their deepest misery and degradation, Marx's prophecy gave the 



workers an inspiring belief in their mission, and in the great future which 
their movement was to prepare for the whole of mankind. Looking back 
at the course of events from 1864 to 1930, I think that but for the 
somewhat accidental fact that Marx discouraged research in social 
technology, European affairs might possibly have developed, under the 
influence of this prophetic religion, towards a socialism of a non- 
collectivist type. A thorough preparation for social engineering, for 
planning for freedom, on the part of the Russian Marxists as well as those 
in Central Europe, might possibly have led to an unmistakable success, 
convincing to all friends of the open society. But this would not have 
been a corroboration of a scientific prophecy. It would have been the 
result of a religious movement — the result of the faith in 
humanitarianism, combined with a critical use of our reason for the 
purpose of changing the world. 

But things developed differently. The prophetic element in Marx's 
creed was dominant in the minds of his followers. It swept everything 
else aside, banishing the power of cool and critical judgement and 
destroying the belief that by the use of reason we may change the world. 
All that remained of Marx's teaching was the oracular philosophy of 
Hegel, which in its Marxist trappings threatens to paralyse the struggle 
for the open society. 



Marx's Ethics 



22 

The Moral Theory of Historicism 



The task which Marx set himself in Capital was to discover inexorable 
laws of social development. It was not the discovery of economic laws 
which would be useful to the social technologist. It was neither the 
analysis of the economic conditions which would permit the realization 
of such socialist aims as just prices, equal distribution of wealth, security, 
reasonable planning of production and, above all, freedom, nor was it an 
attempt to analyse and to clarify these aims. 

But although Marx was strongly opposed to Utopian technology as well 
as to any attempt at a moral justification of socialist aims, his writings 
contained, by implication, an ethical theory. This he expressed mainly by 
moral evaluations of social institutions. After all, Marx's condemnation 
of capitalism is fundamentally a moral condemnation. ThQ system is 
condemned, for the cruel injustice inherent in it which is combined with 
full 'formal' justice and righteousness. The system is condemned, 
because by forcing the exploiter to enslave the exploited it robs both of 
their freedom. Marx did not combat wealth, nor did he praise poverty. He 
hated capitalism, not for its accumulation of wealth, but for its 
oligarchical character; he hated it because in this system wealth means 
political power in the sense of power over other men. Labour power is 
made a commodity; that means that men must sell themselves on the 
market. Marx hated the system because it resembled slavery. 

By laying such stress on the moral aspect of social institutions, Marx 



emphasized our responsibility for the more remote social repercussions 
of our actions; for instance, of such actions as may help to prolong the 
life of socially unjust institutions. 

But although Capital is, in fact, largely a treatise on social ethics, these 
ethical ideas are never represented as such. They are expressed only by 
implication, but not the less forcibly on that account, since the 
implications are very obvious. Marx, I believe, avoided an explicit moral 
theory, because he hated preaching. Deeply distrustful of the moralist, 
who usually preaches water and drinks wine, Marx was reluctant to 
formulate his ethical convictions explicitly. The principles of humanity 
and decency were for him matters that needed no discussion, matters to 
be taken for granted. (In this field, too, he was an optimist.) He attacked 
the moralists because he saw them as the sycophantic apologists of a 
social order which he felt to be immoral; he attacked the eulogists of 
liberalism because of their self-satisfaction, because of their 
identification of freedom with the formal liberty then existing within a 
social system which destroyed freedom. Thus, by implication, he 
admitted his love for freedom; and in spite of his bias, as a philosopher, 
for holism, he was certainly not a collectivist, for he hoped that the state 
would 'wither away'. Marx's faith, I believe, was fundamentally a faith 
in the open society. 

Marx's attitude towards Christianity is closely connected with these 
convictions, and with the fact that a hypocritical defence of capitalist 
exploitation was in his day characteristic of official Christianity. (His 
attitude was not unlike that of his contemporary Kierkegaard, the great 
reformer of Christian ethics, who exposed- the official Christian morality 
of his day as anti-Christian and anti-humanitarian hypocrisy.) A typical 
representative of this kind of Christianity was the High Church priest J. 
Townsend, author of A Dissertation on the Poor Laws, by a Wellwisher of 
Mankind, din extremely crude apologist for exploitation whom Marx 



exposed. 'Hunger', Townsend begins his eulogy-, 'is not only a 
peaceable, silent, unremitted pressure but, as the most natural motive of 
industry and labour, it calls forth the most powerful exertions.' In 
Townsend's 'Christian' world order, everything depends (as Marx 
observes) upon making hunger permanent among the working class; and 
Townsend believes that this is indeed the divine purpose of the principle 
of the growth of population; for he goes on: 'It seems to be a law of 
nature that the poor should be to a certain degree improvident, so that 
there may always be some to fulfil the most servile, the most sordid, the 
most ignoble offices in the community. The stock of human happiness is 
thereby much increased, whilst the more delicate ... are left at liberty 
without interruption to pursue those callings which are suited to their 
various dispositions.' And the 'delicate priestly sycophant', as Marx 
called him for this remark, adds that the Poor Law, by helping the hungry, 
'tends to destroy the harmony and beauty, the symmetry and order, of 
that system which God and nature have established in the world.' 

If this kind of 'Christianity' has disappeared to-day from the face of 
the better part of our globe, it is in no small degree due to the moral 
reformation brought about by Marx. I do not suggest that the reform of 
the Church's attitude towards the poor in England did not commence long 
before Marx had any influence in England; but he influenced this 
development especially on the Continent, and the rise of socialism had 
the effect of strengthening it in England also. His influence on 
Christianity may be perhaps compared with Luther's influence on the 
Roman Church. Both were a challenge, both led to a counter-reformation 
in the camps of their enemies, to a revision and re-valuation of their 
ethical standards. Christianity owes not a little to Marx's influence if it is 
to-day on a different path from the one it was pursuing only thirty years 
ago. It is even partly due to Marx's influence that the Church has listened 
to the voice of Kierkegaard, who, in his Book of the Judge, described his 



own activity as follows-: 'He whose task it is to produce a corrective 
idea, has only to study, precisely and deeply, the rotten parts of the 
existing order — and then, in the most partial way possible, to stress the 
opposite of it.' ('Since that is so', he adds, 'an apparently clever man will 
easily raise the objection of partiality against the corrective idea — and he 
will make the public believe that this was the whole truth about it.') In 
this sense one might say that the early Marxism, with its ethical rigour, 
its emphasis on deeds instead of mere words, was perhaps the most 
important corrective idea of our time-. This explains its tremendous 
moral influence. 

The demand that men should prove themselves in deeds is especially 
marked in some of Marx's earlier writings. This attitude, which might be 
described as his activism, is most clearly formulated in the last of his 
Theses on Feuerbach-: 'The philosophers have only interpreted the world 
in various ways; the point however is to change it.' But there are many 
other passages which show the same 'activist' tendency; especially those 
in which Marx speaks of socialism as the 'kingdom of freedom', a 
kingdom in which man would become the 'master of his own social 
environment'. Marx conceived of socialism as a period in which we are 
largely free from the irrational forces that now determine our life, and in 
which human reason can actively control human affairs. Judging by all 
this, and by Marx's general moral and emotional attitude, I cannot doubt 
that, if faced with the alternative 'are we to be the makers of our fate, or 
shall we be content to be its prophets?' he would have decided to be a 
maker and not merely a prophet. 

But as we already know, these strong 'activist' tendencies of Marx's 
are counteracted by his historicism. Under its influence, he became 
mainly a prophet. He decided that, at least under capitalism, we must 
submit to 'inexorable laws' and to the fact that all we can do is 'to 
shorten and lessen the birth-pangs' of the 'natural phases of its 



evolution'-. There is a wide gulf between Marx's activism and his 
historicism, and this gulf is further widened by his doctrine that we must 
submit to the purely irrational forces of history. For since he denounced 
as Utopian any attempt to make use of our reason in order to plan for the 
future, reason can have no part in bringing about a more reasonable 
world. I believe that such a view cannot be defended, and must lead to 
mysticism. But I must admit that there seems to be a theoretical 
possibility of bridging this gulf, although I do not consider the bridge to 
be sound. This bridge, of which there are only rough plans to be found in 
the writings of Marx and Engels, I call their historicist moral theory-. 

Unwilling to admit that their own ethical ideas were in any sense 
ultimate and self-justifying, Marx and Engels preferred to look upon their 
humanitarian aims in the light of a theory which explains them as the 
product, or the reflection, of social circumstances. Their theory can be 
described as follows. If a social reformer, or a revolutionary, believes 
that he is inspired by a hatred of 'injustice', and by a love for 'justice', 
then he is largely a victim of illusion (like anybody else, for instance the 
apologists of the old order). Or, to put it more precisely, his moral ideas 
of 'justice' and 'injustice' are by-products of the social and historical, 
development. But they are by-products of an important kind, since they 
are part of the mechanism by which the development propels itself. To 
illustrate this point, there are always at least two ideas of 'justice' (or of 
'freedom' or of 'equality'), and these two ideas differ very widely indeed. 
The one is the idea of 'justice' as the ruling class understands it, the 
other, the same idea as the oppressed class understands it. These ideas 
are, of course, products of the class situation, but at the same time they 
play an important part in the class struggle — they have to provide both 
sides with that good conscience which they need in order to carry on their 
fight. 

This theory of morality may be characterized as historicist because it 



holds that all moral categories are dependent on the historical situation; it 
is usually described as historical relativism in the field of ethics. From 
this point of view, it is an incomplete question to ask: Is it right to act in 
this way? The complete question would run like this: Is it right, in the 
sense of fifteenth-century feudal morality, to act in this way? Or perhaps: 
Is it right, in the sense of nineteenth- century proletarian morality, to act 
in this way? This historical relativism was formulated by Engels as 
follows-: 'What morality is preached to us to-day? There is first 
Christian-feudal morality, inherited from past centuries; and this again 
has two main subdivisions, Roman Catholic and Protestant moralities, 
each of which in turn has no lack of further subdivisions, from the Jesuit- 
Catholic and Orthodox- Protestant to loose "advanced" moralities. 
Alongside of these, we find the modern bourgeois morality, and with it, 
too, the proletarian morality of the future . . . ' 

But this so-called 'historical relativism' by no means exhausts the 
historicist character of the Marxist theory of morals. Let us imagine we 
could ask those who hold such a theory, for instance Marx himself: Why 
do you act in the way you do? Why would you consider it distasteful and 
repulsive, for instance, to accept a bribe from the bourgeoisie for 
stopping your revolutionary activities? I do not think that Marx would 
have liked to answer such a question; he would probably have tried to 
evade it, asserting perhaps that he just acted as he pleased, or as he felt 
compelled to. But all this does not touch our problem. It is certain that in 
the practical decisions of his life Marx followed a very rigorous moral 
code; it is also certain that he demanded from his collaborators a high 
moral standard. Whatever the terminology applied to these things may 
be, the problem which faces us is how to find a reply which he might 
have possibly made to the question: Why do you act in such a way? Why 
do you try, for instance, to help the oppressed? (Marx did not himself 
belong to this class, either by birth or by upbringing or by his way of 



living.) 

If pressed in this way, Marx would, I think, have formulated his moral 
belief in the following terms, which form the core of what I call his 
historicist moral theory. As a social scientist (he might have said) I know 
that our moral ideas are weapons in the class struggle. As a scientist, I 
can consider them without adopting them. But as a scientist I find also 
that I cannot avoid taking sides in this struggle; that any attitude, even 
aloofness, means taking sides in some way or other. My problem thus 
assumes the form: Which side shall I take? When I have chosen a certain 
side, then I have, of course, also decided upon my morality. I shall have 
to adopt the moral system necessarily bound up with the interests of the 
class which I have decided to support. But before making this 
fundamental decision, I have not adopted any moral system at all, 
provided I can free myself from the moral tradition of my class; but this, 
of course, is a necessary prerequisite for making any conscious and 
rational decision regarding the competing moral systems. Now since a 
decision is 'moral' only in relation to some previously accepted moral 
code, my fundamental decision can be no 'moral' decision at all. But it 
can be a scientific decision. For as a social scientist, I am able to see what 
is going to happen. I am able to see that the bourgeoisie, and with it its 
system of morals, is bound to disappear, and that the proletariat, and with 
it a new system of morals, is bound to win. I see that this development is 
inevitable. It would be madness to attempt to resist it, just as it would be 
madness to attempt to resist the law of gravity. This is why my 
fundamental decision is in favour of the proletariat and of its morality. 
And this decision is based only on scientific foresight, on scientific 
historical prophecy. Although itself not a moral decision, since it is not 
based on any system of morality, it leads to the adoption of a certain 
system of morality. To sum up, my fundamental decision is not (as you 
suspected) the sentimental decision to help the oppressed, but the 



scientific and rational decision not to offer vain resistance to the 
developmental laws of society. Only after I have made this decision am I 
prepared to accept, and to make full use of, those moral sentiments which 
are necessary weapons in the fight for what is bound to come in any case. 
In this way, I adopt the facts of the coming period as the standards of my 
morality. And in this way, I solve the apparent paradox that a more 
reasonable world will come without being planned by reason; for 
according to my moral standards now adopted, the future world must be 
better, and therefore more reasonable. And I also bridge the gap between 
my activism and my historicism. For it is clear that even though I have 
discovered the natural law that determines the movement of society, I 
cannot shuffle the natural phases of its evolution out of the world by a 
stroke of the pen. But this much I can do. I can actively assist in 
shortening and lessening its birth-pangs. 

This, I think, would have been Marx's reply, and it is this reply which 
to me represents the most important form of what I have called 
'historicist moral theory'. It is this theory to which Engels alludes when 
he writes-: 'Certainly, that morality which contains the greatest number 
of elements that are going to last is the one which, within the present 
time, represents the overthrow of the present time; it is the one which 
represents the future; it is the proletarian morality . . . According to this 
conception, the ultimate causes of all social changes and political 
revolutions are not increasing insight into justice; they are to be sought 
not in the philosophy but in the economics of the epoch concerned. The 
growing realization that existing social institutions are irrational and 
unjust is only a symptom . . . ' It is the theory of which a modern Marxist 
says: 'In founding socialist aspirations on a rational economic law of 
social development, instead of justifying them on moral grounds, Marx 
and Engels proclaimed socialism a historical necessity.'— It is a theory 
which is very widely held; but it has rarely been formulated clearly and 



explicitly. Its criticism is therefore more important than might be 
realized at first sight. 

First, it is clear enough that the theory depends largely on the 
possibility of correct historical prophecy. If this is questioned — and it 
certainly must be questioned — then the theory loses most of its force. But 
for the purpose of analysing it, I shall assume at first that historical 
foreknowledge is an established fact; and I shall merely stipulate that this 
historical foreknowledge is limited; I shall stipulate that we have 
foreknowledge for, say, the next 500 years, a stipulation which should not 
restrict even the boldest claims of Marxist historicism. 

Now let us first examine the claim of historicist moral theory that the 
fundamental decision in favour of, or against, one of the moral systems in 
question is itself not a moral decision; that it is not based on any moral 
consideration or sentiment, but on a scientific historical prediction. This 
claim is, I think, untenable. In order to make this quite clear, it will 
suffice to make explicit the imperative, or principle of conduct, implied 
in this fundamental decision. It is the following principle: Adopt the 
moral system of the future! or: Adopt the moral system held by those 
whose actions are most useful for bringing about the future! Now it 
seems clear to me that even on the assumption that we know exactly what 
the next 500 years will be like, it is not at all necessary for us to adopt 
such a principle. It is, to give an example, at least conceivable that some 
humanitarian pupil of Voltaire who foresaw in 1764 the development of 
France down to, say, 1 864 might have disliked the prospect; it is at least 
conceivable that he would have decided that this development was rather 
distasteful and that he was not going to adopt the moral standards of 
Napoleon III as his own. I shall be faithful to my humanitarian standards, 
he might have said, I shall teach them to my pupils; perhaps they will 
survive this period, perhaps some day they will be victorious. It is 
likewise at least conceivable (I do not assert more, at present) that a man 



who to-day foresees with certainty that we are heading for a period of 
slavery, that we are going to return to the cage of the arrested society, or 
even that we are about to return to the beasts, may nevertheless decide 
not to adopt the moral standards of this impending period but to 
contribute as well as he can to the survival of his humanitarian ideals, 
hoping perhaps for a resurrection of his morality in some dim future. 

All that is, at least, conceivable. It may perhaps not be the 'wisest' 
decision to make. But the fact that such a decision is excluded neither by 
foreknowledge nor by any sociological or psychological law shows that 
the first claim of historicist moral theory is untenable. Whether we 
should accept the morality of the future just because it is the morality of 
the future, this in itself is just a moral problem. The fundamental decision 
cannot be derived from any knowledge of the future. 

In previous chapters I have mentioned moral positivism (especially that 
of Hegel), the theory that there is no moral standard but the one which 
exists; that what is, is reasonable and good; and therefore, that might is 
right. The practical aspect of this theory is this. A moral criticism of the 
existing state of affairs is impossible, since this state itself determines 
the moral standard of things. Now the historicist moral theory we are 
considering is nothing but another form of moral positivism. For it holds 
that coming might is right. The future is here substituted for the present — 
that is all. And the practical aspect of the theory is this. Amoral criticism 
of the coming state of affairs is impossible, since this state determines 
the moral standard of things. The difference between 'the present' and 
'the future' is here, of course, only a matter of degree. One can say that 
the future starts to-morrow, or in 500 years, or in 100. In their theoretical 
structure there is no difference between moral conservatism, moral 
modernism, and moral futurism. Nor is there much to choose between 
them in regard to moral sentiments. If the moral futurist criticizes the 
cowardice of the moral conservative who takes sides with the powers that 



be, then the moral conservative can return the charge; he can say that the 
moral futurist is a coward since he takes sides with the powers that will 
be, with the rulers of to-morrow. 

I feel sure that, had he considered these implications, Marx would have 
repudiated historicist moral theory. Numerous remarks and numerous 
actions prove that it was not a scientific judgement but a moral impulse, 
the wish to help the oppressed, the wish to free the shamelessly exploited 
and miserable workers, which led him to socialism. I do not doubt that it 
is this moral appeal that is the secret of the influence of his teaching. And 
the force of this appeal was tremendously strengthened by the fact that he 
did not preach morality in the abstract. He did not pretend to have any 
right to do so. Who, he seems to have asked himself, lives up to his own 
standard, provided it is not a very low one? It was this feeling which led 
him to rely, in ethical matters, on under- statements, and which led him to 
the attempt to find in prophetic social science an authority in matters of 
morals more reliable than he felt himself to be. 

Surely, in Marx's practical ethics such categories as freedom and 
equality played the major role. He was, after all, one of those who took 
the ideals of 1789 seriously. And he had seen how shamelessly a concept 
like 'freedom' could be twisted. This is why he did not preach freedom in 
words — why he preached it in action. He wanted to improve society and 
improvement meant to him more freedom, more equality, more justice, 
more security, higher standards of living, and especially that shortening 
of the working day which at once gives the workers some freedom. It was 
his hatred of hypocrisy, his reluctance to speak about these 'high ideals', 
together with his amazing optimism, his trust that all this would be 
realized in the near future, which led him to veil his moral beliefs behind 
historicist formulations. 

Marx, I assert, would not seriously have defended moral positivism in 
the form of moral futurism if he had seen that it implies the recognition 



of future might as right. But there are others who do not possess his 
passionate love of humanity, who are moral futurists just because of these 
implications, i.e. opportunists wishing to be on the winning side. Moral 
futurism is widespread to-day. Its deeper, non- opportunist basis is 
probably the belief that goodness must 'ultimately' triumph over 
wickedness. But moral futurists forget that we are not going to live to 
witness the 'ultimate' outcome of present events. 'History will be our 
judge!' What does this mean? That success will judge. The worship of 
success and of future might is the highest standard of many who would 
never admit that present might is right. (They quite forget that the present 
is the future of the past.) The basis of all this is a halfhearted compromise 
between a moral optimism and a moral scepticism. It seems to be hard to 
believe in one's conscience. And it seems to be hard to resist the impulse 
to be on the winning side. 

All these critical remarks are consistent with the assumption that we 
can predict the future for the next, say, 500 years. But if we drop this 
entirely fictitious assumption, then historicist moral theory loses all its 
plausibility. And we must drop it. For there is no prophetic sociology to 
help us in selecting a moral system. We cannot shift our responsibility 
for such a selection on to anybody, not even on to 'the future'. 

Marx's historicist moral theory is, of course, only the result of his view 
concerning the method of social science, of his sociological determinism, 
a view which has become rather fashionable in our day. All our opinions, 
it is said, including our moral standards, depend upon society and its 
historical state. They are the products of society or of a certain class 
situation. Education is defined as a special process by which the 
community attempts to 'pass on' to its members 'its culture including the 
standards by which it would have them to live'—, and the 'relativity of 
educational theory and practice to a prevailing order' is emphasized. 
Science, too, is said to depend on the social stratum of the scientific 



worker, etc. 

A theory of this kind which emphasizes the sociological dependence of 
our opinions is sometimes cdiWQd sociologism; if the historical 
dependence is emphasized, it is called historism. (Historism must not, of 
course, be mixed up with historicism.) Both sociologism and historism, 
in so far as they maintain the determination of scientific knowledge by 
society or history, will be discussed in the next two chapters. In so far as 
sociologism bears upon moral theory, a few remarks may be added here. 
But before going into any detail, I wish to make quite clear my opinion 
concerning these Hegelianizing theories. I believe that they chatter 
trivialities clad in the jargon of oracular philosophy. 

Let us examine this moral 'sociologism'. That man, and his aims, are 
in a certain sense a product of society is true enough. But it is also true 
that society is a product of man and of his aims and that it may become 
increasingly so. The main question is: Which of these two aspects of the 
relations between men and society is more important? Which is to be 
stressed? 

We shall understand sociologism better if we compare it with the 
analogous 'naturalistic' view that man and his aims are a product of 
heredity and environment. Again we must admit that this is true enough. 
But it is also quite certain that man's environment is to an increasing 
extent a product of him and his aims (to a limited extent, the same might 
be said even of his heredity). Again we must ask: which of the two 
aspects is more important, more fertile? The answer may be easier if we 
give the question the following more practical form. We, the generation 
now living, and our minds, our opinions, are largely the product of our 
parents, and of the way they have brought us up. But the next generation 
will be, to a similar extent, a product of ourselves, of our actions and of 
the way in which we bring them up. Which of the two aspects is the more 
important one for us to-day? 



If we consider this question seriously, then we find that the decisive 
point is that our minds, our opinions, though largely dependent on our 
upbringing are not totally so. If they were totally dependent on our 
upbringing, if we were incapable of self-criticism, of learning from our 
own way of seeing things, from our experience, then, of course, the way 
we have been brought up by the last generation would determine the way 
in which we bring up the next. But it is quite certain that this is not so. 
Accordingly, we can concentrate our critical faculties on the difficult 
problem of bringing up the next generation in a way which we consider 
better than the way in which we have been brought up ourselves. 

The situation stressed so much by sociologism can be dealt with in an 
exactly analogous way. That our minds, our views, are in a way a product 
of 'society' is trivially true. The most important part of our environment 
is its social part; thought, in particular, is very largely dependent on 
social intercourse; language, the medium of thought, is a social 
phenomenon. But it simply cannot be denied that we can examine 
thoughts, that we can criticize them, improve them, and further that we 
can change and improve our physical environment according to our 
changed, improved thoughts. And the same is true of our social 
environment. 

All these considerations are entirely independent of the metaphysical 
'problem of free will'. Even the indeterminist admits a certain amount of 
dependence on heredity and on environmental, especially social, 
influence. On the other hand, the determinist must agree that our views 
and actions are not fully and solely determined by heredity, education, 
and social influences. He has to admit that there are other factors, for 
instance, the more 'accidental' experiences accumulated during one's 
life, and that these also exert their influence. Determinism or 
indeterminism, as long as they remain within their metaphysical 
boundaries, do not affect our problem. But the point is that they may 



trespass beyond these boundaries; that metaphysical determinism, for 
instance, may encourage sociological determinism or 'sociologism'. But 
in this form, the theory can be confronted with experience. And 
experience shows that it is certainly false. 

Beethoven, to take an instance from the field of aesthetics, which has a 
certain similarity to that of ethics, is surely to some extent a product of 
musical education and tradition, and many who take an interest in him 
will be impressed by this aspect of his work. The more important aspect, 
however, is that he is also a producer of music, and thereby of musical 
tradition and education. I do not wish to quarrel with the metaphysical 
determinist who would insist that every bar Beethoven wrote was 
determined by some combination of hereditary and environmental 
influences. Such an assertion is empirically entirely insignificant, since 
no one could actually 'explain' a single bar of his writing in this way. The 
important thing is that everyone admits that what he wrote can be 
explained neither by the musical works of his predecessors, nor by the 
social environment in which he lived, nor by his deafness, nor by the food 
which his housekeeper cooked for him; not, in other words, by any 
definite set of environmental influences or circumstances open to 
empirical investigation, or by anything we could possibly know of his 
heredity. 

I do not deny that there are certain interesting sociological aspects of 
Beethoven's work. It is well known, for instance, that the transition from 
a small to a large symphony orchestra is connected, in some way, with a 
socio-political development. Orchestras cease to be the private hobbies of 
princes, and are at least partly supported by a middle class whose interest 
in music greatly increases. I am willing to appreciate any sociological 
'explanation' of this sort, and I admit that such aspects may be worthy of 
scientific study. (After all, I myself have attempted similar things in this 
book, for instance, in my treatment of Plato.) 



What then, more precisely, is the object of my attack? It is the 
exaggeration and generalization of any aspect of this kind. If we 'explain' 
Beethoven's symphony orchestra in the way hinted above, we have 
explained very little. If we describe Beethoven as representing the 
bourgeoisie in the process of emancipating itself, we say very little, even 
if it is true. Such a function could most certainly be combined with the 
production of bad music (as we see from Wagner). We cannot attempt to 
explain Beethoven's genius in this way, or in any way at all. 

I think that Marx's own views could likewise be used for an empirical 
refutation of sociological determinism. For if we consider in the light of 
this doctrine the two theories, activism and historicism, and their struggle 
for supremacy in Marx's system, then we will have to say that 
historicism would be a view more fitting for a conservative apologist 
than for a revolutionary or even a reformer. And, indeed, historicism was 
used by Hegel with that tendency. The fact that Marx not only took it 
over from Hegel, but in the end permitted it to oust his own activism, 
may thus show that the side a man takes in the social struggle need not 
always determine his intellectual decisions. These may be determined, as 
in Marx's case, not so much by the true interest of the class he supported 
as by accidental factors, such as the influence of a predecessor, or 
perhaps by shortsightedness. Thus in this case, sociologism may further 
our understanding of Hegel, but the example of Marx himself exposes it 
as an unjustified generalization. A similar case is Marx's underrating of 
the significance of his own moral ideas; for it cannot be doubted that the 
secret of his religious influence was in its moral appeal, that his criticism 
of capitalism was effective mainly as a moral criticism. Marx showed 
that a social system can as such be unjust; that if the system is bad, then 
all the righteousness of the individuals who profit from it is a mere sham 
righteousness, is mere hypocrisy. For our responsibility extends to the 
system, to the institutions which we allow to persist. 



It is this moral radicalism of Marx which explains his influence; and 
that is a hopeful fact in itself. This moral radicalism is still alive. It is our 
task to keep it alive, to prevent it from going the way which his political 
radicalism will have to go. 'Scientific' Marxism is dead. Its feeling of 
social responsibility and its love for freedom must survive. 



The Aftermath 



23 

The Sociology of Knowledge 



Rationality, in the sense of an appeal to a universal and impersonal standard of truth, is of 
supreme importance not only in ages in which it easily prevails, but also, and even more, 
in those less fortunate times in which it is despised and rejected as the vain dream of men 
who lack the virility to kill where they cannot agree. 

Bertrand Russell. 

It can hardly be doubted that Hegel's and Marx's historicist philosophies 
are characteristic products of their time — a time of social change. Like 
the philosophies of Heraclitus and Plato, and like those of Comte and 
Mill, Lamarck and Darwin, they are philosophies of change, and they 
witness to the tremendous and undoubtedly somewhat terrifying 
impression made by a changing social environment on the minds of those 
who live in this environment. Plato reacted to this situation by attempting 
to arrest all change. The more modern social philosophers appear to react 
very differently, since they accept, and even welcome, change; yet this 
love of change seems to me a little ambivalent. For even though they 
have given up any hope of arresting change, as historicists they try to 
predict it, and thus to bring it under rational control; and this certainly 
looks like an attempt to tame it. Thus it seems that, to the historicist, 
change has not entirely lost its terrors. 

In our own time of still more rapid change, we even find the desire not 
only to predict change, but to control it by centralized large-scale 
planning. These holistic views (which I have criticized in The Poverty oj 



Historicism) represent a compromise, as it were, between Platonic and 
Marxian theories. Plato's will to arrest change, combined with Marx's 
doctrine of its inevitability, yield, as a kind of Hegelian 'synthesis', the 
demand that since it cannot be entirely arrested, change should at least be 
'planned', and controlled by the state whose power is to be vastly 
extended. 

An attitude like this may seem, at first sight, to be a kind of 
rationalism; it is closely related to Marx's dream of the 'realm of 
freedom' in which man is for the first time master of his own fate. But as 
a matter of fact, it occurs in closest alliance with a doctrine which is 
definitely opposed to rationalism (and especially to the doctrine of the 
rational unity of mankind; see chapter 24 ). one which is well in keeping 
with the irrationalist and mystical tendencies of our time. I have in mind 
the Marxist doctrine that our opinions, including our moral and scientific 
opinions, are determined by class interest, and more generally by the 
social and historical situation of our time. Under the name of 'sociology 
of knowledge' or 'sociologism', this doctrine has been developed 
recently (especially by M. Scheler and K. Mannheim-) as a theory of the 
social determination of scientific knowledge. 

The sociology of knowledge argues that scientific thought, and 
especially thought on social and political matters, does not proceed in a 
vacuum, but in a socially conditioned atmosphere. It is influenced largely 
by unconscious or subconscious elements. These elements remain hidden 
from the thinker's observing eye because they form, as it were, the very 
place which he inhabits, his social habitat. The social habitat of the 
thinker determines a whole system of opinions and theories which appear 
to him as unquestionably true or self-evident. They appear to him as if 
they were logically and trivially true, such as, for example, the sentence 
'all tables are tables'. This is why he is not even aware of having made 
any assumptions at all. But that he has made assumptions can be seen if 



we compare him with a thinker who lives in a very different social 
habitat; for he too will proceed from a system of apparently 
unquestionable assumptions, but from a very different one; and it may be 
so different that no intellectual bridge may exist and no compromise be 
possible between these two systems. Each of these different socially 
determined systems of assumptions is called by the sociologists of 
knowledge a total ideology. 

The sociology of knowledge can be considered as a Hegelian version of 
Kant's theory of knowledge. For it continues on the lines of Kant's 
criticism of what we may term the 'passivist' theory of knowledge. I 
mean by this the theory of the empiricists down to and including Hume, a 
theory which may be described, roughly, as holding that knowledge 
streams into us through our senses, and that error is due to our 
interference with the sense-given material, or to the associations which 
have developed within it; the best way of avoiding error is to remain 
entirely passive and receptive. Against this receptacle theory of 
knowledge (I usually call it the 'bucket theory of the mind'), Kant- 
argued that knowledge is not a collection of gifts received by our senses 
and stored in the mind as if it were a museum, but that it is very largely 
the result of our own mental activity; that we must most actively engage 
ourselves in searching, comparing, unifying, generalizing, if we wish to 
attain knowledge. We may call this theory the 'activist' theory of 
knowledge. In connection with it, Kant gave up the untenable ideal of a 
science which is free from any kind of presuppositions. (That this ideal is 
even self-contradictory will be shown in the next chapter.) He made it 
quite clear that we cannot start from nothing, and that we have to 
approach our task equipped with a system of presuppositions which we 
hold without having tested them by the empirical methods of science; 
such a system may be called a 'categorial apparatus'-. Kant believed that 
it was possible to discover the one true and unchanging categorial 



apparatus, which represents as it were the necessarily unchanging 
framework of our intellectual outfit, i.e. human 'reason'. This part of 
Kant's theory was given up by Hegel, who, as opposed to Kant, did not 
believe in the unity of mankind. He taught that man's intellectual outfit 
was constantly changing, and that it was part of his social heritage; 
accordingly the development of man's reason must coincide with the 
historical development of his society, i.e. of the nation to which he 
belongs. This theory of Hegel's, and especially his doctrine that all 
knowledge and all truth is 'relative' in the sense of being determined by 
history, is sometimes called 'historism' (in contradistinction to 
'historicism', as mentioned in the last chapter). The sociology of 
knowledge or 'sociologism' is obviously very closely related to or nearly 
identical with it, the only difference being that, under the influence of 
Marx, it emphasizes that the historical development does not produce one 
uniform 'national spirit', as Hegel held, but rather several and sometimes 
opposed 'total ideologies' within one nation, according to the class, the 
social stratum, or the social habitat, of those who hold them. 

But the likeness to Hegel goes further. I have said above that according 
to the sociology of knowledge, no intellectual bridge or compromise 
between different total ideologies is possible. But this radical scepticism 
is not really meant quite as seriously as it sounds. There is a way out of it, 
and the way is analogous to the Hegelian method of superseding the 
conflicts which preceded him in the history of philosophy. Hegel, a spirit 
freely poised above the whirlpool of the dissenting philosophies, reduced 
them all to mere components of the highest of syntheses, of his own 
system. Similarly, the sociologists of knowledge hold that the 'freely 
poised intelligence' of an intelligentsia which is only loosely anchored in 
social traditions may be able to avoid the pitfalls of the total ideologies; 
that it may even be able to see through, and to unveil, the various total 
ideologies and the hidden motives and other determinants which inspire 



them. Thus the sociology of knowledge believes that the highest degree 
of objectivity can be reached by the freely poised intelligence analysing 
the various hidden ideologies and their anchorage in the unconscious. The 
way to true knowledge appears to be the unveiling of unconscious 
assumptions, a kind of psycho-therapy, as it were, or if I may say so, a 
socio- therapy. Only he who has been socio-analysed or who has socio- 
analysed himself, and who is freed from this social complex, i.e. from his 
social ideology, can attain to the highest synthesis of objective 
knowledge. 

In a previous chapter, when dealing with 'Vulgar Marxism' I 
mentioned a tendency which can be observed in a group of modern 
philosophies, the tendency to unveil the hidden motives behind our 
actions. The sociology of knowledge belongs to this group, together with 
psycho-analysis and certain philosophies which unveil the 
'meaninglessness' of the tenets of their opponents-. The popularity of 
these views lies, I believe, in the ease with which they can be applied, and 
in the satisfaction which they confer on those who see through things, and 
through the follies of the unenlightened. This pleasure would be 
harmless, were it not that all these ideas are liable to destroy the 
intellectual basis of any discussion, by establishing what I have called- a 
'reinforced dogmatism'. (Indeed, this is something rather similar to a 
'total ideology'.) Hegelianism does it by declaring the admissibility and 
even fertility of contradictions. But if contradictions need not be avoided, 
then any criticism and any discussion becomes impossible since criticism 
always consists in pointing out contradictions either within the theory to 
be criticized, or between it and some facts of experience. The situation 
with psycho-analysis is similar: the psycho-analyst can always explain 
away any objections by showing that they are due to the repressions of 
the critic. And the philosophers of meaning, again, need only point out 
that what their opponents hold is meaningless, which will always be true. 



since 'meaninglessness' can be so defined that any discussion about it is 
by definition without meaning-. Marxists, in a like manner, are 
accustomed to explain the disagreement of an opponent by his class bias, 
and the sociologists of knowledge by his total ideology. Such methods are 
both easy to handle and good fun for those who handle them. But they 
clearly destroy the basis of rational discussion, and they must lead, 
ultimately, to anti-rationalism and mysticism. 

In spite of these dangers, I do not see why I should entirely forgo the 
fun of handling these methods. For just like the psycho-analysts, the 
people to whom psycho-analysis applies best,- the socio-analysts invite 
the application of their own methods to themselves with an almost 
irresistible hospitality. For is not their description of an intelligentsia 
which is only loosely anchored in tradition a very neat description of 
their own social group? And is it not also clear that, assuming the theory 
of total ideologies to be correct, it would be part of every total ideology 
to believe that one's own group was free from bias, and was indeed that 
body of the elect which alone was capable of objectivity? Is it not, 
therefore, to be expected, always assuming the truth of this theory, that 
those who hold it will unconsciously deceive themselves by producing an 
amendment to the theory in order to establish the objectivity of their own 
views? Can we, then, take seriously their claim that by their sociological 
self-analysis they have reached a higher degree of objectivity; and their 
claim that socio-analysis can cast out a total ideology? But we could even 
ask whether the whole theory is not simply the expression of the class 
interest of this particular group; of an intelligentsia only loosely anchored 
in tradition, though just firmly enough to speak Hegelian as their mother 
tongue. 

How little the sociologists of knowledge have succeeded in socio- 
therapy, that is to say, in eradicating their own total ideology, will be 
particularly obvious if we consider their relation to Hegel. For they have 



no idea that they are just repeating him; on the contrary, they believe not 
only that they have outgrown him, but also that they have successfully 
seen through him, socio-analysed him; and that they can now look at him, 
not from any particular social habitat, but objectively, from a superior 
elevation. This palpable failure in self-analysis tells us enough. 

But, all joking apart, there are more serious objections. The sociology 
of knowledge is not only self-destructive, not only a rather gratifying 
object of socio-analysis, it also shows an astounding failure to understand 
precisely its main subject, thQ social aspects of knowledge, or rather, of 
scientific method. It looks upon science or knowledge as a process in the 
mind or 'consciousness' of the individual scientist, or perhaps as the 
product of such a process. If considered in this way, what we call 
scientific objectivity must indeed become completely ununderstandable, 
or even impossible; and not only in the social or political sciences, where 
class interests and similar hidden motives may play a part, but just as 
much in the natural sciences. Everyone who has an inkling of the history 
of the natural sciences is aware of the passionate tenacity which 
characterizes many of its quarrels. No amount of political partiality can 
influence political theories more strongly than the partiality shown by 
some natural scientists in favour of their intellectual offspring. If 
scientific objectivity were founded, as the sociologistic theory of 
knowledge naively assumes, upon the individual scientist's impartiality 
or objectivity, then we should have to say good-bye to it. Indeed, we must 
be in a way more radically sceptical than the sociology of knowledge; for 
there is no doubt that we are all suffering under our own system of 
prejudices (or 'total ideologies', if this term is preferred); that we all take 
many things as self-evident, that we accept them uncritically and even 
with the naive and cocksure belief that criticism is quite unnecessary; and 
scientists are no exception to this rule, even though they may have 
superficially purged themselves from some of their prejudices in their 



particular field. But they have not purged themselves by socio-analysis or 
any similar method; they have not attempted to climb to a higher plane 
from which they can understand, socio-analyse, and expurgate their 
ideological follies. For by making their minds more 'objective' they 
could not possibly attain to what we call 'scientific objectivity'. No, what 
we usually mean by this term rests on different grounds-. It is a matter of 
scientific method. And, ironically enough, objectivity is closely bound up 
with the social aspect of scientific method, with the fact that science and 
scientific objectivity do not (and cannot) result from the attempts of an 
individual scientist to be 'objective', but from the friendly-hostile co- 
operation of many scientists. Scientific objectivity can be described as 
the inter- subjectivity of scientific method. But this social aspect of 
science is almost entirely neglected by those who call themselves 
sociologists of knowledge. 

Two aspects of the method of the natural sciences are of importance in 
this connection. Together they constitute what I may term the 'public 
character of scientific method'. First, there is something approaching /ree 
criticism. A scientist may offer his theory with the full conviction that it 
is unassailable. But this will not impress his fellow-scientists and 
competitors; rather it challenges them: they know that the scientific 
attitude means criticizing everything, and they are little deterred even by 
authorities. Secondly, scientists try to avoid talking at cross-purposes. (I 
may remind the reader that I am speaking of the natural sciences, but a 
part of modern economics may be included.) They try very seriously to 
speak one and the same language, even if they use different mother 
tongues. In the natural sciences this is achieved by recognizing 
experience as the impartial arbiter of their controversies. When speaking 
of 'experience' I have in mind experience of a 'public' character, like 
observations, and experiments, as opposed to experience in the sense of 
more 'private' aesthetic or religious experience; and an experience is 



'public' if everybody who takes the trouble can repeat it. In order to 
avoid speaking at cross-purposes, scientists try to express their theories 
in such a form that they can be tested, i.e. refuted (or else corroborated) 
by such experience. 

This is what constitutes scientific objectivity. Everyone who has 
learned the technique of understanding and testing scientific theories can 
repeat the experiment and judge for himself. In spite of this, there will 
always be some who come to judgements which are partial, or even 
cranky. This cannot be helped, and it does not seriously disturb the 
working of the various social institutions which have been designed to 
further scientific objectivity and criticism; for instance the laboratories, 
the scientific periodicals, the congresses. This aspect of scientific method 
shows what can be achieved by institutions designed to make public 
control possible, and by the open expression of public opinion, even if 
this is limited to a circle of specialists. Only political power, when it is 
used to suppress free criticism, or when it fails to protect it, can impair 
the functioning of these institutions, on which all progress, scientific, 
technological, and political, ultimately depends. 

In order to elucidate further still this sadly neglected aspect of 
scientific method, we may consider the idea that it is advisable to 
characterize science by its methods rather than by its results. 

Let us first assume that a clairvoyant produces a book by dreaming it, 
or perhaps by automatic writing. Let us assume, further, that years later 
as a result of recent and revolutionary scientific discoveries, a great 
scientist (who has never seen that book) produces one precisely the same. 
Or to put it differently, we assume that the clairvoyant 'saw' a scientific 
book which could not then have been produced by a scientist owing to the 
fact that many relevant discoveries were still unknown at that date. We 
now ask: is it advisable to say that the clairvoyant produced a scientific 
book? We may assume that, if submitted at the time to the judgement of 



competent scientists, it would have been described as partly 
ununderstandable, and partly fantastic; thus we shall have to say that the 
clairvoyant's book was not when written a scientific work, since it was 
not the result of scientific method. I shall call such a result, which, 
though in agreement with some scientific results, is not the product of 
scientific method, a piece of 'revealed science'. 

In order to apply these considerations to the problem of the publicity of 
scientific method, let us assume that Robinson Crusoe succeeded in 
building on his island physical and chemical laboratories, astronomical 
observatories, etc., and in writing a great number of papers, based 
throughout on observation and experiment. Let us even assume that he 
had unlimited time at his disposal, and that he succeeded in constructing 
and in describing scientific systems which actually coincide with the 
results accepted at present by our own scientists. Considering the 
character of this Crusonian science, some people will be inclined, at first 
sight, to assert that it is real science and not 'revealed science'. And, no 
doubt, it is very much more like science than the scientific book which 
was revealed to the clairvoyant, for Robinson Crusoe applied a good deal 
of scientific method. And yet, I assert that this Crusonian science is still 
of the 'revealed' kind; that there is an element of scientific method 
missing, and consequently, that the fact that Crusoe arrived at our results 
is nearly as accidental and miraculous as it was in the case of the 
clairvoyant. For there is nobody but himself to check his results; nobody 
but himself to correct those prejudices which are the unavoidable 
consequence of his peculiar mental history; nobody to help him to get rid 
of that strange blindness concerning the inherent possibilities of our own 
results which is a consequence of the fact that most of them are reached 
through comparatively irrelevant approaches. And concerning his 
scientific papers, it is only in attempts to explain his work to somebody 
who has not done it that he can acquire the discipline of clear and 



reasoned communication which too is part of scientific method. In one 
point — a comparatively unimportant one — is the 'revealed' character of 
the Crusonian science particularly obvious; I mean Crusoe's discovery of 
his 'personal equation' (for we must assume that he made this discovery), 
of the characteristic personal reaction-time affecting his astronomical 
observations. Of course it is conceivable that he discovered, say, changes 
in his reaction-time, and that he was led, in this way, to make allowances 
for it. But if we compare this way of finding out about reaction-time, with 
the way in which it was discovered in 'public' science — through the 
contradiction between the results of various observers — then the 
'revealed' character of Robinson Crusoe's science becomes manifest. 

To sum up these considerations, it may be said that what we call 
'scientific objectivity' is not a product of the individual scientist's 
impartiality, but a product of the social or public character of scientific 
method; and the individual scientist's impartiality is, so far as it exists, 
not the source but rather the result of this socially or institutionally 
organized objectivity of science. 

Both- Kantians and Hegelians make the same mistake of assuming that 
our presuppositions (since they are, to start with, undoubtedly 
indispensable instruments which we need in our active 'making' of 
experiences) can neither be changed by decision nor refuted by 
experience; that they are above and beyond the scientific methods of 
testing theories, constituting as they do the basic presuppositions of all 
thought. But this is an exaggeration, based on a misunderstanding of the 
relations between theory and experience in science. It was one of the 
greatest achievements of our time when Einstein showed that, in the light 
of experience, we may question and revise our pre-suppositions regarding 
even space and time, ideas which had been held to be necessary 
presuppositions of all science, and to belong to its 'categorial apparatus'. 
Thus the sceptical attack upon science launched by the sociology of 



knowledge breaks down in the light of scientific method. The empirical 
method has proved to be quite capable of taking care of itself. 

But it does so not by eradicating our prejudices all at once; it can 
eliminate them only one by one. The classical case in point is again 
Einstein's discovery of our prejudices regarding time. Einstein did not set 
out to discover prejudices; he did not even set out to criticize our 
conceptions of space and time. His problem was a concrete problem of 
physics, the re-drafting of a theory that had broken down because of 
various experiments which in the light of the theory seemed to contradict 
one another. Einstein together with most physicists realized that this 
meant that the theory was false. And he found that if we alter it in a point 
which had so far been held by everybody to be self-evident and which had 
therefore escaped notice, then the difficulty could be removed. In other 
words, he just applied the methods of scientific criticism and of the 
invention and elimination of theories, of trial and error. But this method 
does not lead to the abandonment of all our prejudices; rather, we can 
discover the fact that we had a prejudice only after having got rid of it. 

But it certainly has to be admitted that, at any given moment, our 
scientific theories will depend not only on the experiments, etc., made up 
to that moment, but also upon prejudices which are taken for granted, so 
that we have not become aware of them (although the application of 
certain logical methods may help us to detect them). At any rate, we can 
say in regard to this incrustation that science is capable of learning, of 
breaking down some of its crusts. The process may never be perfected, 
but there is no fixed barrier before which it must stop short. Any 
assumption can, in principle, be criticized. And that anybody may 
criticize constitutes scientific objectivity. 

Scientific results are 'relative' (if this term is to be used at all) only in 
so far as they are the results of a certain stage of scientific development 
and liable to be superseded in the course of scientific progress. But this 



does not mean that truth is 'relative'. If an assertion is true, it is true for 
ever—. It only means that most scientific results have the character of 
hypotheses, i.e. statements for which the evidence is inconclusive, and 
which are therefore liable to revision at any time. These considerations 
(with which I have dealt more fully elsewhere—), though not necessary 
for a criticism of the sociologists, may perhaps help to further the 
understanding of their theories. They also throw some light, to come back 
to my main criticism, on the important role which co-operation, 
intersubjectivity, and the publicity of method play in scientific criticism 
and scientific progress. 

It is true that the social sciences have not yet fully attained this 
publicity of method. This is due partly to the intelligence-destroying 
influence of Aristotle and Hegel, partly perhaps also to their failure to 
make use of the social instruments of scientific objectivity. Thus they are 
really 'total ideologies', or putting it differently, some social scientists 
are unable, and even unwilling, to speak a common language. But the 
reason is not class interest, and the cure is not a Hegelian dialectical 
synthesis, nor self-analysis. The only course open to the social sciences is 
to forget all about the verbal fire-works and to tackle the practical 
problems of our time with the help of the theoretical methods which are 
fundamentally the same in all sciences. I mean the methods of trial and 
error, of inventing hypotheses which can be practically tested, and of 
submitting them to practical tests. A social technology is needed whose 
results can be tested by piecemeal social engineering. 

The cure here suggested for the social sciences is diametrically 
opposed to the one suggested by the sociology of knowledge. 
Sociologism believes that it is not their unpractical character, but rather 
the fact that practical and theoretical problems are too much intertwined 
in the field of social and political knowledge, that creates the 
methodological difficulties of these sciences. Thus we can read in a 



leading work on the sociology of knowledge—: 'The peculiarity of 
political knowledge, as opposed to "exact" knowledge, lies in the fact that 
knowledge and will, or the rational element and the range of the 
irrational, are inseparably and essentially intertwined.' To this we can 
reply that 'knowledge' and 'will' are, in a certain sense, always 
inseparable; and that this fact need not lead to any dangerous 
entanglement. No scientist can know without making an effort, without 
taking an interest; and in his effort there is usually even a certain amount 
of self-interest involved. The engineer studies things mainly from a 
practical point of view. So does the farmer. Practice is not the enemy of 
theoretical knowledge but the most valuable incentive to it. Though a 
certain amount of aloofness may be becoming to the scientist, there are 
many examples to show that it is not always important for a scientist to 
be thus disinterested. But it is important for him to remain in touch with 
reality, with practice, for those who overlook it have to pay by lapsing 
into scholasticism. Practical application of our findings is thus the means 
by which we may eliminate irrationalism from social science, and not any 
attempt to separate knowledge from 'will'. 

As opposed to this, the sociology of knowledge hopes to reform the 
social sciences by making the social scientists aware of the social forces 
and ideologies which unconsciously beset them. But the main trouble 
about prejudices is that there is no such direct way of getting rid of them. 
For how shall we ever know that we have made any progress in our 
attempt to rid ourselves from prejudice? Is it not a common experience 
that those who are most convinced of having got rid of their prejudices 
are most prejudiced? The idea that a sociological or a psychological or an 
anthropological or any other study of prejudices may help us to rid 
ourselves of them is quite mistaken; for many who pursue these studies 
are full of prejudice; and not only does self-analysis not help us to 
overcome the unconscious determination of our views, it often leads to 



even more subtle self-deception. Thus we can read in the same work on 
the sociology of knowledge— the following references to its own 
activities: 'There is an increasing tendency towards making conscious the 
factors by which we have so far been unconsciously ruled . . . Those who 
fear that our increasing knowledge of determining factors may paralyse 
our decisions and threaten "freedom" should put their minds at rest. For 
only he is truly determined who does not know the most essential 
determining factors but acts immediately under the pressure of 
determinants unknown to him.' Now this is clearly just a repetition of a 
pet idea of Hegel's which Engels naively repeated when he said—: 
'Freedom is the appreciation of necessity.' And it is a reactionary 
prejudice. For are those who act under the pressure of well-known 
determinants, for example, of a political tyranny, made free by their 
knowledge? Only Hegel could tell us such tales. But that the sociology of 
knowledge preserves this particular prejudice shows clearly enough that 
there is no possible short-cut to rid us of our ideologies. (Once a 
Hegelian, always a Hegelian.) Self-analysis is no substitute for those 
practical actions which are necessary for establishing the democratic 
institutions which alone can guarantee the freedom of critical thought, 
and the progress of science. 



24 

Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt 
Against Reason 



Marx was a rationalist. With Socrates, and with Kant, he believed in 
human reason as the basis of the unity of mankind. But his doctrine that 
our opinions are determined by class interest hastened the decline of this 
belief. Like Hegel's doctrine that our ideas are determined by national 
interests and traditions, Marx's doctrine tended to undermine the 
rationalist belief in reason. Thus threatened both from the right and from 
the left, a rationalist attitude to social and economic questions could 
hardly resist when historicist prophecy and oracular irrationalism made a 
frontal attack on it. This is why the conflict between rationalism and 
irrationalism has become the most important intellectual, and perhaps 
even moral, issue of our time. 



I 

Since the terms 'reason' and 'rationalism' are vague, it will be necessary 
to explain roughly the way in which they are used here. First, they are 
used in a wide sense-; they are used to cover not only intellectual activity 
but also observation and experiment. It is necessary to keep this remark 



in mind, since 'reason' and 'rationalism' are often used in a different and 
more narrow sense, in opposition not to 'irrationalism' but to 
'empiricism'; if used in this way, rationalism extols intelligence above 
observation and experiment, and might therefore be better described as 
'intellectualism'. But when I speak here of 'rationalism', I use the word 
always in a sense which includes 'empiricism' as well as 
'intellectualism'; just as science makes use of experiments as well as of 
thought. Secondly, I use the word 'rationalism' in order to indicate, 
roughly, an attitude that seeks to solve as many problems as possible by 
an appeal to reason, i.e. to clear thought and experience, rather than by an 
appeal to emotions and passions. This explanation, of course, is not very 
satisfactory, since all terms such as 'reason' or 'passion' are vague; we 
do not possess 'reason' or 'passions' in the sense in which we possess 
certain physical organs, for example, brains or a heart, or in the sense in 
which we possess certain 'faculties', for example, the power of speaking, 
or of gnashing our teeth. In order therefore to be a little more precise, it 
may be better to explain rationalism in terms of practical attitudes or 
behaviour. We could then say that rationalism is an attitude of readiness 
to listen to critical arguments and to learn from experience. It is 
fundamentally an attitude of admitting that '/ may be wrong and you may 
be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth'. It is an attitude 
which does not lightly give up hope that by such means as argument and 
careful observation, people may reach some kind of agreement on many 
problems of importance; and that, even where their demands and their 
interests clash, it is often possible to argue about the various demands 
and proposals, and to reach — ^perhaps by arbitration — a compromise 
which, because of its equity, is acceptable to most, if not to all. In short, 
the rationalist attitude, or, as I may perhaps label it, the 'attitude of 
reasonableness', is very similar to the scientific attitude, to the belief that 
in the search for truth we need co-operation, and that, with the help of 



argument, we can in time attain something like objectivity. 

It is of some interest to analyse this resemblance between this attitude 
of reasonableness and that of science more fully. In the last chapter, I 
tried to explain the social aspect of scientific method with the help of the 
fiction of a scientific Robinson Crusoe. An exactly analogous 
consideration can show the social character of reasonableness, as opposed 
to intellectual gifts, or cleverness. Reason, like language, can be said to 
be a product of social life. A Robinson Crusoe (marooned in early 
childhood) might be clever enough to master many difficult situations; 
but he would invent neither language nor the art of argumentation. 
Admittedly, we often argue with ourselves; but we are accustomed to do 
so only because we have learned to argue with others, and because we 
have learned in this way that the argument counts, rather than the person 
arguing. (This last consideration cannot, of course, tip the scales when we 
argue with ourselves.) Thus we can say that we owe our reason, like our 
language, to intercourse with other men. 

The fact that the rationalist attitude considers the argument rather than 
the person arguing is of far-reaching importance. It leads to the view that 
we must recognize everybody with whom we communicate as a potential 
source of argument and of reasonable information; it thus establishes 
what may be described as the 'rational unity of mankind'. 

In a way, our analysis of 'reason' may be said to resemble slightly that 
of Hegel and the Hegelians, who consider reason as a social product and 
indeed as a kind of department of the soul or the spirit of society (for 
example, of the nation, or the class) and who emphasize, under the 
influence of Burke, our indebtedness to our social heritage, and our 
nearly complete dependence on it. Admittedly, there is some similarity. 
But there are very considerable differences also. Hegel and the Hegelians 
are coUectivists. They argue that, since we owe our reason to 'society' — 
or to a certain society such as a nation — 'society' is everything and the 



individual nothing; or that whatever value the individual possesses is 
derived from the collective, the real carrier of all values. As opposed to 
this, the position presented here does not assume the existence of 
collectives; if I say, for example, that we owe our reason to 'society', 
then I always mean that we owe it to certain concrete individuals — 
though perhaps to a considerable number of anonymous individuals — and 
to our intellectual intercourse with them. Therefore, in speaking of a 
'social' theory of reason (or of scientific method), I mean more precisely 
that the theory is an inter-personal one, and never that it is a collectivist 
theory. Certainly we owe a great deal to tradition, and tradition is very 
important, but the term 'tradition' also has to be analysed into concrete 
personal relations-. And if we do this, then we can get rid of that attitude 
which considers every tradition as sacrosanct, or as valuable in itself, 
replacing this by an attitude which considers traditions as valuable or 
pernicious, as the case may be, according to their influence upon 
individuals. We thus may realize that each of us (by way of example and 
criticism) may contribute to the growth or the suppression of such 
traditions. 

The position here adopted is very different from the popular, originally 
Platonic, view of reason as a kind of 'faculty', which may be possessed 
and developed by different men in vastly different degrees. Admittedly, 
intellectual gifts may be different in this way, and they may contribute to 
reasonableness; but they need not. Clever men may be very unreasonable; 
they may cling to their prejudices and may not expect to hear anything 
worth while from others. According to our view, however, we not only 
owe our reason to others, but we can never excel others in our 
reasonableness in a way that would establish a claim to authority; 
authoritarianism and rationalism in our sense cannot be reconciled, since 
argument, which includes criticism, and the art of listening to criticism, 
is the basis of reasonableness. Thus rationalism in our sense is 



diametrically opposed to all those modern Platonic dreams of brave new 
worlds in which the growth of reason would be controlled or 'planned' by 
some superior reason. Reason, like science, grows by way of mutual 
criticism; the only possible way of 'planning' its growth is to develop 
those institutions that safeguard the freedom of this criticism, that is to 
say, the freedom of thought. It may be remarked that Plato, even though 
his theory is authoritarian, and demands the strict control of the growth of 
human reason in his guardians (as has been shown especially in chapter 
8), pays tribute, by his manner of writing, to our inter-personal theory of 
reason; for most of his earlier dialogues describe arguments conducted in 
a very reasonable spirit. 

My way of using the term 'rationalism' may become a little clearer, 
perhaps, if we distinguish between a true rationalism and a false or a 
pseudo-rationalism. What I shall call the 'true rationalism' is the 
rationalism of Socrates. It is the awareness of one's limitations, the 
intellectual modesty of those who know how often they err, and how 
much they depend on others even for this knowledge. It is the realization 
that we must not expect too much from reason; that argument rarely 
settles a question, although it is the only means for learning — not to see 
clearly, but to see more clearly than before. 

What I shall call 'pseudo-rationalism' is the intellectual intuitionism 
of Plato. It is the immodest belief in one's superior intellectual gifts, the 
claim to be initiated, to know with certainty, and with authority. 
According to Plato, opinion — even 'true opinion', as we can read in the 
Timaeus- — 'is shared by all men; but reason' (or 'intellectual intuition') 
'is shared only by the gods, and by very few men'. This authoritarian 
intellectualism, this belief in the possession of an infallible instrument of 
discovery, or an infallible method, this failure to distinguish between a 
man's intellectual powers and his indebtedness to others for all he can 
possibly know or understand, this pseudo-rationalism is often called 



'rationalism', but it is diametrically opposed to what we call by this 
name. 

My analysis of the rationalist attitude is undoubtedly very incomplete, 
and, I readily admit, a little vague; but it will suffice for our purpose. In a 
similar way I shall now describe irrationalism, indicating at the same 
time how an irrationalist is likely to defend it. 

The irrationalist attitude may be developed along the following lines. 
Though perhaps recognizing reason and scientific argument as tools that 
may do well enough if we wish to scratch the surface of things, or as 
means to serve some irrational end, the irrationalist will insist that 
'human nature' is in the main not rational. Man, he holds, is more than a 
rational animal, and also less. In order to see that he is less, we need only 
consider how small is the number of men who are capable of argument; 
this is why, according to the irrationalist, the majority of men will always 
have to be tackled by an appeal to their emotions and passions rather than 
by an appeal to their reason. But man is also more than just a rational 
animal, since all that really matters in his life goes beyond reason. Even 
the few scientists who take reason and science seriously are bound to 
their rationalist attitude merely because they love it. Thus even in these 
rare cases, it is the emotional make-up of man and not his reason that 
determines his attitude. Moreover, it is his intuition, his mystical insight 
into the nature of things, rather than his reasoning which makes a great 
scientist. Thus rationalism cannot offer an adequate interpretation even of 
the apparently rational activity of the scientist. But since the scientific 
field is exceptionally favourable to a rationalist interpretation, we must 
expect that rationalism will fail even more conspicuously when it tries to 
deal with other fields of human activity. And this expectation, so the 
irrationalist will continue his argument, proves to be quite accurate. 
Leaving aside the lower aspects of human nature, we may look to one of 
its highest, to the fact that man can be creative. It is the small creative 



minority of men who really matter; the men who create works of art or of 
thought, the founders of religions, and the great statesmen. These few 
exceptional individuals allow us to glimpse the real greatness of man. But 
although these leaders of mankind know how to make use of reason for 
their purposes, they are never men of reason. Their roots lie deeper — 
deep in their instincts and impulses, and in those of the society of which 
they are parts. Creativeness is an entirely irrational, a mystical faculty . . . 



II 



The issue between rationalism and irrationalism is of long standing. 
Although Greek philosophy undoubtedly started off as a rationalist 
undertaking, there were streaks of mysticism even in its first beginnings. 
It is (as hinted in chapter 10) the yearning for the lost unity and shelter of 
tribalism which expresses itself in these mystical elements within a 
fundamentally rational approach-. An open conflict between rationalism 
and irrationalism broke out for the first time in the Middle Ages, as the 
opposition between scholasticism and mysticism. (It is perhaps not 
without interest that rationalism flourished in the former Roman 
provinces, while men from the 'barbarian' countries were prominent 
among the mystics.) In the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth 
centuries, when the tide of rationalism, of intellectualism, and of 
'materialism' was rising, irrationalists had to pay some attention to it, to 
argue against it; and by exhibiting its limitations, and exposing the 
immodest claims and dangers of pseudo-rationalism (which they did not 
distinguish from rationalism in our sense), some of these critics, notably 
Burke, have earned the gratitude of all true rationalists. But the tide has 
now turned, and 'profoundly significant allusions ... and allegories' (as 



Kant puts it) have become the fashion of the day. An oracular 
irrationalism has established (especially with Bergson and the majority of 
German philosophers and intellectuals) the habit of ignoring or at best 
deploring the existence of such an inferior being as a rationalist. To them 
the rationalists — or the 'materialists', as they often say — and especially, 
the rationalist scientist, are the poor in spirit, pursuing soulless and 
largely mechanical activities-, and completely unaware of the deeper 
problems of human destiny and of its philosophy. And the rationalists 
usually reciprocate by dismissing irrationalism as sheer nonsense. Never 
before has the break been so complete. And the break in the diplomatic 
relations of the philosophers proved its significance when it was followed 
by a break in the diplomatic relations of the states. 

In this issue, I am entirely on the side of rationalism. This is so much 
the case that even where I feel that rationalism has gone too far I still 
sympathize with it, holding as I do that an excess in this direction (as 
long as we exclude the intellectual immodesty of Plato's pseudo- 
rationalism) is harmless indeed as compared with an excess in the other. 
In my opinion, the only way in which excessive rationalism is likely to 
prove harmful is that it tends to undermine its own position and thus to 
further an irrationalist reaction. It is only this danger which induces me to 
examine the claims of an excessive rationalism more closely and to 
advocate a modest and self-critical rationalism which recognizes certain 
limitations. Accordingly, I shall distinguish in what follows between two 
rationalist positions, which I label 'critical rationalism' and 'uncritical 
rationalism' or 'comprehensive rationalism'. (This distinction is 
independent of the previous one between a 'true' and a 'false' 
rationalism, even though a 'true' rationalism in my sense will hardly be 
other than critical.) 

Uncritical or comprehensive rationalism can be described as the 
attitude of the person who says 'I am not prepared to accept anything that 



cannot be defended by means of argument or experience'. We can express 
this also in the form of the principle that any assumption which cannot be 
supported either by argument or by experience is to be discarded-. Now it 
is easy to see that this principle of an uncritical rationalism is 
inconsistent; for since it cannot, in its turn, be supported by argument or 
by experience, it implies that it should itself be discarded. (It is 
analogous to the paradox of the liar-, i.e. to a sentence which asserts its 
own falsity.) Uncritical rationalism is therefore logically untenable; and 
since a purely logical argument can show this, uncritical rationalism can 
be defeated by its own chosen weapon, argument. 

This criticism may be generalized. Since all argument must proceed 
from assumptions, it is plainly impossible to demand that all assumptions 
should be based on argument. The demand raised by many philosophers 
that we should start with no assumption whatever and never assume 
anything about 'sufficient reason', and even the weaker demand that we 
should start with a very small set of assumptions ('categories'), are both 
in this form inconsistent. For they themselves rest upon the truly colossal 
assumption that it is possible to start without, or with only a few 
assumptions, and still to obtain results that are worth while. (Indeed, this 
principle of avoiding all presuppositions is not, as some may think, a 
counsel of perfection, but a form of the paradox of the liar-.) 

Now all this is a little abstract, but it may be restated in connection 
with the problem of rationalism in a less formal way. The rationalist 
attitude is characterized by the importance it attaches to argument and 
experience. But neither logical argument nor experience can establish the 
rationalist attitude; for only those who are ready to consider argument or 
experience, and who have therefore adopted this attitude already, will be 
impressed by them. That is to say, a rationalist attitude must be first 
adopted if any argument or experience is to be effective, and it cannot 
therefore be based upon argument or experience. (And this consideration 



is quite independent of the question whether or not there exist any 
convincing rational arguments which favour the adoption of the 
rationalist attitude.) We have to conclude from this that no rational 
argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt 
a rational attitude. Thus a comprehensive rationalism is untenable. 

But this means that whoever adopts the rationalist attitude does so 
because he has adopted, consciously or unconsciously, some proposal, or 
decision, or belief, or behaviour; an adoption which may be called 
'irrational'. Whether this adoption is tentative or leads to a settled habit, 
we may describe it as an irrational faith in reason. So rationalism is 
necessarily far from comprehensive or self-contained. This has frequently 
been overlooked by rationalists who thus exposed themselves to a beating 
in their own field and by their own favourite weapon whenever an 
irrationalist took the trouble to turn it against them. And indeed it did not 
escape the attention of some enemies of rationalism that one can always 
refuse to accept arguments, either all arguments or those of a certain 
kind; and that such an attitude can be carried through without becoming 
logically inconsistent. This led them to see that the uncritical rationalist 
who believes that rationalism is self-contained and can be established by 
argument must be wrong. Irrationalism is logically superior to uncritical 
rationalism. 

Then why not adopt irrationalism? Many who started as rationalists but 
were disillusioned by the discovery that a too comprehensive rationalism 
defeats itself have indeed practically capitulated to irrationalism. (This is 
what has happened to Whitehead-, if I am not quite mistaken.) But such 
panic action is entirely uncalled for. Although an uncritical and 
comprehensive rationalism is logically untenable, and although a 
comprehensive irrationalism is logically tenable, this is no reason why 
we should adopt the latter. For there are other tenable attitudes, notably 
that of critical rationalism which recognizes the fact that the fundamental 



rationalist attitude results from an (at least tentative) act of faith — from 
faith in reason. Accordingly, our choice is open. We may choose some 
form of irrationalism, even some radical or comprehensive form. But we 
are also free to choose a critical form of rationalism, one which frankly 
admits its origin in an irrational decision (and which, to that extent, 
admits a certain priority of irrationalism). 

Ill 

The choice before us is not simply an intellectual affair, or a matter of 
taste. It is a moral decision— (in the sense of chapter 5). For the question 
whether we adopt some more or less radical form of irrationalism, or 
whether we adopt that minimum concession to irrationalism which I have 
termed 'critical rationalism', will deeply affect our whole attitude 
towards other men, and towards the problems of social life. It has already 
been said that rationalism is closely connected with the belief in the unity 
of mankind. Irrationalism, which is not bound by any rules of 
consistency, may be combined with any kind of belief, including a belief 
in the brotherhood of man; but the fact that it may easily be combined 
with a very different belief, and especially the fact that it lends itself 
easily to the support of a romantic belief in the existence of an elect 
body, in the division of men into leaders and led, into natural masters and 
natural slaves, shows clearly that a moral decision is involved in the 
choice between it and a critical rationalism. 

As we have seen before (in chapter 5), and now again in our analysis of 
the uncritical version of rationalism, arguments cannot determine such a 
fundamental moral decision. But this does not imply that our choice 
cannot be helped by any kind of argument whatever. On the contrary. 



whenever we are faced with a moral decision of a more abstract kind, it is 
most helpful to analyse carefully the consequences which are likely to 
result from the alternatives between which we have to choose. For only if 
we can visualize these consequences in a concrete and practical way, do 
we really know what our decision is about; otherwise we decide blindly. 
In order to illustrate this point, I may quote a passage from Shaw's Saint 
Joan. The speaker is the Chaplain; he has stubbornly demanded Joan's 
death; but when he sees her at the stake, he breaks down: 'I meant no 
harm. I did not know what it would be like ... I did not know what I was 
doing ... If I had known, I would have torn her from their hands. You 
don't know. You haven't seen: it is so easy to talk when you don't know. 
You madden yourself with words . . . But when it is brought home to you; 
when you see the thing you have done; when it is blinding your eyes, 
stifling your nostrils, tearing your heart, then — then — O God, take away 
this sight from me!' There were, of course, other figures in Shaw's play 
who knew exactly what they were doing, and yet decided to do it; and 
who did not regret it afterwards. Some people dislike seeing their fellow 
men burning at the stake, and others do not. This point (which was 
neglected by many Victorian optimists) is important, for it shows that a 
rational analysis of the consequences of a decision does not make the 
decision rational; the consequences do not determine our decision; it is 
always we who decide. But an analysis of the concrete consequences, and 
their clear realization in what we call our 'imagination', makes the 
difference between a blind decision and a decision made with open eyes; 
and since we use our imagination very little—, we only too often decide 
blindly. This is especially so if we are intoxicated by an oracular 
philosophy, one of the most powerful means of maddening ourselves with 
words — to use Shaw's expression. 

The rational and imaginative analysis of the consequences of a moral 
theory has a certain analogy in scientific method. For in science, too, we 



do not accept an abstract theory because it is convincing in itself; we 
rather decide to accept or reject it after we have investigated those 
concrete and practical consequences which can be more directly tested by 
experiment. But there is a fundamental difference. In the case of a 
scientific theory, our decision depends upon the results of experiments. If 
these confirm the theory, we may accept it until we find a better one. If 
they contradict the theory, we reject it. But in the case of a moral theory, 
we can only confront its consequences with our conscience. And while 
the verdict of experiments does not depend upon ourselves, the verdict of 
our conscience does. 

I hope I have made it clear in which sense the analysis of consequences 
may influence our decision without determining it. And in presenting the 
consequences of the two alternatives between which we must decide, 
rationalism and irrationalism, I warn the reader that I shall be partial. So 
far, in presenting the two alternatives of the moral decision before us — it 
is, in many senses, the most fundamental decision in the ethical field — I 
have tried to be impartial, although I have not hidden my sympathies. But 
now I am going to present those considerations of the consequences of 
the two alternatives which appear to me most telling, and by which I 
myself have been influenced in rejecting irrationalism and accepting the 
faith in reason. 

Let us examine the consequences of irrationalism first. The 
irrationalist insists that emotions and passions rather than reason are the 
mainsprings of human action. To the rationalist's reply that, though this 
may be so, we should do what we can to remedy it, and should try to 
make reason play as large a part as it possibly can, the irrationalist would 
rejoin (if he condescends to a discussion) that this attitude is hopelessly 
unrealistic. For it does not consider the weakness of 'human nature', the 
feeble intellectual endowment of most and their obvious dependence 
upon emotions and passions. 



It is my firm conviction that this irrational emphasis upon emotion and 
passion leads ultimately to what I can only describe as crime. One reason 
for this opinion is that this attitude, which is at best one of resignation 
towards the irrational nature of human beings, at worst one of scorn for 
human reason, must lead to an appeal to violence and brutal force as the 
ultimate arbiter in any dispute. For if a dispute arises, then this means 
that those more constructive emotions and passions which might in 
principle help to get over it, reverence, love, devotion to a common 
cause, etc., have shown themselves incapable of solving the problem. But 
if that is so, then what is left to the irrationalist except the appeal to other 
and less constructive emotions and passions, to fear, hatred, envy, and 
ultimately, to violence? This tendency is very much strengthened by 
another and perhaps even more important attitude which also is in my 
opinion inherent in irrationalism, namely, the stress on the inequality of 
men. 

It cannot, of course, be denied that human individuals are, like all other 
things in our world, in very many respects very unequal. Nor can it be 
doubted that this inequality is of great importance and even in many 
respects highly desirable—. (The fear that the development of mass 
production and collectivization may react upon men by destroying their 
inequality or individuality is one of the nightmares— of our times.) But 
all this simply has no bearing upon the question whether or not we should 
decide to treat men, especially in political issues, as equals, or as much 
like equals as is possible; that is to say, as possessing equal rights, and 
equal claims to equal treatment; and it has no bearing upon the question 
whether we ought to construct political institutions accordingly. 'Equality 
before the law' is not a fact but a political demand— based upon a moral 
decision', and it is quite independent of the theory — ^which is probably 
false — that 'all men are born equal'. Now I do not intend to say that the 
adoption of this humanitarian attitude of impartiality is a direct 



consequence of a decision in favour of rationalism. But a tendency 
towards impartiality is closely related to rationalism, and can hardly be 
excluded from the rationalist creed. Again, I do not intend to say that an 
irrationalist could not consistently adopt an equalitarian or impartial 
attitude; and even if he could not do so consistently, he is not bound to be 
consistent. But I do wish to stress the fact that the irrationalist attitude 
can hardly avoid becoming entangled with the attitude that is opposed to 
equalitarianism. This fact is connected with its emphasis upon emotions 
and passions; for we cannot feel the same emotions towards everybody. 
Emotionally, we all divide men into those who are near to us, and those 
who are far from us. The division of mankind into friend and foe is a 
most obvious emotional division; and this division is even recognized in 
the Christian commandment, 'Love thy enemies!' Even the best Christian 
who really lives up to this commandment (there are not many, as is 
shown by the attitude of the average good Christian towards 
'materialists' and 'atheists'), even he cannot feel equal love for all men. 
We cannot really love 'in the abstract'; we can love only those whom we 
know. Thus the appeal even to our best emotions, love and compassion, 
can only tend to divide mankind into different categories. And this will 
be more true if the appeal is made to lesser emotions and passions. Our 
'natural' reaction will be to divide mankind into friend and foe; into 
those who belong to our tribe, to our emotional community, and those 
who stand outside it; into believers and unbelievers; into compatriots and 
aliens; into class comrades and class enemies; and into leaders and led. 

I have mentioned before that the theory that our thoughts and opinions 
are dependent upon our class situation, or upon our national interests, 
must lead to irrationalism. I now wish to emphasize the fact that the 
opposite is also true. The abandonment of the rationalist attitude, of the 
respect for reason and argument and the other fellow's point of view, the 
stress upon the 'deeper' layers of human nature, all this must lead to the 



view that thought is merely a somewhat superficial manifestation of what 
lies within these irrational depths. It must nearly always, I believe, 
produce an attitude which considers the person of the thinker instead of 
his thought. It must produce the belief that 'we think with our blood', or 
'with our national heritage', or 'with our class'. This view may be 
presented in a materialist form or in a highly spiritual fashion; the idea 
that we 'think with our race' may perhaps be replaced by the idea of elect 
or inspired souls who 'think by God's grace'. I refuse, on moral grounds, 
to be impressed by these differences; for the decisive similarity between 
all these intellectually immodest views is that they do not judge a thought 
on its own merits. By thus abandoning reason, they split mankind into 
friends and foes; into the few who share in reason with the gods, and the 
many who don't (as Plato says); into the few who stand near and the 
many who stand far; into those who speak the untranslatable language of 
our own emotions and passions and those whose tongue is not our tongue. 
Once we have done this, political equalitarianism becomes practically 
impossible. 

Now the adoption of an anti-equalitarian attitude in political life, i.e. in 
the field of problems concerned with the power of man over man, is just 
what I should call criminal. For it offers a justification of the attitude that 
different categories of people have different rights; that the master has 
the right to enslave the slave; that some men have the right to use others 
as their tools. Ultimately, it will be used, as in Plato—, to justify murder. 

I do not overlook the fact that there are irrationalists who love 
mankind, and that not all forms of irrationalism engender criminality. 
But I hold that he who teaches that not reason but love should rule opens 
the way for those who rule by hate. (Socrates, I believe, saw something of 
this when he suggested— that mistrust or hatred of argument is related to 
mistrust or hatred of man.) Those who do not see this connection at once, 
who believe in a direct rule of emotional love, should consider that love 



as such certainly does not promote impartiality. And it cannot do away 
with conflict either. That love as such may be unable to settle a conflict 
can be shown by considering a harmless test case, which may pass as 
representative of more serious ones. Tom likes the theatre and Dick likes 
dancing. Tom lovingly insists on going to a dance while Dick wants for 
Tom's sake to go to the theatre. This conflict cannot be settled by love; 
rather, the greater the love, the stronger will be the conflict. There are 
only two solutions; one is the use of emotion, and ultimately of violence, 
and the other is the use of reason, of impartiality, of reasonable 
compromise. All this is not intended to indicate that I do not appreciate 
the difference between love and hate, or that I think that life would be 
worth living without love. (And I am quite prepared to admit that the 
Christian idea of love is not meant in a purely emotional way.) But I 
insist that no emotion, not even love, can replace the rule of institutions 
controlled by reason. 

This, of course, is not the only argument against the idea of a rule of 
love. Loving a person means wishing to make him happy. (This, by the 
way, was Thomas Aquinas' definition of love.) But of all political ideals, 
that of making the people happy is perhaps the most dangerous one. It 
leads invariably to the attempt to impose our scale of 'higher' values 
upon others, in order to make them realize what seems to us of greatest 
importance for their happiness; in order, as it were, to save their souls. It 
leads to Utopianism and Romanticism. We all feel certain that everybody 
would be happy in the beautiful, the perfect community of our dreams. 
And no doubt, there would be heaven on earth if we could all love one 
another. But, as I have said before (in chapter 9), the attempt to make 
heaven on earth invariably produces hell. It leads to intolerance. It leads 
to religious wars, and to the saving of souls through the inquisition. And 
it is, I believe, based on a complete misunderstanding of our moral 
duties. It is our duty to help those who need our help; but it cannot be our 



duty to make others happy, since this does not depend on us, and since it 
would only too often mean intruding on the privacy of those towards 
whom we have such amiable intentions. The political demand for 
piecemeal (as opposed to Utopian) methods corresponds to the decision 
that the fight against suffering must be considered a duty, while the right 
to care for the happiness of others must be considered a privilege 
confined to the close circle of their friends. In their case, we may perhaps 
have a certain right to try to impose our scale of values — our preferences 
regarding music, for example. (And we may even feel it our duty to open 
to them a world of values which, we trust, can so much contribute to their 
happiness.) This right of ours exists only if, and because, they can get rid 
of us; because friendships can be ended. But the use of political means 
for imposing our scale of values upon others is a very different matter. 
Pain, suffering, injustice, and their prevention, these are the eternal 
problems of public morals, the 'agenda' of public policy (as Bentham 
would have said). The 'higher' values should very largely be considered 
as 'non-agenda', and should be left to the realm of laissez-faire. Thus we 
might say: help your enemies; assist those in distress, even if they hate 
you; but love only your friends. 

This is only part of the case against irrationalism, and of the 
consequences which induce me to adopt the opposite attitude, that is, a 
critical rationalism. This latter attitude with its emphasis upon argument 
and experience, with its device 'I may be wrong and you may be right, 
and by an effort we may get nearer to the truth', is, as mentioned before, 
closely akin to the scientific attitude. It is bound up with the idea that 
everybody is liable to make mistakes, which may be found out by 
himself, or by others, or by himself with the assistance of the criticism of 
others. It therefore suggests the idea that nobody should be his own judge, 
and it suggests the idea of impartiality. (This is closely related to the idea 
of 'scientific objectivity' as analysed in the previous chapter.) Its faith in 



reason is not only a faith in our own reason, but also — and even more — in 
that of others. Thus a rationalist, even if he believes himself to be 
intellectually superior to others, will reject all claims to authority— since 
he is aware that, if his intelligence is superior to that of others (which is 
hard for him to judge), it is so only in so far as he is capable of learning 
from criticism as well as from his own and other people's mistakes, and 
that one can learn in this sense only if one takes others and their 
arguments seriously. Rationalism is therefore bound up with the idea that 
the other fellow has a right to be heard, and to defend his arguments. It 
thus implies the recognition of the claim to tolerance, at least— of all 
those who are not intolerant themselves. One does not kill a man when 
one adopts the attitude of first listening to his arguments. (Kant was right 
when he based the 'Golden Rule' on the idea of reason. To be sure, it is 
impossible to prove the rightness of any ethical principle, or even to 
argue in its favour in just the manner in which we argue in favour of a 
scientific statement. Ethics is not a science. But although there is no 
'rational scientific basis' of ethics, there is an ethical basis of science, 
and of rationalism.) Also the idea of impartiality leads to that of 
responsibility; we have not only to listen to arguments, but we have a 
duty to respond, to answer, where our actions affect others. Ultimately, in 
this way, rationalism is linked up with the recognition of the necessity of 
social institutions to protect freedom of criticism, freedom of thought, 
and thus the freedom of men. And it establishes something like a moral 
obligation towards the support of these institutions. This is why 
rationalism is closely linked up with the political demand for practical 
social engineering — ^piecemeal engineering, of course — in the 
humanitarian sense, with the demand for the rationalization of society—, 
for planning for freedom, and for its control by reason; not by 'science', 
not by a Platonic, a pseudo-rational authority, but by that Socratic reason 
which is aware of its limitations, and which therefore respects the other 



man and does not aspire to coerce him — not even into happiness. The 
adoption of rationalism implies, moreover, that there is a common 
medium of communication, a common language of reason; it establishes 
something like a moral obligation towards that language, the obligation 
to keep up its standards of clarity— and to use it in such a way that it can 
retain its function as the vehicle of argument. That is to say, to use it 
plainly; to use it as an instrument of rational communication, of 
significant information, rather than as a means of 'self-expression', as the 
vicious romantic jargon of most of our educationists has it. (It is 
characteristic of the modern romantic hysteria that it combines a 
Hegelian collectivism concerning 'reason' with an excessive 
individualism concerning 'emotions': thus the emphasis on language as a 
means of self-expression instead of a means of communication. Both 
attitudes, of course, are parts of the revolt against reason.) And it implies 
the recognition that mankind is united by the fact that our different 
mother tongues, in so far as they are rational, can be translated into one 
another. It recognizes the unity of human reason. 

A few remarks may be added concerning the relation of the rationalist 
attitude to the attitude of readiness to use what is usually called 
'imagination'. It is frequently assumed that imagination has a close 
affinity with emotion and therefore with irrationalism, and that 
rationalism rather tends towards an unimaginative dry scholasticism. I do 
not know whether such a view may have some psychological basis, and I 
rather doubt it. But my interests are institutional rather than 
psychological, and from an institutional point of view (as well as from 
that of method) it appears that rationalism must encourage the use of 
imagination because it needs it, while irrationalism must tend to 
discourage it. The very fact that rationalism is critical, whilst 
irrationalism must tend towards dogmatism (where there is no argument, 
nothing is left but full acceptance or flat denial), leads in this direction. 



Criticism always demands a certain degree of imagination, whilst 
dogmatism suppresses it. Similarly, scientific research and technical 
construction and invention are inconceivable without a very considerable 
use of imagination; one must offer something new in these fields (as 
opposed to the field of oracular philosophy where an endless repetition of 
impressive words seems to do the trick). At least as important is the part 
played by imagination in the practical application of equalitarianism and 
of impartiality. The basic attitude of the rationalist, 'I may be wrong and 
you may be right', demands, when put into practice, and especially when 
human conflicts are involved, a real effort of our imagination. I admit 
that the emotions of love and compassion may sometimes lead to a 
similar effort. But I hold that it is humanly impossible for us to love, or 
to suffer with, a great number of people; nor does it appear to me very 
desirable that we should, since it would ultimately destroy either our 
ability to help or the intensity of these very emotions. But reason, 
supported by imagination, enables us to understand that men who are far 
away, whom we shall never see, are like ourselves, and that their relations 
to one another are like our relations to those we love. A direct emotional 
attitude towards the abstract whole of mankind seems to me hardly 
possible. We can love mankind only in certain concrete individuals. But 
by the use of thought and imagination, we may become ready to help all 
who need our help. 

All these considerations show, I believe, that the link between 
rationalism and humanitarianism is very close, and certainly much closer 
than the corresponding entanglement of irrationalism with the anti- 
equalitarian and anti-humanitarian attitude. I believe that as far as 
possible this result is corroborated by experience. A rationalist attitude 
seems to be usually combined with a basically equalitarian and 
humanitarian outlook; irrationalism, on the other hand, exhibits in most 
cases at least some of the anti-equalitarian tendencies described, even 



though it may often be associated with humanitarianism also. My point is 
that the latter connection is anything but well founded. 

IV 

I have tried to analyse those consequences of rationalism and 
irrationalism which induce me to decide as I do. I wish to repeat that the 
decision is largely a moral decision. It is the decision to try to take 
argument seriously. This is the difference between the two views; for 
irrationalism will use reason too, but without any feeling of obligation; it 
will use it or discard it as it pleases. But I believe that the only attitude 
which I can consider to be morally right is one which recognizes that we 
owe it to other men to treat them and ourselves as rational. 

Considered in this way, my counter-attack upon irrationalism is a 
moral attack. The intellectualist who finds our rationalism much too 
commonplace for his taste, and who looks out for the latest esoteric 
intellectual fashion, which he discovers in the admiration of medieval 
mysticism, is not, one fears, doing his duty by his fellow men. He may 
think himself and his subtle taste superior to our 'scientific age', to an 
'age of industrialization' which carries its brainless division of labour 
and its 'mechanization' and 'materialization' even into the field of 
human thought—. But he only shows that he is incapable of appreciating 
the moral forces inherent in modern science. The attitude I am attacking 
can perhaps be illustrated by the following passage which I take from A. 
Keller^: a passage that seems to me a typical expression of this romantic 
hostility towards science: 'We seem to be entering upon a new era where 
the human soul is regaining its mystical and religious faculties, and 
protesting, by inventing new myths, against the materialization and 



mechanization of life. The mind suffered when it had to serve humanity 
as technician, as chauffeur; it is reawakening again as poet and prophet, 
obeying the command and leadership of dreams which seem to be quite 
as wise and reliable as, but more inspiring and stimulating than, 
intellectual wisdom and scientific programmes. The myth of revolution is 
a reaction against the unimaginative banality and conceited self- 
sufficiency of bourgeois society and of an old tired culture. It is the 
adventure of men who have lost all security and are embarking on dreams 
instead of concrete facts.' In analysing this passage I wish first, but only 
in passing, to draw attention to its typical historicist character and to its 
moral futurism— ('entering a new era', 'old and tired culture', etc.). But 
more important even than to realize the technique of the word-magic 
which the passage uses is to ask whether what it says is true. Is it true that 
our soul protests against the materialization and mechanization of our 
life, that it protests against the progress we have made in the fight against 
the untold suffering through hunger and pestilence which characterized 
the Middle Ages? Is it true that the mind suffered when it had to serve 
humanity as a technician, and was it happier to serve as a serf or a slave? 
I do not intend to belittle the very serious problem of purely mechanical 
work, of a drudgery which is felt to be meaningless, and which destroys 
the creative power of the workers; but the only practical hope lies, not in 
a return to slavery and serfdom, but in an attempt to make machinery take 
over this mechanical drudgery. Marx was right in insisting that increased 
productivity is the only reasonable hope of humanizing labour, and of 
further shortening the labour day. (Besides, I do not think that the mind 
always suffers when it has to serve humanity as a technician; I suspect 
that often enough, the 'technicians', including the great inventors and the 
great scientists, rather enjoyed it, and that they were just as adventurous 
as the mystics.) And who believes that the 'command and leadership of 
dreams', as dreamt by our contemporary prophets, dreamers, and leaders. 



are really 'quite as wise and reliable as intellectual wisdom and scientific 
programmes'? But we need only turn to the 'myth of revolution', etc., in 
order to see more clearly what we are facing here. It is a typical 
expression of the romantic hysteria and the radicalism produced by the 
dissolution of the tribe and by the strain of civilization (as I have 
described it in chapter 10). This kind of 'Christianity' which recommends 
the creation of myth as a substitute for Christian responsibility is a tribal 
Christianity. It is a Christianity that refuses to carry the cross of being 
human. Beware of these false prophets! What they are after, without 
being aware of it, is the lost unity of tribalism. And the return to the 
closed society which they advocate is the return to the cage, and to the 
beasts—. 

It may be useful to consider how the adherents of this kind of 
romanticism are likely to react to such criticism. Arguments will hardly 
be offered; since it is impossible to discuss such profundities with a 
rationalist, the most likely reaction will be a high-handed withdrawal, 
combined with the assertion that there is no language common to those 
whose souls have not yet 'regained their mystical faculties', and those 
whose souls possess such faculties. Now this reaction is analogous to that 
of the psycho-analyst (mentioned in the last chapter) who defeats his 
opponents not by replying to their arguments but by pointing out that 
their repressions prevent them from accepting psycho-analysis. It is 
analogous also to that of the socio-analyst who points out that the total 
ideologies of his opponents prevent them from accepting the sociology of 
knowledge. This method, as I admitted before, is good fun for those who 
practise it. But we can see here more clearly that it must lead to the 
irrational division of men into those who are near to us and those who are 
far from us. This division is present in every religion, but it is 
comparatively harmless in Mohammedanism, Christianity, or the 
rationalist faith, which all see in every man a potential convert, and the 



same may be said of psycho-analysis, which sees in every man a potential 
object of treatment (only that in the last case the fee for conversion 
constitutes a serious obstacle). But the division is getting less harmless 
when we proceed to the sociology of knowledge. The socio-analyst 
claims that only certain intellectuals can get rid of their total ideology, 
can be freed from 'thinking with their class'; he thus gives up the idea of 
a potential rational unity of man, and delivers himself body and soul to 
irrationalism. And this situation gets very much worse when we proceed 
to the biological or naturalist version of this theory, to the racial doctrine 
that we 'think with our blood' or that we 'think with our race'. But at 
least as dangerous, since more subtle, is the same idea when it appears in 
the cloak of a religious mysticism; not in the mysticism of the poet or 
musician, but in that of the Hegelianizing intellectualist who persuades 
himself and his followers that their thoughts are endowed, because of 
special grace, with 'mystical and religious faculties' not possessed by 
others, and who thus claim that they 'think by God's grace'. This claim 
with its gentle allusion to those who do not possess God's grace, this 
attack upon the potential spiritual unity of mankind, is, in my opinion, as 
pretentious, blasphemous and anti-Christian, as it believes itself to be 
humble, pious, and Christian. 

As opposed to the intellectual irresponsibility of a mysticism which 
escapes into dreams and of an oracular philosophy which escapes into 
verbiage, modern science enforces upon our intellect the discipline of 
practical tests. Scientific theories can be tested by their practical 
consequences. The scientist, in his own field, is responsible for what he 
says; you can know him by his fruits, and thus distinguish him from the 
false prophets—. One of the few who have appreciated this aspect of 
science is the Christian philosopher J. Macmurray (with whose views on 
historical prophecy I widely disagree, as will be seen in the next chapter): 
'Science itself, he says—, 'in its own specific fields of research, employs 



a method of understanding which restores the broken integrity of theory 
and practice.' This, I believe, is why science is such an offence in the 
eyes of mysticism, which evades practice by creating myths instead. 
'Science, in its own field,' says Macmurray in another place, 'is the 
product of Christianity, and its most adequate expression so far; ... its 
capacity for co-operative progress, which knows no frontiers of race or 
nationality or sex, its ability to predict, and its ability to control, are the 
fullest manifestations of Christianity that Europe has yet seen.' I fully 
agree with this, for I too believe that our Western civilization owes its 
rationalism, its faith in the rational unity of man and in the open society, 
and especially its scientific outlook, to the ancient Socratic and Christian 
belief in the brotherhood of all men, and in intellectual honesty and 
responsibility. (A frequent argument against the morality of science is 
that many of its fruits have been used for bad purposes, for instance, in 
war. But this argument hardly deserves serious consideration. There is 
nothing under the sun which cannot be misused, and which has not been 
misused. Even love can be made an instrument of murder; and pacifism 
can be made one of the weapons of an aggressive war. On the other hand, 
it is only too obvious that it is irrationalism and not rationalism that has 
the responsibility for all national hostility and aggression. There have 
been only too many aggressive religious wars, both before and after the 
Crusades, but I do not know of any war waged for a 'scientific' aim, and 
inspired by scientists.) 

It will have been observed that in the passages quoted, Macmurray 
emphasizes that what he appreciates is science 'in its own specific fields 
of research'. I think that this emphasis is particularly valuable. For 
nowadays one often hears, usually in connection with the mysticism of 
Eddington and Jeans, that modern science, as opposed to that of the 
nineteenth century, has become more humble, in that it now recognizes 
the mysteries of this world. But this opinion, I believe, is entirely on the 



wrong track. Darwin and Faraday, for instance, sought for truth as 
humbly as anybody, and I do not doubt that they were much more humble 
than the two great contemporary astronomers mentioned. For great as 
these are 'in their own specific fields of research', they do not, I believe, 
prove their humility by extending their activities to the field of 
philosophical mysticism—. Speaking more generally, however, it may 
indeed be the case that scientists are becoming more humble, since the 
progress of science is largely by way of the discovery of errors, and since, 
in general, the more we know, the more clearly we realize what we do not 
know. (The spirit of science is that of Socrates—.) 

Although I am mainly concerned with the moral aspect of the conflict 
between rationalism and irrationalism, I feel that I should briefly touch 
upon a more 'philosophical' aspect of the problem; but I wish to make it 
clear that I consider this aspect as of minor importance here. What I have 
in mind is the fact that the critical rationalist can turn the tables upon the 
irrationalist in another way as well. He may contend that the irrationalist 
who prides himself on his respect for the more profound mysteries of the 
world and his understanding of them (as opposed to the scientist who just 
scratches its surface) in fact neither respects nor understands its 
mysteries, but satisfies himself with cheap rationalizations. For what is a 
myth if not an attempt to rationalize the irrational? And who shows 
greater reverence for mystery, the scientist who devotes himself to 
discovering it step by step, always ready to submit to facts, and always 
aware that even his boldest achievement will never be more than a 
stepping-stone for those who come after him, or the mystic who is free to 
maintain anything because he need not fear any test? But in spite of this 
dubious freedom, the mystics endlessly repeat the same thing. (It is 
always the myth of the lost tribal paradise, the hysterical refusal to carry 
the cross of civilization—.) All mystics, as F. Kafka, the mystical poet, 
wrote— in despair, 'set out to say ... that the incomprehensible is 



incomprehensible, and that we knew before'. And the irrationalist not 
only tries to rationalize what cannot be rationalized, but he also gets hold 
of the wrong end of the stick altogether. For it is the particular, the 
unique and concrete individual, which cannot be approached by rational 
methods, and not the abstract universal. Science can describe general 
types of landscape, for example, or of man, but it can never exhaust one 
single individual landscape, or one single individual man. The universal, 
the typical, is not only the domain of reason, but it is also largely the 
product of reason, in so far as it is the product of scientific abstraction. 
But the unique individual and his unique actions and experiences and 
relations to other individuals can never be fully rationalized—. And it 
appears to be just this irrational realm of unique individuality which 
makes human relations important. Most people would feel, for example, 
that what makes their lives worth living would largely be destroyed if 
they themselves, and their lives, were in no sense unique but in all and 
every respect typical of a class of people, so that they repeated exactly all 
the actions and experiences of all other men who belong to this class. It is 
the uniqueness of our experiences which, in this sense, makes our lives 
worth living, the unique experience of a landscape, of a sunset, of the 
expression of a human face. But since the day of Plato, it has been a 
characteristic of all mysticism that it transfers this feeling of the 
irrationality of the unique individual, and of our unique relations to 
individuals, to a different field, namely, to the field of abstract 
universals, a field which properly belongs to the province of science. That 
it is this feeling which the mystic tries to transfer can hardly be doubted. 
It is well known that the terminology of mysticism, the mystical union, 
the mystical intuition of beauty, the mystical love, have in all times been 
borrowed from the realm of relations between individual men, and 
especially from the experience of sexual love. Nor can it be doubted that 
this feeling is transferred by mysticism to the abstract universals, to the 



essences, to the Forms or Ideas. It is again the lost unity of the tribe, the 
wish to return into the shelter of a patriarchal home and to make its limits 
the limits of our world, which stands behind this mystical attitude. 'The 
feeling of the world as a limited whole is the mystical feeling', says- 
Wittgenstein. But this holistic and universalistic irrationalism is 
misplaced. The 'world' and the 'whole' and 'nature', all these are 
abstractions and products of our reason. (This makes the difference 
between the mystical philosopher and the artist who does not rationalize, 
who does not use abstractions, but who creates, in his imagination, 
concrete individuals and unique experiences.) To sum up, mysticism 
attempts to rationalize the irrational, and at the same time it seeks the 
mystery in the wrong place; and it does so because it dreams of the 
collective—, and the union of the elect, since it dares not face the hard 
and practical tasks which those must face who realize that every 
individual is an end in himself. 

The nineteenth-century conflict between science and religion appears 
to me to be superseded—. Since an 'uncritical' rationalism is 
inconsistent, the problem cannot be the choice between knowledge and 
faith, but only between two kinds of faith. The new problem is: which is 
the right faith and which is the wrong faith? What I have tried to show is 
that the choice with which we are confronted is between a faith in reason 
and in human individuals and a faith in the mystical faculties of man by 
which he is united to a collective; and that this choice is at the same time 
a choice between an attitude that recognizes the unity of mankind and an 
attitude that divides men into friends and foes, into masters and slaves. 

Enough has been said, for the present purpose, to explain the terms 
'rationalism' and 'irrationalism', as well as my motives in deciding in 
favour of rationalism, and the reason why I see in the irrational and 
mystical intellectualism which is at present so fashionable the subtle 
intellectual disease of our time. It is a disease which need not be taken 



too seriously, and it is not more than skin-deep. (Scientists, with very few 
exceptions, are particularly free from it.) But in spite of its superficiality, 
it is a dangerous disease, because of its influence in the field of social and 
political thought. 

V 

In order to illustrate the danger, I shall briefly criticize two of the most 
influential irrationalist authorities of our time. The first of them is A. N. 
Whitehead, famous for his work in mathematics, and for his collaboration 
with the greatest contemporary rationalist philosopher, Bertrand 
Russell—. Whitehead considers himself a rationalist philosopher too; but 
so did Hegel, to whom Whitehead owes a great deal; indeed, he is one of 
the few Neo-Hegelians who know how much they owe to Hegel— (as well 
as to Aristotle). Undoubtedly, he owes it to Hegel that he has the courage, 
in spite of Kant's burning protest, to build up grandiose metaphysical 
systems with a royal contempt for argument. 

Let us consider first one of the few rational arguments offered by 
Whitehead in his Process and Reality, the argument by which he defends 
his speculative philosophical method (a method which he calls 
'rationalism'). 'It has been an objection to speculative philosophy', he 
writes—, 'that it is over- ambitious. Rationalism, it is admitted, is the 
method by which advance is made within the limits of particular 
sciences. It is, however, held that this limited success must not encourage 
attempts to frame ambitious schemes expressive of the general nature of 
things. One alleged justification of this criticism is ill-success; European 
thought is represented as littered with metaphysical problems, abandoned 
and unreconciled ... [But] the same criterion would fasten ill-success 



upon science. We no more retain the physics of the seventeenth century 
than we do the Cartesian philosophy of the century . . . The proper test is 
not that of finality, but of progress.' Now this is in itself certainly a 
perfectly reasonable and even plausible argument; but is it valid? The 
obvious objection against it is that while physics progresses, metaphysics 
does not. In physics, there is a 'proper test of progress', namely the test 
of experiment, of practice. We can say why modern physics is better than 
the physics of the seventeenth century. Modern physics stands up to a 
great number of practical tests which utterly defeat the older systems. 
And the obvious objection against speculative metaphysical systems is 
that the progress they claim seems to be just as imaginary as anything 
else about them. This objection is very old; it dates back to Bacon, Hume, 
and Kant. We read, for example, in Kant's Prolegomena—, the following 
remarks concerning the alleged progress of metaphysics: 'Undoubtedly 
there are many who, like myself, have been unable to find that this 
science has progressed by so much as a finger-breadth in spite of so many 
beautiful things which have long been published on this subject. 
Admittedly, we may find an attempt to sharpen a definition, or to supply 
a lame proof with new crutches, and thus to patch up the crazy quilt of 
metaphysics, or to give it a new pattern; but this is not what the world 
needs. We are sick of metaphysical assertions. We want to have definite 
criteria by which we may distinguish dialectical fancies ... from truth.' 
Whitehead is probably aware of this classical and obvious objection; and 
it looks as if he remembers it when in the sentence following the one 
quoted last he writes: 'But the main objection dating from the sixteenth 
century and receiving final expression from Francis Bacon, is the 
uselessness of philosophic speculation.' Since it was the experimental 
and practical uselessness of philosophy to which Bacon objected, it looks 
as if Whitehead here had our point in mind. But he does not follow it up. 
He does not reply to the obvious objection that this practical uselessness 



destroys his point that speculative philosophy, like science, is justified by 
the progress it makes. Instead, he contents himself with switching over to 
an entirely different problem, namely, the well-known problem 'that 
there are no brute, self-contained matters of fact', and that all science 
must make use of thought, since it must generalize, and interpret, the 
facts. On this consideration he bases his defence of metaphysical 
systems: 'Thus the understanding of the immediate brute fact requires its 
metaphysical interpretation . . . ' Now this may be so, or it may not be so. 
But it is certainly an entirely different argument from the one he began 
with. 'The proper test is ... progress', in science as well as in philosophy: 
this is what we originally heard from Whitehead. But no answer to Kant's 
obvious objection is forthcoming. Instead, Whitehead's argument, once 
on the track of the problem of universality and generality, wanders off to 
such questions as the (Platonic) collectivist theory of morality—: 
'Morality of outlook is inseparably conjoined with generality of outlook. 
The antithesis between the general good and the individual interest can be 
abolished only when the individual is such that its interest is the general 
good . . . ' 

Now this was a sample of rational argument. But rational arguments 
are rare indeed. Whitehead has learned from Hegel how to avoid Kant's 
criticism that speculative philosophy only supplies new crutches for lame 
proofs. This Hegelian method is simple enough. We can easily avoid 
crutches as long as we avoid proofs and arguments altogether. Hegelian 
philosophy does not argue; it decrees. It must be admitted that, as 
opposed to Hegel, Whitehead does not pretend to offer the final truth. He 
is not a dogmatic philosopher in the sense that he presents his philosophy 
as an indisputable dogma; he even emphasizes its imperfections. But like 
all Neo-Hegelians, he adopts the dogmatic method of laying down his 
philosophy without argument. We can take it or leave it. But we cannot 
discuss it. (We are indeed faced with 'brute facts'; not with Baconian 



brute facts of experience, but with the brute facts of a man's 
metaphysical inspiration.) In order to illustrate this 'method of take it or 
leave it', I shall quote just one passage from Process and Reality, but I 
must warn my readers that, although I have tried to select the passage 
fairly, they should not form an opinion without reading the book itself. 

Its last part, entitled 'Final Interpretations', consists of two chapters, 
'The Ideal Opposites' (where, for instance, 'Permanence and Flux' 
occurs, a well-known patch from Plato's system; we have dealt with it 
under the name 'Change and Rest'), and 'God and the World'. I quote 
from this latter chapter. The passage is introduced by the two sentences: 
'The final summary can only be expressed in terms of a group of 
antitheses, whose apparent self-contradiction depends on neglect of the 
diverse categories of existence. In each antithesis there is a shift of 
meaning which converts the opposition into a contrast.' This is the 
introduction. It prepares us for an 'apparent contradiction', and tells us 
that this 'depends' on some neglect. This seems to indicate that by 
avoiding that neglect we may avoid the contradiction. But how this is to 
be achieved, or what is, more precisely, in the author's mind, we are not 
told. We have just to take it or leave it. Now I quote the first two of the 
announced 'antitheses' or 'apparent self-contradictions' which are also 
stated without a shadow of argument: 'It is as true to say that God is 
permanent and the World fluent as that the World is permanent and God 
fluent. — It is as true to say that God is one and the World many, as that 
the World is one and God many.' — Now I am not going to criticize these 
echoes of Greek philosophical fancies; we may indeed take it for granted 
that the one is just 'as true' as the other. But we have been promised an 
'apparent self-contradiction'; and I should like to know where a self- 
contradiction appears here. For to me not even the appearance of a 
contradiction is apparent. A self-contradiction would be, for instance, the 
sentence: 'Plato is happy and Plato is not happy', and all the sentences of 



the same 'logical form' (that is to say, all sentences obtained from the 
foregoing by substituting a proper name for Tlato' and a property word 
for 'happy'). But the following sentence is clearly not a contradiction: 'It 
is as true to say that Plato is happy to-day as it is to say that he is 
unhappy to-day' (for since Plato is dead, the one is indeed 'as true' as the 
other); and no other sentence of the same or a similar form can be called 
self-contradictory, even if it happens to be false. This is only to indicate 
why I am at a loss as to this purely logical aspect of the matter, the 
'apparent self-contradictions'. And I feel that way about the whole book. 
I just do not understand what its author wished it to convey. Very likely, 
this is my fault and not his. I do not belong to the number of the elect, 
and I fear that many others are in the same position. This is just why I 
claim that the method of the book is irrational. It divides mankind into 
two parts, a small number of the elect, and the large number of the lost. 
But lost as I am, I can only say that, as I see it, Neo-Hegelianism no 
longer looks like that old crazy quilt with a few new patches, so vividly 
described by Kant; rather it looks now like a bundle of a few old patches 
which have been torn from it. 

I leave it to the careful student of Whitehead's book to decide whether 
it has stood up to its own 'proper test', whether it shows progress as 
compared with the metaphysical systems of whose stagnation Kant 
complained; provided he can find the criteria by which to judge such 
progress. And I will leave it to the same student to judge the 
appropriateness of concluding these remarks with another of Kant's 
comments upon metaphysics—: 'Concerning metaphysics in general, and 
the views I have expressed on their value, I admit that my formulations 
may here or there have been insufficiently conditional and cautious. Yet I 
do not wish to hide the fact that I can only look with repugnance and even 
with something like hate upon the puffed-up pretentiousness of all these 
volumes filled with wisdom, such as are fashionable nowadays. For I am 



fully satisfied that the wrong way has been chosen; that the accepted 
methods must endlessly increase these follies and blunders; and that even 
the complete annihilation of all these fanciful achievements could not 
possibly be as harmful as this fictitious science with its accursed 
fertility.' 

The second example of contemporary irrationalism with which I intend 
to deal here is A. J. Toynbee's A Study of History. I wish to make it clear 
that I consider this a most remarkable and interesting book, and that I 
have chosen it because of its superiority to all other contemporary 
irrationalist and historicist works I know of. I am not competent to judge 
Toynbee's merits as a historian. But as opposed to other contemporary 
historicist and irrationalist philosophers, he has much to say that is most 
stimulating and challenging; I at least have found him so, and I owe to 
him many valuable suggestions. I do not accuse him of irrationalism in 
his own field of historical research. For where it is a question of 
comparing evidence in favour of or against a certain historical 
interpretation, he uses unhesitatingly a fundamentally rational method of 
argument. I have in mind, for instance, his comparative study of the 
authenticity of the Gospels as historical records, with its negative 
results—; although I am not able to judge his evidence, the rationality of 
the method is beyond question, and this is the more admirable as 
Toynbee's general sympathies with Christian orthodoxy might have made 
it hard for him to defend a view which, to say the least, is unorthodox—. I 
also agree with many of the political tendencies expressed in his work, 
and most emphatically with his attack upon modern nationalism, and the 
tribalist and 'archaist', i.e. culturally reactionary tendencies, which are 
connected with it. 

The reason why, in spite of all this, I single out Toynbee's monumental 
historicist work in order to charge it with irrationality, is that only when 
we see the effects of this poison in a work of such merit do we fully 



appreciate its danger. 

What I must describe as Toynbee's irrationalism expresses itself in 
various ways. One of them is that he yields to a widespread and 
dangerous fashion of our time. I mean the fashion of not taking 
arguments seriously, and at their face value, at least tentatively, but of 
seeing in them nothing but a way in which deeper irrational motives and 
tendencies express themselves. It is the attitude of socio-analysis, 
criticized in the last chapter; the attitude of looking at once for the 
unconscious motives and determinants in the social habitat of the thinker, 
instead of first examining the validity of the argument itself. 

This attitude may be justified to a certain extent, as I have tried to 
show in the two previous chapters; and this is especially so in the case of 
an author who does not offer any arguments, or whose arguments are 
obviously not worth looking into. But if no attempt is made to take 
serious arguments seriously, then I believe that we are justified in making 
the charge of irrationalism; and we are even justified in retaliating, by 
adopting the same attitude towards the procedure. Thus I think that we 
have every right to make the socio-analytical diagnosis that Toynbee's 
neglect to take serious arguments seriously is representative of a 
twentieth- century intellectualism which expresses its disillusionment, or 
even despair, of reason, and of a rational solution of our social problems, 
by an escape into a religious mysticism—. 

As an example of the refusal to take serious arguments seriously, I 
select Toynbee's treatment of Marx. My reasons for this selection are the 
following. First, it is a topic which is familiar to myself as well as to the 
reader of this book. Secondly, it is a topic on which I agree with Toynbee 
in most of its practical aspects. His main judgements on Marx's political 
and historical influence are very similar to results at which I have arrived 
by more pedestrian methods; and it is indeed one of the topics whose 
treatment shows his great historical intuition. Thus I shall hardly be 



suspected of being an apologist for Marx if I defend Marx's rationality 
against Toynbee. For this is the point on which I disagree: Toynbee treats 
Marx (as he treats everybody) not as a rational being, a man who offers 
arguments for what he teaches. Indeed, the treatment of Marx, and of his 
theories, only exemplifies the general impression conveyed by Toynbee's 
work that arguments are an unimportant mode of speech, and that the 
history of mankind is a history of emotions, passions, religions, irrational 
philosophies, and perhaps of art and poetry; but that it has nothing 
whatever to do with the history of human reason or of human science. 
(Names like Galileo and Newton, Harvey and Pasteur, do not play any 
part in the first six volumes— of Toynbee's historicist study of the life- 
cycle of civilizations.) 

Regarding the points of similarity between Toynbee's and my general 
views of Marx, I may remind the reader of my allusions, in chapter 1, to 
the analogy between the chosen people and the chosen class; and in 
various other places, I have commented critically upon Marx's doctrines 
of historical necessity, and especially of the inevitability of the social 
revolution. These ideas are linked together by Toynbee with his usual 
brilliance: 'The distinctively Jewish ... inspiration of Marxism', he 
writes—, 'is the apocalyptic vision of a violent revolution which is 
inevitable because it is the decree ... of God himself, and which is to 
invert the present roles of Proletariat and Dominant Minority in ... a 
reversal of roles which is to carry the Chosen People, at one bound, from 
the lowest to the highest place in the Kingdom of This World. Marx has 
taken the Goddess "Historical Necessity" in place of Yahweh for his 
omnipotent deity, and the internal proletariat of the modern Western 
World in place of Jewry; and his Messianic Kingdom is conceived as a 
Dictatorship of the Proletariat. But the salient features of the traditional 
Jewish apocalypse protrude through this threadbare disguise, and it is 
actually the pre-Rabbinical Maccabaean Judaism that our philosopher- 



impresario is presenting in modern Western costume Now there is 
certainly not much in this brilliantly phrased passage with which I do not 
agree, as long as it is intended as nothing more than an interesting 
analogy. But if it is intended as a serious analysis (or part of it) of 
Marxism, then I must protest; Marx, after all, wrote Capital, studied 
laissez-faire capitalism, and made serious and most important 
contributions to social science, even if much of them has been 
superseded. And, indeed, Toynbee's passage is intended as a serious 
analysis; he believes that his analogies and allegories contribute to a 
serious appreciation of Marx; for in an Annex to this passage (from 
which I have quoted only an important part) he treats, under the title— 
'Marxism, Socialism, and Christianity', what he considers to be likely 
objections of a Marxist to this 'account of the Marxian Philosophy'. This 
Annex itself is also undoubtedly intended as a serious discussion of 
Marxism, as can be seen by the fact that its first paragraph commences 
with the words 'The advocates of Marxism will perhaps protest that ...' 
and the second with the words: 'In attempting to reply to a Marxian 
protest on such lines as these . . . ' But if we look more closely into this 
discussion, then we find that none of the rational arguments or claims of 
Marxism is even mentioned, let alone examined. Of Marx's theories and 
of the question whether they are true or false we do not hear a word. The 
one additional problem raised in the Annex is again one of historical 
origin; for the Marxist opponent envisaged by Toynbee does not protest, 
as any Marxist in his senses would, that it is Marx's claim to have based 
an old idea, socialism, upon a new, namely a rational and scientific, 
basis; instead, he 'protests' (I am quoting Toynbee) 'that in a rather 
summary account of Marxian Philosophy ... we have made a show of 
analysing this into a Hegelian and a Jewish and a Christian constituent 
element without having said a word about the most characteristic . . . part 
of Marx's message . . . Socialism, the Marxian will tell us, is the essence 



of the Marxian way of life; it is an original element in the Marxian 
system which cannot be traced to a Hegelian or a Christian or a Jewish 
or any other pre-Marxian source'. This is the protest put by Toynbee into 
the mouth of a Marxist, although any Marxist, even if he has read nothing 
but WvQ Manifesto, must know that Marx himself as early as in 1847 
distinguished about seven or eight different 'pre-Marxian sources' of 
socialism, and among them also those which he labelled 'Clerical' or 
'Christian' socialism, and that he never dreamt of having discovered 
socialism, but only claimed that he had made it rational; or, as Engels 
expresses it, that he had developed socialism from a Utopian idea into a 
science—. But Toynbee neglects all that. 'In attempting', he writes, 'to 
reply to a Marxian protest on such lines as these, we shall readily admit 
the humaneness and constructiveness of the ideal for which socialism 
stands, as well as the importance of the part which this ideal plays in the 
Marxian "ideology"; but we shall find ourselves unable to accept the 
Marxian contention that Socialism is Marx's original discovery. We shall 
have to point out, on our part, that there is a Christian socialism which 
was practised as well as preached before the Marxian Socialism was ever 
heard of; and, when our turn comes for taking the offensive, we shall . . . 
maintain that the Marxian Socialism is derived from the Christian 
tradition . . . ' Now I would certainly never deny this derivation, and it is 
quite clear that every Marxist could admit it without sacrificing the 
tiniest bit of his creed; for the Marxist creed is not that Marx was the 
inventor of a humane and constructive ideal but that he was the scientist 
who by purely rational means showed that socialism will come, and in 
what way it will come. 

How, I ask, can it be explained that Toynbee discusses Marxism on 
lines which have nothing whatever to do with its rational claims? The 
only explanation I can see is that the Marxist claim to rationality has no 
meaning whatever for Toynbee. He is interested only in the question of 



how it originated as a religion. Now I should be the last to deny its 
religious character. But the method of treating philosophies or religions 
entirely from the point of view of their historical origin and environment, 
an attitude described in the previous chapters as historism (and to be 
distinguished from historicism), is, to say the least, very one-sided; and 
how much this method is liable to produce irrationalism can be seen from 
Toynbee's neglect of, if not contempt for, that important realm of human 
life which we have here described as rational. 

In an assessment of Marx's influence, Toynbee arrives at the 
conclusion— that 'the verdict of History may turn out to be that a re- 
awakening of the Christian social conscience has been the one great 
positive achievement of Karl Marx'. Against this assessment, I have 
certainly not much to say; perhaps the reader will remember that I too 
have emphasized— Marx's moral influence upon Christianity. I do not 
think that, as a final appraisal, Toynbee takes sufficiently into account the 
great moral idea that the exploited should emancipate themselves, instead 
of waiting for acts of charity on the part of the exploiters; but this, of 
course, is just a difference of opinion, and I would not dream of 
contesting Toynbee's right to his own opinion, which I consider very fair. 
But I should like to draw attention to the phrase 'the verdict of history 
may turn out', with its implied historicist moral theory, and even moral 
futurism—. For I hold that we cannot and must not evade deciding in such 
matters for ourselves; and that if we are not able to pass a verdict, neither 
will history. 

So much about Toynbee's treatment of Marx. Concerning the more 
general problem of his historism or historical relativism, it may be said 
that he is well aware of it, although he does not formulate it as a general 
principle of the historical determination of all thought, but only as a 
restricted principle applicable to historical thought; for he explains— that 
he takes 'as the starting point ... the axiom that all historical thought is 



inevitably relative to the particular circumstances of the thinker's own 
time and place. This is a law of Human Nature from which no human 
genius can be exempt.' The analogy of this historism with the sociology 
of knowledge is rather obvious; for 'the thinker's own time and place' is 
clearly nothing but the description of what may be called his 'historical 
habitat', by analogy with the 'social habitat' described by the sociology 
of knowledge. The difference, if any, is that Toynbee confines his 'law of 
Human Nature' to historical thought, which seems to me a slightly 
strange and perhaps even unintentional restriction; for it is somewhat 
improbable that there should be a 'law of Human Nature from which no 
human genius can be exempt' holding not for thought in general but only 
for historical thought. 

With the undeniable but rather trivial kernel of truth contained in such 
a historism or sociologism I have dealt in the last two chapters, and I 
need not repeat what I have said there. But as regards criticism, it may be 
worth while to point out that Toynbee 's sentence, if freed from its 
restriction to historical thought, could hardly be considered an 'axiom' 
since it would be paradoxical. (It would be another— form of the paradox 
of the liar; for if no genius is exempt from expressing the fashions of his 
social habitat then this contention itself may be merely an expression of 
the fashion of its author's social habitat, i.e. of the relativistic fashion of 
our own day.) This remark has not only a formal-logical significance. For 
it indicates that historism or historio-analysis can be applied to historism 
itself, and this is indeed a permissible way of dealing with an idea after it 
has been criticized by way of rational argument. Since historism has been 
so criticized, I may now risk a historio-analytical diagnosis, and say that 
historism is a typical though slightly obsolescent product of our time; or 
more precisely, of the typical backwardness of the social sciences of our 
time. It is the typical reaction to interventionism and to a period of 
rationalization and industrial co-operation; a period which, perhaps more 



than any other in history, demands the practical application of rational 
methods to social problems. A social science which cannot quite meet 
these demands is therefore inclined to defend itself by producing 
elaborate attacks upon the applicability of science to such problems. 
Summing up my historio-analytical diagnosis, I venture to suggest that 
Toynbee's historism is an apologetic anti-rationalism, born out of despair 
of reason, and trying to escape into the past, as well as into prophecy of 
the future—. If anything then historism must be understood as an 
historical product. 

This diagnosis is corroborated by many features of Toynbee's work. 
An example is his stress upon the superiority of other-worldliness over 
action which will influence the course of this world. So he speaks, for 
instance, of Mohammed's 'tragic worldly success', saying that the 
opportunity which offered itself to the prophet of taking action in this 
world was 'a challenge to which his spirit failed to rise. In accepting ... 
he was renouncing the sublime role of the nobly-honoured prophet and 
contenting himself with the commonplace role of the magnificently 
successful statesman.' (In other words, Mohammed succumbed to a 
temptation which Jesus resisted.) Ignatius Loyola, accordingly, wins 
Toynbee's approval for turning from a soldier into a saint—. One may 
ask, however, whether this saint did not become a successful statesman 
too? (But if it is a question of Jesuitism, then, it seems, all is different: 
this form of statesmanship is sufficiently otherworldly.) In order to avoid 
misunderstandings, I wish to make it clear that I myself would rate many 
saints higher than most, or very nearly all, statesmen I know of, for I am 
generally not impressed by political success. I quote this passage only as 
a corroboration of my historio-analytical diagnosis: that this historism of 
a modern historical prophet is a philosophy of escape. 

Toynbee's anti-rationalism is prominent in many other places. For 
instance, in an attack upon the rationalistic conception of tolerance he 



uses categories like 'nobleness' as opposed to 'lowness' instead of 
arguments. The passage deals with the opposition between the merely 
'negative' avoidance of violence, on rational grounds, and the true non- 
violence of other-worldliness, hinting that these two are instances of 
'meanings ... which are ... positively antithetical to one another'—. Here 
is the passage I have in mind: 'At its lowest the practice of Non- Violence 
may express nothing more noble and more constructive than a cynical 
disillusionment with . . . violence . . . previously practised ad nauseam . . . 
A notorious example of Non- Violence of this unedifying kind is the 
religious tolerance in the Western World from the seventeenth century . . . 
down to our day.' It is difficult to resist the temptation to retaliate by 
asking — ^using Toynbee's own terminology — ^whether this edifying attack 
upon Western democratic religious tolerance expresses anything more 
noble or more constructive than a cynical disillusionment with reason; 
whether it is not a notorious example of that anti-rationalism which has 
been, and unfortunately still is, fashionable in our Western World, and 
which has been practised ad nauseam, especially from the time of Hegel, 
down to our day? 

Of course, my historio-analysis of Toynbee is not a serious criticism. It 
is only an unkind way of retaliating, of paying historism back in its own 
coin. My fundamental criticism is on very different lines, and I should 
certainly be sorry if by dabbling in historism I were to become 
responsible for making this cheap method more fashionable than it is 
already. 

I do not wish to be misunderstood. I feel no hostility towards religious 
mysticism (only towards a militant anti-rationalist intellectualism) and I 
should be the first to fight any attempt to oppress it. It is not I who 
advocate religious intolerance. But I claim that faith in reason, or 
rationalism, or humanitarianism, or humanism, has the same right as any 
other creed to contribute to an improvement of human affairs, and 



especially to the control of international crime and the establishment of 
peace. 'The humanist', Toynbee writes—, 'purposely concentrates all his 
attention and effort upon . . . bringing human affairs under human control. 
Yet ... the unity of mankind can never be established in fact except 
within a framework of the unity of the superhuman whole of which 
Humanity is a part . . .; and our Modern Western school of humanists have 
been peculiar, as well as perverse, in planning to reach Heaven by raising 
a titanic Tower of Babel on terrestrial foundations Toynbee's 
contention, if I understand him rightly, is that there is no chance for the 
humanist to bring international affairs under the control of human reason. 
Appealing to the authority of Bergson— , he claims that only allegiance to 
a superhuman whole can save us, and that there is no way for human 
reason, no 'terrestrial road', as he puts it, by which tribal nationalism can 
be superseded. Now I do not mind the characterization of the humanist's 
faith in reason as 'terrestrial', since I believe that it is indeed a principle 
of rationalist politics that we cannot make heaven on earth—. But 
humanism is, after all, a faith which has proved itself in deeds, and which 
has proved itself as well, perhaps, as any other creed. And although I 
think, with most humanists, that Christianity, by teaching the fatherhood 
of God, may make a great contribution to establishing the brotherhood of 
man, I also think that those who undermine man's faith in reason are 
unlikely to contribute much to this end. 



Conclusion 



25 

Has History any Meaning? 



I 

In approaching the end of this book, I wish again to remind the reader 
that these chapters were not intended as anything like a full history of 
historicism; they are merely scattered marginal notes to such a history, 
and rather personal notes to boot. That they form, besides, a kind of 
critical introduction to the philosophy of society and of politics, is 
closely connected with this character of theirs, for historicism is a social 
and political and moral (or, shall I say, immoral) philosophy, and it has 
been as such most influential since the beginning of our civilization. It is 
therefore hardly possible to comment on its history without discussing 
the fundamental problems of society, of politics, and of morals. But such 
a discussion, whether it admits it or not, must always contain a strong 
personal element. This does not mean that much in this book is purely a 
matter of opinion; in the few cases where I am explaining my personal 
proposals or decisions in moral and political matters, I have always made 
the personal character of the proposal or decision clear. It rather means 
that the selection of the subject matter treated is a matter of personal 
choice to a much greater extent than it would be, say, in a scientific 
treatise. 

In a way, however, this difference is a matter of degree. Even a science 



is not merely a 'body of facts'. It is, at the very least, a collection, and as 
such it is dependent upon the collector's interests, upon a point of view. 
In science, this point of view is usually determined by a scientific theory; 
that is to say, we select from the infinite variety of facts, and from the 
infinite variety of aspects of facts, those facts and those aspects which are 
interesting because they are connected with some more or less 
preconceived scientific theory. A certain school of philosophers of 
scientific method- have concluded from considerations such as these that 
science always argues in a circle, and 'that we find ourselves chasing our 
own tails', as Eddington puts it, since we can only get out of our factual 
experience what we have ourselves put into it, in the form of our theories. 
But this is not a tenable argument. Although it is, in general, quite true 
that we select only facts which have a bearing upon some preconceived 
theory, it is not true that we select only such facts as confirm the theory 
and, as it were, repeat it; the method of science is rather to look out for 
facts which may refute the theory. This is what we call testing a theory — 
to see whether we cannot find a flaw in it. But although the facts are 
collected with an eye upon the theory, and will confirm it as long as the 
theory stands up to these tests, they are more than merely a kind of empty 
repetition of a preconceived theory. They confirm the theory only if they 
are the results of unsuccessful attempts to overthrow its predictions, and 
therefore a telling testimony in its favour. So it is, I hold, the possibility 
of overthrowing it, or its falsif lability, that constitutes the possibility of 
testing it, and therefore the scientific character of a theory; and the fact 
that all tests of a theory are attempted falsifications of predictions 
derived with its help, furnishes the clue to scientific method-. This view 
of scientific method is corroborated by the history of science, which 
shows that scientific theories are often overthrown by experiments, and 
that the overthrow of theories is indeed the vehicle of scientific progress. 
The contention that science is circular cannot be upheld. 



But one element of this contention remains true; namely, that all 
scientific descriptions of facts are highly selective, that they always 
depend upon theories. The situation can be best described by comparison 
with a searchlight (the 'searchlight theory of science', as I usually call it 
in contradistinction to the 'bucket theory of the mind'-). What the 
searchlight makes visible will depend upon its position, upon our way of 
directing it, and upon its intensity, colour, etc.; although it will, of course, 
also depend very largely upon the things illuminated by it. Similarly, a 
scientific description will depend, largely, upon our point of view, our 
interests, which are as a rule connected with the theory or hypothesis we 
wish to test; although it will also depend upon the facts described. Indeed, 
the theory or hypothesis could be described as the crystallization of a 
point of view. For if we attempt to formulate our point of view, then this 
formulation will, as a rule, be what one sometimes calls a working 
hypothesis; that is to say, a provisional assumption whose function is to 
help us to select, and to order, the facts. But we should be clear that there 
cannot be any theory or hypothesis which is not, in this sense, a working 
hypothesis, and does not remain one. For no theory is final, and every 
theory helps us to select and order facts. This selective character of all 
description makes it in a certain sense 'relative'; but only in the sense 
that we would offer not this but another description, if our point of view 
were different. It may also affect our belief m the truth of the description; 
but it does not affect the question of the truth or falsity of the description; 
truth is not 'relative' in this sense-. 

The reason why all description is selective is, roughly speaking, the 
infinite wealth and variety of the possible aspects of the facts of our 
world. In order to describe this infinite wealth, we have at our disposal 
only a finite number of finite series of words. Thus we may describe as 
long as we like: our description will always be incomplete, a mere 
selection, and a small one at that, of the facts which present themselves 



for description. This shows that it is not only impossible to avoid a 
selective point of view, but also wholly undesirable to attempt to do so; 
for if we could do so, we should get not a more 'objective' description, 
but only a mere heap of entirely unconnected statements. But, of course, a 
point of view is inevitable; and the naive attempt to avoid it can only lead 
to self-deception, and to the uncritical application of an unconscious 
point of view-. All this is true, most emphatically, in the case of 
historical description, with its 'infinite subject matter', as Schopenhauer- 
calls it. Thus in history no less than in science, we cannot avoid a point of 
view; and the belief that we can must lead to self-deception and to lack of 
critical care. This does not mean, of course, that we are permitted to 
falsify anything, or to take matters of truth lightly. Any particular 
historical description of facts will be simply true or false, however 
difficult it may be to decide upon its truth or falsity. 

So far, the position of history is analogous to that of the natural 
sciences, for example, that of physics. But if we compare the part played 
by a 'point of view' in history with that played by a 'point of view' in 
physics, then we find a great difference. In physics, as we have seen, the 
'point of view' is usually presented by a physical theory which can be 
tested by searching for new facts. In history, the matter is not quite so 
simple. 

II 

Let us first consider a little more closely the role of the theories in a 
natural science such as physics. Here, theories have several connected 
tasks. They help to unify science, and they help to explain as well as to 
predict events. Regarding explanation and prediction, I may perhaps 



quote from one of my own publications-: 'To give a causal explanation 
of a certain event means to derive deductively a statement (it will be 
called a prognosis) which describes that event, using as premises of the 
deduction some universal laws together with certain singular or specific 
sentences which we may call initial conditions. For example, we can say 
that we have given a causal explanation of the breaking of a certain 
thread if we find that this thread was capable of carrying one pound only, 
and that a weight of two pounds was put on it. If we analyse this causal 
explanation, then we find that two different constituents are involved in 
it. (1) We assume some hypotheses of the character of universal laws of 
nature; in our case, perhaps: "Whenever a certain thread undergoes a 
tension exceeding a certain maximum tension which is characteristic for 
that particular thread, then it will break." (2) We assume some specific 
statements (the initial conditions) pertaining to the particular event in 
question; in our case, we may have the two statements: "For this thread, 
the characteristic maximum tension at which it is liable to break is equal 
to a one-pound weight" and "The weight put on this thread was a two- 
pound weight." Thus we have two different kinds of statements which 
together yield a complete causal explanation, viz.: (1) universal 
statements of the character of natural laws, and (2) specific statements 
pertaining to the special case in question, the initial conditions. Now 
from the universal laws (1), we can deduce with the help of the initial 
conditions (2) the following specific statement (3): "This thread will 
break." This conclusion (3) we may also call a specific prognosis. — The 
initial conditions (or more precisely, the situation described by them) are 
usually spoken of as the cause of the event in question, and the prognosis 
(or rather, the event described by the prognosis) as the effect: for 
example, we say that the putting of a weight of two pounds on a thread 
capable of carrying one pound only was the cause of the breaking of the 
thread. ' 



From this analysis of causal explanation, we can see several things. 
One is that we can never speak of cause and effect in an absolute way, but 
that an event is a cause of another event, which is its effect, relative to 
some universal law. However, these universal laws are very often so 
trivial (as in our own example) that as a rule we take them for granted, 
instead of making conscious use of them. A second point is that the use of 
a theory for the purpose of predicting some specific event is just another 
aspect of its use for the purpose of explaining such an event. And since 
we test a theory by comparing the events predicted with those actually 
observed, our analysis also shows how theories can be tested. Whether we 
use a theory for the purpose of explanation, or prediction, or of testing, 
depends on our interest, and on what propositions we take as given or 
assumed. 

Thus in the case of the so-called theoretical or generalizing sciences 
(such as physics, biology, sociology, etc.) we are predominantly 
interested in the universal laws or hypotheses. We wish to know whether 
they are true, and since we can never directly make sure of their truth, we 
adopt the method of eliminating the false ones. Our interest in the 
specific events, for example in experiments which are described by the 
initial conditions and prognoses, is somewhat limited; we are interested 
in them mainly as means to certain ends, means by which we can test the 
universal laws, which latter are considered as interesting in themselves, 
and as unifying our knowledge. 

In the case of applied sciences, our interest is different. The engineer 
who uses physics in order to build a bridge is predominantly interested in 
a prognosis: whether or not a bridge of a certain kind described (by the 
initial conditions) will carry a certain load. For him, the universal laws 
are means to an end and taken for granted. 

Accordingly, pure and applied generalizing sciences are respectively 
interested in testing universal hypotheses, and in predicting specific 



events. But there is a further interest, that in explaining a specific or 
particular event. If we wish to explain such an event, for example, a 
certain road accident, then we usually tacitly assume a host of rather 
trivial universal laws (such as that a bone breaks under a certain strain, or 
that any motor-car colliding in a certain way with any human body will 
exert a strain sufficient to break a bone, etc.), and are interested, 
predominantly, in the initial conditions or in the cause which, together 
with these trivial universal laws, would explain the event in question. We 
then usually assume certain initial conditions hypothetically, and attempt 
to find some further evidence in order to find out whether or not these 
hypothetically assumed initial conditions are true; that is to say, we test 
these specific hypotheses by deriving from them (with the help of some 
other and usually equally trivial universal laws) new predictions which 
can be confronted with observable facts. 

Very rarely do we find ourselves in the position of having to worry 
about the universal laws involved in such an explanation. It happens only 
when we observe some new or strange kind of event, such as an 
unexpected chemical reaction. If such an event gives rise to the framing 
and testing of new hypotheses, then it is interesting mainly from the point 
of view of some generalizing science. But as a rule, if we are interested in 
specific events and their explanation, we take for granted all the many 
universal laws which we need. 

Now the sciences which have this interest in specific events and in 
their explanation may, in contradistinction to the generalizing sciences, 
be called the historical sciences. 

This view of history makes it clear why so many students of history 
and its method insist that it is the particular event that interests them, and 
not any so-called universal historical laws. For from our point of view, 
there can be no historical laws. Generalization belongs simply to a 
different line of interest, sharply to be distinguished from that interest in 



specific events and their causal explanation which is the business of 
history. Those who are interested in laws must turn to the generalizing 
sciences (for example, to sociology). Our view also makes it clear why 
history has so often been described as 'the events of the past as they 
actually did happen'. This description brings out quite well the specific 
interest of the student of history, as opposed to a student of a generalizing 
science, even though we shall have to raise certain objections against it. 
And our view explains why, in history, we are confronted, much more 
than in the generalizing sciences, with the problems of its 'infinite 
subject matter'. For the theories or universal laws of generalizing science 
introduce unity as well as a 'point of view'; they create, for every 
generalizing science, its problems, and its centres of interest as well as of 
research, of logical construction, and of presentation. But in history we 
have no such unifying theories; or, rather, the host of trivial universal 
laws we use are taken for granted; they are practically without interest, 
and totally unable to bring order into the subject matter. If we explain, for 
example, the first division of Poland in 1772 by pointing out that it could 
not possibly resist the combined power of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, 
then we are tacitly using some trivial universal law such as: 'If of two 
armies which are about equally well armed and led, one has a tremendous 
superiority in men, then the other never wins.' (Whether we say here 
'never' or 'hardly ever' does not make, for our purposes, as much 
difference as it does for the Captain of H.M.S. Pinafore.) Such a law 
might be described as a law of the sociology of military power; but it is 
too trivial ever to raise a serious problem for the students of sociology, or 
to arouse their attention. Or if we explain Caesar's decision to cross the 
Rubicon by his ambition and energy, say, then we are using some very 
trivial psychological generalizations which would hardly ever arouse the 
attention of a psychologist. (As a matter of fact, most historical 
explanation makes tacit use, not so much of trivial sociological and 



psychological laws, but of what I have called, in chapter 14, the logic oj 
the situation', that is to say, besides the initial conditions describing 
personal interests, aims, and other situational factors, such as the 
information available to the person concerned, it tacitly assumes, as a 
kind of first approximation, the trivial general law that sane persons as a 
rule act more or less rationally.) 



Ill 



We see, therefore, that those universal laws which historical explanation 
uses provide no selective and unifying principle, no 'point of view' for 
history. In a very limited sense such a point of view may be provided by 
confining history to a history of something; examples are the history of 
power politics, or of economic relations, or of technology, or of 
mathematics. But as a rule, we need further selective principles, points of 
view which are at the same time centres of interest. Some of these are 
provided by preconceived ideas which in some way resemble universal 
laws, such as the idea that what is important for history is the character of 
the 'Great Men', or the 'national character', or moral ideas, or economic 
conditions, etc. Now it is important to see that many 'historical theories' 
(they might perhaps be better described as 'quasi-theories') are in their 
character vastly different from scientific theories. For in history 
(including the historical natural sciences such as historical geology) the 
facts at our disposal are often severely limited and cannot be repeated or 
implemented at our will. And they have been collected in accordance 
with a preconceived point of view; the so-called 'sources' of history 
record only such facts as appeared sufficiently interesting to record, so 
that the sources will often contain only such facts as fit in with 



preconceived theory. And if no further facts are available, it will often 
not be possible to test this theory or any other subsequent theory. Such 
untestable historical theories can then rightly be charged with being 
circular in the sense in which this charge has been unjustly brought 
against scientific theories. I shall call such historical theories, in 
contradistinction to scientific theories, 'general interpretations'. 

Interpretations are important since they represent a point of view. But 
we have seen that a point of view is always inevitable, and that, in 
history, a theory which can be tested and which is therefore of scientific 
character can only rarely be obtained. Thus we must not think that a 
general interpretation can be confirmed by its agreement even with all 
our records; for we must remember its circularity, as well as the fact that 
there will always be a number of other (and perhaps incompatible) 
interpretations that agree with the same records, and that we can rarely 
obtain new data able to serve as do crucial experiments in physics-. 
Historians often do not see any other interpretation which fits the facts as 
well as their own does; but if we consider that even in the field of 
physics, with its larger and more reliable stock of facts, new crucial 
experiments are needed again and again because the old ones are all in 
keeping with both of two competing and incompatible theories (consider 
the eclipse-experiment which is needed for deciding between Newton's 
and Einstein's theories of gravitation), then we shall give up the naifve 
belief that any definite set of historical records can ever be interpreted in 
one way only. 

But this does not mean, of course, that all interpretations are of equal 
merit. First, there are always interpretations which are not really in 
keeping with the accepted records; secondly, there are some which need a 
number of more or less plausible auxiliary hypotheses if they are to 
escape falsification by the records; next, there are some that are unable to 
connect a number of facts which another interpretation can connect, and 



in so far 'explain'. There may accordingly be a considerable amount of 
progress even within the field of historical interpretation. Furthermore, 
there may be all kinds of intermediate stages between more or less 
universal 'points of view' and those specific or singular historical 
hypotheses mentioned above, which in the explanation of historical 
events play the role of hypothetical initial conditions rather than of 
universal laws. Often enough, these can be tested fairly well and are 
therefore comparable to scientific theories. But some of these specific 
hypotheses closely resemble those universal quasi-theories which I have 
called interpretations, and may accordingly be classed with these, as 
'specific interpretations'. For the evidence in favour of such a specific 
interpretation is often enough just as circular in character as the evidence 
in favour of some universal 'point of view'. For example, our only 
authority may give us just that information regarding certain events 
which fits with his own specific interpretation. Most specific 
interpretations of these facts we may attempt will then be circular in the 
sense that they must fit in with that interpretation which was used in the 
original selection of facts. If, however, we can give to such material an 
interpretation which radically deviates from that adopted by our authority 
(and this is certainly so, for example, in our interpretation of Plato's 
work), then the character of our interpretation may perhaps take on some 
semblance to that of a scientific hypothesis. But fundamentally, it is 
necessary to keep in mind the fact that it is a very dubious argument in 
favour of a certain interpretation that it can be easily applied, and that it 
explains all we know; for only if we can look out for counter examples 
can we test a theory. (This point is nearly always overlooked by the 
admirers of the various 'unveiling philosophies', especially by the 
psycho-, socio-, and historio-analysts; they are often seduced by the ease 
with which their theories can be applied everywhere.) 

I said before that interpretations may be incompatible; but as long as 



we consider them merely as crystallizations of points of view, then they 
are not. For example, the interpretation that man steadily progresses 
(towards the open society or some other aim) is incompatible with the 
interpretation that he steadily slips back or retrogresses. But the 'point of 
view' of one who looks on human history as a history of progress is not 
necessarily incompatible with that of one who looks on it as a history of 
retrogression; that is to say, we could write a history of human progress 
towards freedom (containing, for example, the story of the fight against 
slavery) and another history of human retrogression and oppression 
(containing perhaps such things as the impact of the white race upon the 
coloured races); and these two histories need not be in conflict; rather, 
they may be complementary to each other, as would be two views of the 
same landscape seen from two different points. This consideration is of 
considerable importance. For since each generation has its own troubles 
and problems, and therefore its own interests and its own point of view, it 
follows that each generation has a right to look upon and re-interpret 
history in its own way, which is complementary to that of previous 
generations. After all, we study history because we are interested in it-, 
and perhaps because we wish to learn something about our own problems. 
But history can serve neither of these two purposes if, under the influence 
of an inapplicable idea of objectivity, we hesitate to present historical 
problems from our point of view. And we should not think that our point 
of view, if consciously and critically applied to the problem, will be 
inferior to that of a writer who naively believes that he does not interpret, 
and that he has reached a level of objectivity permitting him to present 
'the events of the past as they actually did happen'. (This is why I believe 
that even such admittedly personal comments as can be found in this 
book are justified, since they are in keeping with historical method.) The 
main thing is to be conscious of one's point of view, and critical, that is 
to say, to avoid, as far as this is possible, unconscious and therefore 



uncritical bias in the presentation of the facts. In every other respect, the 
interpretation must speak for itself; and its merits will be its fertility, its 
ability to elucidate the facts of history, as well as its topical interest, its 
ability to elucidate the problems of the day. 

To sum up, there can be no history of 'the past as it actually did 
happen'; there can only be historical interpretations, and none of them 
final; and every generation has a right to frame its own. But not only has 
it a right to frame its own interpretations, it also has a kind of obligation 
to do so; for there is indeed a pressing need to be answered. We want to 
know how our troubles are related to the past, and we want to see the line 
along which we may progress towards the solution of what we feel, and 
what we choose, to be our main tasks. It is this need which, if not 
answered by rational and fair means, produces historicist interpretations. 
Under its pressure the historicist substitutes for a rational question: 
'What are we to choose as our most urgent problems, how did they arise, 
and along what roads may we proceed to solve them?' the irrational and 
apparently factual question: 'Which way are we going? What, in essence, 
is the part that history has destined us to play?' 

But am I justified in refusing to the historicist the right to interpret 
history in his own way? Have I not just proclaimed that anybody has such 
a right? My answer to this question is that historicist interpretations are 
of a peculiar kind. Those interpretations which are needed, and justified, 
and one or other of which we are bound to adopt, can, I have said, be 
compared to a searchlight. We let it play upon our past, and we hope to 
illuminate the present by its reflection. As opposed to this, the historicist 
interpretation may be compared to a searchlight which we direct upon 
ourselves. It makes it diflicult if not impossible to see anything of our 
surroundings, and it paralyses our actions. To translate this metaphor, the 
historicist does not recognize that it is we who select and order the facts 
of history, but he believes that 'history itself, or the 'history of 



mankind', determines, by its inherent laws, ourselves, our problems, our 
future, and even our point of view. Instead of recognizing that historical 
interpretation should answer a need arising out of the practical problems 
and decisions which face us, the historicist believes that in our desire for 
historical interpretation, there expresses itself the profound intuition that 
by contemplating history we may discover the secret, the essence of 
human destiny. Historicism is out to find The Path on which mankind is 
destined to walk; it is out to discover The Clue to History (as J. 
Macmurray calls it), or The Meaning of History. 

IV 

But is there such a clue? Is there a meaning in history? 

I do not wish to enter here into the problem of the meaning of 
'meaning'; I take it for granted that most people know with sufficient 
clarity what they mean when they speak of the 'meaning of history' or of 
the 'meaning or purpose of life'—. And in this sense, in the sense in 
which the question of the meaning of history is asked, I answer: History 
has no meaning. 

In order to give reasons for this opinion, I must first say something 
about that 'history' which people have in mind when they ask whether it 
has meaning. So far, I have myself spoken about 'history' as if it did not 
need any explanation. That is no longer possible; for I wish to make it 
clear that 'history' in the sense in which most people speak of it simply 
does not exist, and this is at least one reason why I say that it has no 
meaning. 

How do most people come to use the term 'history'? (I mean 'history' 
in the sense in which we say of a book that it is about the history of 



Europe — not in the sense in which we say that it is a history of Europe.) 
They learn about it in school and at the University. They read books about 
it. They see what is treated in the books under the name 'history of the 
world' or 'the history of mankind', and they get used to looking upon it 
as a more or less definite series of facts. And these facts constitute, they 
believe, the history of mankind. 

But we have already seen that the realm of facts is infinitely rich, and 
that there must be selection. According to our interests, we could, for 
instance, write about the history of art; or of language; or of feeding 
habits; or of typhus fever (see Zinsser's Rats, Lice, and History). 
Certainly, none of these is the history of mankind (nor all of them taken 
together). What people have in mind when they speak of the history of 
mankind is, rather, the history of the Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, 
Macedonian, and Roman empires, and so on, down to our own day. In 
other words: They speak about the history of mankind, but what they 
mean, and what they have learned about in school, is the history oj 
political power. 

There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of 
histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the 
history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. 
But this, I hold, is an offence against every decent conception of 
mankind. It is hardly better than to treat the history of embezzlement or 
of robbery or of poisoning as the history of mankind. For the history oj 
power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass 
murder (including, it is true, some of the attempts to suppress them). This 
history is taught in schools, and some of the greatest criminals are 
extolled as its heroes. 

But is there really no such thing as a universal history in the sense of a 
concrete history of mankind? There can be none. This must be the reply 
of every humanitarian, I believe, and especially that of every Christian. A 



concrete history of mankind, if there were any, would have to be the 
history of all men. It would have to be the history of all human hopes, 
struggles, and sufferings. For there is no one man more important than 
any other. Clearly, this concrete history cannot be written. We must make 
abstractions, we must neglect, select. But with this we arrive at the many 
histories; and among them, at that history of international crime and mass 
murder which has been advertised as the history of mankind. 

But why has just the history of power been selected, and not, for 
example, that of religion, or of poetry? There are several reasons. One is 
that power affects us all, and poetry only a few. Another is that men are 
inclined to worship power. But there can be no doubt that the worship of 
power is one of the worst kinds of human idolatries, a relic of the time of 
the cage, of human servitude. The worship of power is bom of fear, an 
emotion which is rightly despised. A third reason why power politics has 
been made the core of 'history' is that those in power wanted to be 
worshipped and could enforce their wishes. Many historians wrote under 
the supervision of the emperors, the generals and the dictators. 

I know that these views will meet with the strongest opposition from 
many sides, including some apologists for Christianity; for although there 
is hardly anything in the New Testament to support this doctrine, it is 
often considered a part of the Christian dogma that God reveals Himself 
in history; that history has meaning; and that its meaning is the purpose 
of God. Historicism is thus held to be a necessary element of religion. 
But I do not admit this. I contend that this view is pure idolatry and 
superstition, not only from the point of view of a rationalist or humanist 
but from the Christian point of view itself. 

What is behind this theistic historicism? With Hegel, it looks upon 
history — ^political history — as a stage, or rather, as a kind of lengthy 
Shakespearian play; and the audience conceive either the 'great historical 
personalities', or mankind in the abstract, as the heroes of the play. Then 



they ask, 'Who has written this play?' And they think that they give a 
pious answer when they reply, 'God'. But they are mistaken. Their 
answer is pure blasphemy, for the play was (and they know it) written not 
by God, but, under the supervision of generals and dictators, by the 
professors of history. 

I do not deny that it is as justifiable to interpret history from a 
Christian point of view as it is to interpret it from any other point of 
view; and it should certainly be emphasized, for example, how much of 
our Western aims and ends, humanitarianism, freedom, equality, we owe 
to the influence of Christianity. But at the same time, the only rational as 
well as the only Christian attitude even towards the history of freedom is 
that we are ourselves responsible for it, in the same sense in which we are 
responsible for what we make of our lives, and that only our conscience 
can judge us and not our worldly success. The theory that God reveals 
Himself and His judgement in history is indistinguishable from the 
theory that worldly success is the ultimate judge and justification of our 
actions; it comes to the same thing as the doctrine that history will judge, 
that is to say, that future might is right; it is the same as what I have 
called 'moral futurism'—. To maintain that God reveals Himself in what 
is usually called 'history', in the history of international crime and of 
mass murder, is indeed blasphemy; for what really happens within the 
realm of human lives is hardly ever touched upon by this cruel and at the 
same time childish affair. The life of the forgotten, of the unknown 
individual man; his sorrows and his joys, his suffering and death, this is 
the real content of human experience down the ages. If that could be told 
by history, then I should certainly not say that it is blasphemy to see the 
finger of God in it. But such a history does not and cannot exist; and all 
the history which exists, our history of the Great and the Powerful, is at 
best a shallow comedy; it is the opera buffa played by the powers behind 
reality (comparable to Homer's opera buffa of the Olympian powers 



behind the scene of human struggles). It is what one of our worst 
instincts, the idolatrous worship of power, of success, has led us to 
believe to be real. And in this not even man-made, but man-faked 
'history', some Christians dare to see the hand of God! They dare to 
understand and to know what He wills when they impute to Him their 
petty historical interpretations! 'On the contrary', says K. Barth, the 
theologian, in his Credo, 'we have to begin with the admission . . . that all 
that we think we know when we say "God" does not reach or comprehend 
Him but always one of our self-conceived and self-made idols, 
whether it is "spirit" or "nature", "fate" or "idea" . . . '— (It is in keeping 
with this attitude that Barth characterizes the 'Neo-Protestant doctrine of 
the revelation of God in history' as 'inadmissible' and as an 
encroachment upon 'the kingly office of Christ'.) But it is, from the 
Christian point of view, not only arrogance that underlies such attempts; 
it is, more specifically, an anti- Christian attitude. For Christianity 
teaches, if anything, that worldly success is not decisive. Christ 'suffered 
under Pontius Pilate'. I am quoting Barth again: 'How does Pontius Pilate 
get into the Credo? The simple answer can at once be given: it is a matter 
of date.' Thus the man who was successful, who represented the historical 
power of that time, plays here the purely technical role of indicating 
when these events happened. And what were these events? They had 
nothing to do with power-political success, with 'history'. They were not 
even the story of an unsuccessful non-violent nationalist revolution {d la 
Gandhi) of the Jewish people against the Roman conquerors. The events 
were nothing but the sufferings of a man. Barth insists that the word 
'suffers' refers to the whole of the life of Christ and not only to His 
death; he says—: 'Jesus suffers. Therefore He does not conquer. He does 
not triumph. He has no success ... He achieved nothing except ... His 
crucifixion. The same could be said of His relationship to His people and 
to His disciples.' My intention in quoting Barth is to show that it is not 



only my 'rationalist' or 'humanist' point of view from which the worship 
of historical success appears as incompatible with the spirit of 
Christianity. What matters to Christianity is not the historical deeds of 
the powerful Roman conquerers but (to use a phrase of Kierkegaard's—) 
'what a few fishermen have given the world'. And yet all theistic 
interpretation of history attempts to see in history as it is recorded, i.e. in 
the history of power, and in historical success, the manifestation of God's 
will. 

To this attack upon the 'doctrine of the revelation of God in history', it 
will probably be replied that it is success. His success after His death, by 
which Christ's unsuccessful life on earth was finally revealed to mankind 
as the greatest spiritual victory; that it was the success, the fruits of His 
teaching which proved it and justified it, and by which the prophecy 'The 
last shall be first and the first last' has been verified. In other words, that 
it was the historical success of the Christian Church through which the 
will of God manifested itself. But this is a most dangerous line of 
defence. Its implication that the worldly success of the Church is an 
argument in favour of Christianity clearly reveals lack of faith. The early 
Christians had no worldly encouragement of this kind. (They believed 
that conscience must judge power—, and not the other way round.) Those 
who hold that the history of the success of Christian teaching reveals the 
will of God should ask themselves whether this success was really a 
success of the spirit of Christianity; and whether this spirit did not 
triumph at the time when the Church was persecuted, rather than at the 
time when the Church was triumphant. Which Church incorporated this 
spirit more purely, that of the martyrs, or the victorious Church of the 
Inquisition? 

There seem to be many who would admit much of this, insisting as 
they do that the message of Christianity is to the meek, but who still 
believe that this message is one of historicism. An outstanding 



representative of this view is J. Macmurray, who, in The Clue to History, 
finds the essence of Christian teaching in historical prophecy, and who 
sees in its founder the discoverer of a dialectical law of 'human nature'. 
Macmurray holds— that, according to this law, political history must 
inevitably bring forth 'the socialist commonwealth of the world. The 
fundamental law of human nature cannot be broken ... It is the meek who 
will inherit the earth.' But this historicism, with its substitution of 
certainty for hope, must lead to a moral futurism. 'The \di^ cannot be 
broken.' So we can be sure, on psychological grounds, that whatever we 
do will lead to the same result; that even fascism must, in the end, lead to 
that commonwealth; so that the final outcome does not depend upon our 
moral decision, and that there is no need to worry over our 
responsibilities. If we are told that we can be certain, on scientific 
grounds, that 'the last will be first and the first last', what else is this but 
the substitution of historical prophecy for conscience? Does not this 
theory come dangerously close (certainly against the intentions of its 
author) to the admonition: 'Be wise, and take to heart what the founder of 
Christianity tells you, for he was a great psychologist of human nature 
and a great prophet of history. Climb in time upon the band-waggon of 
the meek; for according to the inexorable scientific laws of human nature, 
this is the surest way to come out on top!' Such a clue to history implies 
the worship of success; it implies that the meek will be justified because 
they will be on the winning side. It translates Marxism, and especially 
what I have described as Marx's historicist moral theory, into the 
language of a psychology of human nature, and of religious prophecy. It 
is an interpretation which, by implication, sees the greatest achievement 
of Christianity in the fact that its founder was a forerunner of Hegel — a 
superior one, admittedly. 

My insistence that success should not be worshipped, that it cannot be 
our judge, and that we should not be dazzled by it, and in particular, my 



attempts to show that in this attitude I concur with what I believe to be 
the true teaching of Christianity, should not be misunderstood. They are 
not intended to support the attitude of ' other- worldliness' which I have 
criticized in the last chapter—. Whether Christianity is other-worldly, I 
do not know, but it certainly teaches that the only way to prove one's 
faith is by rendering practical (and worldly) help to those who need it. 
And it is certainly possible to combine an attitude of the utmost reserve 
and even of contempt towards worldly success in the sense of power, 
glory, and wealth, with the attempt to do one's best in this world, and to 
further the ends one has decided to adopt with the clear purpose of 
making them succeed; not for the sake of success or of one's justification 
by history, but for their own sake. 

A forceful support of some of these views, and especially of the 
incompatibility of historicism and Christianity, can be found in 
Kierkegaard's criticism of Hegel. Although Kierkegaard never freed 
himself entirely from the Hegelian tradition in which he was educated—, 
there was hardly anybody who recognized more clearly what Hegelian 
historicism meant. 'There were', Kierkegaard wrote—, 'philosophers who 
tried, before Hegel, to explain ... history. And providence could only 
smile when it saw these attempts. But providence did not laugh outright, 
for there was a human, honest sincerity about them. But Hegel — ! Here I 
need Homer's language. How did the gods roar with laughter! Such a 
horrid little professor who has simply seen through the necessity of 
anything and everything there is, and who now plays the whole affair on 
his barrel-organ: listen, ye gods of Olympus!' And Kierkegaard 
continues, referring to the attack— by the atheist Schopenhauer upon the 
Christian apologist Hegel: 'Reading Schopenhauer has given me more 
pleasure than I can express. What he says is perfectly true; and then — it 
serves the Germans right — he is as rude as only a German can be.' But 
Kierkegaard's own expressions are nearly as blunt as Schopenhauer's; for 



Kierkegaard goes on to say that Hegelianism, which he calls 'this 
brilliant spirit of putridity', is the 'most repugnant of all forms of 
looseness'; and he speaks of its 'mildew of pomposity', its 'intellectual 
voluptuousness', and its 'infamous splendour of corruption'. 

And, indeed, our intellectual as well as our ethical education is corrupt. 
It is perverted by the admiration of brilliance, of the way things are said, 
which takes the place of a critical appreciation of the things that are said 
(and the things that are done). It is perverted by the romantic idea of the 
splendour of the stage of History on which we are the actors. We are 
educated to act with an eye to the gallery. 

The whole problem of educating man to a sane appreciation of his own 
importance relative to that of other individuals is thoroughly muddled by 
these ethics of fame and fate, by a morality which perpetuates an 
educational system that is still based upon the classics with their 
romantic view of the history of power and their romantic tribal morality 
which goes back to Heraclitus; a system whose ultimate basis is the 
worship of power. Instead of a sober combination of individualism and 
altruism (to use these labels again—) — that is to say, instead of a position 
like 'What really matters are human individuals, but I do not take this to 
mean that it is I who matter very much' — a romantic combination of 
egoism and collectivism is taken for granted. That is to say, the 
importance of the self, of its emotional life and its 'self-expression', is 
romantically exaggerated; and with it, the tension between the 
'personality' and the group, the collective. This takes the place of the 
other individuals, the other men, but does not admit of reasonable 
personal relations. 'Dominate or submit' is, by implication, the device of 
this attitude; either be a Great Man, a Hero wrestling with fate and 
earning fame ('the greater the fall, the greater the fame', says Heraclitus), 
or belong to 'the masses' and submit yourself to leadership and sacrifice 
yourself to the higher cause of your collective. There is a neurotic, an 



hysterical element in this exaggerated stress on the importance of the 
tension between the self and the collective, and I do not doubt that this 
hysteria, this reaction to the strain of civilization, is the secret of the 
strong emotional appeal of the ethics of hero-worship, of the ethics of 
domination and submission—. 

At the bottom of all this there is a real difficulty. While it is fairly 
clear (as we have seen in chapters 9 and 24) that the politician should 
limit himself to fighting against evils, instead of fighting for 'positive' or 
'higher' values, such as happiness, etc., the teacher, in principle, is in a 
different position. Although he should not impose his scale of 'higher' 
values upon his pupils, he certainly should try to stimulate their interest 
in these values. He should care for the souls of his pupils. (When Socrates 
told his friends to care for their souls, he cared for them.) Thus there is 
certainly something like a romantic or aesthetic element in education, 
such as should not enter politics. But though this is true in principle, it is 
hardly applicable to our educational system. For it presupposes a relation 
of friendship between teacher and pupil, a relation which, as emphasized 
in chapter 24, each party must be free to end. (Socrates chose his 
companions, and they him.) The very number of pupils makes all this 
impossible in our schools. Accordingly, attempts to impose higher values 
not only become unsuccessful, but it must be insisted that they lead to 
harm — to something much more concrete and public than the ideals 
aimed at. And the principle that those who are entrusted to us must, 
before anything else, not be harmed, should be recognized to be just as 
fundamental for education as it is for medicine. 'Do no harm' (and, 
therefore, 'give the young what they most urgently need, in order to 
become independent of us, and to be able to choose for themselves') 
would be a very worthy aim for our educational system, and one whose 
realization is somewhat remote, even though it sounds modest. Instead, 
'higher' aims are the fashion, aims which are typically romantic and 



indeed nonsensical, such as 'the full development of the personality'. 

It is under the influence of such romantic ideas that individualism is 
still identified with egoism, as it was by Plato, and altruism with 
collectivism (i.e. with the substitution of group egoism for the 
individualist egoism). But this bars the way even to a clear formulation of 
the main problem, the problem of how to obtain a sane appreciation of 
one's own importance in relation to other individuals. Since it is felt, and 
rightly so, that we have to aim at something beyond our own selves, 
something to which we can devote ourselves, and for which we may make 
sacrifices, it is concluded that this must be the collective, with its 
'historical mission'. Thus we are told to make sacrifices, and, at the same 
time, assured that we shall make an excellent bargain by doing so. We 
shall make sacrifices, it is said, but we shall thereby obtain honour and 
fame. We shall become 'leading actors', heroes on the Stage of History; 
for a small risk we shall gain great rewards. This is the dubious morality 
of a period in which only a tiny minority counted, and in which nobody 
cared for the common people. It is the morality of those who, being 
political or intellectual aristocrats, have a chance of getting into the 
textbooks of history. It cannot possibly be the morality of those who 
favour justice and equalitarianism; for historical fame cannot be just, and 
it can be attained only by a very few. The countless number of men who 
are just as worthy, or worthier, will always be forgotten. 

It should perhaps be admitted that the Heraclitean ethics, the doctrine 
that the higher reward is that which only posterity can offer, may in some 
way perhaps be slightly superior to an ethical doctrine which teaches us 
to look out for reward now. But it is not what we need. We need an ethics 
which defies success and reward. And such an ethics need not be 
invented. It is not new. It has been taught by Christianity, at least in its 
beginnings. It is, again, taught by the industrial as well as by the 
scientific co-operation of our own day. The romantic historicist morality 



of fame, fortunately, seems to be on the decline. The Unknown Soldier 
shows it. We are beginning to realize that sacrifice may mean just as 
much, or even more, when it is made anonymously. Our ethical education 
must follow suit. We must be taught to do our work; to make our 
sacrifice for the sake of this work, and not for praise or the avoidance of 
blame. (The fact that we all need some encouragement, hope, praise, and 
even blame, is another matter altogether.) We must find our justification 
in our work, in what we are doing ourselves, and not in a fictitious 
'meaning of history'. 

History has no meaning, I contend. But this contention does not imply 
that all we can do about it is to look aghast at the history of political 
power, or that we must look on it as a cruel joke. For we can interpret it, 
with an eye to those problems of power politics whose solution we choose 
to attempt in our time. We can interpret the history of power politics 
from the point of view of our fight for the open society, for a rule of 
reason, for justice, freedom, equality, and for the control of international 
crime. Although history has no ends, we can impose these ends of ours 
upon it; and although history has no meaning, we can give it a meaning. 

It is the problem of nature and convention which we meet here again—. 
Neither nature nor history can tell us what we ought to do. Facts, whether 
those of nature or those of history, cannot make the decision for us, they 
cannot determine the ends we are going to choose. It is we who introduce 
purpose and meaning into nature and into history. Men are not equal; but 
we can decide to fight for equal rights. Human institutions such as the 
state are not rational, but we can decide to fight to make them more 
rational. We ourselves and our ordinary language are, on the whole, 
emotional rather than rational; but we can try to become a little more 
rational, and we can train ourselves to use our language as an instrument 
not of self-expression (as our romantic educationists would say) but of 
rational communication—. History itself — I mean the history of power 



politics, of course, not the nonexistent story of the development of 
mankind — has no end nor meaning, but we can decide to give it both. We 
can make it our fight for the open society and against its enemies (who, 
when in a corner, always protest their humanitarian sentiments, in 
accordance with Pareto's advice); and we can interpret it accordingly. 
Ultimately, we may say the same about the 'meaning of life'. It is up to 
us to decide what shall be our purpose in life, to determine our ends—. 

This dualism of facts and decisions— is, I believe, fundamental. Facts 
as such have no meaning; they can gain it only through our decisions. 
Historicism is only one of many attempts to get over this dualism; it is 
born of fear, for it shrinks from realizing that we bear the ultimate 
responsibility even for the standards we choose. But such an attempt 
seems to me to represent precisely what is usually described as 
superstition. For it assumes that we can reap where we have not sown; it 
tries to persuade us that if we merely fall into step with history 
everything will and must go right, and that no fundamental decision on 
our part is required; it tries to shift our responsibility on to history, and 
thereby on to the play of demoniac powers beyond ourselves; it tries to 
base our actions upon the hidden intentions of these powers, which can be 
revealed to us only in mystical inspirations and intuitions; and it thus 
puts our actions and ourselves on the moral level of a man who, inspired 
by horoscopes and dreams, chooses his lucky number in a lottery—. Like 
gambling, historicism is born of our despair in the rationality and 
responsibility of our actions. It is a debased hope and a debased faith, an 
attempt to replace the hope and the faith that springs from our moral 
enthusiasm and the contempt for success by a certainty that springs from 
a pseudo-science; a pseudoscience of the stars, or of 'human nature', or 
of historical destiny. 

Historicism, I assert, is not only rationally untenable, it is also in 
conflict with any religion that teaches the importance of conscience. For 



such a religion must agree with the rationalist attitude towards history in 
its emphasis on our supreme responsibility for our actions, and for their 
repercussions upon the course of history. True, we need hope; to act, to 
live without hope goes beyond our strength. But we do not need more, 
and we must not be given more. We do not need certainty. Religion, in 
particular, should not be a substitute for dreams and wish-fulfilment; it 
should resemble neither the holding of a ticket in a lottery, nor the 
holding of a policy in an insurance company. The historicist element in 
religion is an element of idolatry, of superstition. 

This emphasis upon the dualism of facts and decisions determines also 
our attitude towards such ideas as 'progress'. If we think that history 
progresses, or that we are bound to progress, then we commit the same 
mistake as those who believe that history has a meaning that can be 
discovered in it and need not be given to it. For to progress is to move 
towards some kind of end, towards an end which exists for us as human 
beings. 'History' cannot do that; only we, the human individuals, can do 
it; we can do it by defending and strengthening those democratic 
institutions upon which freedom, and with it progress, depends. And we 
shall do it much better as we become more fully aware of the fact that 
progress rests with us, with our watchfulness, with our efforts, with the 
clarity of our conception of our ends, and with the realism— of their 
choice. 

Instead of posing as prophets we must become the makers of our fate. 
We must learn to do things as well as we can, and to look out for our 
mistakes. And when we have dropped the idea that the history of power 
will be our judge, when we have given up worrying whether or not history 
will justify us, then one day perhaps we may succeed in getting power 
under control. In this way we may even justify history, in our turn. It 
badly needs a justification. 



Addenda 



I 

Facts, Standards, and Truth: A Further Criticism 
of Relativism (1961) 

The main philosophical malady of our time is an intellectual and moral 
relativism, the latter being at least in part based upon the former. By 
relativism — or, if you like, scepticism — I mean here, briefly, the theory 
that the choice between competing theories is arbitrary; since either, 
there is no such thing as objective truth; or, if there is, no such thing as a 
theory which is true or at any rate (though perhaps not true) nearer to the 
truth than another theory; or, if there are two or more theories, no ways or 
means of deciding whether one of them is better than another. 

In this addendum- I shall first suggest that a dose of Tarski's theory of 
truth (see also the references to A. Tarski in the Index of this book), 
stiffened perhaps by my own theory of getting nearer to the truth, may go 
a long way towards curing this malady, though I admit that some other 
remedies might also be required, such as the non- authoritarian theory of 
knowledge which I have developed elsewhere.- 1 shall also try to show (in 
sections 12 ff. below) that the situation in the realm of standards — 
especially in the moral and political field — is somewhat analogous to that 
obtaining in the realm of facts. 



1. Truth 



Certain arguments in support of relativism arise from the question, asked 
in the tone of the assured sceptic who knows for certain that there is no 
answer: 'What is truth?' But Pilate's question can be answered in a 
simple and reasonable way — ^though hardly in a way that would have 
satisfied him — as follows: an assertion, proposition, statement, or belief, 
is true if, and only if, it corresponds to the facts. 

Yet what do we mean by saying that a statement corresponds to the 
facts? Though to our sceptic or relativist this second question may seem 
just as unanswerable as the first, it actually can be equally readily 
answered. The answer is not difficult — as one might expect if one 
reflects upon the fact that every judge assumes that the witness knows 
what truth (in the sense of correspondence with the facts) means. Indeed, 
the answer turns out to be almost trivial. 

In a way it is trivial — that is, once we have learnt from Tarski that the 
problem is one in which we refer to or speak about statements and facts 
and some relationship of correspondence holding between statement and 
facts; and that, therefore, the solution must also be one that refers to or 
speaks about statements and facts, and some relation between them. 
Consider the following: 

The statement 'Smith entered the pawnshop shortly after 10.15' 
corresponds to the facts if and only if Smith entered the pawnshop 
shortly after 10.15. 

When we read this italicized paragraph, what is likely to strike us first 
is its triviality. But never mind its triviality: if we look at it again, and 
more carefully, we see (1) that it refers to a statement, and (2) to some 
facts; and (3) that it can therefore state the very obvious conditions which 
we should expect to hold whenever we wish to say that the statement 
referred to corresponds to the facts referred to. 



Those who think that this italicized paragraph is too trivial or too 
simple to contain anything interesting should be reminded of the fact, 
already referred to, that since everybody knows what truth, or 
correspondence with the facts, means (as long as he does not allow 
himself to speculate about it) this must be, in a sense, a trivial matter. 

That the idea formulated in the italicized paragraph is correct, may be 
brought out by the following second italicized paragraph. 

The assertion made by the witness, 'Smith entered the pawnshop 
shortly after 10.15' is true if and only if Smith entered the pawnshop 
shortly after 10.15. 

It is clear that this second italicized paragraph is again very trivial. 
Nevertheless, it states in full the conditions for applying the predicate 'is 
true' to any statement made by a witness. 

Some people might think that a better way to formulate the paragraph 
would be the following: 

The assertion made by the witness 7 saw that Smith entered the 
pawnshop shortly after 10.15' is true if and only if the witness saw that 
Smith entered the pawnshop shortly after 10.15. 

Comparing this third italicized paragraph with the second we see that 
while the second gives the conditions for the truth of a statement about 
Smith and what he did, the third gives the conditions for the truth of a 
statement about the witness and what he did (or saw). But this is the only 
difference between the two paragraphs: both state the full conditions for 
the truth of the two different statements which are quoted in them. 

It is a rule of giving evidence that eye-witnesses should confine 
themselves to stating what they actually saw. Compliance with this rule 
may sometimes make it easier for the judge to distinguish between true 
evidence and false evidence. Thus the third italicized paragraph may 
perhaps be said to have some advantages over the second, if regarded 
from the point of view of truth-^^^A:z>2^ and tmth-finding. 



But it is essential for our present purpose not to mix up questions of 
actual truth-seeking or truth-finding (i.e. epistemological or 
methodological questions) with the question of what we mean, or what 
we intend to say, when we speak of truth, or of correspondence with the 
facts (the logical or ontological question of truth). Now from the latter 
point of view, the third italicized paragraph has no advantage whatever 
over the second. Each of them states to the full the conditions for the 
truth of the statement to which it refers. 

Each, therefore, answers the question — 'What is truth?' in precisely 
the same way; though each does it only indirectly, by giving the 
conditions for the truth for a certain statementMand each for a different 
statement. 

2. Criteria 

It is decisive to realize that knowing what truth means, or under what 
conditions a statement is called true, is not the same as, and must be 
clearly distinguished from, possessing a means of deciding — a criterion 
for deciding — whether a given statement is true or false. 

The distinction I am referring to is a very general one, and it is of 
considerable importance for an assessment of relativism, as we shall see. 

We may know, for example, what we mean by 'good meat' and by 
'meat gone bad'; but we may not know how to tell the one from the other, 
at least in some cases: it is this we have in mind when we say that we 
have no criterion of the 'goodness' of good meat. Similarly, every doctor 
knows, more or less, what he means by 'tuberculosis'; but he may not 
always recognize it. And even though there may be (by now) batteries of 
tests which amount almost to a decision method, — that is to say, to a 
criterionMsixty years ago there certainly were no such batteries of tests 



at the disposal of doctors, and no criterion. But doctors knew then very 
well what they meant — a lung infection due to a certain kind of microbe. 

Admittedly, a criterion — a definite method of decision — if we could 
obtain one, might make everything clearer and more definite and more 
precise. It is therefore understandable that some people, hankering after 
precision, demand criteria. And if we can get them, the demand may be 
reasonable. 

But it would be a mistake to believe that, before we have a criterion for 
deciding whether or not a man is suffering from tuberculosis, the phrase 
'Xis suffering from tuberculosis' is meaningless; or that, before we have 
a criterion of the goodness or badness of meat, there is no point in 
considering whether or not a piece of meat has gone bad; or that, before 
we have a reliable lie-detector, we do not know what we mean when we 
say that X is deliberately lying, and should therefore not even consider 
this 'possibility', since it is no possibility at all, but meaningless; or that, 
before we have a criterion of truth, we do not know what we mean when 
we say of a statement that it is true. 

Thus those who insist that, without a criterion — a reliable test — for 
tuberculosis, or lying, or truth, we cannot mean anything by the words 
'tuberculosis' or 'lying' or 'true', are certainly mistaken. In fact, 
construction of a battery of tests for tuberculosis, or for lying, comes 
after we have established — perhaps only roughly — ^what we mean by 
'tuberculosis' or by 'lying'. 

It is clear that in the course of developing tests for tuberculosis, we 
may learn a lot more about this illness; so much, perhaps, that we may 
say that the very meaning of the term 'tuberculosis' has changed under 
the influence of our new knowledge, and that after the establishment of 
the criterion the meaning of the term is no longer the same as before. 
Some, perhaps, may even say that 'tuberculosis' can now be defined in 
terms of the criterion. But this does not alter the fact that we meant 



something before — though we may, of course, have known less about the 
thing. Nor does it alter the fact that there are few diseases (if any) for 
which we have either a criterion or a clear definition, and that few criteria 
(if any) are reliable. (But if they are not reliable, we had better not call 
them 'criteria'.) 

There may be no criterion which helps us to establish whether a pound 
note is, or is not, genuine. But should we find two pound notes with the 
same serial number, we should have good reasons to assert, even in the 
absence of a criterion, that one of them at least is a forgery; and this 
assertion would clearly not be made meaningless by the absence of a 
criterion of genuineness. 

To sum up, the theory that in order to determine what a word means we 
must establish a criterion for its correct use, or for its correct application, 
is mistaken: we practically never have such a criterion. 

3. Criterion philosophies 

The view just rejected — ^the view that we must have criteria in order to 
know what we are talking about, whether it is tuberculosis, lying, or 
existence, or meaning, or truth — is the overt or implicit basis of many 
philosophies. A philosophy of this kind may be called a 'criterion 
philosophy'. 

Since the basic demand of a criterion philosophy cannot as a rule be 
met, it is clear that the adoption of a criterion-philosophy will, in many 
cases, lead to disappointment, and to relativism or scepticism. 

I believe that it is the demand for a criterion of truth which has made 
so many people feel that the question 'What is truth?' is unanswerable. 
But the absence of a criterion of truth does not render the notion of truth 
non- significant any more than the absence of a criterion of health renders 



the notion of health non-significant. A sick man may seek health even 
though he has no criterion for it. An erring man may seek truth even 
though he has no criterion for it. 

And both may simply seek health, or truth, without much bothering 
about the meanings of these terms which they (and others) understand 
well enough for their purposes. 

One immediate result of Tarski's work on truth is the following 
theorem of logic: there can be no general criterion of truth (except with 
respect to certain artificial language systems of a somewhat 
impoverished kind). 

This result can be exactly established; and its establishment makes use 
of the notion of truth as correspondence with the facts. 

We have here an interesting and philosophically very important result 
(important especially in connection with the problem of an authoritarian 
theory of knowledge-). But this result has been established with the help 
of a notion — in this case the notion of truth — for which we have no 
criterion. The unreasonable demand of the criterion-philosophies that we 
should not take a notion seriously before a criterion has been established 
would therefore, if adhered to in this case, have for ever prevented us 
from attaining a logical result of great philosophical interest. 

Incidentally, the result that there can be no general criterion of truth is 
a direct consequence of the still more important result (which Tarski 
obtained by combining Godel's undecidability theorem with his own 
theory of truth) that there can be no general criterion of truth even for the 
comparatively narrow field of number theory, or for any science which 
makes full use of arithmetic. It applies a fortiori to truth in any extra- 
mathematical field in which unrestricted use is made of arithmetic. 



4. Fallibilism 



All this shows not only that some still fashionable forms of scepticism 
and relativism are mistaken, but also that they are obsolete; that they are 
based on a logical confusion — between the meaning of a term and the 
criterion of its proper application — although the means for clearing up 
this confusion have been readily available for some thirty years. 

It must be admitted, however, that there is a kernel of truth in both 
scepticism and relativism. The kernel of truth is just that there exists no 
general criterion of truth. But this does not warrant the conclusion that 
the choice between competing theories is arbitrary. It merely means, 
quite simply, that we can always err in our choice — that we can always 
miss the truth, or fall short of the truth; that certainty is not for us (nor 
even knowledge that is highly probable, as I have shown in various 
places, for example in chapter 10 of Conjectures and Refutations)', that 
we are fallible. 

This, for all we know, is no more than the plain truth. There are few 
fields of human endeavour, if any, which seem to be exempt from human 
fallibility. What we once thought to be well-established, or even certain, 
may later turn out to be not quite correct (but this means false), and in 
need of correction. 

A particularly impressive example of this is the discovery of heavy 
water, and of heavy hydrogen {deuterium, first separated by Harold C. 
Urey in 1931). Prior to this discovery, nothing more certain and more 
settled could be imagined in the field of chemistry than our knowledge of 
water (H2 O) and of the chemical elements of which it is composed. 
Water was even used for the 'operational' definition of the gramme, the 
unit standard of mass of the 'absolute' metric system; it thus formed one 
of the basic units of experimental physical measurements. This illustrates 
the fact that our knowledge of water was believed to be so well 
established that it could be used as the firm basis of all other physical 
measurements. But after the discovery of heavy water, it was realized that 



what had been believed to be a chemically pure compound was actually a 
mixture of chemically indistinguishable but physically very different 
compounds, with very different densities, boiling points, and freezing 
points — ^though for the definitions of all these points, 'water' had been 
used as a standard base. 

This historical incident is typical; and we may learn from it that we 
cannot foresee which parts of our scientific knowledge may come to grief 
one day. Thus the belief in scientific certainty and in the authority of 
science is just wishful thinking: science is fallible, because science is 
human. 

But the fallibility of our knowledge — or the thesis that all knowledge is 
guesswork, though some consists of guesses which have been most 
severely tested — ^must not be cited in support of scepticism or relativism. 
From the fact that we can err, and that a criterion of truth which might 
save us from error does not exist, it does not follow that the choice 
between theories is arbitrary, or non-rational: that we cannot learn, or get 
nearer to the truth: that our knowledge cannot grow. 

5. Fallibilism and the growth of knowledge 

By 'fallibilism' I mean here the view, or the acceptance of the fact, that 
we may err, and that the quest for certainty (or even the quest for high 
probability) is a mistaken quest. But this does not imply that the quest for 
truth is mistaken. On the contrary, the idea of error implies that of truth 
as the standard of which we may fall short. It implies that, though we 
may seek for truth, and though we may even find truth (as I believe we do 
in very many cases), we can never be quite certain that we have found it. 
There is always a possibility of error; though in the case of some logical 
and mathematical proofs, this possibility may be considered slight. 



But fallibilism need in no way give rise to any sceptical or relativist 
conclusions. This will become clear if we consider that all the known 
historical examples of human fallibility — including all the known 
examples of miscarriage of justice — are examples of the advance of our 
knowledge. Every discovery of a mistake constitutes a real advance in our 
knowledge. As Roger Martin du Gard says mJean Barois, 'it is 
something if we know where truth is not to be found'. 

For example, although the discovery of heavy water showed that we 
were badly mistaken, this was not only an advance in our knowledge, but 
it was in its turn connected with other advances, and it produced many 
further advances. Thus we can learn from our mistakes. 

This fundamental insight is, indeed, the basis of all epistemology and 
methodology; for it gives us a hint how to learn more systematically, how 
to advance more quickly (not necessarily in the interests of technology: 
for each individual seeker after truth, the problem of how to hasten one's 
advance is most urgent). This hint, very simply, is that we must search for 
our mistakesdAor in other words, that we must try to criticize our theories. 

Criticism, it seems, is the only way we have of detecting our mistakes, 
and of learning from them in a systematic way. 

6. Getting nearer to the truth 

In all this, the idea of the growth of knowledge — of getting nearer to the 
truth — is decisive. Intuitively, this idea is as clear as the idea of truth 
itself. A statement is true if it corresponds to the facts. It is nearer to the 
truth than another statement if it corresponds to the facts more closely 
than the other statement. 

But though this idea is intuitively clear enough, and its legitimacy is 
hardly questioned by ordinary people or by scientists, it has, like the idea 



of truth, been attacked as illegitimate by some philosophers (for example 
quite recently by W. V. Quine -). It may therefore be mentioned here that, 
combining two analyses of Tarski, I have recently been able to give a 
'definition' of the idea of approaching truth in the purely logical terms of 
Tarski 's theory. (I simply combined the ideas of truth and of content, 
obtaining the idea of the truth-content of a statement a, i.e. the class of all 
true statements following from a, and its falsity content, which can be 
defined, roughly, as its content minus its truth content. We can then say 
that a statement a gets nearer to the truth than a statement b if and only if 
its truth content has increased without an increase in its falsity content; 
see chapter 10 of my Conjectures and Refutations .) There is therefore no 
reason whatever to be sceptical about the notion of getting nearer to the 
truth, or of the advancement of knowledge. And though we may always 
err, we have in many cases (especially in cases of crucial tests deciding 
between two theories) a fair idea of whether or not we have in fact got 
nearer to the truth. 

It should be very clearly understood that the idea of one statement a 
getting nearer to the truth than another statement b in no way interferes 
with the idea that every statement is either true or false, and that there is 
no third possibility. It only takes account of the fact that there may be a 
lot of truth in a false statement. If I say 'It is half past three — too late to 
catch the 3.35' then my statement might be false because it was not too 
late for the 3.35 (since the 3.35 happened to be four minutes late). But 
there was still a lot of truth — of true information — in my statement; and 
though I might have added 'unless indeed the 3.35 is late (which it rarely 
is)', and thereby added to its truth-content, this additional remark might 
well have been taken as understood. (My statement might also have been 
false because it was only 3.28 not 3.30, when I made it. But even then 
there was a lot of truth in it.) 

A theory like Kepler's which describes the track of the planets with 



remarkable accuracy may be said to contain a lot of true information, 
even though it is a false theory because deviations from Kepler's ellipses 
do occur. And Newton's theory (even though we may assume here that it 
is false) contains, for all we know, a staggering amount of true 
information — much more than Kepler's theory. Thus Newton's theory is 
a better approximation than Kepler's — it gets nearer to the truth. But this 
does not make it true: it can be nearer to the truth and it can, at the same 
time, be a false theory. 

7. Absolutism 

The idea of a philosophical absolutism is rightly repugnant to many 
people since it is, as a rule, combined with a dogmatic and authoritarian 
claim to possess the truth, or a criterion of truth. 

But there is another form of absolutism — a fallibilistic absolutism — 
which indeed rejects all this: it merely asserts that our mistakes, at least, 
are absolute mistakes, in the sense that if a theory deviates from the truth, 
it is simply false, even if the mistake made was less glaring than that in 
another theory. Thus the notions of truth, and of falling short of the truth, 
can represent absolute standards for the fallibilist. This kind of 
absolutism is completely free from any taint of authoritarianism. And it 
is a great help in serious critical discussions. Of course, it can be 
criticized in its turn, in accordance with the principle that nothing is 
exempt from criticism. But at least at the moment it seems to me unlikely 
that criticism of the (logical) theory of truth and the theory of getting 
nearer to the truth will succeed. 



8. Sources of knowledge 



The principle that everything is open to criticism (from which this 
principle itself is not exempt) leads to a simple solution of the problem of 
the sources of knowledge, as I have tried to show elsewhere (see the 
Introduction to my Conjectures and Refutations). It is this: every 
'source' — tradition, reason, imagination, observation, or what not — is 
admissible and may be used, but none has any authority. 

This denial of authority to the sources of knowledge attributes to them 
a role very different from that which they were supposed to play in past 
and present epistemologies. But it is part of our critical and fallibilist 
approach: every source is welcome, but no statement is immune from 
criticism, whatever its 'source' may be. Tradition, more especially, which 
both the intellectualists (Descartes) and the empiricists (Bacon) tended to 
reject, can be admitted by us as one of the most important 'sources', 
since almost all that we learn (from our elders, in school, from books) 
stems from it. I therefore hold that anti-traditionalism must be rejected as 
futile. Yet traditionalism — which stresses the authority of traditions — 
must be rejected too; not as futile, but as mistaken — just as mistaken as 
any other epistemology which accepts some source of knowledge 
(intellectual intuition, say, or sense intuition) as an authority, or a 
guarantee, or a criterion, of truth. 

9. Is a critical method possible? 

But if we really reject any claim to authority, of any particular source of 
knowledge, how can we then criticize any theory? Does not all criticism 
proceed from some assumptions? Does not the validity of any criticism, 
therefore, depend upon the truth of these assumptions? And what is the 
good of criticizing a theory if the criticism should turn out to be invalid? 
Yet in order to show that it is valid, must we not establish, or justify, its 



assumptions? And is not the establishment or the justification of any 
assumption just the thing which everybody attempts (though often in 
vain) and which I here declare to be impossible? But if it is impossible, is 
not then (valid) criticism impossible too? 

I believe that it is this series of questions or objections which has 
largely barred the way to a (tentative) acceptance of the point of view 
here advocated: as these questions show, one may easily be led to believe 
that the critical method is, logically considered, in the same boat with all 
other methods: since it cannot work without making assumptions, it 
would have to establish or justify those assumptions; yet the whole point 
of our argument was that we cannot establish or justify anything as 
certain, or even as probable, but have to content ourselves with theories 
which withstand criticism. 

Obviously, these objections are very serious. They bring out the 
importance of our principle that nothing is exempt from criticism, or 
should be held to be exempt from criticism — ^not even this principle of 
the critical method itself. 

Thus these objections constitute an interesting and important criticism 
of my position. But this criticism can in its turn be criticized; and it can 
be refuted. 

First of all, even if we were to admit that all criticism starts from 
certain assumptions, this would not necessarily mean that, for it to be 
valid criticism, these assumptions must be established and justified. For 
the assumptions may, for example, be part of the theory against which the 
criticism is directed. (In this case we speak of 'immanent criticism'.) Or 
they may be assumptions which would be generally found acceptable, 
even though they do not form part of the theory criticized. In this case the 
criticism would amount to pointing out that the theory criticized 
contradicts (unknown to its defenders) some generally accepted views. 
This kind of criticism may be very valuable even when it is unsuccessful; 



for it may lead the defenders of the criticized theory to question those 
generally accepted views, and this may lead to important discoveries. (An 
interesting example is the history of Dirac's theory of anti-particles.) 

Or they may be assumptions which are of the nature of a competing 
theory (in which case the criticism may be called 'transcendent 
criticism', in contradistinction to 'immanent criticism'): the assumptions 
may be, for example, hypotheses, or guesses, which can be independently 
criticized and tested. In this case the criticism offered would amount to a 
challenge to carry out certain crucial tests in order to decide between two 
competing theories. 

These examples show that the important objections raised here against 
my theory of criticism are based upon the untenable dogma that criticism, 
in order to be 'valid', must proceed from assumptions which are 
established or justified. 

Moreover, criticism may be important, enlightening, and even fruitful, 
without being valid: the arguments used in order to reject some invalid 
criticism may throw a lot of new light upon a theory, and can be used as a 
(tentative) argument in its favour; and of a theory which can thus defend 
itself against criticism we may well say that it is supported by critical 
arguments. 

Quite generally, we may say that valid criticism of a theory consists in 
pointing out that a theory does not succeed in solving the problems which 
it was supposed to solve; and if we look at criticism in this light then it 
certainly need not be dependent on any particular set of assumptions (that 
is, it can be 'immanent'), even though it may well be that some 
assumptions which were foreign to the theory under discussion (that is, 
some 'transcendent' assumptions) inspired it to start with. 



10. Decisions 



From the point of view here developed, theories are not, in general, 
capable of being established or justified; and although they may be 
supported by critical arguments, this support is never conclusive. 
Accordingly, we shall frequently have to make up our minds whether or 
not these critical arguments are strong enough to justify the tentative 
acceptance of the theory — or in other words, whether the theory seems 
preferable, in the light of the critical discussion, to the competing 
theories. 

In this sense, decisions enter into the critical method. But it is always a 
tentative decision, and a decision subject to criticism. 

As such it should be contrasted with what has been called 'decision' or 
'leap in the dark' by some irrationalist or anti-rationalist or existentialist 
philosophers. These philosophers, probably under the impact of the 
argument (rejected in the preceding section) of the impossibility of 
criticism without presuppositions, developed the theory that all our tenets 
must be based on some fundamental decision — on some leap in the dark. 
It must be a decision, a leap, which we take with closed eyes, as it were; 
for as we cannot 'know' without assumptions, without already having 
taken up a fundamental position, this fundamental position cannot be 
taken up on the basis of knowledge. It is, rather, a choice — ^but a kind of 
fateful and almost irrevocable choice, one which we take blindly, or by 
instinct, or by chance, or by the grace of God. 

Our rejection of the objections presented in the preceding section 
shows that the irrationalist view of decisions is an exaggeration as well as 
an over-dramatization. Admittedly, we must decide. But unless we decide 
against listening to argument and reason, against learning from our 
mistakes, and against listening to others who may have objections to our 
views, our decisions need not be final; not even the decision to consider 
criticism. (It is only in its decision not to take an irrevocable leap into the 
darkness of irrationality that rationalism may be said not to be self- 



contained, in the sense of chapter 24.) 

I believe that the critical theory of knowledge here sketched throws 
some light upon the great problems of all theories of knowledge: how it is 
that we know so much and so little; and how it is that we can lift 
ourselves slowly out of the swamp of ignorance — by our own bootstraps, 
as it were. We do so by working with guesses, and by improving upon our 
guesses, through criticism. 

11. Social and political problems 

The theory of knowledge sketched in the preceding sections of this 
addendum seems to me to have important consequences for the 
evaluation of the social situation of our time, a situation influenced to a 
large extent by the decline of authoritarian religion. This decline has led 
to a widespread relativism and nihilism: to the decline of all beliefs, even 
the belief in human reason, and thus in ourselves. 

But the argument here developed shows that there are no grounds 
whatever for drawing such desperate conclusions. The relativistic and the 
nihilistic (and even the 'existentialistic') arguments are all based on 
faulty reasoning. In this they show, incidentally, that these philosophies 
actually do accept reason, but are unable to use it properly; in their own 
terminology we might say that they fail to understand 'the human 
situation', and especially man's ability to grow, intellectually and 
morally. 

As a striking illustration of this misunderstanding — of desperate 
consequences drawn from an insufficient understanding of the 
epistemological situation — I will quote a passage from one of 
Nietzsche's Tracts Against the Times (from section 3 of his essay on 
Schopenhauer). 



This was the first danger in whose shadow Schopenhauer grew up: isolation. The second 
was: despair of finding the truth. This latter danger is the constant companion of every 
thinker who sets out from Kant's philosophy; that is if he is a real man, a living human 
being, able to suffer and yearn, and not a mere rattling automaton, a mere thinking and 
calculating machine ... Though I am reading everywhere that [owing to Kant] ... a 
revolution has started in all fields of thought, I cannot believe that this is so as yet . . . But 
should Kant one day begin to exert a more general influence, then we shall find that this will 
take the form of a creeping and destructive scepticism and relativism; and only the most 
active and the most noble of minds . . . will instead experience that deep emotional shock, 
and that despair of truth, which was felt for example by Heinrich von Kleist ... 'Recently', 
he wrote, in his moving way, 'I have become acquainted with the philosophy of Kant; and I 
must tell you of a thought of which I need not be afraid that it will shake you as deeply and 
as painfully as it shook me: — ^It is impossible for us to decide whether that to which we 
appeal as truth is in truth the truth, or whether it merely seems to us so. If it is the latter, then 
all that truth to which we may attain here will be as nothing after our death, and all our 
efforts to produce and acquire something that might survive us must be in vain. — ^If the 
sharp point of this thought does not pierce your heart, do not smile at one who feels 
wounded by it in the holiest depth of his soul. My highest, my only aim has fallen to the 
ground, and I have none left.' 

I agree with Nietzsche that Kleist's words are moving; and I agree that 
Kleist 's reading of Kant's doctrine that it is impossible to attain any 
knowledge of things in themselves is straightforward enough, even 
though it conflicts with Kant's own intentions; for Kant believed in the 
possibility of science, and of finding the truth. (It was only the need to 
explain the paradox of the existence of ma priori science of nature 
which led him to adopt that subjectivism which Kleist rightly found 
shocking.) Moreover, Kleist's despair is at least partly the result of 
disappointment — of seeing the downfall of an over-optimistic belief in a 
simple criterion of truth (such as self-evidence). Yet whatever may be the 
history of this philosophic despair, it is not called for. Though truth is not 
self-revealing (as Cartesians and Baconians thought), though certainty 
may be unattainable, the human situation with respect to knowledge is far 
from desperate. On the contrary, it is exhilarating: here we are, with the 
immensely difficult task before us of getting to know the beautiful world 



we live in, and ourselves; and fallible though we are we nevertheless find 
that our powers of understanding, surprisingly, are almost adequate for 
the task — more so than we ever dreamt in our wildest dreams. We really 
do learn from our mistakes, by trial and error. And at the same time we 
learn how little we know — as when, in climbing a mountain; every step 
upwards opens some new vista into the unknown, and new worlds unfold 
themselves of whose existence we knew nothing when we began our 
climb. 

Thus we can learn, we can grow in knowledge, even if we can never 
knowdA that is, know for certain. Since we can learn, there is no reason 
for despair of reason; and since we can never know, there are no grounds 
here for smugness, or for conceit over the growth of our knowledge. 

It may be said that this new way of knowing is too abstract and too 
sophisticated to replace the loss of authoritarian religion. This may be 
true. But we must not underrate the power of the intellect and the 
intellectuals. It was the intellectuals — ^the 'second-hand dealers in ideas', 
as F. A. Hayek calls them — ^who spread relativism, nihilism, and 
intellectual despair. There is no reason why some intellectuals — some 
more enlightened intellectuals — should not eventually succeed in 
spreading the good news that the nihilist ado was indeed about nothing. 

12. Dualism of facts and standards 

In the body of this book I spoke about the dualism of facts and decisions, 
and I pointed out, following L. J. Russell (see note 5 (3) to chapter 5, vol. 
i, p. 234), that this dualism may be described as one of propositions and 
proposals. The latter terminology has the advantage of reminding us that 
both propositions, which state facts, and proposals, which propose 
policies, including principles or standards of policy, are open to rational 



discussion. Moreover, a decision — one, say, concerning the adoption of a 
principle of conduct — ^reached after the discussion of a proposal, may 
well be tentative, and it may be in many respects very similar to a 
decision to adopt (also tentatively), as the best available hypothesis, a 
proposition which states a fact. 

There is, however, an important difference here. For the proposal to 
adopt a policy or a standard, its discussion, and the decision to adopt it, 
may be said to create this policy or this standard. On the other hand, the 
proposal of a hypothesis, its discussion, and the decision to adopt it — or 
to accept a proposition — does not, in the same sense, create a fact. This, I 
suppose, was the reason why I thought that the term 'decision' would be 
able to express the contrast between the acceptance of policies or 
standards, and the acceptance of facts. Yet there is no doubt that it would 
have been clearer had I spoken of a dualism of facts and policies, or of a 
dualism of facts and standards, rather than of a dualism of facts and 
decisions. 

Terminology apart, the important thing is the irreducible dualism 
itself: whatever the facts may be, and whatever the standards may be (for 
example, the principles of our policies), the first thing is to distinguish 
the two, and to see clearly why standards cannot be reduced to facts. 

13. Proposals and propositions 

There is, then, a decisive asymmetry between standards and facts: 
through the decision to accept a proposal (at least tentatively) we create 
the corresponding standard (at least tentatively); yet through the decision 
to accept a proposition we do not create the corresponding fact. 

Another asymmetry is that standards always pertain to facts, and that 
facts are evaluated by standards; these are relations which cannot be 



simply turned round. 

Whenever we are faced with a fact — and more especially, with a fact 
which we may be able to change — we can ask whether or not it complies 
with certain standards. It is important to realize that this is very far from 
being the same as asking whether we like it; for although we may often 
adopt standards which correspond to our likes or dislikes, and although 
our likes and dislikes may play an important role in inducing us to adopt 
or reject some proposed standard, there will as a rule be many other 
possible standards which we have not adopted; and it will be possible to 
judge, or evaluate, the facts by any of them. This shows that the 
relationship of evaluation (of some questionable fact by some adopted or 
rejected standard) is, logically considered, totally different from a 
person's psychological relation (which is not a standard but a fact), of 
like or dislike, to the fact in question, or to the standard in question. 
Moreover, our likes and dislikes are facts which can be evaluated like any 
other facts. 

Similarly, the fact that a certain standard has been adopted or rejected 
by some person or by some society must, as a fact, be distinguished from 
any standard, including the adopted or rejected standard. And since it is a 
fact (and an alterable fact) it may be judged or evaluated by some (other) 
standards. 

These are a few reasons why standards and facts, and therefore 
proposals and propositions, should be clearly and decisively 
distinguished. Yet once they have been distinguished, we may look not 
only at the dissimilarities of facts and standards but also at their 
similarities. 

First, both proposals and propositions are alike in that we can discuss 
them, criticize them, and come to some decision about them. Secondly, 
there is some kind of regulative idea about both. In the realm of facts it is 
the idea of correspondence between a statement or a proposition and a 



fact; that is to say, the idea of truth. In the realm of standards, or of 
proposals, the regulative idea may be described in many ways, and called 
by many terms, for example, by the terms 'right' or 'good'. We may say 
of a proposal that it is right (or wrong) or perhaps good (or bad); and by 
this we may mean, perhaps, that it corresponds (or does not correspond) 
to certain standards which we have decided to adopt. But we may also say 
of a standard that it is right or wrong, or good or bad, or valid or invalid, 
or high or low; and by this we may mean, perhaps, that the corresponding 
proposal should or should not be accepted. It must therefore be admitted 
that the logical situation of the regulative ideas, of 'right', say, or 'good', 
is far less clear than that of the idea of correspondence to the facts. 

As pointed out in the book, this difficulty is a logical one and cannot be 
got over by the introduction of a religious system of standards. The fact 
that God, or any other authority, commands me to do a certain thing is no 
guarantee that the command is right. It is I who must decide whether to 
accept the standards of any authority as (morally) good or bad. God is 
good only if His commandments are good; it would be a grave mistake — 
in fact an immoral adoption of authoritarianism — ^to say that His 
commandments are good simply because they are His, unless we have 
first decided (at our own risk) that He can only demand good or right 
things of us. 

This is Kant's idea of autonomy, as opposed to heteronomy. 

Thus no appeal to authority, not even to religious authority, can get us 
out of the difficulty that the regulative idea of absolute 'rightness' or 
'goodness' differs in its logical status from that of absolute truth; and we 
have to admit the difference. This difference is responsible for the fact, 
alluded to above, that in a sense we create our standards by proposing, 
discussing, and adopting them. 

All this must be admitted; nevertheless we may take the idea of 
absolute truth — of correspondence to the facts — as a kind of model for 



the realm of standards, in order to make it clear to ourselves that, just as 
we may seek for absolutely true propositions in the realm of facts or at 
least for propositions which come nearer to the truth, so we may seek for 
absolutely right or valid proposals in the realm of standards — or at least 
for better, or more valid, proposals. 

However, it would be a mistake, in my opinion, to extend this attitude 
beyond the seeking to the finding. For though we should seek for 
absolutely right or valid proposals, we should never persuade ourselves 
that we have definitely found them; for clearly, there cannot be a 
criterion of absolute rightnessMQYQn less than a criterion of absolute 
truth. The maximization of happiness may have been intended as a 
criterion. On the other hand I certainly never recommended that we adopt 
the minimization of misery as a criterion, though I think that it is an 
improvement on some of the ideas of utilitarianism. I also suggested that 
the reduction of avoidable misery belongs to the agenda of public policy 
(which does not mean that any question of public policy is to be decided 
by a calculus of minimizing misery) while the maximization of one's 
happiness should be left to one's private endeavour. (I quite agree with 
those critics of mine who have shown that if used as a criterion, the 
minimum misery principle would have absurd consequences; and I expect 
that the same may be said about any other moral criterion.) 

But although we have no criterion of absolute rightness, we certainly 
can make progress in this realm. As in the realm of facts, we can make 
discoveries. That cruelty is always 'bad'; that it should always be avoided 
where possible; that the golden rule is a good standard which can perhaps 
even be improved by doing unto others, wherever possible, as they want 
to be done by: these are elementary and extremely important examples of 
discoveries in the realm of standards. 

These discoveries create standards, we might say, out of nothing: as in 
the field of factual discovery, we have to lift ourselves by our own 



bootstraps. This is the incredible fact: that we can learn; by our mistakes, 
and by criticism; and that we can learn in the realm of standards just as 
well as in the realm of facts. 

14. Two wrongs do not make two rights 

Once we have accepted the absolute theory of truth it is possible to 
answer an old and serious yet deceptive argument in favour of relativism, 
of both the intellectual and the evaluative kind, by making use of the 
analogy between true facts and valid standards. The deceptive argument I 
have in mind appeals to the discovery that other people have ideas and 
beliefs which differ widely from ours. Who are we to insist that ours are 
the right ones? Already Xenophanes sang, 2500 years ago (Diels-Kranz, 
B, 16, 15): 

The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black, 

While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. 

Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw, 

And could sculpture like men, then the horses would draw their gods 

Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape 

Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own. 

So each of us sees his gods, and his world, from his own point of view, 
according to his tradition and his upbringing; and none of us is exempt 
from this subjective bias. 

This argument has been developed in various ways; and it has been 
argued that our race, or our nationality, or our historical background, or 
our historical period, or our class interest, or our social habitat, or our 
language, or our personal background knowledge, is an insurmountable, 
or an almost insurmountable, barrier to objectivity. 

The facts on which this argument is based must be admitted; and 



indeed, we can never rid ourselves of bias. There is, however, no need to 
accept the argument itself, or its relativistic conclusions. For first of all, 
we can, in stages, get rid of some of this bias, by means of critical 
thinking and especially of listening to criticism. For example, 
Xenophanes doubtless was helped, by his own discovery, to see things in 
a less biased way. Secondly, it is a fact that people with the most 
divergent cultural backgrounds can enter into fruitful discussion, 
provided they are interested in getting nearer to the truth, and are ready to 
listen to each other, and to learn from each other. This shows that, though 
there are cultural and linguistic barriers, they are not insurmountable. 

Thus it is of the utmost importance to profit from Xenophanes' 
discovery in every field; to give up cocksureness, and become open to 
criticism. Yet it is also of the greatest importance not to mistake this 
discovery, this step towards criticism, for a step towards relativism. If 
two parties disagree, this may mean that one is wrong, or the other, or 
both: this is the view of the criticist. It does not mean, as the relativist 
will have it, that both may be equally right. They may be equally wrong, 
no doubt, though they need not be. But anybody who says that to be 
equally wrong means to be equally right is merely playing with words, or 
with metaphors. 

It is a great step forward to learn to be self-critical; to learn to think 
that the other fellow may be right — ^more right than we ourselves. But 
there is a great danger involved in this: we may think that both, the other 
fellow and we ourselves, may be right. But this attitude, modest and self- 
critical as it may appear to us, is neither as modest nor as self-critical as 
we may be inclined to think; for it is more likely that both, we ourselves 
and the other fellow, are wrong. Thus self-criticism should not be an 
excuse for laziness and for the adoption of relativism. And as two wrongs 
do not make a right, two wrong parties to a dispute do not make two right 
parties. 



15. 'Experience^ and 'intuition ^ as sources of knowledge 

The fact that we can learn from our mistakes, and through criticism, in 
the realm of standards as well as in the realm of facts, is of fundamental 
importance. But is the appeal to criticism sufficient? Do we not have to 
appeal to the authority of experience or (especially in the realm of 
standards) of intuition? 

In the realm of facts, we do not merely criticize our theories, we 
criticize them by an appeal to experimental and observational experience. 
It is a serious mistake, however, to believe that we can appeal to anything 
like an authority of experience, though philosophers, particularly 
empiricist philosophers, have depicted sense perception, and especially 
sight, as a source of knowledge which furnishes us with definite 'data' 
out of which our experience is composed. I believe that this picture is 
totally mistaken. For even our experimental and observational experience 
does not consist of 'data'. Rather, it consists of a web of guesses — of 
conjectures, expectations, hypotheses, with which there are interwoven 
accepted, traditional, scientific, and unscientific, lore and prejudice. 
There simply is no such thing as pure experimental and observational 
experience — experience untainted by expectation and theory. There are 
no pure 'data', no empirically given 'sources of knowledge' to which we 
can appeal, in our criticism. 'Experience', whether ordinary or scientific 
experience, is much more like what Oscar Wilde had in mind in Lady 
Windermere 's Fan, Act iii: 

Dumby: Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. 

Cecil Graham: One shouldn't commit any. 

Dumby: Life would be very dull without them. 



Learning from our mistakes — without which life would indeed be dull 



— is also the meaning of 'experience' which is implied in Dr. Johnson's 
famous joke about 'the triumph of hope over experience'; or in C. C. 
King's remark (in his Story of the British Army, 1897, p. 112): 'But the 
British leaders were to learn ... in the "only school fools learn in, that of 
experience".' 

It seems, then, that at least some of the ordinary uses of 'experience' 
agree much more closely with what I believe to be the character of both 
'scientific experience' and 'ordinary empirical knowledge' than with the 
traditional analyses of the philosophers of the empiricist schools. And all 
this seems to agree also with the original meaning of 'empeiria' (from 
'peirao' — ^to try, to test, to examine) and thus of ' experientia' and 
' experimentum\ Yet it must not be held to constitute an argument; 
neither one from ordinary usage nor one from origin. It is intended only 
to illustrate my logical analysis of the structure of experience. According 
to this analysis, experience, and more especially scientific experience, is 
the result of usually mistaken guesses, of testing them, and of learning 
from our mistakes. Experience (in this sense) is not a 'source of 
knowledge'; nor does it carry any authority. 

Thus criticism which appeals to experience is not of an authoritative 
character. It does not consist in contrasting dubious results with 
established ones, or with 'the evidence of our senses' (or with 'the 
given'). It consists, rather, in comparing some dubious results with 
others, often equally dubious, which may, however, be taken as 
unproblematic for the moment, although they may at any time be 
challenged as new doubts arise, or else because of some inkling or 
conjecture; an inkling or a conjecture, for example, that a certain 
experiment may lead to a new discovery. 

Now the situation in acquiring knowledge about standards seems to me 
altogether analogous. 

Here, too, philosophers have looked for the authoritative ^owrc^^ of 



this knowledge, and they found, in the main, two: feelings of pleasure and 
pain, or a moral sense or a moral intuition for what is right or wrong 
(analogous to perception in the epistemology of factual knowledge), or, 
alternatively, a source called 'practical reason' (analogous to 'pure 
reason', or to a faculty of 'intellectual intuition', in the epistemology of 
factual knowledge). And quarrels continually raged over the question 
whether all, or only some, of these authoritative sources of moral 
knowledge existed. 

I think that this problem is a pseudo-problem. The main point is not the 
question of the 'existence' of any of these faculties — a very vague and 
dubious psychological question — ^but whether these may be authoritative 
'sources of knowledge' providing us with 'data' or other definite starting- 
points for our constructions or, at least, with a definite frame of reference 
for our criticism. I deny that we have any authoritative sources of this 
kind, either in the epistemology of factual knowledge or in the 
epistemology of the knowledge of standards. And I deny that we need any 
such definite frame of reference for our criticism. 

How do we learn about standards? How, in this realm, do we learn 
from our mistakes? First we learn to imitate others (incidentally, we do 
so by trial and error), and so learn to look upon standards of behaviour as 
if they consisted of fixed, 'given' rules. Later we find (also by trial and 
error) that we are making mistakes — for example, that we may hurt 
people. We may thus learn the golden rule; but soon we find that we may 
misjudge a man's attitude, his background knowledge, his aims, his 
standards; and we may learn from our mistakes to take care even beyond 
the golden rule. 

Admittedly, such things as sympathy and imagination may play an 
important role in this development; but they are not authoritative sources 
of knowledge — ^no more than any of our sources in the realm of the 
knowledge of facts. And though something like an intuition of what is 



right and what is wrong may also play an important role in this 
development, it is, again, not an authoritative source of knowledge. For 
we may see to-day very clearly that we are right, and yet learn to-morrow 
that we made a mistake. 

'Intuitionism' is the name of a philosophical school which teaches that 
we have some faculty or capacity of intellectual intuition allowing us to 
'see' the truth; so that what we have seen to be true must indeed be true. 
It is thus a theory of some authoritative source of knowledge. Anti- 
intuitionists have usually denied the existence of this source of 
knowledge while asserting, as a rule, the existence of some other source 
such as sense-perception. My view is that both parties are mistaken, for 
two reasons. First, I assert that there exists something like an intellectual 
intuition which makes us feel, most convincingly, that we see the truth (a 
point denied by the opponents of intuitionism). Secondly, I assert that 
this intellectual intuition, though in a way indispensable, often leads us 
astray in the most dangerous manner. Thus we do not, in general, see the 
truth when we are most convinced that we see it; and we have to learn, 
through mistakes, to distrust these intuitions. 

What, then, are we to trust? What are we to accept? The answer is: 
whatever we accept we should trust only tentatively, always remembering 
that we are in possession, at best, of partial truth (or rightness), and that 
we are bound to make at least some mistake or misjudgement somewhere 
— not only with respect to facts but also with respect to the adopted 
standards; secondly, we should trust (even tentatively) our intuition only 
if it has been arrived at as the result of many attempts to use our 
imagination; of many mistakes, of many tests, of many doubts, and of 
searching criticism. 

It will be seen that this form of anti-intuitionism (or some may say, 
perhaps, of intuitionism) is radically different from the older forms of 
anti-intuitionism. And it will be seen that there is one essential ingredient 



in this theory: the idea that we may fall short — ^perhaps always — of some 
standard of absolute truth, or of absolute rightness, in our opinions as 
well as in our actions. 

It may be objected to all this that, whether or not my views on the nature 
of ethical knowledge and ethical experience are acceptable, they are still 
'relativist' or 'subjectivist'. For they do not establish any absolute moral 
standards: at best they show that the idea of an absolute standard is a 
regulative idea, of use to those who are already converted — ^who are 
already eager to learn about, and search for, true or valid or good moral 
standards. My reply is that even the 'establishment' — say, by means of 
pure logic — of an absolute standard, or a system of ethical norms, would 
make no difference in this respect. For assuming we have succeeded in 
logically proving the validity of an absolute standard, or a system of 
ethical norms, so that we could logically prove to somebody how he 
ought to act: even then he might take no notice; or else he might reply: 'I 
am not in the least interested in your "ought", or in your moral rules — no 
more so than in your logical proofs, or, say, in your higher mathematics.' 
Thus even a logical proof cannot alter the fundamental situation that only 
he who is prepared to take these things seriously and to learn about them 
will be impressed by ethical (or any other) arguments. You cannot force 
anybody by arguments to take arguments seriously, or to respect his own 
reason. 

16. The dualism of facts and standards and the idea of 
liberalism 

The dualism of facts and standards is, I contend, one of the bases of the 
liberal tradition. For an essential part of this tradition is the recognition 



of the injustice that does exist in this world, and the resolve to try to help 
those who are its victims. This means that there is, or that there may be, a 
conflict, or at least a gap, between facts and standards: facts may fall 
short of right (or valid or true) standards — especially those social or 
political facts which consist in the actual acceptance and enforcement of 
some code of justice. 

To put it in another way, liberalism is based upon the dualism of facts 
and standards in the sense that it believes in searching for ever better 
standards, especially in the field of politics and of legislation. 

But this dualism of facts and standards has been rejected by some 
relativists who have opposed it with arguments like the following: 

(1) The acceptance of a proposal — and thus of a standard — is a social 
or political or historical fact. 

(2) If an accepted standard is judged by another, not yet accepted 
standard, and found wanting, then this judgement (whoever may have 
made it) is also a social or political or historical fact. 

(3) If a judgement of this kind becomes the basis of a social or political 
movement, then this is also a historical fact. 

(4) If this movement is successful, and if in consequence the old 
standards are reformed or replaced by new standards, then this is also a 
historical fact. 

(5) Thus — so argues the relativist or moral positivist — ^we never have 
to transcend the realm of facts, if only we include in it social or political 
or historical facts: there is no dualism of facts and standards. 

/ consider this conclusion (5) to be mistaken. It does not follow from 
the premises (1) to (4) whose truth I admit. The reason for rejecting (5) is 
very simple: we can always ask whether a development as here described 
— a social movement based upon the acceptance of a programme for the 
reform of certain standards — ^was 'good' or 'bad'. In raising this 
question, we re-open the gulf between standards and facts which the 



monistic argument (1) to (5) attempts to close. 

From what I have just said, it may be rightly inferred that the monistic 
position — the philosophy of the identity of facts and standardsdAi^ 
dangerous; for even where it does not identify standards with existing 
facts — even where it does not identify present might and right — it leads 
necessarily to the identification of future might and right. Since the 
question whether a certain movement for reform is right or wrong (or 
good or bad) cannot be raised, according to the monist, except in terms of 
another movement with opposite tendencies, nothing can be asked except 
the question which of these opposite movements succeeded, in the end, in 
establishing its standards as a matter of social or political or historical 
fact. 

In other words, the philosophy here described — the attempt to 
'transcend' the dualism of facts and standards and to erect a monistic 
system, a world of facts only — leads to the identification of standards 
either with established might or with future might: it leads to a moral 
positivism, or to a moral historicism, as described and discussed in 
chapter 22 of this book. 

1 7. Hegel again 

My chapter on Hegel has been much criticized. Most of the criticism I 
cannot accept, because it fails to answer my main objections against 
Hegel — that his philosophy exemplifies, if compared with that of Kant (I 
still find it almost sacrilegious to put these two names side by side), a 
terrible decline in intellectual sincerity and intellectual honesty; that his 
philosophical arguments are not to be taken seriously; and that his 
philosophy was a major factor in bringing about the 'age of intellectual 
dishonesty', as Konrad Heiden called it, and in preparing for that 



contemporary trahison des clercs (I am alluding to Julien Benda's great 
book) which has helped to produce two world wars so far. 

It should not be forgotten that I looked upon my book as my war effort: 
believing as I did in the responsibility of Hegel and the Hegelians for 
much of what happened in Germany, I felt that it was my task, as a 
philosopher, to show that this philosophy was a pseudo-philosophy. 

The time at which the book was written may perhaps also explain my 
optimistic assumption (which I could attribute to Schopenhauer) that the 
stark realities of the war would show up the playthings of the 
intellectuals, such as relativism, as what they were, and that this verbal 
spook would disappear. 

I certainly was too optimistic. Indeed, it seems that most of my critics 
took some form of relativism so much for granted that they were quite 
unable to believe that I was really in earnest in rejecting it. 

I admit that I made some factual mistakes: Mr. H. N. Rodman, of 
Harvard University, has told me that I was mistaken in writing 'two 
years' in the third line from the bottom of p. 266, and that I ought to have 
written 'four years'. He also told me that there are, in his opinion, a 
number of more serious — if less clear-cut — historical errors in the 
chapter, and that some of my attributions of ulterior motives to Hegel are, 
in his opinion, historically unjustified. 

Such things are very much to be regretted, although they have 
happened to better historians than I. But the question of real importance 
is this: do these mistakes affect my assessment of Hegel's philosophy, 
and of its disastrous influence? 

My own answer to the question is: 'No.' It is his philosophy which has 
led me to look upon Hegel as I do, not his biography. In fact, I am still 
surprised that serious philosophers were offended by my admittedly 
partly playful attack upon a philosophy which I am still unable to take 
seriously. I tried to express this by the scherzo-style of my Hegel chapter. 



hoping to expose the ridiculous in this philosophy which I can only 
regard with a mixture of contempt and horror. 

All this was clearly indicated in my book; also the fact that I neither 
could- nor wished to spend unlimited time upon deep researches into the 
history of a philosopher whose work I abhor. As it was, I wrote about 
Hegel in a manner which assumed that few would take him seriously. 
And although this manner was lost upon my Hegelian critics, who were 
decidedly not amused, I still hope that some of my readers got the joke. 

But all this is comparatively unimportant. What may be important is 
the question whether my attitude towards Hegel's philosophy was 
justified. It is a contribution towards an answer to this question which I 
wish to make here. 

I think most Hegelians will admit that one of the fundamental motives 
and intentions of Hegel's philosophy is precisely to replace and 
'transcend' the dualistic view of facts and standards which had been 
presented by Kant, and which was the philosophical basis of the idea of 
liberalism and of social reform. 

To transcend this dualism of facts and standards is the decisive aim of 
Hegel's philosophy of identitydi4thQ identity of the ideal and the real, of 
right and might. All standards are historical: they are historical facts, 
stages in the development of reason, which is the same as the 
development of the ideal and of the real. There is nothing but fact; and 
some of the social or historical facts are, at the same time, standards. 

Now Hegel's argument was, fundamentally, the one I stated (and 
criticized) here in the preceding section — although Hegel presented it in a 
surpassingly vague, unclear, and specious form. Moreover, I contend that 
this identity philosophy (despite some 'progressivist' suggestions, and 
some mild expressions of sympathy with various 'progressive' 
movements which it contained) played a major role in the downfall of the 



liberal movement in Germany; a movement which, under the influence of 
Kant's philosophy, had produced such important liberal thinkers as 
Schiller and Wilhelm von Humboldt, and such important works as 
Humboldt's Essay towards the Determination of the Limits of the Powers 
of the State. 

This is my first and fundamental accusation. My second accusation, 
closely connected with the first, is that Hegel's identity philosophy, by 
contributing to historicism and to an identification of might and right, 
encouraged totalitarian modes of thought. 

My third accusation is that Hegel's argument (which admittedly 
required of him a certain degree of subtlety, though not more than a great 
philosopher might be expected to possess) was full of logical mistakes 
and of tricks, presented with pretentious impressiveness. This 
undermined and eventually lowered the traditional standards of 
intellectual responsibility and honesty. It also contributed to the rise of 
totalitarian philosophizing and, even more serious, to the lack of any 
determined intellectual resistance to it. 

These are my principal objections to Hegel stated, I believe, fairly 
clearly in chapter 12. But I certainly did not analyse the fundamental 
issue — ^the philosophy of identity of facts and standards — quite as clearly 
as I ought to have done. So I hope I have made amends in this addendum 
— ^not to Hegel, but to those who may have been harmed by him. 

18. Conclusion 

In ending my book once again, I am as conscious as ever of its 
imperfections. In part, these imperfections are a consequence of its scope, 
which transcends what I should consider as my more professional 
interests. In part they are simply a consequence of my personal fallibility: 



it is not for nothing that I am a fallibilist. 

But though I am very conscious of my personal fallibility, even as it 
affects what I am going to say now, I do believe that a fallibilist approach 
has much to offer to the social philosopher. By recognizing the 
essentially critical and therefore revolutionary character of all human 
thought — of the fact that we learn from our mistakes, rather than by the 
accumulation of data — and by recognizing on the other hand that almost 
all the problems as well as the (non-authoritative) sources of our thought 
are rooted in traditions, and that it is almost always traditions which we 
criticize, a critical (and progressive) fallibilism may provide us with a 
much-needed perspective for the evaluation of both, tradition and 
revolutionary thought. Even more important, it can show us that the role 
of thought is to carry out revolutions by means of critical debates rather 
than by means of violence and of warfare; that it is the great tradition of 
Western rationalism to fight our battles with words rather than with 
swords. This is why our Western civilization is an essentially pluralistic 
one, and why monolithic social ends would mean the death of freedom: of 
the freedom of thought, of the free search for truth, and with it, of the 
rationality and the dignity of man. 



II 

Note on Schwarzschild's Book on Marx (1965) 



Some years after I wrote this book, Leopold Schwarzschild's book on 
Marx, The Red Prussian (translated by Margaret Wing: London 1948) 
became known to me. There is no doubt in my mind that Schwarzschild 
looks at Marx with unsympathetic and even hostile eyes, and that he often 
paints him in the darkest possible colours. But even though the book may 
be not always fair, it contains documentary evidence, especially from the 
Marx-Engels correspondence, which shows that Marx was less of a 
humanitarian, and less of a lover of freedom, than he is made to appear in 
my book. Schwarzschild describes him as a man who saw in 'the 
proletariat' mainly an instrument for his own personal ambition. Though 
this may put the matter more harshly than the evidence warrants, it must 
be admitted that the evidence itself is shattering. 



Notes 

1 I am deeply indebted to Dr. William W. Bartley's incisive criticism which not only helped 
me to improve chapter 24 of this book (especially page 231) but also induced me to make 
important changes in the present addendum. 

2 See for example 'On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance', now the Introduction to 
my Conjectures and Refutations and, more especially. Chapter 10 of that book; also, of 
course, my The Logic of Scientific Discovery. 

3 For a description and criticism of authoritarian (or non-fallibilist) theories of knowledge see 
especially sections v, vi, and x. ff.. of the Introduction to my Conjectures and Refutations. 

4 See W. V. Quine, Word and Object, 1959, p. 23. 



5 See my Introduction and my Preface to the Second Edition. 



Notes 



General Remarks. The text of the book is self-contained and may be read 
without these Notes. However, a considerable amount of material which 
is likely to interest all readers of the book will be found here, as well as 
some references and controversies which may not be of general interest. 
Readers who wish to consult the Notes for the sake of this material may 
find it convenient first to read without interruption through the text of a 
chapter, and then to turn to the Notes. 

I wish to apologize for the perhaps excessive number of cross- 
references which have been included for the benefit of those readers who 
take a special interest in one or other of the side issues touched upon 
(such as Plato's preoccupation with racialism, or the Socratic Problem). 
Knowing that war conditions would make it impossible for me to read the 
proofs, I decided to refer not to pages but to note numbers. Accordingly, 
references to the text have been indicated by notes such as: 'cp. text to 
note 24 to chapter 3', etc. War conditions also restricted library facilities, 
making it impossible for me to obtain a number of books, some recent 
and some not, which would have been consulted in normal circumstances. 

* Notes which make use of material which was not available to me 
when writing the manuscript for the first edition of this book (and other 
notes which I wish to characterize as having been added to the book since 
1943) are enclosed by asterisks; not all new additions to the notes have, 
however, been so marked.* 



Note to Introduction 



For Kant's motto, see note 41 to chapter 24, and text. 

The terms 'open society' and 'closed society' were first used, to my 
knowledge, by Henri Bergson, in Two Sources of Morality and Religion 
(Engl, ed., 1935). In spite of a considerable difference (due to a 
fundamentally different approach to nearly every problem of philosophy) 
between Bergson's way of using these terms and mine, there is a certain 
similarity also, which I wish to acknowledge. (Cp. Bergson's 
characterization of the closed society, op. cit., p. 229, as 'human society 
fresh from the hands of nature'.) The main difference, however, is this. 
My terms indicate, as it were, a rationalist distinction; the closed society 
is characterized by the belief in magical taboos, while the open society is 
one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, 
and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence (after 
discussion). Bergson, on the other hand, has a kind of religious 
distinction in mind. This explains why he can look upon his open society 
as the product of a mystical intuition, while I suggest (in chapters 10 and 
24) that mysticism may be interpreted as an expression of the longing for 
the lost unity of the closed society, and therefore as a reaction against the 
rationalism of the open society. From the way my term 'The Open 
Society' is used in chapter 10, it may be seen that there is some 
resemblance to Graham Wallas' term 'The Great Society'; but my term 
may cover a 'small society' too, as it were, like that of Periclean Athens, 
while it is perhaps conceivable that a 'Great Society' may be arrested and 
thereby closed. There is also, perhaps, a similarity between my 'open 
society' and the term used by Walter Lippmann as the title of his most 
admirable book. The Good Society (1937). See also note 59 (2) to chapter 
10 and notes 29, 32, and 58 to chapter 24, and text. 



Notes to Volume I 



Notes to Chapter One 



For Pericles' motto, see note 31 to chapter 10, and text. Plato's motto is 
discussed in some detail in notes 33 and 34 to chapter 6, and text. 

1. I use the term 'collectivism' only for a doctrine which emphasizes the significance of some 
collective or group, for instance, 'the state' (or a certain state; or a nation; or a class) as 
against that of the individual. The problem of collectivism versus individualism is explained 
more fully in chapter 6, below; see especially notes 26 to 28 to that chapter, and text. — 
Concerning 'tribalism', cp. chapter 10, and especially note 38 to that chapter (list of 
Pythagorean tribal taboos). 

2. This means that the interpretation does not convey any empirical information, as shown in 
my The Logic of Scientific Discovery. 

3. One of the features which the doctrines of the chosen people, the chosen race, and the 
chosen class have in common is that they originated, and became important, as reactions 
against some kind of oppression. The doctrine of the chosen people became important at the 
time of the foundation of the Jewish church, i.e. during the Babylonian captivity; Count 
Gobineau's theory of the Aryan master race was a reaction of the aristocratic emigrant to the 
claim that the French Revolution had successfully expelled the Teutonic masters. Marx's 
prophecy of the victory of the proletariat is his reply to one of the most sinister periods of 
oppression and exploitation in modern history. Compare with these matters chapter 10, 
especially note 39, and chapter 17, especially notes 13-15, and text. 

* One of the briefest and best summaries of the historicist creed can be found in the radically 
historicist pamphlet which is quoted more fully at the end of note 12 to chapter 9, entitled 
Christians in the Class Struggle, by Gilbert Cope, Foreword by the Bishop of Bradford. 
('Magnificat' Publication No. 1, Published by the Council of Clergy and Ministers for 
Common Ownership, 1942, 28, Maypole Lane, Birmingham 14.) Here we read, on pp. 5-6: 
'Common to all these views is a certain quality of "inevitability plus freedom". Biological 
evolution, the class conflict succession, the action of the Holy Spirit — all three are 
characterized by a definite motion towards an end. That motion may be hindered or 



deflected for a time by deliberate human action, but its gathering momentum cannot be 
dissipated, and though the final stage is but dimly apprehended, it is 'possible to know 
enough about the process to help forward or to delay the inevitable flow. In other words, the 
natural laws of what we observe to be "progress" are sufficiently . . . understood by men so 
that they can ... either ... make efforts to arrest or divert the main stream — efforts which 
may seem to be successful for a time, but which are in fact foredoomed to failure.'* 

4. Hegel said that, in his Logic, he had preserved the whole of Heraclitus' teaching. He also 
said that he owed everything to Plato. *It may be worth mentioning that Ferdinand von 
Lassalle, one of the founders of the German social democratic movement (and, like Marx, a 
Hegelian), wrote two volumes on Heraclitus.* 



Notes to Chapter Two 



1. The question 'What is the world made of?' is more or less generally accepted as the 
fundamental problem of the early Ionian philosophers. If we assume that they viewed the 
world as an edifice, the question of the ground-plan of the world would be complementary 
to that of its building material. And indeed, we hear that Thales was not only interested in 
the stuff the world is made of, but also in descriptive astronomy and geography, and that 
Anaximander was the first to draw up a ground-plan, i.e. a map of the earth. Some further 
remarks on the Ionian school (and especially on Anaximander as predecessor of Heraclitus) 
will be found in chapter 10; cp. notes 38-40 to that chapter, especially note 39. 

* According to R. Eisler, Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt , p. 693, Homer's feeling of destiny 
('moira') can be traced back to oriental astral mysticism which deifies time, space, and fate. 
According to the same author {Revue de Synthese Historique, 41, app., p. 16 f), Hesiod's 
father was a native of Asia Minor, and the sources of his idea of the Golden Age, and the 
metals in man, are oriental. (Cp. on this question Eisler 's forthcoming posthumous study of 
Plato, Oxford 1950.) Eisler also shows {Jesus Basileus, vol. II, 618 f) that the idea of the 
world as a totality of things ('cosmos') goes back to Babylonian political theory. The idea of 
the world as an edifice (a house or tent) is treated in his Weltenmantel.'^ 

2. See Diels, Z)/e Vorsokratiker, 5th edition, 1934 (abbreviated here as 'D5'), fragment 124; 
cp. also D5, vol. II, p. 423, lines 21 f (The interpolated negation seems to me 
methodologically as unsound as the attempt of certain authors to discredit the fragment 
altogether; apart from this, I follow Riistow's emendation.) For the two other quotations in 
this paragraph, see Plato, Cratylus, 40 Id, 402a/b. 

My interpretation of the teaching of Heraclitus is perhaps different from that commonly 
assumed at present, for instance from that of Burnet. Those who may feel doubtful whether 
it is at all tenable are referred to my notes, especially the present note and notes 6, 7, and 11, 
in which I am dealing with Heraclitus' natural philosophy, having confined my text to a 
presentation of the historicist aspect of Heraclitus' teaching and to his social philosophy. I 
further refer them to the evidence of chapters 4 to 9, and especially of chapter 10, in whose 



light Heraclitus' philosophy, as I see it, appears as a somewhat typical reaction to the social 
revolution which he witnessed. Cp. also the notes 39 and 59 to that chapter (and text), and 
the general criticism of Burnet's and Taylor's methods in note 56. 

As indicated in the text, I hold (with many others, for instance, with Zeller and Grote) that 
the doctrine of universal flux is the central doctrine of Heraclitus. As opposed to this, Burnet 
holds that this 'is hardly the central point in the system' of Heraclitus (cp. Early Greek 
Philosophy, 2nd ed., 163). But a close inspection of his arguments (158 f) leaves me quite 
unconvinced that Heraclitus' fundamental discovery was the abstract metaphysical doctrine 
'that wisdom is not the knowledge of many things, but the perception of the underlying 
unity of warring opposites', as Burnet puts it. The unity of opposites is certainly an 
important part of Heraclitus' teaching, but it can be derived (as far as such things can be 
derived; cp. note 11 to this chapter, and the corresponding text) from the more concrete and 
intuitively understandable theory of flux; and the same can be said of Heraclitus' doctrine of 
the fire (cp. note 7 to this chapter). 

Those who suggest, with Burnet, that the doctrine of universal flux was not new, but 
anticipated by the earlier lonians, are, I feel, unconscious witnesses to Heraclitus' originality; 
for they fail now, after 2,400 years, to grasp his main point. They do not see the difference 
between a flux or circulation within a vessel or an edifice or a cosmic framework, i.e. within 
a totality of things (part of the Heraclitean theory can indeed be understood in this way, but 
only that part of it which is not very original; see below), and a universal flux which 
embraces everything, even the vessel, the framework itself (cp. Lucian in D5 I, p. 190) and 
which is described by Heraclitus' denial of the existence of any fixed thing whatever. (In a 
way, Anaximander had made a beginning by dissolving the fi*amework, but there was still a 
long way fi"om this to the theory of universal flux. Cp. also note 15 (4) to chapter 3.) 
The doctrine of universal flux forces Heraclitus to attempt an explanation of the apparent 
stability of the things in this world, and of other typical regularities. This attempt leads him 
to the development of subsidiary theories, especially to his doctrine of fire (cp. note 7 to this 
chapter) and of natural laws (cp. note 6). It is in this explanation of the apparent stability of 
the world that he makes much use of the theories of his predecessors by developing their 
theory of rarefaction and condensation, together with their doctrine of the revolution of the 



heavens, into a general theory of the circulation of matter, and of periodicity. But this part of 
his teaching, I hold, is not central to it, but subsidiary. It is, so to speak, apologetic, for it 
attempts to reconcile the new and revolutionary doctrine of flux with common experience as 
well as with the teaching of his predecessors. I believe, therefore, that he is not a mechanical 
materiahst who teaches something like the conservation and circulation of matter and of 
energy; this view seems to me to be excluded by his magical attitude towards laws as well as 
by his theory of the unity of opposites which emphasizes his mysticism. 
My contention that the universal flux is the central theory of Heraclitus is, I believe, 
corroborated by Plato. The overwhelming majority of his explicit references to Heraclitus 
{Crat, 401d, 402a/b, 411, 437ff , 440; Theaet, 153c/d, 160d, 177c, 179d f , 182a ff , 183a 
ff., cp. dlso Symp., 207d, Phil., 43a; cp. also Aristotle's Metaphysics, 987a33, 1010al3, 
1078b 13) witness to the tremendous impression made by this central doctrine upon the 
thinkers of that period. These straightforward and clear testimonies are much stronger than 
the admittedly interesting passage which does not mention Heraclitus' name (Soph., 242d f., 
quoted already, in connection with Heraclitus, by Ueberweg and Zeller), on which Burnet 
attempts to base his interpretation. (His other witness, Philo Judaeus, cannot count much as 
against the evidence of Plato and Aristotle.) But even this passage agrees completely with 
our interpretation. (With regard to Burnet's somewhat wavering judgement concerning the 
value of this passage, cp. note 56(7) to chapter 10.) Heraclitus' discovery that the world is 
not the totality of things but of events or facts is not at all trivial; this can be perhaps gauged 
by the fact that Wittgenstein has found it necessary to reaffirm it quite recently: 'The world is 
the totality of fsLCts, not of things.' (Cp. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921/22, sentence 
1.1; italics mine.) 

To sum up. I consider the doctrine of universal flux as fundamental, and as emerging from 
the realm of Heraclitus' social experiences. All other doctrines of his are in a way subsidiary 
to it. The doctrine of fire (cp. Aristotle's Metaphysics, 984a7, 1067a2; also 989a2, 996a9, 
5; Physics, 205a3) I consider to be his central doctrine in the field of natural 
philosophy; it is an attempt to reconcile the doctrine of flux with our experience of stable 
things, a link with the older theories of circulation, and it leads to a theory of laws. And the 
doctrine of the unity of opposites I consider as something less central and more abstract, as a 



forerunner of a kind of logical or methodological theory (as such it inspired Aristotle to 
formulate his law of contradiction), and as linked to his mysticism. 

3. W. Nestle, Die Vorsokratiker (1905), 35. 

4. In order to facilitate the identification of the fragments quoted, I give the numbers of 
Bywater's edition (adopted, in his English translation of the fragments, by Burnet, Early 
Greek Philosophy), and also the numbers of Diels' 5th edition. 

Of the eight passages quoted in the present paragraph, (1) and (2) are from the fragments B 
114 (= Bywater, and Burnet), D5 121 (= Diels, 5th edition). The others are from the 
fragments: (3) B 111, D5 29; cp. Plato's Republic, 586a/b ... (4): B 111, D5 104 ... (5): B 
112, D5 39 (cp. D5, vol. I, p. 65, Bias, 1) ... (6): B 5, D5 17 ... (7): B 110, D5 33 ... (8): B 
100, D5 44. 

5. The three passages quoted in this paragraph are from the fragments: (1) and (2): cp. B 41, 
D5 91; for (1) cp. also note 2 to this chapter; (3): D5 74. 

6. The two passages are B 21, D5 31; and B 22, D5 90. 

7. For Heraclitus' 'measures' (or laws, or periods), see B 20, 21, 23, 29; D5 30, 31, 94. (D 31 
brings 'measure' and 'law' {logos) together.) 

The five passages quoted later in this paragraph are from the fragments: (1): D5, vol. I, p. 
141, line 10. (Cp. Diog. Laert., IX, 7.) ... (2): B 29, D5 94 (cp. note 2 to chapter 5) ... (3): B 
34, D5 100 ... (4): B 20, D5 30 ... (5): B 26, D5 66. 

(1) The idea of law is correlative to that of change or flux, since only laws or regularities 
within the flux can explain the apparent stability of the world. The most typical regularities 
within the changing world known to man are the natural periods: the day, the moon-month, 
and the year (the seasons). Heraclitus' theory of law is, I believe, logically intermediate 
between the comparatively modem views of 'causal laws' (held by Leucippus and especially 
by Democritus) and Anaximander's dark powers of fate. Heraclitus' laws are still 'magical', 
i.e. he has not yet distinguished between abstract causal regularities and laws enforced, like 
taboos, by sanctions (with this, cp. chapter 5, note 2). It appears that his theory of fate was 
connected with a theory of a 'Great Year' or 'Great Cycle' of 18,000 or 36,000 ordinary 
years. (Cp. for instance J. Adam's edition of The Republic of Plato, vol. II, 303.) I certainly 



do not think that this theory is an indication that Heraclitus did not really believe in a 
universal flux, but only in various circulations which always re-established the stability of 
the framework; but I think it possible that he had difficulties in conceiving a law of change, 
and even of fate, other than one involving a certain amount of periodicity. (Cp. also note 6 
to chapter 3.) 

(2) Fire plays a central role in Heraclitus' philosophy of nature. (There may be some Persian 
influence here.) The flame is the obvious symbol of a flux or process which appears in 
many respects as a thing. It thus explains the experience of stable things, and reconciles this 
experience with the doctrine of flux. This idea can easily be extended to living bodies which 
are like flames, only burning more slowly. Heraclitus teaches that all things are in flux, all 
are like fire; their flux has only different 'measures' or laws of motion. The 'bowl' or 
'trough' in which the fire burns will be in a much slower flux than the fire, but it will be in 
flux nevertheless. It changes, it has its fate and its laws, it must be burned into by the fire, 
and consumed, even if it takes a longer time before its fate is fulfilled. Thus, 'in its advance, 
the fire will judge and convict everything' (B 26, D5 66). 

Accordingly, the fire is the symbol and the explanation of the apparent rest of things in spite 
of their real state of flux. But it is also a symbol of the transmutation of matter from one 
stage (fuel) into another. It thus provides the link between Heraclitus' intuitive theory of 
nature and the theories of rarefaction and condensation, etc., of his predecessors. But its 
flaring up and dying down, in accordance with the measure of fuel provided, is also an 
instance of a law. If this is combined with some form of periodicity, then it can be used to 
explain the regularities of natural periods, such as days or years. (This trend of thought 
renders it unlikely that Burnet is right in disbelieving the traditional reports of Heraclitus' 
belief in a periodical conflagration, which was probably connected with his Great Year; cp. 
Aristotle, Physics, 205a3 with D5 66.) 

8. The thirteen passages quoted in this paragraph are from the fragments. (1): B 10, D5 123 ... 
(2): B 11, D5 93 ... (3): B 16, D5 40 ... (4): B 94, D5 73 ... (5): B 95, D5 89 ... with (4) and 
(5), cp. Plato's Republic, 476c f , and 520c ... (6): B 6, D5 19 ... (7): B 3, D5 34 ... (8): B 
19, D5 41 ... (9): B 92, D5 2 ... (10): B 91a, D5 113 ... (11): B 59, D5 10 ... (12): B 65, D5 



32 ... (13):B28, D5 64. 

9. More consistent than most moral historicists, Heraclitus is also an ethical and juridical 
positivist (for this term, cp. chapter 5): 'All things are, to the gods, fair and good and right; 
men, however, have taken up some things as wrong, and some as right' (D5 102, B 61; see 
passage (8) in note 11.) That he was the first juridical positivist is attested by Plato {Theaet, 
177c/d). On moral and juridical positivism in general, cp. chapter 5 (text to notes 14-18) 
and chapter 22. 

10 . The two passages quoted in this paragraph are: (1): B 44, D5 53 ... (2): B 62, D5 80. 

11 . The nine passages quoted in this paragraph are: (1): B 39, D5 126 ... (2): B 104, D5 111 ... 
(3): B 78, D5 88 ... (4): B 45, D5 51 ... (5): D5 8 ... (6): B 69, D5 60 ... (7): B 50, D5 59 ... 
(8): B 61, D5 102 (cp. note 9) ... (9): B 57, D5 58. (Cp. Aristotle, Physics, 185b20.) 

Flux or change must be the transition from one stage or property or position to another. In so 
far as flux presupposes something that changes, this something must remain identically the 
same, even though it assumes an opposite stage or property or position. This links the theory 
of flux to that of the unity of opposites (cp. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1005b25, 1024a24 and 
34, 1062a32, 1063a25) as well as the doctrine of the oneness of all things; they are all only 
different phases or appearances of the one changing something (of fire). 
Whether 'the path that leads up' and 'the path that leads down' were originally conceived as 
an ordinary path leading first up a mountain, and later down again (or perhaps: leading up 
from the point of view of the man who is down, and down from that of the man who is up), 
and whether this metaphor was only later applied to the processes of circulation, to the path 
that leads up from earth through water (perhaps Hquid fuel in a bowl?) to the fire, and down 
again from the fire through the water (rain?) to earth; or whether Heraclitus' path up and 
down was originally applied by him to this process of circulation of matter; all this can of 
course not be decided. (But I think that the first alternative is more likely in view of the great 
number of similar ideas in Heraclitus' fragments: cp. the text.) 

12 . The four passages are: (1): B 102, D5 24 ... (2): B 101, D5 25 (a closer version which more 
or less preserves Heraclitus' pun is: 'Greater death wins greater destiny.' Cp. also Plato's 
Laws, 903 d/e; contrast With. Rep. 617 d/e) ... (3): B 111, D5 29 (part of the continuation is 



quoted above; see passage (3) in note 4) ... (4): B 113, D5 49. 

13 . It seems very probable (cp. Meyer's Gesch. d. Altertums, esp. vol. I) that such characteristic 
teachings as that of the chosen people originated in this period, which produced several 
other religions of salvation besides the Jewish. 

14 . Comte, who in France developed a historicist philosophy not very dissimilar from Hegel's 
Prussian version, tried, like Hegel, to stem the revolutionary tide. (Cp. F. A. von Hayek, The 
Counter-Revo lution of Science, Economica, N.S. vol. VIII, 1941, pp. 119 ff., 281 ff.) For 
Lassalle's interest in Heraclitus, see note 4 to chapter 1. — It is interesting to note, in this 
connection, the parallelism between the history of historicist and of evolutionary ideas. They 
originated in Greece with the semi-Heraclitean Empedocles (for Plato's version, see note 1 to 
chapter 11), and they were revived, in England as well as in France, in the time of the 
French Revolution. 



Notes to Chapter Three 



1. With this explanation of the term oligarchy, cp. also the end of notes 44 and 57 to chapter 8. 

2. Cp. especially note 48 to chapter 10. 

3. Cp. the end of chapter 7, esp. note 25, and chapter 10, esp. note 69. 

4. Cp. Diogenes Laert., Ill, 1. — Concerning Plato's family connections, and especially the 
alleged descent of his father's family from Codrus, 'and even from the God Poseidon', see 
G. Grote, Plato and other Companions of Socrates (edn 1875), vol. I, 114. (See, however, 
the similar remark on Critias' family, i.e. on that of Plato's mother, in E. Meyer, Geschichte 
des Altertums, vol. V, 1922, p. 66.) Plato says of Codrus in the Symposium (208d): 'Do you 
suppose that Alcestis, ... or Achilles, ... or that your own Codrus would have sought death 
— in order to save the kingship for his childrenMhad they not expected to win that 
immortal memory of their virtue in which indeed we keep them?' Plato praises Critias' (i.e. 
his mother's) family in the early Charmides (157e ff.) and in the late Timaeus (20e), where 
the family is traced back to the Athenian ruler (archon-) Dropides, the friend of Solon. 

5. The two autobiographical quotations which follow in this paragraph are from the Seventh 
Letter (325). Plato's authorship of the Letters has been questioned by some eminent scholars 
(perhaps without sufficient foundation; I think Field's treatment of this problem very 
convincing; cp. note 57 to chapter 10; on the other hand, even the Seventh Letter looks to 
me a little suspicious — it repeats too much what we know from the Apology, and says too 
much what the occasion requires). I have therefore taken care to base my interpretation of 
Platonism mainly on some of the most famous dialogues; it is, however, in general 
agreement with \hQ Letters. For the reader's convenience, a Hst of those Platonic dialogues 
which are frequently mentioned in the text may be given here, in what is their probable 
historical order; cp. note 56 (8) to chapter 10. Crito — Apology — Euthyphro; Protagoras — 
Meno — Gorgias; Cratylus — Menexenus — Phaedo; Republic; Parmenides — Theaetetus; 
Sophist — Statesman (or Politicus) — Philebus; Timaeus — Critias; Laws. 

6. (1) That historical developments may have a cyclic character is nowhere very clearly stated 



by Plato. It is, however, alluded to in at least four dialogues, namely in the Phaedo, in the 
Republic, in the Statesman {or Politicus), and in the Laws. In all these places, Plato's theory 
may possibly allude to Heraclitus' Great Year (cp. note 6 to chapter 2). It may be, however, 
that the allusion is not to Heraclitus directly, but rather to Empedocles, whose theory (cp. 
also Aristotle, Met, 1000a25 f.) Plato considered as merely a 'milder' version of the 
Heraclitean theory of the unity of all flux. He expresses this in a famous passage of the 
Sophist (242e f.). According to this passage, and to Aristotle {De Gen. Corn , B, 6., 334a6), 
there is a historical cycle embracing a period in which love rules, and a period in which 
Heraclitus' strife rules; and Aristotle tells us that, according to Empedocles, the present 
period is 'now a period of the reign of Strife, as it was formerly one of Love'. This insistence 
that the flux of our own cosmic period is a kind of strife, and therefore bad, is in close 
accordance both with Plato's theories and with his experiences. 

The length of the Great Year is, probably, the period of time after which all heavenly bodies 
return to the same positions relative to each other as were held by them at the moment from 
which the period is reckoned. (This would make it the smallest common multiple of the 
periods of the 'seven planets'.) 

(2) The passage in the Phaedo mentioned under (1) alludes first to the Heraclitean theory of 
change leading from one state to its opposite state, or from one opposite to the other: 'that 
which becomes less must once have been greater ...' (70e/71a). It then proceeds to indicate 
a cyclic law of development: 'Are there not two processes which are ever going on, from 
one extreme to its opposite, and back again ...?' {loc. cit.). And a little later (72a/b) the 
argument is put like this: 'If the development were in a straight line only, and there were no 
compensation or cycle in nature, ... then, in the end, all things would take on the same 
properties ... and there would be no further development' It appears that the general 
tendency of the Phaedo is more optimistic (and shows more faith in man and in human 
reason) than that of the later dialogues, but there are no direct references to human historical 
development. 

(3) Such references are, however, made in the Republic where, in Books VIII and IX, we 
find an elaborate description of historical decay treated here in chapter 4. This description is 
introduced by Plato's Story of the Fall of Man and of the Number, which will here be 



discussed more fully in chapters 5 and 8. J. Adam, in his edition of The Republic of Plato 
(1902, 1921), rightly calls this story 'the setting in which Plato's "Philosophy of History" is 
framed' (vol. II, 210). This story does not contain any explicit statement on the cyclic 
character of history, but it contains a few rather mysterious hints which, according to 
Aristotle's (and Adam's) interesting but uncertain interpretation, are possibly allusions to the 
Heraclitean Great Year, i.e. to the cyclic development. (Cp. note 6 to chapter 2, and Adam, 
op. cit, vol. II, 303; the remark on Empedocles made there, 303f., needs correction; see (1) 
in this note, above.) 

(4) There is, furthermore, the myth in the Statesman (268e-274c). According to this myth, 
God himself steers the world for half a cycle of the great world period. When he lets go, then 
the world, which so far has moved forward, begins to roll back again. Thus we have two 
half-periods or half-cycles in the full cycle, a forward movement led by God constituting the 
good period without war or strife, and a backward movement when God abandons the 
world, which is a period of increasing disorganization and strife. It is, of course, the period 
in which we live. Ultimately, things will become so bad that God will take the wheel again, 
and reverse the motion, in order to save the world from utter destruction. 
This myth shows great resemblances to Empedocles' myth mentioned in (1) above, and 
probably also to Heraclitus' Great Year. — ^Adam ( op. cit., vol. II, 296 f.) also points out the 
similarities with Hesiod's story. *One of the points which allude to Hesiod is the reference to 
a Golden Age of Cronos; and it is important to note that the men of this age are earth-bom. 
This estabhshes a point of contact with the Myth of the Earth-bom, and of the metals in man, 
which plays a role in the Republic (414b ff. and 546e f); this role is discussed below in 
chapter 8. The Myth of the Earth-bom is also alluded to in the Symposium (191b); possibly 
the allusion is to the popular claim that the Athenians are 'like grasshoppers' — 
autochthonous (cp. notes 32 (l)e to chapter 4 and 1 1 (2) to chapter 8).* 
When, however, later in the Statesman (302b ff.) the six forms of imperfect government are 
ordered according to their degree of imperfection, there is no indication any longer to be 
found of a cyclic theory of history. Rather, the six forms, which are all degenerate copies of 
the perfect or best state (Statesman, 293d/e; 297c; 303b), appear all as steps in the process of 
degeneration; i.e. both here and in the Republic Plato confines himself, when it comes to 



more concrete historical problems, to that part of the cycle which leads to decay. 

* (5) Analogous remarks hold for the Laws. Something like a cyclic theory is sketched in 
Book III, 676b/c-677b, where Plato turns to a more detailed analysis of the beginning of 
one of the cycles; and in 67 8e and 679c, this beginning turns out to be a Golden Age, so 
that the further story again becomes one of deterioration. — It may be mentioned that Plato's 
doctrine, that the planets are gods, together with the doctrine that the gods influence human 
lives (and with his belief that cosmic forces are at work in history), played an important part 
in the astrological speculations of the neo-Platonists. All three doctrines can be found in the 
Laws (see, for example, 821b-d and 899b; 899d-905d; 677a ff.). Astrology, it should be 
realized, shares with historicism the belief in a determinate destiny which can be predicted; 
and it shares with some important versions of historicism (especially with Platonism and 
Marxism) the behef that, notwithstanding the possibility of predicting the future, we have 
some influence upon it, especially if we actually know what is coming.* 

(6) Apart from these scanty allusions, there is hardly anything to indicate that Plato took the 
upward or forward part of the cycle seriously. But there are many remarks, apart from the 
elaborate description in the Republic and that quoted in (5), which show that he believed 
very seriously in the downward movement, in the decay of history. We must consider, 
especially, the Timaeus, and the Laws. 

(7) In the Timaeus (42b f, 90e ff., and especially 9 Id f; cp. also the Ph a edrus, 248d f), 
Plato describes what may be called the origin of species by degeneration (cp. text to note 4 
to chapter 4, and note 11 to chapter 11): men degenerate into women, and later into lower 
animals. 

(8) In Book III of the Laws (cp. also Book IV, 713a ff.; see however the short allusion to a 
cycle mentioned above) we have a rather elaborate theory of historical decay, largely 
analogous to that in the Republic. See also the next chapter, especially notes 3, 6, 7, 27, 31, 
and 44. 

7. A similar opinion of Plato's political aims is expressed by G. C. Field, Plato and His 
Contemporaries (1930), p. 91: 'The chief aim of Plato's philosophy may be regarded as the 
attempt to re-establish standards of thought and conduct for a civilization that seemed on the 



verge of dissolution.' See also note 3 to chapter 6, and text. 

8. I follow the majority of the older and a good number of contemporary authorities (e.g. G. C. 
Field, F. M. Cornford, A. K. Rogers) in believing, against John Burnet and A. E. Taylor, that 
the theory of Forms or Ideas is nearly entirely Plato's, and not Socrates', in spite of the fact 
that Plato puts it into the mouth of Socrates as his main speaker. Though Plato's dialogues 
are our only first-rate source for Socrates' teaching, it is, I believe, possible to distinguish in 
them between 'Socratic', i.e. historically true, and 'Platonic' features of Plato's speaker 
'Socrates'. The so-called Socratic Problem is discussed in chapters 6, 7, 8, and 10; cp. 
especially note 56 to chapter 10. 

9. The term 'social engineering' seems to have been used first by Roscoe Pound, in his 
Introduction to the Philosophy of Law (1922, p. 99; *Bryan Magee tells me now that the 
Webbs used it almost certainly before 1922.*) He uses the term in the 'piecemeal' sense. In 
another sense it is used by M. Eastman, Mxrxwm; Is it Science? (1940). I read Eastman's 
book after the text of my own book was written; my term 'social engineering' is, 
accordingly, used without any intention of alluding to Eastman's terminology. As far as I 
can see, he advocates the approach which I criticize in chapter 9 under the name 'Utopian 
social engineering'; cp. note 1 to that chapter. — See also note 18 (3) to chapter 5. As the first 
social engineer one might describe the town-planner Hippodamus of Miletus. (Cp. 
Aristotle's Politics 1276b22, and R. Eisler, Jesus Basileus, II, p. 754.) 

The term 'social technology' has been suggested to me by C. G. F. Simkin. — I wish to make 
it clear that in discussing problems of method, my main emphasis is upon gaining practical 
institutional experience. Cp. chapter 9, especially text to note 8 to that chapter. For a more 
detailed analysis of the problems of method connected with social engineering and social 
technology, see my The Poverty of Historicism (2nd edition, 1960), part III. 

10 . The quoted passage is from my The Poverty of Historicism, p. 65. The 'undesigned results 
of human actions' are more fully discussed below, in chapter 14, see especially note 11 and 
text. 

11 . I believe in a dualism of facts and decisions or demands (or of 'is' and 'ought'); in other 
words, I believe in the impossibility of reducing decisions or demands to facts, although 



they can, of course, be treated as facts. More on this point will be said in chapters 5 (text to 
notes 4-5), 22, and 24. 

12 Evidence in support of this interpretation of Plato's theory of the best state will be supplied 
in the next three chapters; I may refer, in the meanwhile, to Statesman, 293 d/e; 297c; Laws, 
713b/c; 739d/e; Timaeus, 22d ff., especially 25e and 26d. 

13 . Cp. Aristotle's famous report, partly quoted later in this chapter (see especially note 25 to 
this chapter, and the text). 

14 . This is shown in Grote's Plato, vol. Ill, note u on pp. 267 f 

15 . The quotations are from the Timaeus, 50c/d and 51e-52b. The simile which describes the 
Forms or Ideas as the fathers, and Space as the mother, of the sensible things, is important 
and has far-reaching connections. Cp. also notes 17 and 19 to this chapter, and note 59 to 
chapter 10. 

(1) It resembles Hesiod's myth of chaos, the yawning gap (space; receptacle) which 
corresponds to the mother, and the God Eros, who corresponds to the father or to the Ideas. 
Chaos is the origin, and the question of the causal explanation (chaos = cause) remains for a 
long time one of origin (arche-) or birth or generation. 

(2) The mother or Space corresponds to the indefinite or boundless of Anaximander and of 
the Pythagoreans. The Idea, which is male, must therefore correspond to the definite (or 
limited) of the Pythagoreans. For the definite, as opposed to the boundless, the male, as 
opposed to the female, the light, as opposed to the dark, and the good, as opposed to the 
bad, all belong to the same side in \hQ Pythagorean table of opposites. (Cp. Aristotle's 
Metaphysics, 986a22 f ) We also can therefore expect to see the Ideas associated with light 
and goodness. (Cp. end of note 32 to chapter 8.) 

(3) The Ideas are boundaries or limits, they are definite, as opposed to indefinite Space, and 
impress or imprint (cp. note 17 (2) to this chapter) themselves like rubber-stamps, or better, 
like moulds, upon Space (which is not only space but at the same time Anaximander 's 
unformed matter — stuff without property), thus generating sensible things. *J. D. Mabbott 
has kindly drawn my attention to the fact that the Forms or Ideas, according to Plato, do not 
impress themselves upon Space but are, rather, impressed or imprinted upon it by the 



Demiurge. Traces of the theory that the Forms are 'causes both of being and of generation 
(or becoming)' can be found aheady in the Phaedo (lOOd), as Aristotle points out (in 
Metaphysics 1080a2).* 

(4) In consequence of the act of generation, Space, i.e. the receptacle, begins to labour, so 
that all things are set in motion, in a Heraclitean or Empedoclean flux which is really 
universal in so far as the movement or flux extends even to the framework, i.e. (boundless) 
space itself. (For the late Heraclitean idea of the receptacle, cp. the Cratylus, 41 2d.) 

(5) This description is also reminiscent of Parmenides' 'Way of Delusive Opinion', in which 
the world of experience and of flux is created by the mingling of two opposites, the light (or 
hot or fire) and the dark (or cold or earth). It is clear that Plato's Forms or Ideas would 
correspond to the former, and Space or what is boundless to the latter; especially if we 
consider that Plato's pure space is closely akin to indeterminate matter. 

(6) The opposition between the determinate and indeterminate seems also to correspond, 
especially after the all-important discovery of the irrationality of the square root of two, to 
the opposition between the rational and the irrational. But since Parmenides identifies the 
rational with being, this would lead to an interpretation of Space or the irrational as non- 
being. In other words, the Pythagorean table of opposites is to be extended to cover 
rationality, as opposed to irrationality, and being, as opposed to non-being. (This agrees with 
Metaphysics, 1004b27, where Aristotle says that 'all the contraries are reducible to being 
and non-being'; 1072a31, where one side of the table — that of being — ^is described as the 
object of (rational) thought; and 1093b 13, where the powers of certain numbers — 
presumably in opposition to their roots — are added to this side. This would further explain 
Aristotle's remark in Metaphysics, 986b27; and it would perhaps not be necessary to 
assume, as F. M. Comford does in his excellent article 'Parmenides' Two Ways', Class. 
Quart, XVII, 1933, p. 108, that Parmenides, fir. 8, 53/54, 'has been misinterpreted by 
Aristotle and Theophrastus' for if we expand the table of opposites in this way, Cornford's 
most convincing interpretation of the crucial passage of fir. 8 becomes compatible with 
Aristotle's remark.) 

(7) Comford has explained {op. cit, 100) that there are three 'ways' in Parmenides, the way 
of Truth, the way of Not-being, and the way of Seeming (or, if I may call it so, of delusive 



opinion). He shows (101) that they correspond to three regions discussed in the Republic, 
the perfectly real and rational world of the Ideas, the perfectly unreal, and the world of 
opinion (based on the perception of things in flux). He has also shown (102) that in the 
Sophist, Plato modifies his position. To this, some comments may be added from the point 
of view of the passages in the Timaeus to which this note is appended. 

(8) The main difference between the Forms or Ideas of the Republic and those of the 
Timaeus is that in the former, the Forms (and also God; cp. Rep., 380d) are petri-fied, so to 
speak, while in the latter, they are deified. In the former, they bear a much closer 
resemblance to the Parmenidean One (cp. Adam's note to Rep., 380d28, 31), than in the 
latter. This development leads to the Laws, where the Ideas are largely replaced by souls. 
The decisive difference is that the Ideas become more and more the starting points of motion 
and causes of generation, or as the Timaeus puts it, fathers of the moving things. The 
greatest contrast is perhaps between the Phaedo, 79e: 'The soul is infinitely more like the 
unchangeable; even the most stupid person would not deny that' (cp. also Rep., 585c, 609b 
f ), and the Laws, 895e/896a (cp. Phaedrus, 245c ff.): 'What is the definition of that which is 
named "soul"? Can we imagine any other definition than ... "The motion that moves 
itself'?' The transition between these two positions is, perhaps, provided by the Sophist 
(which introduces the Form or Idea of motion itself) and by the Timaeus, 35a, which 
describes the 'divine and unchanging' Forms and the changing and corruptible bodies. This 
seems to explain why, in the Laws (cp. 894d/e), the motion of the soul is said to be 'first in 
origin and power' and why the soul is described (966e) as 'the most ancient and divine of 
all things whose motion is an ever-flowing source of real existence'. (Since, according to 
Plato, all living things have souls, it may be claimed that he admitted the presence of an at 
least partly formal principle in things; a point of view which is very close to Aristotelianism, 
especially in the presence of the primitive and widespread belief that all things are alive.) 
(Cp. also note 7 to chapter 4.) 

(9) In this development of Plato's thought, a development whose driving force is to explain 
the world of flux with the help of the Ideas, i.e. to make the break between the world of 
reason and the world of opinion at least understandable, even though it cannot be bridged, 
the Sophist seems to play a decisive role. Apart fi"om making room, as Comford mentions 



{op. cit, 102), for the plurality of Ideas, it presents them, in an argument against Plato's own 
earlier position (248a ff.): (a) as active causes, which may interact, for example, with mind; 
(b) as unchanging in spite of that, although there is now an Idea of motion in which all 
moving things participate and which is not at rest; (c) as capable of mingling with one 
another. It further introduces 'Not-being', identified in the Timaeus with Space (cp. 
Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge , 1935, note to 247), and thus makes it possible for 
the Ideas to mingle with it (cp. also Philolaus, fr. 2, 3, 5, Diels^), and to produce the world 
of flux with its characteristic intermediate position between the being of Ideas and the not- 
being of Space or matter. 

(10) Ultimately, I wish to defend my contention in the text that the Ideas are not only outside 
space, but also outside time, though they are in contact with the world at the beginning of 
time. This, I believe, makes it easier to understand how they act without being in motion; for 
all motion or flux is in space and time. Plato, I believe, assumes that time has a beginning. I 
think that this is the most direct interpretation of Laws, 721c: 'the race of man is twin-bom 
with all time', considering the many indications that Plato believed man to be created as one 
of the first creatures. (In this point, I disagree slightly with Covnfovd, Plato's Cosmology , 
1937, p. 145, and pp. 26 ff.) 

(11) To sum up, the Ideas are earlier and better than their changing and decaying copies, 
and are themselves not in flux. (See also note 3 to chapter 4.) 

16 . Cp. note 4 to this chapter. 

17 . (1) The role of the gods in the Timaeus is similar to the one described in the text. Just as the 
Ideas stamp out things, so the gods form the bodies of men. Only the human soul is created 
by the Demiurge himself who also creates the world and the gods. (For another hint that the 
gods are patriarchs, see Laws, 713c/d.) Men, the weak, degenerate children of gods, are then 
liable to further degeneration; cp. note 6(7) to this chapter, and 37-41 to chapter 5. 

(2) In an interesting passage of the Laws (681b; cp. also note 32 (1, a) to chapter 4) we find 
another allusion to the parallelism between the relation Idea — things and the relation parent 
— children. In this passage, the origin of law is explained by the influence of tradition, and 
more especially, by the transmission of a rigid order from the parents to the children; and the 



following remark is made: 'And they (the parents) would be sure to stamp upon their 
children, and upon their children's children, their own cast of mind.' 

18 . Cp. note 49, especially (3), to chapter 8. 

19. Cp. Timaeus, 31a. The term which I have freely translated by 'superior thing which is their 
prototype' is a term frequently used by Aristotle with the meaning 'universal' or 'generic 
term'. It means a 'thing which is general' or 'surpassing' or 'embracing' and I suspect that it 
originally means 'embracing' or 'covering' in the sense in which a mould embraces or 
covers what it moulds. 

20 . Cp. Republic, 597c. See also 596a (and Adam's second note to 596a5): 'For we are in the 
habit, you will remember, of postulating a Form or Idea — one for each group of many 
particular things to which we apply the same name.' 

21 . There are innumerable passages in Plato; I mention only the Phaedo (e.g. 79a), the 
Republic, 544a, the Theaetetus (152d/e, 179d/e), the Timaeus (28b/c, 29c/d, 51d f). 
Aristotle mentions it in Metaphysics, 987a32; 999a25-999bl0; 1010a6-15; 1078b 15; see 
also notes 23 and 25 to this chapter. 

22. Parmenides taught, as Burnet puts it (Early Greek Philosophy 2, 208), that 'what is ... is 
finite, spherical, motionless, corporeal', i.e. that the world is a full globe, a whole without 
any parts, and that 'there is nothing beyond it'. I am quoting Burnet because (a) his 
description is excellent and (b) it destroys his own interpretation {E.G. P., 208-11) of what 
Parmenides calls the 'Opinion of the Mortals' (or the Way of Delusive Opinion). For Burnet 
dismisses there all the interpretations of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Simplicius, Gomperz, and 
Meyer, as 'anachronisms' or 'palpable anachronisms', etc. Now the interpretation dismissed 
by Burnet is practically the same as the one here proposed in the text; namely, that 
Parmenides believed in a world of reality behind this world of appearance. Such a duahsm, 
which would allow Parmenides' description of the world of appearance to claim at least 
some kind of adequacy, is dismissed by Burnet as hopelessly anachronistic. I suggest, 
however, that if Parmenides had believed solely in his unmoving world, and not at all in the 
changing world, then he would have been really mad (as Empedocles hints). But in fact 
there is an indication of a similar dualism already in Xenophanes, fragm. 23-6, if confronted 



with fragm. 34 (esp. 'But all may have their fancy opinions'), so that we can hardly speak of 
an anachronism. — ^As indicated in note 15 (6-7), I follow Cornford's interpretation of 
Parmenides. (See also note 41 to chapter 10.) 

23 . Cp. Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1078b23; the next quotation is: op. cil, 1078bl9. 

24 . This valuable comparison is due to G. C. Field, Plato and His Contemporaries, 211. 

25 . The preceding quotation is from Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1078bl5; the next from cit., 
987b7. 

26 . In Aristotle's analysis (in Metaphysics, 987a30-bl8) of the arguments which led to the 
theory of Ideas (cp. also note 56 (6) to chapter 10), we can distinguish the following steps: 
(a) Heraclitus' flux, (b) the impossibility of true knowledge of things in flux, (c) the 
influence of Socrates' ethical essences, (d) the Ideas as objects of true knowledge, (e) the 
influence of the Pythagoreans, (/) the 'mathematicals' as intermediate objects. — ((e) and (f) I 
have not mentioned in the text, where I have mentioned instead (g) the Parmenidean 
influence.) 

It may be worth while to show how these steps can be identified in Plato's own work, where 
he expounds his theory; especially in the Phaedo and in the Republic, in the Theaetetus and 
in the Sophist, and in the Timaeus. 

(1) In the Phaedo, we fmd indications of all the points up to and including (e). In 65a-66a, 
the steps (d) and (c) are prominent, with an allusion to (b). In 70e step (a), Heraclitus' theory 
appears, combined with an element of Pythagoreanism (e). This leads to 74a ff., and to a 
statement of step (d). 99-100 is an approach to (d) through (c), etc. For (a) to (d), cp. also 
the Cratylus, 439c ff. 

In \hQ Republic, it is of course especially Book VI that corresponds closely to Aristotle's 
report, (a) In the beginning of Book VI, 485a/b (cp. 527a/b), the Heraclitean flux is referred 
to (and contrasted with the unchanging world of Forms). Plato there speaks of 'a reality 
which exists for ever and is exempt from generation and degeneration '. (Cp. notes 2 (2) and 
3 to chapter 4 and note 33 to chapter 8, and text.) The steps (b), (d) and especially if) play a 
rather obvious role in the famous Simile of the Line (Rep., 509c-511e; cp. Adam's notes, 
and his appendix I to Book VII); Socrates' ethical influence, i.e. step (c), is of course alluded 



to throughout the Republic. It plays an important role within the Simile of the Line and 
especially immediately before, i.e. in 508b ff, where the role of the good is emphasized; see 
in particular 508b/c: 'This is what I maintain regarding the offspring of the good. What the 
good has begotten in its own likeness is, in the intelhgible world, related to reason (and its 
objects) in the same way as, in the visible world', that which is the offspring of the sun, 'is 
related to sight (and its objects).' Step {e) is implied in (/), but more fully developed in Book 
VII, in the famous Curriculum (cp. especially 523a-527c), which is largely based on the 
Simile of the Line in Book VI. 

(2) In the Theaetetus, (a) and (b) are treated extensively; (c) is mentioned in 174b and 175c. 
In the Sophist, all the steps, including (g), are mentioned, only (e) and (J) being left out; see 
especially 247a (step (c)); 249c (step (b)); 253d/e (step (d)). In the Philebus, we find 
indications of all steps except perhaps (/); steps (a) to (d) are especially emphasized in 59a- 
c. 

(3) In the Timaeus, all the steps mentioned by Aristotle are indicated, with the possible 
exception of (c), which is alluded to only indirectly in the introductory recapitulation of the 
contents of the Republic, and in 29d. Step (e) is, as it were, alluded to throughout, since 
'Timaeus' is a 'western' philosopher and strongly influenced by Pythagoreanism. The other 
steps occur twice in a form almost completely parallel to Aristotle's account; first briefly in 
28a-29d, and later, with more elaboration, in 48e-55c. Immediately after (a), i.e. a 
Heraclitean description (49a ff.; cp. Comford, Plato's Cosmology, 178) of the world in flux, 
the argument (b) is raised (51c-e) that if we are right in distinguishing between reason (or 
true knowledge) and mere opinion, we must admit the existence of the unchangeable Forms; 
these are (in 51e f) introduced next in accordance with step (d). The Heraclitean flux then 
comes again (as labouring space), but this time it is explained, as a consequence of the act of 
generation. And as a next step (f) appears, in 53c. (I suppose that the 'lines and planes and 
solids' mentioned by Aristotle in Metaphysics, 992b 13, refer to 53c ff.) 

(4) It seems that this parallelism between the Timaeus and Aristotle's report has not been 
sufficiently emphasized so far; at least, it is not used by G. C. Field in his excellent and 
convincing analysis of Aristotle's report (Plato and His Contemporaries, 202 ff.). But it 
would have strengthened Field's arguments (arguments, however, which hardly need 



strengthening, since they are practically conclusive) against Burnet's and Taylor's views that 
the Theory of Ideas is Socratic (cp. note 56 to chapter 10). For in the Timaeus, Plato does not 
put this theory into the mouth of Socrates, a fact which according to Burnet's and Taylor's 
principles should prove that it was not Socrates' theory. (They avoid this inference by 
claiming that 'Timaeus' is a Pythagorean, and that he develops not Plato's philosophy but 
his own. But Aristotle knew Plato personally for twenty years and should have been able to 
judge these matters; and he wrote his Metaphysics at a time when members of the Academy 
could have contradicted his presentation of Platonism.) 

(5) Burnet writes, in Greek Philosophy, 1, 155 (cp. also p. xliv of his edition of the Phaedo, 
1911): 'the theory of forms in the sense in which it is maintained in the Phaedo and 
Republic is wholly absent from what we may fairly regard the most distinctively Platonic of 
the dialogues, those, namely, in which Socrates is no longer the chief speaker. In that sense 
it is never even mentioned in any dialogue later than the Parmenides ... with the single 
exception of the Timaeus (51c), where the speaker is a Pythagorean.' But if it is maintained 
in the Timaeus in the sense in which it is maintained in the Republic, then it is certainly so 
maintained in the Sophist, 257d/e; and in the Statesman, 269c/d; 286a; 297b/c, and c/d; 
301a and e; 302e; and 303b; and in the Philebus, 15a f , and 59a-d; and in the Laws, 713b, 
739d/e, 962c f, 963c ff., and, most important, 965c {c^. Philebus, 16d), 965d, and 966a; 
see also the next note. (Burnet believes in the genuineness of the Letters, especially the 
Seventh; but the theory of Ideas is maintained there in 342a ff.; see also note 56 (5, d) to 
chapter 10.) 

27 . Cp. Laws, 895d-e. I do not agree with England's note (in his edition of the Laws, vol. II, 
472) that 'the word "essence" will not help us'. True, if we meant by 'essence' some 
important sensible part of the sensible thing (which might perhaps be purified and produced 
by some distillation), then 'essence' would be misleading. But the word 'essential' is widely 
used in a way which corresponds very well indeed with what we wish to express here; 
something opposed to the accidental or unimportant or changing empirical aspect of the 
thing, whether it is conceived as dwelling in that thing, or in a metaphysical world of Ideas. 
I am using the term 'essentialism' in opposition to 'nominalism', in order to avoid, and to 
replace, the misleading traditional term 'realism', wherever it is opposed (not to 'idealism' 



but) to 'nominalism'. (See also note 26 ff. to chapter 11, and text, and especially note 38.) 
On Plato's application of his essentialist method, for instance, as mentioned in the text, to the 
theory of the soul, sqqLuws, 895e f, quoted in note 15 (8) to this chapter, and chapter 5, 
especially note 23. See also, for instance, Meno, 86d/e, and Symposium, 199c/d. 

28 . On the theory of causal explanation, cp. my The Logic of Scientific Discovery, especially 
section 12, pp. 59 ff. See also note 6 to chapter 25, below. 

29 . The theory of language here indicated is that of Semantics, as developed especially by A. 
Tarski and R. Carnap. Cp. Carnap, Introduction to Semantics, 1942, and note 23 to chapter 
8. 

30 . The theory that while the physical sciences are based on a methodological nominalism, the 
social sciences must adopt essentiahst ('reahstic') methods, has been made clear to me by K. 
Polanyi (in 1925); he pointed out, at that time, that a reform of the methodology of the social 
sciences might conceivably be achieved by abandoning this theory. — The theory is held, to 
some extent, by most sociologists, especially by J. S. Mill (for instance. Logic, VI, ch. VI, 2; 
see also his historicist formulations, e.g. in VI, ch. X, 2, last paragraph: 'The fundamental 
problem ... of the social science is to find the laws according to which any state of society 
produces the state which succeeds it ...'), K. Marx (see below); M. Weber (cp., for example, 
his definitions in the beginning of Methodische Grundlagen der Soziologie, in Wirtschaft 
und Gesellschaft, I, and in Ges. Aufsaetze zur Wissenschaftslehre), G. Simmel, A. Vierkandt, 
R. M. Maclver, and many more. — The philosophical expression of all these tendencies is E. 
Husserl's 'Phaenomenology', a systematic revival of the methodological essentialism of 
Plato and Aristotle. (See also chapter 1 1 . especially note 44.) 

The opposite, the nominalist attitude in sociology, can be developed, I think, only as a 
technological theory of social institutions. 

In this context, I may mention how I came to trace historicism back to Plato and Heraclitus. 
In analysing historicism, I found that it needs what I call now methodological essentialism; 
i.e. I saw that the typical arguments in favour of essentialism are bound up with historicism 
(cp. my The Poverty of Historicism). This led me to consider the history of essentialism. I 
was struck by the parallelism between Aristotle's report and the analysis which I had carried 



out originally without any reference to Platonism. In this way, I was reminded of the roles of 
both Heraclitus and Plato in this development. 

31 . R. H. S. Grossman's Plato To-day (1937) was the first book (apart from G. Grote's Plato) I 
have found to contain a political interpretation of Plato which is partly similar to my own. 
See also notes 2-3 to chapter 6, and text. * Since then I have found that similar views of 
Plato have been expressed by various authors. C. M. Bowra {Ancient Greek Literature, 
1933) is perhaps the first; his brief but thorough criticism of Plato (pp. 186-90) is as fair as it 
is penetrating. The others are W. Fite ( The Platonic Legend, 1934); B. Farrington {Science 
and Politics in the Ancient World, 1939); A. D. Winspear {The Genesis of Plato's Thought, 
1940); and H. Kelsen {Platonic Justice, 1933; now in What is Justice!, 1957, and Platonic 
Love, in The American Imago, vol. 3, 1942).* 



Notes to Chapter Four 



1. Cp. Republic, 608e. See also note 2 (2) to this chapter. 

2. In the Laws, the soul — 'the most ancient and divine of all things in motion' (966e) — is 
described as the 'starting point of all motion' (895b). (1) With the Platonic theory, Aristotle 
contrasts his own, according to which the 'good' thing is not the starting point, but rather the 
end or aim of change since 'good' means a thing aimed at — the final cause of change. Thus 
he says of the Platonists, i.e. of 'those who believe in Forms', that they agree with 
Empedocles (they speak 'in the same way' as Empedocles) in so far as they 'do not speak as 
if anything came to pass for the sake of these' (i.e. of things which are 'good') 'but as if all 
movement started from them'. And he points out that 'good' means therefore to the 
Platonists not 'a cause qua good', i.e. an aim, but that 'it is only incidentally a good'. Cp. 
Metaphysics, 988a35 and b8 ff. and 1075a, 34/35. This criticism sounds as if Aristotle had 
sometimes held views similar to those of Speusippus, which is indeed Zeller's opinion; see 
note 1 1 to chapter 1 1 . 

(2) Concerning the movement towards corruption, mentioned in the text in this paragraph, 
and its general significance in the Platonic philosophy, we must keep in mind the general 
opposition between the world of unchanging things or Ideas, and the world of sensible 
things in flux. Plato often expresses this opposition as one between the world of unchanging 
things and the world of corruptible things, or between things that are ungenerated, and 
those that are generated and are doomed to degenerate, etc.; see, for instance. Republic, 
485a/b, quoted in note 26(1) to chapter 3 and in text to note 33 to chapter Republic, 
508d-e; 527a/b; and Republic, 546a, quoted in text to note 37 to chapter 5: 'All things that 
have been generated must degenerate' (or decay). That this problem of the generation and 
corruption of the world of things in flux was an important part of the Platonic School 
tradition is indicated by the fact that Aristotle devoted a separate treatise to this problem. 
Another interesting indication is the way in which Aristotle talked about these matters in the 
introduction to his Politics, contained in the concluding sentences of the Nicomachean 
Ethics (11 8 lb/1 5): 'We shall try to ... find what it is that preserves or corrupts the cities ...' 



This passage is significant not only as a general formulation of what Aristotle considered the 
main problem of his Politics, but also because of its striking similarity to an important 
passage in the Laws, viz. 676a, and 676b/c quoted below in text to notes 6 and 25 to this 
chapter. (See also notes 1,3, and 24/25 to this chapter; see note 32 to chapter 8, and the 
passage from the Laws quoted in note 59 to chapter 8.) 

3. This quotation is from the Statesman, 269d. (See also note 23 to this chapter.) For the 
hierarchy of motions, SQQLaws, 893c-895b. For the theory that perfect things (divine 
'natures'; cp. the next chapter) can only become less perfect when they change, see 
QS^Qc'mWy Republic, 380e-381c — in many ways (note the examples in 380e) a parallel 
passage to Laws, 1916.. The quotations from Aristotle are from the Metaphysics, 988b3, and 
fxomDe Gen. et Corn , 335bl4. The last four quotations in this paragraph are from Plato's 
Laws, 904c f , and 797d. See also note 24 to this chapter, and text. (It is possible to interpret 
the remark about the evil objects as another allusion to a cyclic development, as discussed in 
note 6 to chapter 2, i.e. as an allusion to the belief that the trend of the development must 
reverse, and that things must begin to improve, once the world has reached the lowest depth 
of evilness. 

* Since my interpretation of the Platonic theory of change and of the passages from the Laws 
has been challenged, I wish to add some further comments, especially on the two passages 
(1) Laws, 904c, f, and (2) 797d. 

(1) The passage Laws, 904c, 'the less significant is the beginning decline in their level of 
rank' may be translated more literally 'the less significant is the beginning movement down 
in the level of rank'. It seems to me certain, from the context, that 'down the level of rank' is 
meant rather than 'as to level of rank', which clearly is also a possible translation. (My 
reason is not only the whole dramatic context, down from 904a, but also more especially the 
series 'kata ... kata ... kato-' which, in a passage of gathering momentum, must colour the 
meaning of at least the second 'kata\ — Concerning the word I translate by 'level', this may, 
admittedly, mean not only 'plane' but also 'surface'; and the word I translate by 'rank' may 
mean 'space'; yet Bury's translation: 'the smaller the change of character, the less is the 
movement over surface in space' does not seem to me to yield much meaning in this 



context.) 

(2) The continuation of this passage (Laws, 798) is most characteristic. It demands that 'the 
lawgiver must contrive, by whatever means at his disposal ['by hook or by crook', as Bury 
well translates], a method which ensures for his state that the whole soul of every one of its 
citizens will, from reverence and fear, resist any change of any of the things that are 
established of old'. (Plato includes, explicitly, things which other lawgivers consider 'mere 
matters of play' — such, as, for example, changes in the games of children.) 

(3) In general, the main evidence for my interpretation of Plato's theory of change — apart 
from a great number of minor passages referred to in the various notes in this chapter and 
the preceding one — is of course found in the historical or evolutionary passages of all the 
dialogues which contain such passages, especially the Republic (the decline and fall of the 
state from its near-perfect or Golden Age in Books VIII and IX), the Statesman (the theory 
of the Golden Age and its decline), the Laws (the story of the primitive patriarchy and of the 
Dorian conquest, and the story of the decline and fall of the Persian Empire), the Timaeus 
(the story of evolution by degeneration, which occurs twice, and the story of the Golden 
Age of Athens, which is continued in the Critias). 

To this evidence Plato's frequent references to Hesiod must be added, and the undoubted 
fact that Plato's synthetic mind was not less keen than that of Empedocles (whose period of 
strife is the one ruling now; cp. Aristotle, De Gen. et Corn , 334a, b) in conceiving human 
affairs in a cosmic setting {Statesman, Timaeus). 

(4) Ultimately, I may perhaps refer to general psychological considerations. On the one hand 
the fear of innovation (illustrated by many passages in the Laws, e.g. 758c/d) and, on the 
other hand, the idealization of the past (such as found in Hesiod or in the story of the lost 
paradise) are frequent and striking phenomena. It is perhaps not too far-fetched to connect 
the latter, or even both, with the idealization of one's childhood — one's home, one's parents, 
and with the nostalgic wish to return to these early stages of one's life, to one's origin. There 
are many passages in Plato in which he takes it for granted that the original state of affairs, 
or original nature, is a state of blessedness. I refer only to the speech of Aristophanes in the 
Symposium; here it is taken for granted that the urge and the suffering of passionate love is 
sufficiently explained if it is shown that it derives from this nostalgia, and similarly, that the 



feelings of sexual gratification can be explained as those of a gratified nostalgia. Thus Plato 
says of Eros {Symposium, 193d): 'He will restore us to our original nature (see also 191d) 
and heal us and make us happy and blessed.' The same thought underlies many remarks 
such as the following from the Philebus (16c): 'The men of old ... were better than we are 
now, and . . . lived nearer to the gods . . . ' All this indicates the view that our unhappy and 
unblessed state is a consequence of the development which makes us different from our 
original nature — our Idea; and it further indicates that the development is one from a state of 
goodness and blessedness to a state where goodness and blessedness are being lost; but this 
means that the development is one of increasing corruption. Plato's theory of 
anamnesisMthQ theory that all knowledge is re-cognition or re-collection of the knowledge 
we had in our pre-natal past is part of the same view: in the past there resides not only the 
good, the noble, and the beautiful, but also all wisdom. Even the ancient change or motion is 
better than secondary motion; for in the Laws the soul is said to be (895b) 'the starting point 
of all motions the first to arise in things at rest ... the most ancient and potent motion', and 
(966c) 'the most ancient and divine of all things'. (Cp. note 15 (8) to chapter 3.) 
As pointed out before (cp. especially note 6 to chapter 3), the doctrine of an historical and 
cosmic tendency towards decay appears to be combined, in Plato, with a doctrine of an 
historical and cosmic cycle. (The period of decay, probably, is a part of this cycle.)* 

4. Cp. Timaeus, 91d-92b/c. See also note 6 (7) to chapter 3 and note 1 1 to chapter 11. 

5. See the beginning of chapter 2 above, and note 6 (1) to chapter 3. It is not a mere accident 
that Plato mentions Hesiod's story of 'metals' when discussing his own theory of historical 
decay (Rep., 546e/547a, esp. notes 39 and 40 to chapter 5); he clearly wishes to indicate 
how well his theory fits in with, and explains, that of Hesiod. 

6. The historical part of the Laws is in Books Three and Four (see note 6(5) and (8) to chapter 
3). The two quotations in the text are from the beginning of this part, i.e. Laws, 676a. For the 
parallel passages mentioned, sqq Republic, 369b, f. ('The birth of a city ...') and 545d 
('How will our city be changed ...'). 

It is often said that the Laws (and the Statesman) are less hostile towards democracy than the 
Republic, and it must be admitted that Plato's general tone is in fact less hostile (this is 



perhaps due to the increasing inner strength of democracy; see chapter 10 and the beginning 
of chapter 11). But the only practical concession made to democracy in the Laws is that 
political officers are to be elected, by the members of the ruling (i.e. the military) class; and 
since all important changes in the laws of the state are forbidden anyway (cp., for instance, 
the quotations in note 3 of this chapter), this does not mean very much. The fundamental 
tendency remains pro-Spartan, and this tendency was, as can be seen from Aristotle's 
Politics, 11, 6, 17 (1265b), compatible with a so-called 'mixed' constitution. In fact, Plato in 
the Laws is, if anything, more hostile towards the spirit of democracy, i.e. towards the idea 
of the freedom of the individual, than he is in the Republic; cp. especially the text to notes 
32 and 33 to chapter 6 (i.e. Laws, 739c, ff., and 942a, f ) and to notes 19-22 to chapter 8 
(i.e. Laws, 903c-909a). — See also next note. 

7. It seems likely that it was largely this difficulty of explaining the first change (or the Fall of 
Man) that led Plato to transform his theory of Ideas, as mentioned in note 15 (8) to chapter 3; 
viz., to transform the Ideas into causes and active powers, capable of mingling with some of 
the other Ideas (cp. Sophist, 252e, ff.), and of rejecting the remaining ones {Sophist, lllic), 
and thus to transform them into something like gods, as opposed to the Republic which (cp. 
380d) petrifies even the gods into unmoving and unmoved Parmenidean beings. An 
important turning point is, apparently, the Sophist, 248e-249c (note especially that here the 
Idea of motion is not at rest). The transformation seems to solve at the same time the 
difficulty of the so-called 'third man'; for if the Forms are, as in the Timaeus, fathers, then 
there is no 'third man' necessary to explain their similarity to their offspring. 
Regarding the relation of the Republic to the Statesman and to the Laws, I think that Plato's 
attempt in the two latter dialogues to trace the origin of human society further and further 
back is likewise connected with the difficulties inherent in the problem of the first change. 
That it is difficult to conceive of a change overtaking a perfect city is clearly stated in 
Republic, 546a; Plato's attempt in the Republic to solve it will be discussed in the next 
chapter (cp. text to notes 37-40 to chapter 5). In the Statesman, Plato adopts the theory of a 
cosmic catastrophe which leads to the change from the (Empedoclean) half-circle of love to 
the present period, the half-circle of strife. This idea seems to have been dropped in the 
Timaeus, in order to be replaced by a theory (retained in the Laws) of more limited 



catastrophes, such as floods, which may destroy civilizations, but apparently do not affect 
the course of the universe. (It is possible that this solution of the problem was suggested to 
Plato by the fact that in 373-372 B.C., the ancient city of Helice was destroyed by 
earthquake and flood.) The earliest form of society, removed in the Republic only by one 
single step from the still existing Spartan state, is thrust back to a more and more distant past. 
Although Plato continues to believe that the first settlement must be the best city, he now 
discusses societies prior to the first settlement, i.e. nomad societies, 'hill shepherds'. (Cp. 
especially note 32 to this chapter.) 

8. The quotation is from Marx-Engels, The Communist Manifesto; cp. A Handbook of Marxism 
(edited by E. Burns, 1935), 22. 

9. The quotation is from Adam's comments on Book VIII of the Republic; see his edition, vol. 
II, 198, noteto 544a3. 

10. Cp. Republic, 544c. 

1 1 . (1) As opposed to my contention that Plato, like many modern sociologists since Comte, 
tries to outline the typical stages of social development, most critics take Plato's story merely 
as a somewhat dramatic presentation of a purely logical classification of constitutions. But 
this not only contradicts what Plato says (cp. Adam's note to Rep., 544c 19, op. cit, vol. II, 
199), but it is also against the whole spirit of Plato's logic, according to which the essence of 
a thing is to be understood by its original nature, i.e. by its historical origin. And we must 
not forget that he uses the same word, 'genus', to mean a class in the logical sense and a 
race in the biological sense. The logical 'genus' is still identical with the 'race', in the sense 
of 'offspring of the same parent'. (With this, cp. notes 15-20 to chapter 3, and text, as well 
as notes 23-24 to chapter 5, and text, where the Qqwdiiion nature = origin =race is 
discussed.) Accordingly, there is every reason for taking what Plato says at its face value; for 
even if Adam were right when he says {loc. cit.) that Plato intends to give a 'logical order', 
this order would for him be at the same time that of a typical historical development. Adam's 
remark {loc. cit.) that the order 'is primarily determined by psychological and not by 
historical considerations' turns, I believe, against him. For he himself points out (for 
instance, op. cit, vol. II, 195, note to 543a, ff.) that Plato 'retains throughout ... the analogy 



between the Soul and the City'. According to Plato's political theory of the soul (which will 
be discussed in the next chapter), the psychological history must run parallel to the social 
history, and the alleged opposition between psychological and historical considerations 
disappears, turning into another argument in favour of our interpretation. 

(2) Exactly the same reply could be made if somebody should argue that Plato's order of the 
constitution is, fundamentally, not a logical but an ethical one; for the ethical order (and the 
aesthetic order as well) is, in Plato's philosophy, indistinguishable from the historical order. 
In this connection, it may be remarked that this historicist view provides Plato with a 
theoretical background for Socrates' eudemonism, i.e. for the theory that goodness and 
happiness are identical. This theory is developed, in the Republic (cp. especially 580b), in 
the form of the doctrine that goodness and happiness, or badness and unhappiness, are 
proportional; and so they must be, if the degree of the goodness as well as of the happiness 
of a man is to be measured by the degree in which he resembles our original blessed nature 
— the perfect Idea of man. (The fact that Plato's theory leads, in this point, to a theoretical 
justification of an apparently paradoxical Socratic doctrine may well have helped Plato to 
convince himself that he was only expounding the true Socratic creed; see text to notes 
56/57 to chapter 10.) 

(3) Rousseau took over Plato's classification of institutions {Social Contract, Book II, ch. 
VII, Book III, ch. Ill ff., cp. also ch. X). It seems however that he was not directly 
influenced by Plato when he revived the Platonic Idea of a primitive society (cp., however, 
notes 1 to chapter 6 and 14 to chapter 9); but a direct product of the Platonic Renaissance in 
Italy was Sanazzaro's most miiuQntidiX Arcadia, with its revival of Plato's idea of a blessed 
primitive society of Greek (Dorian) hill shepherds. (For this idea of Plato's, cp. text to note 
32 to this chapter.) Thus Romanticism (cp. also chapter 9) is historically indeed an offspring 
of Platonism. 

(4) How far the modem historicism of Comte and Mill, and of Hegel and Marx, is influenced 
by the theistic historicism of Giambattista Vico's New Science (1725) is very hard to say: 
Vico himself was undoubtedly influenced by Plato, as well as by St. Augustine's De Civitate 
Dei and Machiavelh's Discourses on Livy. Like Plato (cp. ch. 5), Vico identified the 'nature' 
of a thing with its 'origin' (cp. Opere, Ferrari's second edn, 1852-4, vol. V, p. 99); and he 



believed that all nations must pass through the same course of development, according to 
one universal law. His 'nations' (like Hegel's) may thus be said to be one of the links 
between Plato's 'Cities' and Toynbee's 'Civilizations'. 

12 . Cp. Republic, 549c/d; the next quotations are op. cit., 550d-e, and later, op. cit., 551a/b. 

13 . Cp. op. cit., 556e. (This passage should be compared with Thucydides, III, 82-4, quoted in 
chapter 10, text to note 12.) The next quotation is op. cit., 557a. 

14 . For Pericles' democratic programme, see text to note 31, chapter 10, note 17 to chapter 6, 
and note 34 to chapter 10. 

15 . Adam, in his edition of The Republic of Plato, vol. II, 240, note to 559d22. (The italics in 
the second quotation are mine.) Adam admits that 'the picture is doubtless somewhat 
exaggerated'; but he leaves little doubt that he thinks it is, fundamentally, true 'for all time'. 

16 . Adam, loc. cit. 

17 . This quotation is from Republic, 560d (for this and the next quotation, cp. Lindsay's 
translation); the next two quotations are from the same work, 563 a-b, and d. (See also 
Adam's note to 563d25.) It is significant that Plato appeals here to the institution of private 
property, severely attacked in other parts of the Republic, as if it were an unchallenged 
principle of justice. It seems that when the property bought is a slave, an appeal to the lawful 
right of the buyer is adequate. 

Another attack upon democracy is that 'it tramples under foot' the educational principle that 
'no one can grow up to be a good man unless his earliest years were given to noble games'. 
{Rep., 558b; see Lindsay's translation; cp. note 68 to chapter 10.) See also the attacks upon 
equalitarianism quoted in note 14 to chapter 6. 

* For Socrates' attitude towards his young companions see most of the earlier dialogues, but 
also the Phaedo, where Socrates' 'pleasant, kind, and respectful manner in which he listened 
to the young man's criticism' is described. For Plato's contrasting attitude, see text to notes 
19-21 to chapter 7; see also the excellent lectures by H. Cherniss, The Riddle of the Early 
Academy (1945), especially pp. 70 and 79 (on the Parmenides 135c-d), and cp. notes 18- 
21 to chapter 7, and text. 



18 . Slavery (see the preceding note) and the Athenian movement against it will be further 
discussed in chapters 5 (notes 13 and text), 10, and 11; see also note 29 to the present 
chapter. Like Plato, Aristotle (e.g. in Pol, 1313bll, 1319b20; and in his Constitution oj 
Athens, 59, 5) testifies to Athens' liberality towards slaves; and so does the Pseudo- 
Xenophon (cp. his Const, of Athens, I, 10 f.) 

19. Cp. Republic, 577a, f.; see Adam's notes to 577a5 and bl2 {op. cit., vol. II, 332 f.). See 
now also the Addendum III (Reply to a Critic), especially pp. 330 f. 

20. Republic, 566e; cp. note 63 to chapter 10. 

21 . Cp. Statesman {Politicus), 301c/d. Although Plato distinguishes six types of debased states, 
he does not introduce any new terms; the names 'monarchy' (or 'kingship') and 
'aristocracy' are used in the Republic (445d) of the best state itself, and not of the relatively 
best forms of debased states, as in the Statesman. 

22. Cp. Republic, 544d. 

23 . Cp. Statesman, 297c/d: 'If the government I have mentioned is the only true original, then 
the others' (which are 'only copies of this'; cp. 297b/c) 'must use its laws, and write them 
down; this is the only way in which they can be preserved'. (Cp. note 3 to this chapter, and 
note 18 to chapter 7.) 'And any violation of the laws should be punished with death, and the 
most severe punishments; and this is very just and good, although, of course, only the 
second best thing.' (For the origin of the laws, cp. note 32 (1, a) to this chapter, and note 17 
(2) to chapter 3.) And in 300e/301a, f , we read: 'The nearest approach of these lower forms 
of government to the true government ... is to follow these written laws and customs ... 
When the rich rule and imitate the true Form, then the government is called aristocracy; and 
when they do not heed the (ancient) laws oligarchy,' etc. It is important to note that not 
lawfulness or lawlessness in the abstract, but the preservation of the ancient institutions of 
the original or perfect state is the criterion of the classification. (This is in contrast to 
Aristotle's Politics, 1292a, where the main distinction is whether or not 'the law is supreme', 
or, for instance, the mob.) 

24 . The passage. Laws, 709e-714a, contains several allusions to Statesman; for instance. 



710d-e, which introduces, following Herodotus III, 80-82, the number of rulers as the 
principle of classification; the enumerations of the forms of government in 712c and d; and 
713b, ff., i.e. the myth of the perfect state in the day of Cronos, 'of which the best of our 
present states are imitations'. In view of these allusions, I little doubt that Plato intended his 
theory of the fitness of tyranny for Utopian experiments to be understood as a kind of 
continuation of the story of the Statesman (and thus also of the Republic). — The quotations 
in this paragraph are from the Laws, 709e, and 710c/d; the 'remark from the Laws quoted 
above' is 797d, quoted in the text to note 3, in this chapter. (I agree with E. B. England's 
note to this passage, in his edition of The Laws of Plato, 1921, vol. II, 258, that it is Plato's 
principle that 'change is detrimental to the power ... of anything', and therefore also to the 
power of evil; but I do not agree with him 'that change from bad', viz., to good, is too self- 
evident to be mentioned as an exception; it is not self-evident from the point of view of 
Plato's doctrine of the evil nature of change. See also next note.) 

25 . Cp. Laws, 676b/c (cp. 676a quoted in the text to note 6). In spite of Plato's doctrine that 
'change is detrimental' (cp. the end of the last note), E. B. England interprets these passages 
on change and revolution by giving them an optimistic or progressive meaning. He suggests 
that the object of Plato's search is what 'we might call "the secret of political vitality'". (Cp. 
op. cit., vol. I, 344.) And he interprets this passage on the search for the true cause of 
(detrimental) change as dealing with a search for 'the cause and nature of the true 
development of a state, i.e. of its progress towards perfection '. (Italics his; cp. vol. I, 345.) 
This interpretation cannot be correct, for the passage in question is an introduction to a story 
of political decline; but it shows how much the tendency to idealize Plato and to represent 
him as a progressivist blinds even such an excellent critic to his own finding, namely, that 
Plato believed change to be detrimental. 

26 . Cp. Republic, 545d (see also the parallel passage 465b). The next quotation is from the 
Laws, 683e. (Adam in his edition of the Republic, vol. II, 203, note to 545d21, refers to this 
passage in th^Laws.) England, in his edition of t\\QLaws, vol. I, 360 f, note to 683e5, 
mentions Republic, 609a, but neither 545d nor 465b, and supposes that the reference is 'to a 
previous discussion, or one recorded in a lost dialogue'. I do not see why Plato should not 



be alluding to the Republic, by using the fiction that some of its topics have been discussed 
by the present interlocutors. As Cornford says, in Plato's last group of dialogues there is 'no 
motive to keep up the illusion that the conversations had really taken place'; and he is also 
right when he says that Plato 'was not the slave of his own fictions'. (Cp. Cornford, Plato 's 
Cosmology, pp. 5 and 4.) Plato's law of revolutions was rediscovered, without reference to 
Plato, by V. Pareto; cp. his Treatise on General Sociology, §§ 2054, 2057, 2058. (At the end 
of § 2055, there is also a theory of arresting history.) Rousseau also rediscovered the law. 
{Social Contract, Book III, ch. X.) 

27 . (1) It may be worth noting that the intentionally non-historical traits of the best state, 
especially the rule of the philosophers, are not mentioned by Plato in the summary at the 
beginning of the Timaeus, and that in Book VIII of the Republic he assumes that the rulers 
of the best state are not versed in Pythagorean number-mysticism; cp. Republic, 546c/d, 
where the rulers are said to be ignorant of these matters. (Cp. also the remark, i^ep. , 
543d/544a, according to which the best state of Book VIII can still be surpassed, namely, as 
Adam says, by the city of Books V-VII — the ideal city in heaven.) 

In his book, Plato 's Cosmology, pp. 6 ff, Cornford reconstructs the outlines and contents of 
Plato's unfinished trilogy, Timaeus — Critias — Hermocrates, and shows how they are related 
to the historical parts of the Laws (Book III). This reconstruction is, I think, a valuable 
corroboration of my theory that Plato's view of the world was fundamentally historical, and 
that his interest in 'how it generated' (and how it decays) is linked with his theory of Ideas, 
and indeed based on it. But if that is so, then there is no reason why we should assume that 
the later books of the Republic 'started from the question how it' (i.e. the city) 'might be 
realized in the future and sketched its possible decline through lower forms of politics' 
(Cornford, op. cit, 6; italics mine); instead we should look upon the Books VIII and IX of 
thQ Republic, in view of their close parallelism with the Third Book of \hQ Laws, as a 
simplified historical sketch of the actual decline of the ideal city of the past, and as an 
explanation of the origin of the existing states, analogous to the greater task set by Plato for 
himself in the Timaeus, in the unfinished trilogy, and in the Laws. 

(2) In connection with my remark, later in the paragraph, that Plato 'certainly knew that he 
did not possess the necessary data', see for instance Z^m, 683d, and England's note to 



683d2. 

(3) To my remark, further down in the paragraph, that Plato recognized the Cretan and 
Spartan societies as petrified or arrested forms (and to the remark in the next paragraph that 
Plato's best state is not only a class state but a caste state) the following may be added. (Cp. 
also note 20 to this chapter, and 24 to chapter 10.) 

InLaws, 797d (in the introduction to the 'important pronouncement', as England calls it, 
quoted in the text to note 3 to this chapter), Plato makes it perfectly clear that his Cretan and 
Spartan interlocutors are aware of the 'arrested' character of their social institutions; Clenias, 
the Cretan interlocutor, emphasizes that he is anxious to listen to any defence of the archaic 
character of a state. A little later (799a), and in the same context, a direct reference is made 
to the Egyptian method of arresting the development of institutions; surely a clear indication 
that Plato recognized a tendency in Crete and Sparta parallel to that of Egypt, namely, to 
arrest all social change. 

In this context, a passage in the Timaeus (see especially 24a-b) seems important. In this 
passage, Plato tries to show {a) that a class division very similar to that of the Republic was 
established in Athens at a very ancient period of its pre-historical development, and {b) that 
these institutions were closely akin to the caste system of Egypt (whose arrested caste 
institutions he assumes to have derived from his ancient Athenian state). Thus Plato himself 
acknowledges by implication that the ideal ancient and perfect state of the Republic is a 
caste state. It is interesting that Crantor, first commentator on the Timaeus, reports, only two 
generations after Plato, that Plato had been accused of deserting the Athenian tradition, and 
of becoming a disciple of the Egyptians. (Cp. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, Germ, ed., II, 476.) 
Crantor alludes perhaps to Isocrates' Busiris, 8, quoted in note 3 to chapter 13. 
For the problem of the castes in the Republic, see furthermore notes 3 1 and 32 (I, d) to this 
chapter, note 40 to chapter 6, and notes 11-14 to chapter 8. A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man 
and His Work, p. 269 f , forcefully denounces the view that Plato favoured a caste state. 

28. Cp. Republic, 416a. The problem is considered more fully in this chapter, text to note 35. 
(For the problem of caste, mentioned in the next paragraph, see notes 27 (3) and 31 to this 
chapter.) 



29. For Plato's advice against legislating for the common people with their 'vulgar market 
quarrels', etc., see Republic, 425b-427a/b; especially 425d-e and 427a. These passages, of 
course, attack Athenian democracy, and all 'piecemeal' legislation in the sense of chapter 9. 
*That this is so is also seen by Cornford, The Republic of Plato (1941); for he writes, in a 
note to a passage in which Plato recommends Utopian engineering (it is Republic 500d, f., 
the recommendation of 'canvas-cleaning' and of a romantic radicalism; cp. note 12 to 
chapter 9, and text): 'Contrast the piecemeal tinkering at reform satirized at 425e ...'. 
Cornford does not seem to like piecemeal reforms, and he seems to prefer Plato's methods; 
but his and my interpretation of Plato's intentions seem to coincide.* 

The four quotations further down in this paragraph are from \hQ Republic, 371d/e; 463a-b 
('supporters' and 'employers'); 549a; and 471b/c. Adam comments {op. cit., vol. I, 97, note 
to 371e32): 'Plato does not admit slave labour in his city, unless perhaps in the persons of 
barbarians.' I agree that Plato opposes in the Republic (469b-470c) the enslavement of 
Greek prisoners of war; but he goes on (in 471b-c) to encourage that of barbarians by 
Greeks, and especially by the citizens of his best city. (This appears to be also the opinion of 
Tarn; cp. note 13(2) to chapter 15.) And Plato violently attacked the Athenian movement 
against slavery, and insisted on the legal rights of property when the property was a slave 
(cp. text to notes 17 and 18 to this chapter). As is shown also by the third quotation (from 
Rep., 548e/549a) in the paragraph to which this note is appended, he did not aboHsh slavery 
in his best city. (See also Rep., 590c/d, where he defends the demand that the coarse and 
vulgar should be the slaves of the best man.) A. E. Taylor is therefore wrong when he twice 
asserts (in his Plato, 1908 and 1914, pp. 197 and 118) that Plato implies 'that there is no 
class of slaves in the community'. For similar views in Taylor's Plato: The Man and His 
Work (1926), cp. end of note 27 to this chapter. 

Plato's treatment of slavery in the Statesman throws, I think, much light on his attitude in the 
Republic. For here, too, he does not speak much about slaves, although he clearly assumes 
that there are slaves in his state. (See his characteristic remark, 289b/c, that 'all property in 
tame animals, except slaves' has been already dealt with; and a similarly characteristic 
remark, 309a, that true kingscraft 'makes slaves of those who wallow in ignorance and 
abject humility'. The reason why Plato does not say very much about the slaves is quite 



clear from 289c, ff., especially 289d/e. He does not see a major distinction between 'slaves 
and other servants', such as labourers, tradesmen, merchants (i.e. all 'banausic' persons who 
earn money; cp. note 4 to chapter 11); slaves are distinguished from the others merely as 
'servants acquired by purchase'. In other words, he is so high above the baseborn that it is 
hardly worth his while to bother about subtle differences. All this is very similar to the 
Republic, only a little more explicit. (See also note 57 (2) to chapter 8.) 
For Plato's treatment of slavery in the Laws, see especially G. R. Morrow, 'Plato and Greek 
Slavery' {Mind, N.S., vol. 48, 186-201; see also p. 402), an article which gives an excellent 
and critical survey of the subject, and reaches a very just conclusion, although the author is, 
in my opinion, still a little biased in favour of Plato. (The article does not perhaps sufficiently 
stress the fact that in Plato's day an anti-slavery movement was well on the way; cp. note 13 
to chapter 5.) 

30 . The quotation is from Plato's summary of the Republic in the Timaeus (18c/d). — With the 
remark concerning the lack of novelty of the suggested community of women and children, 
compare Adam's edition of The Republic of Plato, vol. I, p. 292 (note to 457b, ff.) and p. 
308 (note to 463c 17), as well as pp. 345-55, esp. 354; with the Pythagorean element in 
Plato's communism, cp. op. cit., p. 199, note to 416d22. (For the precious metals, see note 
24 to chapter 10. For the common meals, see note 34 to chapter 6; and for the communist 
principle in Plato and his successors, note 29 (2) to chapter 5, and the passages mentioned 
there.) 

31 . The passage quoted is from Republic, 434b/c. In demanding a caste state, Plato hesitates for 
a long time. This is quite apart from the 'lengthy preface' to the passage in question (which 
will be discussed in chapter 6; cp. notes 24 and 40 to that chapter); for when first speaking 
about these matters, in 415a, ff, he speaks as though a rise from the lower to the upper 
classes were permissible, provided that in the lower classes 'children were bom with an 
admixture of gold and silver' (415c), i.e. of upper class blood and virtue. But in 434b-d, 
and, even more clearly, in 547a, this permission is, in effect, withdrawn; and in 547a any 
admixture of the metals is declared an impurity which must be fatal to the state. See also text 
to notes 1 1-14 to chapter 8 (and note 27 (3) to the present chapter). 



32 . Cp. the Statesman, 27 le. The passages in the Laws about the primitive nomadic shepherds 
and their patriarchs are 677e-680e. The passage quoted is Laws, 680e. The passage quoted 
next is from the Myth of the Earthbom, Republic, 415d/e. The concluding quotation of the 
paragraph is from Republic, 440d. — It may be necessary to add some comments on certain 
remarks in the paragraph to which this note is appended. 

(1) It is stated in the text that it is not very clearly explained how the 'settlement' came 
about. Both in the Laws and in the Republic we first hear (see {a) and (c), below) of a kind 
of agreement or social contract (for the social contract, cp. note 29 to chapter 5 and notes 
43-54 to chapter 6, and text), and later (see {b) and (c), below) of a forceful subjugation. 
{a) In the Laws, the various tribes of hill shepherds settle in the plains after having joined 
together to form larger war bands whose laws are arrived at by an agreement or contract, 
made by arbiters vested with royal powers (681b and c/d; for the origin of the laws 
described in 681b, cp. note 17 (2) to chapter 3). But now Plato becomes evasive. Instead of 
describing how these bands settle in Greece, and how the Greek cities were founded, Plato 
switches over to Homer's story of the foundation of Troy, and to the Trojan war. From there, 
Plato says, the Achaeans returned under the name of Dorians, and 'the rest of the story ... is 
part of Lacedaemonian history' (682e) 'for we have reached the settlement of Lacedaemon' 
(682e/683a). So far we have heard nothing about the manner of this settlement, and there 
follows at once a further digression (Plato himself speaks about the 'roundabout track of the 
argument') until we get ultimately (in 683 c/d) the 'hint' mentioned in the text; see {b). 

(b) The statement in the text that we get a hint that the Dorian 'settlement' in the 
Peloponnese was in fact a violent subjugation, refers to the Laws (6 8 3 c/d), where Plato 
introduces what are actually his first historical remarks on Sparta. He says that he begins at 
the time when the whole of the Peloponnese was 'practically subjugated' by the Dorians. In 
the Menexenus (whose genuineness can hardly be doubted; cp. note 35 to chapter 10) there 
is in 245c an allusion to the fact that the Peloponnesians were 'immigrants from abroad' (as 
Grote puts it: cp. his Plato, III, p. 5). 

(c) In the Republic (369b) the city is founded by workers with a view to the advantages of a 
division of labour and of co-operation, in accordance with the contract theory. 

{d) But later {mRep., 415d/e; see the quotation in the text, to this paragraph) we get a 



description of the triumphant invasion of a warrior class of somewhat mysterious origin — the 
'earthbom'. The decisive passage of this description states that the earthbom must look 
round to find for their camp the most suitable spot (literally) 'for keeping down those 
within', i.e. for keeping down those already living in the city, i.e. for keeping down the 
inhabitants. 

{e) In the Statesman (271a, f.) these 'earthbom' are identified with the very early nomad hill 
shepherds of the pre-settlement period. Cp. also the allusion to the autochthonous 
grasshoppers in the Symposium, 191b; cp. note 6 (4) to chapter 3, and 1 1 (2) to chapter 8. 
(/) To sum up, it seems that Plato had a fairly clear idea of the Dorian conquest, which he 
preferred, for obvious reasons, to veil in mystery. It also seems that there was a tradition that 
the conquering war hordes were of nomad descent. 

(2) With the remark later in the text in this paragraph regarding Plato's 'continuous 
emphasis' on the fact that ruling is shepherding, cp., for instance, the following passages: 
Republic, 343b, where the idea is introduced; 345c, f , where, in the form of the simile of the 
good shepherd, it becomes one of the central topics of the investigation; 375a-376b, 404a, 
440d, 451b-e, 459a-460c, and 466c-d (quoted in note 30 to chapter 5), where the 
auxiliaries are likened to sheep-dogs and where their breeding and education are discussed 
accordingly; 416a, ff., where the problem of the wolves without and within the state is 
introduced; cp. furthermore the Statesman, where the idea is continued over many pages, 
especially 261d-276d. With regard to the Laws, I may refer to the passage (694e), where 
Plato says of Cyrus that he had acquired for his sons 'cattle and sheep and many herds of 
men and other animals'. (Cp. also Laws, 735, and Theaet, 174d.) 

(3) With all this, cp. also A. J. Toynbee, A Study of History, esp. vol. Ill, pp. 32 (n. 1), where 
A. H. Lybyer, The Government of the Ottoman Empire, etc., is quoted, 33 (n. 2), 50-100; 
see more especially his remark on the conquering nomads (p. 22) who 'deal with ... men', 
and on Plato's 'human watchdogs' (p. 94, n. 2). I have been much stimulated by Toynbee's 
brilliant ideas and much encouraged by many of his remarks which I take as corroborating 
my interpretations, and which I can value the more highly the more Toynbee's and my 
fundamental assumptions seem to disagree. I also owe to Toynbee a number of terms used 
in my text, especially 'human cattle', 'human herd' and 'human watch-dog'. 



Toynbee's Study of History is, from my point of view, a model of what I call historicism; I 
need not say much more to express my fundamental disagreement with it; and a number of 
special points of disagreement will be discussed at various places (cp. notes 43 and 45 (2) to 
this chapter, notes 7 and 8 to chapter 10, and chapter 24; also, my criticism of Toynbee in 
chapter 24, and in The Poverty of Historicism, p. 110 ff.). But it contains a wealth of 
interesting and stimulating ideas. Regarding Plato, Toynbee emphasizes a number of points 
in which I can follow him, especially that Plato's best state is inspired by his experience of 
social revolutions and by his wish to arrest all change, and that it is a kind of arrested Sparta 
(which itself was also arrested). In spite of these points of agreement, there is even in the 
interpretation of Plato a fundamental disagreement between Toynbee's views and my own. 
Toynbee regards Plato's best state as a typical (reactionary) Utopia, while I interpret its 
major part, in connection with what I consider as Plato's general theory of change, as an 
attempt to reconstruct a primitive form of society. Nor do I think that Toynbee would agree 
with my interpretation of Plato's story of the period prior to the settlement, and of the 
settlement itself, outlined in this note and the text; for Toynbee says {op. cit., vol. Ill, 80) 
that 'the Spartan society was not of nomadic origin'. Toynbee strongly emphasizes {op. cit, 
III, 50 ff.) the pecuhar character of the Spartan society, which, he says, was arrested in its 
development owing to a superhuman effort to keep down their 'human cattle'. But I think 
that this emphasis on the pecuhar situation of Sparta makes it difficult to understand the 
similarities between the institutions of Sparta and Crete which Plato found so striking {Rep., 
544c; Laws, 683a). These, I believe, can be explained only as arrested forms of very ancient 
tribal institutions, which must be considerably older than the effort of the Spartans in the 
second Messenian war (about 650-620 B.C.; cp. Toynbee, op. cit.. Ill, 53). Since the 
conditions of the survival of these institutions were so very different in the two localities, 
their similarity is a strong argument in favour of their being primitive and against an 
explanation by a factor which affects only one of them. 

For problems of the Dorian Settlement, see also R. Eisler m Caucasia, vol. V, 1928, 
especially p. 113, note 84, where the term 'Hellenes' is translated as the 'settlers', and 
'Greeks' as the 'graziers' — i.e. the cattle-breeders or nomads. The same author has shown 
{Orphisch-Dionisische Mysteriengedanken, 1925, p. 58, note 2) that the idea of the God- 



Shepherd is of Orphic origin. At the same place, the sheep-dogs of God {Domini Canes) are 
mentioned.* 

33 . The fact that education is in Plato's state a class prerogative has been overlooked by some 
enthusiastic educationists who credit Plato with the idea of making education independent of 
financial means; they do not see that the evil is the class prerogative as such, and that it is 
comparatively unimportant whether this prerogative is based upon the possession of money 
or upon any other criterion by which membership of the ruling class is determined. Cp. 
notes 12 and 13 to chapter 7, and text. Concerning the carrying of arms, see Laws, 
753b. 

34 . Cp. Republic, 460c. (See also note 31 to this chapter.) Regarding Plato's recommendation 
of infanticide, see Adam, op. cit, vol. I, p. 299, note to 460c 18, and pp. 357 ff. Although 
Adam rightly insists that Plato was in favour of infanticide, and although he rejects as 
'irrelevant' all attempts 'to acquit Plato of sanctioning' such a dreadful practice, he tries to 
excuse Plato by pointing out 'that the practice was widely prevalent in ancient Greece'. But 
it was not so in Athens. Plato chooses throughout to prefer the ancient Spartan barbarism 
and racialism to the enlightenment of Pericles' Athens; and for this choice he must be held 
responsible. For a hypothesis explaining the Spartan practice, see note 7 to chapter 10 (and 
text); see also the cross-references given there. 

The later quotations in this paragraph which favour applying the principles of animal 
breeding to man are from Republic, 459b (cp. note 39 to chapter 8, and text); those on the 
analogy between dogs and warriors, etc., from the Republic, 404a; 375a; 376a/b; and 376b. 
See also note 40 (2) to chapter 5, and the next note here. 

35 . The two quotations before the note number are both from Republic, 375b. The next 
following quotation is from 416a (cp. note 28 to this chapter); the remaining ones are from 
375c-e. The problem of blending opposite 'natures' (or even Forms; cp. notes 18-20 and 40 
(2) to chapter 5, and text and note 39 to chapter 8) is one of Plato's favourite topics. (In the 
Statesman, 283e, f , and later in Aristotle, it merges into the doctrine of the mean.) 

36. The quotations are from Republic, 410c; 410d; 410e; 411e/412a and 412b. 



37 . In the Laws (680b, ff.) Plato himself treats Crete with some irony because of its barbarous 
ignorance of literature. This ignorance extends even to Homer, whom the Cretan interlocutor 
does not know, and of whom he says: 'foreign poets are very little read by Cretans'. ('But 
they are read in Sparta', rejoins the Spartan interlocutor.) For Plato's preference for Spartan 
customs, see also note 34 to chapter 6, and the text to note 30 to the present chapter. 

38 . For Plato's view on Sparta's treatment of the human cattle, see note 29 to this chapter. 
Republic, 548e/549a, where the timocratic man is compared with Plato's brother Glaucon: 
'He would be harder' (than Glaucon) 'and less musical'; the continuation of this passage is 
quoted in the text to note 29. — Thucydides reports (IV, 80) the treacherous murder of the 
2,000 helots; the best of the helots were selected for death by a promise of freedom. It is 
almost certain that Plato knew Thucydides well, and we can be sure that he had in addition 
more direct sources of information. 

For Plato's views on Athens' slack treatment of slaves, see note 18 to this chapter. 

39 . Considering the decidedly anti-Athenian and therefore anti-literary tendency of the 
Republic, it is a little difficult to explain why so many educationists are so enthusiastic about 
Plato's educational theories. I can see only three likely explanations. Either they do not 
understand the Republic, in spite of its most outspoken hostility towards the then existing 
Athenian literary education; or they are simply flattered by Plato's rhetorical emphasis upon 
the political power of education, just as so many philosophers are, and even some musicians 
(see text to note 41); or both. 

It is also difficult to see how lovers of Greek art and literature can find encouragement in 
Plato, who, especially in the Tenth Book of the Republic, launched a most violent attack 
against all poets and tragedians, and especially against Homer (and even Hesiod). See 
Republic, 600a, where Homer is put below the level of a good technician or mechanic (who 
would be generally despised by Plato as banausic and depraved; cp. Rep., 495e and 590c, 
and note 4 to chapter 11); Republic, 600c, where Homer is put below the level of the 
Sophists Protagoras and Prodicus (see also Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, German edn, II, 401); 
and Republic, 605a/b, where poets are bluntly forbidden to enter into any well-governed 
city. 



These clear expressions of Plato's attitude, however, are usually passed over by the 
commentators, who dwell, on the other hand, on remarks like the one made by Plato in 
preparing his attack on Homer ('... though love and admiration for Homer hardly allow me 
to say what I have to say'; Rep., 595b). Adam comments on this (note to 595bll) by saying 
that 'Plato speaks with real feeling'; but I think that Plato's remark only illustrates a method 
fairly generally adopted in the Republic, namely, that of making some concession to the 
reader's sentiments (cp. chapter 10, especially text to note 65) before the main attack upon 
humanitarian ideas is launched. 

40 . For the rigid censorship aimed at class discipline, sqq Republic, IIIq, ff., and especially 
378c: 'Those who are to be the guardians of our city ought to consider it the most pernicious 
crime to quarrel easily with one another.' It is interesting that Plato does not state this 
political principle at once, when introducing his theory of censorship in 376e, ff., but that he 
speaks first only of truth, beauty, etc. The censorship is further tightened up in 595a, ff., 
especially 605a/b (see the foregoing note, and notes 18-22 to chapter 7, and text). For the 
role of censorship in the Laws, see 801c/d. — See also the next note. 

For Plato's forgetfulness of his principle {Rep., 410c-412b, see note 36 to this chapter) that 
music has to strengthen the gentle element in man as opposed to the fierce, see especially 
399a, f , where modes of music are demanded which do not make men soft, but are 'fit for 
men who are warriors'. Cp. also the next note, (2). — It must be made clear that Plato has not 
'forgotten' a previously announced principle, but only that principle to which his discussion 
is going to lead up. 

41 . (1) For Plato's attitude towards music, especially music proper, see, for instance. Republic, 
397b, ff.; 398e, ff; 400a, ff; 410b, 424b, f, 546d. Laws, 657e, ff; 673a, 700b, ff, 798d, 
ff, 801d, ff, 802b, ff, 816c. His attitude is, fundamentally, that one must 'beware of 
changing to a new mode of music; this endangers everything' since 'any change in the style 
of music always leads to a change in the most important institutions of the whole state. So 
says Damon, and I believe him.' {Rep., 424c.) Plato, as usual, follows the Spartan example. 
Adam {op. cit, vol. I, p. 216, note to 424c20; italics mine; cp. also his references) says that 
'the connection between musical and political changes ... was recognized universally 



throughout Greece, and particularly at Sparta, where . . . Timotheus had his lyre confiscated 
for adding to it four new strings'. That Sparta's procedure inspired Plato cannot be doubted; 
its universal recognition throughout Greece, and especially in Periclean Athens, is most 
improbable. (Cp. (2) of this note.) 

(2) In the text I have called Plato's attitude towards music (cp. especially Rep., 398e, ff.) 
superstitious and backward if compared with 'a more enlightened contemporary criticism'. 
The criticism I have in mind is that of the anonymous writer, probably a musician of the fifth 
(or the early fourth) century, the author of an address (possibly an Olympian oration) which 
is now known as the thirteenth piece of Grenfell and Hunt, The Hibeh Papyri, 1906, pp. 45 
ff. It seems possible that the writer is one of 'the various musicians who criticize Socrates' 
(i.e. the 'Socrates' of Plato's Republic), mentioned by Aristotle (in the equally superstitious 
passage of his Politics, 1342b, where he repeats most of Plato's arguments); but the criticism 
of the anonymous author goes much further than Aristotle indicates. Plato (and Aristotle) 
believed that certain musical modes, for instance, the 'slack' Ionian and Lydian modes, 
made people soft and effeminate, while others, especially the Dorian mode, made them 
brave. This view is attacked by the anonymous author. 'They say', he writes, 'that some 
modes produce temperate and others just men; others, again, heroes, and others cowards.' 
He brilliantly exposes the silliness of this view by pointing out that some of the most war- 
like of the Greek tribes use modes reputed to produce cowards, while certain professional 
(opera) singers habitually sing in the 'heroic' mode without ever showing signs of becoming 
heroes. This criticism might have been directed against the Athenian musician Damon, often 
quoted by Plato as an authority, a friend of Pericles (who was liberal enough to tolerate a 
pro-Spartan attitude in the field of artistic criticism). But it might easily have been directed 
against Plato himself. For Damon, see Diels^; for a hypothesis concerning the anonymous 
author, see ibid., vol. II, p. 334, note. 

(3) In view of the fact that I am attacking a 'reactionary' attitude towards music, I may 
perhaps remark that my attack is in no way inspired by a personal sympathy for 'progress' 
in music. In fact, I happen to like old music (the older the better) and to dislike modem 
music intensely (especially most works written since the day when Wagner began to write 
music). I am altogether against 'fiiturism', whether in the field of art or of morals (cp. 



chapter 22, and note 19 to chapter 25). But I am also against imposing one's likes and 
dislikes upon others, and against censorship in such matters. We can love and hate, 
especially in art, without favouring legal measures for suppressing what we hate, or for 
canonizing what we love. 

42. Cp. Republic, 537a; and 466e-467e. 

The characterization of modern totalitarian education is due to A. Kolnai, The War against 
the West{m%\^. 318. 

43. Plato's remarkable theory that the state, i.e. centralized and organized political power, 
originates through a conquest (the subjugation of a sedentary agricultural population by 
nomads or hunters) was, as far as I know, first re-discovered (if we discount some remarks 
by Machiavelli) by Hume in his criticism of the historical version of the contract theory (cp. 
his Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, vol. II, 1752, Essay XII, Q/" the Original 
Contract): — 'Almost all the governments', Hume writes, 'which exist at present, or of which 
there remains any record in story, have been founded originally, either on usurpation or 
conquest, or both ...'And he points out that for 'an artful and bold man it is often easy 

by employing sometimes violence, sometimes false pretences, to establish his dominion 
over a people a hundred times more numerous than his partizans ... By such arts as these, 
many governments have been established; and this is all the original contract, which they 
have to boast of The theory was next revived by Renan, in What is a Nation? (1882), and 
by Nietzsche in his Genealogy of Morals (1887); see the third German edition of 1894, p. 
98. The latter writes of the origin of the 'state' (without reference to Hume): 'Some horde of 
blonde beasts, a conquering master race with a war-like organization . . . lay their terrifying 
paws heavily upon a population which is perhaps immensely superior in — numbers . . . This 
is the way in which the "state" originates upon earth; I think that the sentimentality which 
lets it originate with a "contract", is dead.' This theory appeals to Nietzsche because he likes 
these blonde beasts. But it has also been proffered more recently by F. Oppenheimer {The 
State, transl. Gitterman, 1914, p. 68); by a Marxist, K. Kautsky (in his book on The 
Materialist Interpretation of History); and by W. C. Macleod {The Origin and History oj 
Politics, 1931). I think it very likely that something of the kind described by Plato, Hume, 



and Nietzsche has happened in many, if not in all, cases. I am speaking only about 'states' 
in the sense of organized and even centralized political power. 

I may mention that Toynbee has a very different theory. But before discussing it, I wish first 
to make it clear that from the anti-historicist point of view, the question is of no great 
importance. It is perhaps interesting in itself to consider how 'states' originated, but it has no 
bearing whatever upon the sociology of states, as I understand it, i.e. upon political 
technology (see chapters 3 . 9, and 25 ). 

Toynbee 's theory does not confine itself to 'states' in the sense of organized and centralized 
political power. He discusses, rather, the 'origin of civilizations'. But here begins the 
difficulty; for some of his 'civilizations' are states (as here described), some are groups or 
sequences of states, and some are societies like that of the Eskimos, which are not states; and 
if it is questionable whether 'states' originate according to one single scheme, then it must be 
even more doubtful when we consider a class of such diverse social phenomena as the early 
Egyptian and Mesopotamian states and their institutions and technique on the one side, and 
the Eskimo way of living on the other. 

But we may concentrate on Toynbee's description (A Study of History, vol. I, pp. 305 ff.) of 
the origin of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian 'civilizations'. His theory is that the challenge 
of a difficult jungle environment rouses a response from ingenious and enterprising leaders; 
they lead their followers into the valleys which they begin to cultivate, and found states. This 
(Hegelian and Bergsonian) theory of the creative genius as a cultural and political leader 
appears to me most romantic. If we take Egypt, then we must look, first of all, for the origin 
of the caste system. This, I believe, is most likely the result of conquests, just as in India 
where every new wave of conquerors imposed a new caste upon the old ones. But there are 
other arguments. Toynbee himself favours a theory which is probably correct, namely, that 
animal breeding and especially animal training is a later, a more advanced and a more diffi- 
cult stage of development than mere agriculture, and that this advanced step is taken by the 
nomads of the steppe. But in Egypt we find both agriculture and animal breeding, and the 
same holds for most of the early 'states' (though not for all the American ones, I gather). 
This seems to be a sign that these states contain a nomadic element; and it seems only 
natural to venture the hypothesis that this element is due to nomad invaders imposing their 



rule, a caste rule, upon the original agricultural population. This theory disagrees with 
Toynbee's contention {op. cit. III, 23 f.) that nomad-built states usually wither away very 
quickly. But the fact that many of the early caste states go in for the breeding of animals has 
to be explained somehow. 

The idea that nomads or even hunters constituted the original upper class is corroborated by 
the age-old and still surviving upper-class tradition according to which war, hunting, and 
horses are the symbols of the leisured classes; a tradition which formed the basis of 
Aristotle's ethics and politics, and which is still alive, as Veblen ( The Theory of the Leisure 
Class) and Toynbee have shown; and to this evidence we can perhaps add the animal 
breeder's belief in racialism, and especially in the racial superiority of the upper class. The 
latter belief which is so pronounced in caste states and in Plato and in Aristotle is held by 
Toynbee to be 'one of the ... sins of our ... modem age' and 'something alien from the 
Hellenic genius' {op. cit.. Ill, 93). But although many Greeks may have developed beyond 
racialism, it seems likely that Plato's and Aristotle's theories are based on old traditions; 
especially in view of the fact that racial ideas played such a role in Sparta. 

44. Cp. Laws, 694a-698a. 

45 . (1) Spengler's i)ec/me of the West is not in my opinion to be taken seriously. But it is a 
symptom; it is the theory of one who believes in an upper class which is facing defeat. Like 
Plato, Spengler tries to show that 'the world' is to be blamed, with its general law of decline 
and death. And like Plato, he demands (in his sequel, Prussianism and Socialism) a new 
order, a desperate experiment to stem the forces of history, a regeneration of the Prussian 
ruling class by the adoption of a 'socialism' or communism, and of economic abstinence. — 
Concerning Spengler, I largely agree with L. Nelson, who pubHshed his criticism under a 
long ironical title whose beginning may be translated: 'Witchcraft: Being an Initiation into 
the Secrets of Oswald Spengler 's Art of Fortune Telling, and a Most Evident Proof of the 
Irrefutable Truth of His Soothsaying', etc. I think that this is a just characterization of 
Spengler. Nelson, I may add, was one of the first to oppose what I call historicism (following 
here Kant in his criticism of Herder; cp. chapter 12, note 56). 

(2) My remark that Spengler's is not the Decline and Fall is meant especially as an 



allusion to Toynbee. Toynbee's work is so superior to Spengler's that I hesitate to mention it 
in the same context; but the superiority is due mainly to Toynbee's wealth of ideas and to his 
superior knowledge (which manifests itself in the fact that he does not, as Spengler does, 
deal with everything under the sun at the same time). But the aim and method of the 
investigation is similar. It is most decidedly historicist. (Cp. my criticism of Toynbee in The 
Poverty ofHistoricism, pp. 110 ff.) And it is, fundamentally, Hegelian (although I do not see 
that Toynbee is aware of this fact). His 'criterion of the growth of civilizations' which is 
'progress towards self-determination' shows this clearly enough; for Hegel's law of progress 
towards 'self-consciousness' and 'freedom' can be only too easily recognized. (Toynbee's 
Hegelianism seems to come somehow through Bradley, as may be seen, for instance, by his 
remarks on relations, op. cit. III, 223: 'The very concept of "relations" between "things" or 
"beings" involves' a 'logical contradiction ... How is this contradiction to be transcended?' 
(I cannot enter here into a discussion of the problem of relations. But I may state 
dogmatically that all problems concerning relations can be reduced, by certain simple 
methods of modem logic, to problems concerning properties, or classes; in other words, 
peculiar philosophical difficulties concerning relations do not exist. The method mentioned 
is due to N. Wiener and K. Kuratowski; see Quine, A System of Logistic, 1934, pp. 16 ff.). 
Now I do not believe that to classify a work as belonging to a certain school is to dismiss it; 
but in the case of Hegelian historicism I think that it is so, for reasons to be discussed in the 
second volume of this book. 

Concerning Toynbee's historicism, I wish to make it especially clear that I doubt very much 
indeed whether civilizations are bom, grow, break down, and die. I am obliged to stress this 
point because I myself use some of the terms used by Toynbee, in so far as I speak of the 
'breakdown' and of the 'arresting' of societies. But I wish to make it clear that my term 
'breakdown' refers not to all kinds of civilizations but to one particular kind of phenomenon 
— ^to the feeling of bewilderment connected with the dissolution of the magical or tribal 
'closed society'. Accordingly, I do not believe, as Toynbee does, that Greek society suffered 
'its breakdown' in the period of the Peloponnesian war; and I find the symptoms of the 
breakdown which Toynbee describes much earlier. (Cp. with this notes 6 and 8 to chapter 
10, and text.) Regarding 'arrested' societies, I apply this term exclusively, either to a society 



that clings to its magical forms through closing itself up, by force, against the influence of an 
open society, or to a society that attempts to return to the tribal cage. 

Also I do not think that our Western civilization is just one member of a species. I think that 
there are many closed societies who may suffer all kinds of fates; but an 'open society' can, 
I suppose, only go on, or be arrested and forced back into the cage, i.e. to the beasts. (Cp. 
also chapter 10, especially the last note.) 

(3) Regarding the Decline and Fall stories, I may mention that nearly all of them stand under 
the influence of Heraclitus' remark: 'They fill their bellies like the beasts', and of Plato's 
theory of the low animal instincts. I mean to say that they all try to show that the decline is 
due to an adoption (by the ruling class) of these 'lower' standards which are allegedly 
natural to the working classes. In other words, and putting the matter crudely but bluntly, the 
theory is that civilizations, like the Persian and the Roman empires, decline owing to 
overfeeding. (Cp. note 19 to chapter 10.) 



Notes to Chapter Five 



1. The 'charmed circle' is a quotation from Burnet, Greek Philosophy , I, 106, where similar 
problems are treated. I do not, however, agree with Burnet that 'in early days the regularity 
of human life had been far more clearly apprehended than the even course of nature'. This 
presupposes the establishment of a differentiation which, I believe, is characteristic of a later 
period, i.e. the period of the dissolution of the 'charmed circle of law and custom'. 
Moreover, natural periods (the seasons, etc.; cp. note 6 to chapter 2, and Plato (?), Epinomis, 
97 8d, ff.) must have been apprehended in very early days. — For the distinction between 
natural and normative laws, see esp. note 18 (4) to this chapter. 

2. *Cp. R. Eisler, The Royal Art of Astrology . Eisler says that the peculiarities of the movement 
of the planets were interpreted, by the Babylonian 'tablet writers who produced the Library 
of Assurbanipal' {op. cit, 288), as 'dictated by the "laws" or "decisions" ruling "heaven and 
earth" {pirishte- shame- u irsiti), pronounced by the creator god at the beginning' {ibid., 
232 f ). And he points out {ibid., 288) that the idea of 'universal laws' (of nature) originates 
with this 'mythological ... concept of ... "decrees of heaven and earth" ...'* 

For the passage from Heraclitus, cp. D5, B 29, and note 7 (2) to chapter 2; also note 6 to that 
chapter, and text. See also Burnet, loc. cit., who gives a different interpretation; he thinks 
that 'when the regular course of nature began to be observed, no better name could be found 
for it than Right or Justice ... which properly meant the unchanging custom that guided 
human life.' I do not believe that the term meant first something social and was then 
extended, but I think that both social and natural regularities ('order') were originally 
undifferentiated, and interpreted as magical. 

3. The opposition is expressed sometimes as one between 'nature' and 'law' (or 'norm' or 
'convention'), sometimes as one between 'nature' and the 'positing' or 'laying down' (viz., 
of normative laws), and sometimes as one between 'nature' and 'art', or 'natural' and 
'artificial'. 

The antithesis between nature and convention is often said (on the authority of Diogenes 
Laertius, II, 16 and 4; Doxogr., 564b) to have been introduced by Archelaus, who is said to 



have been the teacher of Socrates. But I think that, in the Laws, 690b, Plato makes it clear 
enough that he considers 'the Theban poet Pindar' to be the originator of the antithesis (cp. 
notes 10 and 28 to this chapter). Apart from Pindar's fragments (quoted by Plato; see also 
Herodotus, III, 38), and some remarks by Herodotus {loc. cit), one of the earliest original 
sources preserved is the Sophist An tiphon's fragments On Truth (see notes 11 and 12 to this 
chapter). According to Plato's Protagoras, the Sophist Hippias seems to have been a pioneer 
of similar views (see note 13 to this chapter). But the most influential early treatment of the 
problem seems to have been that of Protagoras himself, although he may possibly have used 
a different terminology. (It may be mentioned that Democritus dealt with the antithesis 
which he applied also to such social 'institutions' as language; and Plato did the same in the 
Cratylus, e.g. 384e.) 

4. A very similar point of view can be found in Russell's 'A Free Man's Worship' (in 
Mysticism and Logic); and in the last chapter of Sherrington's Man on His Nature. 

5. (1) Positivists will reply, of course, that the reason why norms cannot be derived from 
factual propositions is that norms are meaningless; but this shows only that (with 
Wittgenstein's Tractatus) they define 'meaning' arbitrarily in such a way that only factual 
propositions are 'meaningful'. (See also my The Logic of Scientific Discovery, pp. 35 ff. and 
51 f ) The followers of 'psychologism', on the other hand, will try to explain imperatives as 
expressions of emotions, norms as habits, and standards as points of view. But although the 
habit of not stealing certainly is a fact, it is necessary, as explained in the text, to distinguish 
this fact from the corresponding norm. — On the question of the logic of norms, I fully agree 
with most of the views expressed by K. Menger in his book. Moral, Wille und 
Weltgestaltung, 1935. He is one of the first, I believe, to develop the foundations of a logic 
of norms. I may perhaps express here my opinion that the reluctance to admit that norms are 
something important and irreducible is one of the main sources of the intellectual and other 
weaknesses of the more 'progressive' circles in our present time. 

(2) Concerning my contention that it is impossible to derive a sentence stating a norm or 
decision from a sentence stating a fact, the following may be added. In analysing the 
relations between sentences and facts, we are moving in that field of logical inquiry which 



A. Tarski has called Semantics (cp. note 29 to chapter 3 and note 23 to chapter 8). One of 
the fundamental concepts of semantics is the concept of truth. As shown by Tarski, it is 
possible (within what Camap calls a semantical system) to derive a descriptive statement like 
'Napoleon died on St. Helena' from the statement 'Mr. A said that Napoleon died on St. 
Helena', in conjunction with the further statement that what Mr. A said was true. (And if we 
use the term 'fact' in such a wide sense that we not only speak about the fact described by a 
sentence but also about the fact that this sentence is true, then we could even say that it is 
possible to derive 'Napoleon died on St. Helena' from the two 'facts' that Mr. A said it, and 
that he spoke the truth.) Now there is no reason why we should not proceed in an exactly 
analogous fashion in the realm of norms. We might then introduce, in correspondence to the 
concept of truth, the concept of the validity or rightness of a norm. This would mean that a 
certain norm N could be derived (in a kind of semantic of norms) from a sentence stating 
that TV is valid or right; or in other words, the norm or commandment 'Thou shalt not steal' 
would be considered as equivalent to the assertion 'The norm "Thou shalt not steal" is valid 
or right'. (And again, if we use the term 'fact' in such a wide sense that we speak about the 
fact that a norm is valid or right, then we could even derive norms from facts. This, 
however, does not impair the correctness of our considerations in the text which are 
concerned solely with the impossibility of deriving norms from psychological or 
sociological or similar, i.e. non-semantic, facts.) 

(3) In my first discussion of these problems, I spoke of norms or decisions but never of 
proposals. The proposal to speak, instead, of 'proposals' is due to L. J. Russell; see his 
paper 'Propositions and Proposals', in the Library of the Tenth International Congress of 
Philosophy (Amsterdam, August 11-18, 1948), vol. I, Proceedings of the Congress . In this 
important paper, statements of fact or 'propositions' are distinguished from suggestions for 
the adoption of a line of conduct (of a certain policy, or of certain norms, or of certain aims 
or ends), and the latter are called 'proposals'. The great advantage of this terminology is 
that, as everybody knows, one can discuss a proposal, while it is not so clear whether, and in 
which sense, one can discuss a decision or a norm; thus by talking of 'norms' or 'decisions', 
one is liable to support those who say that these things are beyond discussion (either above 
it, as some dogmatic theologians or metaphysicians may say, or — as nonsensical — ^below it. 



as some positivists may say). 

Adopting Russell's terminology, we could say that a proposition may be asserted or stated 
(or a hypothesis accepted) while a proposal is adopted; and we shall distinguish the fact oj 
its adoption from the proposal which has been adopted. 

Our dualistic thesis then becomes the thesis that proposals are not reducible to facts (or to 
statements of facts, or to propositions) even though they pertain to facts. ^ 

6. Cp. also the last note (71) to chapter 10. 

Although my own position is, I believe, clearly enough implied in the text, I may perhaps 
briefly formulate what seem to me the most important principles of humanitarian and 
equalitarian ethics. 

(1) Tolerance towards all who are not intolerant and who do not propagate intolerance. (For 
this exception, cp. what is said in notes 4 and 6 to chapter 7.) This implies, especially, that 
the moral decisions of others should be treated with respect, as long as such decisions do not 
conflict with the principle of tolerance. 

(2) The recognition that all moral urgency has its basis in the urgency of suffering or pain. I 
suggest, for this reason, to replace the utilitarian formula 'Aim at the greatest amount of 
happiness for the greatest number', or briefly, 'Maximize happiness', by the formula 'The 
least amount of avoidable suffering for all', or briefly, 'Minimize suffering'. Such a simple 
formula can, I believe, be made one of the fundamental principles (admittedly not the only 
one) of public policy. (The principle 'Maximize happiness', in contrast, seems to be apt to 
produce a benevolent dictatorship.) We should realize that from the moral point of view 
suffering and happiness must not be treated as symmetrical; that is to say, the promotion of 
happiness is in any case much less urgent than the rendering of help to those who suffer, 
and the attempt to prevent suffering. (The latter task has little to do with 'matters of taste', 
the former much.) Cp. also note 2 to chapter 9. 

(3) The fight against tyranny; or in other words, the attempt to safeguard the other principles 
by the institutional means of a legislation rather than by the benevolence of persons in 
power. (Cp. section 1 1 of chapter 7.) 

7. Cp. Burnet, Greek Philosophy, I, 117. — Protagoras' doctrine referred to in this paragraph is 



to be found in Plato's dialogue Protagoras, 322a, ff.; cp. also the Theaetetus, esp. 172b (see 
also note 27 to this chapter). 

The difference between Platonism and Protagoreanism can perhaps be briefly expressed as 
follows: 

(Platonism.) There is an inherent 'natural' order of justice in the world, i.e. the original or 
first order in which nature was created. Thus the past is good, and any development leading 
to new norms is bad. 

(Protagoreanism.) Man is the moral being in this world. Nature is neither moral nor immoral. 
Thus it is possible for man also to improve things. — It is not unlikely that Protagoras was 
influenced by Xenophanes, one of the first to express the attitude of the open society, and to 
criticize Hesiod's historical pessimism: 'In the beginning, the Gods did not show to man all 
he was wanting; but in the course of time, he may search for the better, and find it.' (Cp. 
Diels^ 18.) It seems that Plato's nephew and successor Speusippus returned to this 
progressive view (cp. Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1072b30 and note 11 to chapter 11) and that 
the Academy adopted with him a more liberal attitude in the field of politics also. 
Concerning the relation of the doctrine of Protagoras to the tenets of religion, it may be 
remarked that he believed God to work through man. I do not see how this position can 
contradict that of Christianity. Compare with it for instance K. Earth's statement {Credo, 
1936, p. 188): 'The Bible is a human document' (i.e. man is God's instrument). 

8. Socrates' advocacy of the autonomy of ethics (closely related to his insistence that problems 
of nature do not matter) is expressed especially in his doctrine of the self-sufficiency or 
autarky of the 'virtuous' individual. That this theory contrasts strongly with Plato's views of 
the individual will be seen later; cp. especially notes 25 to this chapter and 36 to the next, 
and text. (Cp. also note 56 to chapter 10.) 

9. We cannot, for instance, construct institutions which work independently of how they are 
being 'manned'. With these problems, cp. chapter 7 (text to notes 7-8, 22-23), and 
especially chapter 9. 

10 . For Plato's discussion of Pindar's naturalism, see esp. Gorgias, 484b; 488b; Z^m, 690b 
(quoted below in this chapter; cp. note 28); 714e/715a; cp. also 890a/b. (See also Adam's 



note to Rep., 359c20.) 

1 1 ■ Antiphon uses the term which, in connection with Parmenides and Plato, I have translated 
above by 'delusive opinion' (cp. note 15 to chapter 3); and he likewise opposes it to 'truth'. 
Cp. also Barker's translation m Greek Political Theory, I — Plato and His Predecessors 
(1918), 83. 

12 . See Antiphon, On Truth; cp. Barker, op. cit., 83-5. See also next note, (2). 

13. Hippias is quoted in VXdXo's Protagoras, 337e. For the next four quotations, cp. (1) 
Euripides /(9«, 854 ff.; and (2) his Phoenissae, 538; cp. also GompQYz, Greek Thinkers 
(German edn, I, 325); and Barker, op. cit., 75; cp. also Plato's violent attack upon Euripides 
in Republic, 568a-d. Furthermore (3) Alcidamas in Schol. to Aristotle's Rhet. , I, 13, 
1373bl8. (4) Lycophron in Aristotle's Fragm., 91 (Rose); (cp. also the Pseudo-Plutarch, De 
Nobil, 18.2). For the Athenian movement against slavery, cp. text to note 18 to chapter 4, 
and note 29 (with further references) to the same chapter; also note 18 to chapter 10 and 
Addendum ///(Reply to a Critic), especially pp. 330 f. 

(1) It is worth nothing that most Platonists show little sympathy with this equalitarian 
movement. Barker, for instance, discusses it under the heading 'General Iconoclasm'; cp. 
op. cit., 75. (See also the second quotation from Field's Plato quoted in text to note 3, 
chapter 6.) This lack of sympathy is due, undoubtedly, to Plato's influence. 

(2) For Plato's and Aristotle's anti-equalitarianism mentioned in the text, next paragraph, cp. 
also especially note 49 (and text) to chapter 8, and notes 3-4 (and text) to chapter 11. 

This anti-equalitarianism and its devastating effects has been clearly described by W. W. 
Tarn in his excellent paper 'Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind' {Proc. of the 
British Acad. , XIX, 1933, pp. 123 ff.). Tarn recognizes that in the fifth century, there may 
have been a movement towards 'something better than the hard-and-fast division of Greeks 
and barbarians; but', he says, 'this had no importance for history, because anything of the 
sort was strangled by the idealist philosophies . Plato and Aristotle left no doubt about their 
views. Plato said that all barbarians were enemies by nature; it was proper to wage war upon 
them, even to the point of enslaving . . . them. Aristotle said that all barbarians were slaves by 
nature ...'(p. 124, italics mine). I fully agree with Tarn's appraisal of the pernicious anti- 



humanitarian influence of the idealist philosophers, i.e. of Plato and Aristotle. I also agree 
with Tarn's emphasis upon the immense significance of equalitarianism, of the idea of the 
unity of mankind (cp. op. cit, p. 147). The main point in which 1 cannot fully agree is 
Tarn's estimate of the fifth-century equalitarian movement, and of the early cynics. He may 
or may not be right in holding that the historical influence of these movements was small in 
comparison with that of Alexander. But I believe that he would have rated these movements 
more highly if he had only followed up the parallelism between the cosmopolitan and the 
anti-slavery movement. The parallelism between the relations Greeks: barbarians and free 
men: slaves is clearly enough shown by Tarn in the passage here quoted; and if we consider 
the unquestionable strength of the movement against slavery (see esp. note 18 to chapter 4) 
then the scattered remarks against the distinction between Greeks and barbarians gain much 
in significance. Cp. also Aristotle, Politics, III, 5, 7 (1278a); IV (VI), 4, 16 (1319b); and III, 
2, 2 (1275b). See also note 48 to chapter 8, and the reference to E. Badian at the end of that 
note. 

14 . For the theme 'return to the beasts', cp. chapter 10, note 71, and text. 

15 . For Socrates' doctrine of the soul, see text to note 44 to chapter 10. 

16 . The term 'natural right' in an equalitarian sense came to Rome through the Stoics (there is 
the influence of Antisthenes to be considered; cp. note 48 to chapter 8) and was popularized 
by Roman Law (cp. Institutiones, II, 1, 2; I, 2, 2). It is used by Thomas Aquinas also 
(Summa, II, 91, 2). The confusing use of the term 'natural law' instead of 'natural right' by 
modern Thomists is to be regretted, as well as the small emphasis they put upon 
equalitarianism. 

17 . The monistic tendency which first led to the attempt to interpret norms as natural has 
recently led to the opposite attempt, namely, to interpret natural laws as conventional. This 
(physical) type of conventionalism has been based, by Poincare, on the recognition of the 
conventional or verbal character of definitions. Poincare, and more recently Eddington, 
point out that we define natural entities by the laws they obey. From this the conclusion is 
drawn that these laws, i.e. the laws of nature, are definitions, i.e. verbal conventions. Cp. 
Eddington's letter in Nature, 148 (1941), 141: 'The elements' (of physical theory) '... can 



only be defined ... by the laws they obey; so that we find ourselves chasing our own tails in 
a purely formal system. ' — An analysis and a criticism of this form of conventionalism can 
be found in my The Logic of Scientific Discovery, especially pp. 78 ff. 

18 . (1) The hope of getting some argument or theory to share our responsibilities is, I believe, 
one of the basic motives of 'scientific' ethics. 'Scientific' ethics is in its absolute barrenness 
one of the most amazing of social phenomena. What does it aim at? At telling us what we 
ought to do, i.e. at constructing a code of norms upon a scientific basis, so that we need only 
look up the index of the code if we are faced with a difficult moral decision? This clearly 
would be absurd; quite apart from the fact that if it could be achieved, it would destroy all 
personal responsibility and therefore all ethics. Or would it give scientific criteria of the truth 
and falsity of moral judgements, i.e. of judgements involving such terms as 'good' or 'bad'? 
But it is clear that moral judgements are absolutely irrelevant. Only a scandal-monger is 
interested in judging people or their actions; 'judge not' appears to some of us one of the 
fundamental and much too little appreciated laws of humanitarian ethics. (We may have to 
disarm and to imprison a criminal in order to prevent him from repeating his crimes, but too 
much of moral judgement and especially of moral indignation is always a sign of hypocrisy 
and Pharisaism.) Thus an ethics of moral judgements would be not only irrelevant but 
indeed an immoral affair. The all-importance of moral problems rests, of course, on the fact 
that we can act with intelligent foresight, and that we can ask ourselves what our aims ought 
to be, i.e. how we ought to act. 

Nearly all moral philosophers who have dealt with the problem of how we ought to act (with 
the possible exception of Kant) have tried to answer it either by reference to 'human nature' 
(as did even Kant, when he referred to human reason) or to the nature of 'the good'. The 
first of these ways leads nowhere, since all actions possible to us are founded upon 'human 
nature', so that the problem of ethics could also be put by asking which elements in human 
nature I ought to approve and to develop, and which sides I ought to suppress or to control. 
But the second of these ways also leads nowhere; for given an analysis of 'the good' in form 
of a sentence like: 'The good is such and such' (or 'such and such is good'), we would 
always have to ask: What about it? Why should this concern me? Only if the word 'good' is 
used in an ethical sense, i.e. only if it is used to mean 'that which I ought to do', could I 



derive from the information 'x is good' the conclusion that I ought to do x. In other words, if 
the word 'good' is to have any ethical significance at all, it must be defined as 'that which I 
(or we) ought to do (or to promote)'. But if it is so defined, then its whole meaning is 
exhausted by the defining phrase, and it can in every context be replaced by this phrase, i.e. 
the introduction of the term 'good' cannot materially contribute to our problem. (Cp. also 
note 49 (3) to chapter 11.) 

All the discussions about the definition of the good, or about the possibility of defining it, 
are therefore quite useless. They only show how far 'scientific' ethics is removed fi-om the 
urgent problems of moral life. And they thus indicate that 'scientific' ethics is a form of 
escape, and escape from the realities of moral life, i.e. from our moral responsibilities. (In 
view of these considerations, it is not surprising to find that the beginning of 'scientific' 
ethics, in the form of ethical naturahsm, coincides in time with what may be called the 
discovery of personal responsibility. Cp. what is said in chapter 10, text to notes 27-38 and 
55-7, on the open society and the Great Generation.) 

(2) It may be fitting in this connection to refer to a particular form of the escape from 
responsibility discussed here, as exhibited especially by the juridical positivism of the 
Hegehan school, as well as by a closely allied spiritual naturalism. That the problem is still 
significant may be seen from the fact that an author of the excellence of Catlin remains on 
this important point (as on a number of others) dependent upon Hegel; and my analysis will 
take the form of a criticism of Catlin's arguments in favour of spiritual naturahsm, and 
against the distinction between laws of nature and normative laws (cp. G. E. G. Catlin,^ 
Study of the Principles of Politics, 1930, pp. 96-99). 

Catlin begins by making a clear distinction between the laws of nature and 'laws ... which 
human legislators make'; and he admits that, at first sight the phrase 'natural law', if applied 
to norms, 'appears to be patently unscientific, since it seems to fail to make a distinction 
between that human law which requires enforcement and the physical laws which are 
incapable of breach'. But he tries to show that it only appears to be so, and that 'our 
criticism' of this way of using the term 'natural law' was 'too hasty'. And he proceeds to a 
clear statement of spiritual naturalism, i.e. to a distinction between 'sound law' which is 
'according to nature', and other law: 'Sound law, then, involves a formulation of human 



tendencies, or, in brief, is a copy of the "natural" law to be "found" by political science. 
Sound law is in this sense emphatically found and not made. It is a copy of natural social 
law' (i.e. of what I called 'sociological laws'; cp. text to note 8 to this chapter). And he 
concludes by insisting that in so far as the legal system becomes more rational, its rules 
'cease to assume the character of arbitrary commands and become mere deductions drawn 
from the primary social laws' (i.e. from what I should call 'sociological laws'). 

(3) This is a very strong statement of spiritual naturahsm. Its criticism is the more important 
as Catlin combines his doctrine with a theory of 'social engineering' which may perhaps at 
first sight appear similar to the one advocated here (cp. text to note 9 to chapter 3 and text to 
notes 1-3 and 8-11 to chapter 9). Before discussing it, I wish to explain why I consider 
Catlin's view to be dependent on Hegel's positivism. Such an explanation is necessary, 
because Catlin uses his naturalism in order to distinguish between 'sound' and other law; in 
other words, he uses it in order to distinguish between 'just' and 'unjust' law; and this 
distinction certainly does not look like positivism, i.e. the recognition of the existing law as 
the sole standard of justice. In spite of all that, I believe that Catlin's views are very close to 
positivism; my reason being that he believes that only 'sound' law can be effective, and in 
so far 'existent' in precisely Hegel's sense. For Catlin says that when our legal code is not 
'sound', i.e. not in accordance with the laws of human nature, then 'our statute remains 
paper'. This statement is purest positivism; for it allows us to deduce from the fact that a 
certain code is not only 'paper' but successfully enforced, that it is 'sound'; or in other 
words, that all legislation which does not turn out to be merely paper is a copy of human 
nature and therefore just. 

(4) I now proceed to a brief criticism of the argument proffered by Catlin against the 
distinction between (a) laws of nature which cannot be broken, and (b) normative laws, 
which are man-made, i.e. enforced by sanctions; a distinction which he himself makes so 
very clearly at first. Catlin's argument is a twofold one. He shows (a^) that laws of nature 
also are man-made, in a certain sense, and that they can, in a sense, be broken; and (b^) that 
in a certain sense normative laws cannot be broken. I begin with (a^). 'The natural laws of 
the physicist', writes Catlin, 'are not brute facts, they are rationalizations of the physical 
world, whether superimposed by man or justified because the world is inherently rational 



and orderly. ' And he proceeds to show that natural laws 'can be nullified' when 'fresh facts' 
compel us to recast the law. My reply to this argument is this. A statement intended as a 
formulation of a law of nature is certainly man-made. We make the hypothesis that there is a 
certain invariable regularity, i.e. we describe the supposed regularity with the help of a 
statement, the natural law. But, as scientists, we are prepared to learn from nature that we 
have been wrong; we are prepared to recast the law if fresh facts which contradict our 
hypothesis show thatowr supposed law was no law, since it has been broken. In other 
words, by accepting nature's nullification, the scientist shows that he accepts a hypothesis 
only as long as it has not been falsified; which is the same as to say that he regards a law of 
nature as a rule which cannot be broken, since he accepts the breaking of his rule as proof 
that his rule did not formulate a law of nature. Furthermore: although the hypothesis is man- 
made, we may be unable to prevent its falsification. This shows that, by creating the 
hypothesis, we have not created the regularity which it is intended to describe (although we 
did create a new set of problems, and may have suggested new observations and 
interpretations), (b^) 'It is not true', says Catlin, 'that the criminal "breaks" the law when he 
does the forbidden act ... the statute does not say: "Thou canst nof ; it says, "Thou shalt not, 
or this punishment will be inflicted." As command', Catlin continues, 'it may be broken, but 
as law, in a very real sense, it is only broken when the punishment is not inflicted ... So far 
as the law is perfected and its sanctions executed, ... it approximates to physical law.' The 
reply to this is simple. In whichever sense we speak of 'breaking' the law, the juridical law 
can be broken; no verbal adjustment can alter that. Let us accept Catlin 's view that a 
criminal cannot 'break' the law, and that it is only 'broken' if the criminal does not receive 
the punishment prescribed by the law. But even fi"om this point of view, the law can be 
broken; for instance, by officers of the state who refuse to punish the criminal. And even in 
a state where all sanctions are, in fact, executed, the officers could, if they chose, prevent 
such execution, and so 'break' the law in Catlin 's sense. (That they would thereby 'break' 
the law in the ordinary sense, also, i.e. that they would become criminals, and that they 
might ultimately perhaps be punished is quite another question.) In other words: A 
normative law is always enforced by men and by their sanctions, and it is therefore 
fundamentally different fi-om a hypothesis. Legally, we can enforce the suppression of 



murder, or of acts of kindness; of falsity, or of truth; of justice, or of injustice. But we cannot 
force the sun to alter its course. No amount of argument can bridge this gap. 

19 . The 'nature of happiness and misery' is referred to in the Theaetetus, 175c. For the close 
relationship between 'nature' and 'Form' or 'Idea', cp. especially Republic, 597a-d, where 
Plato first discusses the Form or Idea of a bed, and then refers to it as 'the bed which exists 
by nature, and which was made by God' (597b). In the same place, he proffers the 
corresponding distinction between the 'artificial' (or the 'fabricated' thing, which is an 
'imitation') and 'truth'. Cp. also Adam's note to Republic, 597b 10 (with the quotation from 
Burnet given there), and the notes to 476b 13, 501b9, 525c 15; furthermore Theaetetus, 174b 
(and Cornford's note 1 to p. 85 in his Plato's Theory of Knowledge). See also Aristotle's 
Metaphysics, 1015al4. 

20 . For Plato's attack upon art, see the last book of the Republic, and especially the passages 
Republic, 600a-605b, mentioned in note 39 to chapter 4. 

21 . Cp. notes 11, 12 and 13 to this chapter, and text. My contention that Plato agrees at least 
partly with Antiphon's naturalist theories (although he does not, of course, agree with 
Antiphon's equalitarianism) will appear strange to many, especially to the readers of Barker, 
op. cit. And it may surprise them even more to hear the opinion that the main disagreement 
was not so much a theoretical one, but rather one of moral practice, and that Antiphon and 
not Plato was morally in the right, as far as the practical issue of equalitarianism is 
concerned. (For Plato's agreement with Antiphon's principle that nature is true and right, see 
also text to notes 23 and 28, and note 30 to this chapter.) 

22 . These quotations are from Sophist, 266b and 265e. But the passage also contains (265c) a 
criticism (similar to Laws, quoted in text to notes 23 and 30 in this chapter) of what may be 
described as a materialist interpretation of naturalism such as was held, perhaps, by 
Antiphon; I mean 'the belief ... that nature ... generates without intelligence'. 

23. Cp. Laws, 892a and c. For the doctrine of the affinity of the soul to the Ideas, see also note 
15 (8) to chapter 3. For the affinity of 'natures' and 'souls', see Aristotle's Metaphysics, 
1015al4, with the passages of ihQLaws quoted, and with 896d/e: 'the soul dwells in all 
things that move . . . ' 



Compare further especially the following passages in which 'natures' and 'souls' are used in 
a way that is obviously synonymous: Republic, 485a/b, 485e/486a and d, 486b ('nature'); 
486b and d ('soul'), 490e/491a (both), 491b (both), and many other places (cp. also Adam's 
note to 370a7). The affinity is directly stated in 490b(10). For the affinity between 'nature' 
and 'soul' and 'race', cp. 50 le where the phrase 'philosophic natures' or 'souls' found in 
analogous passages is replaced by 'race of philosophers'. 

There is also an affinity between 'soul' or 'nature' and the social class or caste; see for 
msidLncQ Republic, 435b. The connection between caste and race is fundamental, for from 
the beginning (415a), caste is identified with race. 

'Nature' is used in the sense of 'talent' or 'condition of the soul' in Laws, 648d, 650b, 655e, 
710b, 766a, 875c. The priority and superiority of nature over art is stated in Laws, 889a, ff. 
For 'natural' in the sense of 'right', or 'true', see Laws, 686d and 818e, respectively. 

24 . Cp. the passages quoted in note 32 (1), {a) and (c), to chapter 4. 

25 . The Socratic doctrine of autarky is mentioned m Republic, 387d/e {q.y>- Apology , 41c, ff., 
and Adam's note to Rep., 387d25). This is only one of the few scattered passages 
reminiscent of Socratic teaching; but it is in direct contradiction to the main doctrine of the 
Republic, as it is expounded in the text (see also note 36 to chapter 6, and text); this may be 
seen by contrasting the quoted passage with 369c, ff., and very many similar passages. 

26 . Cp. for instance the passage quoted in the text to note 29 to chapter 4. For the 'rare and 
uncommon natures', cp. Republic, 491a/b, and many other passages, for instance Timaeus, 
51e: 'reason is shared by the gods with very few men'. For the 'social habitat', see 49 Id (cp. 
also chapter 23). 

While Plato (and Aristotle; cp. especially note 4 to chapter 11, and text) insisted that manual 
work is degrading, Socrates seems to have adopted a very different attitude. (Cp. Xenophon, 
Memorabilia, II, 7; 7-10; Xenophon's story is, to some extent, corroborated by Antisthenes' 
and Diogenes' attitude towards manual work; cp. also note 56 to chapter 10.) 

27 . See especially Theaetetus, 172b (cp. also Comford's comments on this passage in Plato's 
Theory of Knowledge). See also note 7 to this chapter. The elements of conventionalism in 
Plato's teaching may perhaps explain why the Republic was said, by some who still 



possessed Protagoras' writings, to resemble these. (Cp. Diogenes Laertius, III, 37.) For 
Lycophron's contract theory, see notes 43-54 to chapter 6 (especially note 46), and text. 

28 . Cp. Laws, 690b/c; see note 10 to this chapter. Plato mentions Pindar's naturalism also in 
Gorgias, 484b, A^^h; Laws, 714c, 890a. For the opposition between 'external compulsion' 
on the one hand, and {a) 'free action', {b) 'nature', on the other, cp. also Republic, 603c, 
and Timaeus, 64d. (Cp. also Rep., 466c-d, quoted in note 30 to this chapter.) 

29 . Cp. Republic, 369b-c. This is part of the contract theory. The next quotation, which is the 
first statement of the naturalist principle in the perfect state, is 370a/b-c. (Naturalism is in 
the Republic first mentioned by Glaucon in 358e, ff.; but this is, of course, not Plato's own 
doctrine of naturahsm.) 

(1) For the further development of the naturalistic principle of the division of labour and the 
part played by this principle in Plato's theory of justice, cp. especially text to notes 6, 23 and 
40 to chapter 6. 

(2) For a modern radical version of the naturalistic principle, see Marx's formula of the 
communist society (adopted from Louis Blanc): 'From each according to his ability: to each 
according to his needs!' (Cp. for instance A Handbook of Marxism, E. Burns, 1935, p. 752; 
and note 8 to chapter 13; see also note 3 to chapter 13, and note 48 to chapter 24, and text.) 
For the historical roots of this 'principle of communism', see Plato's maxim 'Friends have in 
common all things they possess' (see note 36 to chapter 6, and text; for Plato's communism 
see also notes 34 to chapter 6 and 30 to chapter 4, and text), and compare these passages 
with the Acts: 'And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; . . . and 
parted them to all men, as every man had need' (2, 44-45). — 'Neither was there any among 
them that lacked: for ... distribution was made unto every man according as he had need' (4, 
34-35). 

30 . See note 23, and text. The quotations in the present paragraph are all from the Laws: (1) 
889, a-d (cp. the very similar passage in the Theaetetus, 172b); (2) 896c-e; (3) 890e/891a. 
For the next paragraph in the text (i.e. for my contention that Plato's naturalism is incapable 
of solving practical problems) the following may serve as an illustration. Many naturalists 
have contended that men and women are 'by nature' different, both physically and 



spiritually, and that they should therefore fulfil different functions in social Hfe. Plato, 
however, uses the same naturahstic argument to prove the opposite; for, he argues, are not 
dogs of both sexes useful for watching as well as hunting? 'Do you agree', he writes {Rep., 
466c-d), 'that women ... must participate with men in guarding as well as in hunting, as it is 
with dogs; . . . and that in so doing, they will be acting in the most desirable manner, since 
this will be not contrary to nature, but in accordance with the natural relations of the sexes?' 
(See also text to note 28 to this chapter; for the dog as ideal guardian, cp. chapter 4, 
especially note 32 (2), and text.) 

3 1 . For a brief criticism of the biological theory of the state, see note 7 to chapter 10, and text. 
*For the oriental origin of the theory, see R. Eisler, Revue de Synthese Historique, vol. 41, p. 
15.* 

32 . For some applications of Plato's political theory of the soul, and for the inferences drawn 
from it, see notes 58-9 to chapter 10, and text. For the fundamental methodological analogy 
between city and individual, see QS^Qc'mWy Republic, 368e, 445c, 577c. For Alcmaeon's 
political theory of the human individual, or of human physiology, cp. note 13 to chapter 6. 

33 . Cp. Republic, 423, b and d. 

34 . This quotation as well as the next is from G. Grote, Plato and the Other Companions oj 
Socrates (1875), vol. Ill, 124. — The main passages of the Republic are 439c, f. (the story of 
Leontius); 571c, f. (the bestial part versus the reasoning part); 588c (the Apocalyptic 
Monster; cp. the 'Beast' which possesses a Platonic Number, in the Revelation 13, 17 and 
18); 603d and 604b (man at war with himself). See dXso Laws, 689a-b, and notes 58-9 to 
chapter 10. 

35 . Cp. Republic, 519e, f. (cp. also note 10 to chapter 8); the next two quotations are both from 
the Laws, 903c. (I have reversed their order.) It may be mentioned that the 'whole' referred 
to in these two passages {'pan' and 'holon') is not the state but the world; yet there is no 
doubt that the underlying tendency of this cosmological holism is a political holism; cp. 
Laws, 903d-e (where the physician and craftsman is associated with the statesman), and the 
fact that Plato often uses 'holon' (especially the plural of it) to mean 'state' as well as 
'world'. Furthermore, the first of these two passages (in my order of quoting) is a shorter 



version of Republic, 420b-421c; the second of Republic, 520b, ff. ('We have created you 
for the sake of the state, as well as for your own sake.') VurihQX passages on holism or 
collectivism arQ: Republic, 424a, 449e, 462a, f.,Laws, 715b, 739c, 875a, f, 903b, 923b, 
942a, f (See also notes 31/32 to chapter 6.) For the remark in this paragraph that Plato spoke 
of the state as an organism, cp. Republic, 462c, and Laws, 964e, where the state is even 
compared with the human body. 

36 . Cp. Adam in his edition of the Republic, vol. II, 303; see also note 3 to chapter 4, and text. 

37 . This point is emphasized by Adam, op. cit., note 546a, b7, and pp. 288 and 307. The next 
quotation in this paragraph is Republic, 546a; cp. Republic, 485a/b, quoted in note 26 (1) to 
chapter 3 and in text to note 33 to chapter 8. 

38 . This is the main point in which I must deviate from Adam's interpretation. I believe Plato to 
indicate that the philosopher king of Books VI- VII, whose main interest is in the things that 
are not generated and do not decay {Rep., 485b; see the last note and the passages there 
referred to), obtains with his mathematical and dialectical training the knowledge of the 
Platonic Number and with it the means of arresting social degeneration and thereby the 
decay of the state. See especially the text to note 39. 

The quotations that follow in this paragraph are: 'keeping pure the race of the guardians'; 
cp. Republic, 460c, and text to note 34 to chapter 4. 'A city thus constituted, etc.': 546a. 
The reference to Plato's distinction, in the field of mathematics, acoustics, and astronomy, 
between rational knowledge and delusive opinion based upon experience or perception is to 
Republic, 523a, ff, 525d, ff. (where 'calculation' is discussed; see especially 526a); 527d, 
ff , 529b, f , 531a, ff (down to 534a and 537d); see also 509d-51 le. 

39 . * I have been blamed for 'adding' the words (which I never placed in quotation marks) 
'lacking a purely rational method'; but in view of Rep., 523a to 537d, it seems to me clear 
that Plato's reference to 'perception' implies just this contrast.* The quotations in this 
paragraph are from Rep., 546b, ff. Note that, throughout this passage, it is 'The Muses' who 
speak through the mouth of 'Socrates'. 

In my interpretation of the Story of the Fall and the Number, I have carefully avoided the 
difficult, undecided, and perhaps undecidable problem of the computation of the Number 



itself. (It may be undecidable since Plato may not have revealed his secret in full.) I confine 
my interpretation entirely to the passages immediately before and after the one that describes 
the Number itself; these passages are, I believe, clear enough. In spite of that, my 
interpretation deviates, as far as I know, from previous attempts. 

(1) The crucial statement on which I base my interpretation is (A) that the guardians work by 
'calculation aided by perception'. Next to this, I am using the statements (B) that they will 
not 'accidentally hit upon (the correct way of) obtaining good offspring'; (Q that they will 
'blunder, and beget children in the wrong way'; (Z)) that they are 'ignorant' of such matters 
(that is, such matters as the Number). 

Regarding (A), it should be clear to every careful reader of Plato that such a reference to 
perception is intended to express a criticism of the method in question. This view of the 
passage under consideration (546a, f ) is supported by the fact that it comes so soon after the 
passages 523a-537d (see the end of the last note), in which the opposition between pure 
rational knowledge and opinion based on perception is one of the main themes, and in 
which, more especially, the term 'calculation' is used in a context emphasizing the 
opposition between rational knowledge and experience, while the term 'perception' (see also 
511c/d) is given a definite technical and deprecatory sense. (Cp. also, for instance, 
Plutarch's wording in his discussion of this opposition: in his Life ofMarcellus, 306.) I am 
therefore of the opinion, and this opinion is enforced by the context, especially by {B), (Q, 
{D), that Plato's remark {A) implies {a) that 'calculation based upon perception' is a poor 
method, and {b) that there are better methods, namely the methods of mathematics and 
dialectics, which yield pure rational knowledge. The point I am trying to elaborate is, 
indeed, so plain, that I should not have troubled so much about it were it not for the fact that 
even Adam has missed it. In his note to 546a, hi, he interprets 'calculation' as a reference to 
the rulers' task of determining the number of marriages they should permit, and 'perception' 
as the means by which they 'decide what couples should be joined, what children be reared, 
etc.'. That is to say, Adam takes Plato's remark to be a simple description and not as a 
polemic against the weakness of the empirical method. Accordingly, he relates neither the 
statement (Q that the rulers will 'blunder' nor the remark {D) that they are 'ignorant' to the 
fact that they use empirical methods. (The remark {B) that they will not 'hit' upon the right 



method 'by accident' would simply be left untranslated, if we follow Adam's suggestion.) 
In interpreting our passage we must keep it in mind that in Book VIII, immediately before 
the passage in question, Plato returns to the question of the first city of Books II to IV. (See 
Adam's notes to 449a, ff., and 543a, ff.) But the guardians of this city are neither 
mathematicians nor dialecticians. Thus they have no idea of the purely rational methods 
emphasized so much in Book VII, 525-534. In this connection, the import of the remarks on 
perception, i.e. on the poverty of empirical methods, and on the resulting ignorance of the 
guardians, is unmistakable. 

The statement (B) that the rulers will not 'hit accidentally upon' (the correct way of) 
'obtaining good offspring, or none at all', is perfectly clear in my interpretation. Since the 
rulers have merely empirical methods at their disposal, it would be only a lucky accident if 
they did hit upon a method whose determination needs mathematical or other rational 
methods. Adam suggests (note to 546a, b7) the translation: 'none the more will they by 
calculation together with perception obtain good offspring'; and only in brackets, he adds: 
'lit. hit the obtaining of. I think that his failure to make any sense of the 'hit' is a 
consequence of his failure to see the implications of (A). 

The interpretation here suggested makes (Q and (D) perfectly understandable; and Plato's 
remark that his Number is 'master over better or worse birth', fits in perfectly. It may be 
remarked that Adam does not comment on (D), i.e. the ignorance, although such a comment 
would be most necessary in view of his theory (note to 546d22) that 'the number is not a 
nuptial ... number', and that it has no technical eugenic meaning. 

That the meaning of the Number is indeed technical and eugenic is, I think, clear, if we 
consider that the passage containing the Number is enclosed in passages containing 
references to eugenic knowledge, or rather, lack of eugenic knowledge. Immediately before 
the Number, (A), {B), (Q, occur, and immediately afterwards, {D), as well as the story of the 
bride and bridegroom and their degenerate offspring. Besides, (Q before the Number and 
(D) after the Number refer to each other; for (Q, the 'blunder', is connected with a reference 
to 'begetting in the wrong way', and (Z)), the 'ignorance', is connected with an exactly 
analogous reference, viz., 'uniting bride and bridegroom in the wrong manner'. (See also 
next note.) 



The last point in which I must defend my interpretation is my contention that those who 
know the Number thereby obtain the power to influence 'better or worse births'. This does 
not of course follow from Plato's statement that the Number itself has such power; for if 
Adam's interpretation is right, then the Number regulates the births because it determines an 
unalterable period after which degeneration is bound to set in. But I assert that Plato's 
references to 'perception', to 'blunder' and to 'ignorance' as the immediate cause of the 
eugenic mistakes would be pointless if he did not mean that, had they possessed an adequate 
knowledge of the appropriate mathematical and purely rational methods, the guardians 
would not have blundered. But this makes the inference inevitable that the Number has a 
technical eugenic meaning, and that its knowledge is the key to the power of arresting 
degeneration. (This inference also seems to me the only one compatible with all we know 
about this type of superstition; all astrology, for instance, involves the apparently somewhat 
contradictory conception that the knowledge of our fate may help us to influence this fate.) 
I think that the rejection of the explanation of the Number as a secret breeding taboo arises 
from a reluctance to credit Plato with such crude ideas, however clearly he may express 
them. In other words, they arise from the tendency to idealize Plato. 

(2) In this connection, I must refer to an article by A. E. Taylor, 'The Decline and Fall of The 
State in Republic, VIIF (Mind, N.S. 48, 1939, pp. 23 ff.). In this article, Taylor attacks Adam 
(in my opinion not justly), and argues against him: 'It is true, of course, that the decay of the 
ideal State is expressly said in 546b to begin when the ruling class "beget children out of 
due season" ... But this need not mean, and in my opinion does not mean, that Plato is 
concerning himself here with problems of the hygiene of reproduction. The main thought is 
the simple one that if, like everything of man's making, the State carries the seeds of its own 
dissolution within it, this must, of course, mean that sooner or later the persons wielding 
supreme power will be inferior to those who preceded them' (pp. 25 ff.). Now this 
interpretation seems to me not only untenable, in view of Plato's fairly definite statements, 
but also a typical example of the attempt to eliminate from Plato's writing such embarrassing 
elements as racialism or superstition. Adam began by denying that the Number has technical 
eugenic importance, and by asserting that it is not a 'nuptial number', but merely a 
cosmological period. Taylor now continues by denying that Plato is here at all interested in 



'problems of the hygiene of the reproduction'. But Plato's passage is thronged with allusions 
to these problems, and Taylor himself admits two pages before (p. 23) that it is 'nowhere 
suggested' that the Number 'is a determinant of anything but the "better and worse births'". 
Besides, not only the passage in question but the whole of the Republic (and similarly the 
Statesman, especially 310b, 310e) is simply full of emphasis upon the 'problems of the 
hygiene of reproduction'. Taylor's theory that Plato, when speaking of the 'human creature' 
(or, as Taylor puts it, of a 'thing of human generation'), means the state, and that Plato 
wishes to allude to the fact that the state is the creation of a human lawgiver, is, I think, 
without support in Plato's text. The whole passage begins with a reference to the things of 
the sensible world in flux, to the things that are generated and that decay (see notes 37 and 
38 to this chapter), and more especially, to living things, plants as well as animals, and to 
their racial problems. Besides, a thing 'of man's making' would, if emphasized by Plato in 
such a context, mean an 'artificial' thing which is inferior because it is 'twice removed' from 
reality. (Cp. text to notes 20-23 to this chapter, and the whole Tenth Book of the Republic 
down to the end of 608b.) Plato would never expect anybody to interpret the phrase 'a thing 
of man's making' as meaning the perfect, the 'natural' state; rather he would expect them to 
think of something very inferior (like poetry; cp. note 39 to chapter 4). The phrase which 
Taylor translates 'thing of human generation' is usually simply translated by 'human 
creature', and this removes all difficulties. 

(3) Assuming that my interpretation of the passage in question is correct, a suggestion may 
be made with the intention of connecting Plato's behef in the significance of racial 
degeneration with his repeated advice that the number of the members of the ruling class 
should be kept constant (advice that shows that the sociologist Plato understood the 
unsettling effect of population increase). Plato's way of thinking, described at the end of the 
present chapter (cp. text to note 45; and note 37 to chapter 8), especially the way he opposes 
The One monarch. The Few timocrats, to The Many who are nothing but a mob, may have 
suggested to him the belief that an increase in numbers is equivalent to a decline in quality. 
(Something on these lines is indeed suggested in i\\QLaws, 710d.) If this hypothesis is 
correct, then he may easily have concluded that population increase is interdependent with, 
or perhaps even caused by, racial degeneration. Since population increase was in fact the 



main cause of the instability and dissolution of the early Greek tribal societies (cp. notes 6, 
7, and 63 to chapter 10, and text), this hypothesis would explain why Plato believed that the 
'real' cause was racial degeneration (in keeping with his general theories of 'nature', and of 
'change'). 

40 . (1) Or 'at the wrong time'. Adam insists (note to 546d22) that we must not translate 'at the 
wrong time' but 'inopportunely'. I may remark that my interpretation is quite independent of 
this question; it is fully compatible with 'inopportunely' or 'wrongly' or 'at the wrong time' 
or 'out of due season'. (The phrase in question means, originally, something like 'contrary 
to the proper measure'; usually it means 'at the wrong time'.) 

* (2) Concerning Plato's remarks about 'mingling' and 'mixture', it may be observed that 
Plato seems to have held a primitive but popular theory of heredity (apparently still held by 
race-horse breeders) according to which the offspring is an even mixture or blend of the 
characters or 'natures' of his two parents, and that their characters, or natures, or 'virtues' 
(stamina, speed, etc., or, according to the Republic, the Statesman, and the Laws, gentleness, 
fierceness, boldness, self-restraint, etc.) are mixed in him in proportion to the number of 
ancestors (grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.) who possessed these characters. 
Accordingly, the art of breeding is one of a judicious and scientific — mathematical or 
harmonious — blending or mixing of natures. See especially the Statesman, where the royal 
craft of statesman- ship or herdsmanship is likened to that of weaving, and where the kingly 
weaver must blend boldness with self-restraint. (See also Republic, 375c-e, and 410c, ff.; 
Laws, 731b; and notes 34 f. to chapter 4; 13 and 39 f. to chapter 8; and text.)* 

41 . For Plato's law of social revolutions, see especially note 26 to chapter 4, and text. 

42 . The term 'meta-biology' is used by G. B. Shaw in this sense, i.e. as denoting a kind of 
religion. (Cp. the preface to Back to Methuselah; see also note 66 to chapter 12.) 

43 . Cp. Adam's note to Republic, 547a 3. 

44 . For a criticism of what I call 'psychologism' in the method of sociology, cp. text to note 19 
to chapter 13 and chapter 14, where Mill's still popular methodological psychologism is 
discussed. 



45 . It has often been said that Plato's thought must not be squeezed into a 'system'; 
accordingly, my attempts in this paragraph (and not only in this paragraph) to show the 
systematic unity of Plato's thought, which is obviously based on the Pythagorean table of 
opposites, will probably arouse criticism. But I believe that such a systematization is a 
necessary test of any interpretation. Those who believe that they do not need an 
interpretation, and that they can 'know' a philosopher or his work, and take him just 'as he 
was', or his work just 'as it was', are mistaken. They cannot but interpret both the man and 
his work; but since they are not aware of the fact that they interpret (that their view is 
coloured by tradition, temperament, etc.), their interpretation must necessarily be naive and 
uncritical. (Cp. also chapter 10 (notes 1-5 and 56), and chapter 25.) A critical interpretation, 
however, must take the form of a rational reconstruction, and must be systematic; it must try 
to reconstruct the philosopher's thought as a consistent edifice. Cp. also what A. C. Ewing 
says of Kant (A Short Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason , 1938, p. 4): '... we 
ought to start with the assumption that a great philosopher is not likely to be always 
contradicting himself, and consequently, wherever there are two interpretations, one of 
which will make Kant consistent and the other inconsistent, prefer the former to the latter, if 
reasonably possible.' This surely applies also to Plato, and even to interpretation in general. 



Notes to Chapter Six 



1. Cp. note 3 to chapter 4 and text, especially the end of that paragraph. Furthermore, note 2 
(2) to that chapter. Concerning the formula Back to Nature, I wish to draw attention to the 
fact that Rousseau was greatly influenced by Plato. Indeed, a glance at the Social Contract 
will reveal a wealth of analogies especially with those Platonic passages on naturalism which 
have been commented upon in the last chapter. Cp. especially note 14 to chapter 9. There is 
also an interesting similarity hQtwQQn Republic, 591a, ff. (and Gorgias, 472e, ff., where a 
similar idea occurs in an individualist context), and Rousseau's (and Hegel's) famous theory 
of punishment. (Barker, Greek Political Theory, I, 388 ff., rightly emphasizes Plato's 
influence upon Rousseau. But he does not see the strong element of romanticism in Plato; 
and it is not generally appreciated that the rural romanticism which influenced both France 
and Shakespeare's England through the medium of Sanazzaro's Arcadia, has its origin in 
Plato's Dorian shepherds; cp. notes 11 (3), 26, and 32 to chapter 4, and note 14 to chapter 
9.) 

2. Cp. R. H. S. Crossman, P/flto To-Day (1937), 132; the next quotation is from p. 111. This 
interesting book (like the works of Grote and T. Gomperz) has greatly encouraged me to 
develop my rather unorthodox views on Plato, and to follow them up to their rather 
unpleasant conclusions. For the quotations from C. E. M. Joad, cp. his Guide to the 
Philosophy of Morals and Politics (1938), 661, and 660. I may also refer here to the very 
interesting remarks on Plato's views on justice by C. L. Stevenson, in his article 'Persuasive 
Definitions' {Mind, N.S., vol. 47, 1938, pp. 331 ff ). 

3. Cp. Crossman, op. cit, 132 f The next two quotations are: Field, Plato, etc., 91; cp. similar 
remarks in Barker, Greek Political Theory, etc. (see note 13 to chapter 5). 

The idealization of Plato has played a considerable part in the debates on the genuineness of 
the various works transmitted under his name. Many of them have been rejected by some of 
the critics simply because they contained passages which did not fit in with their idealized 
view of Plato. A rather naive as well as typical expression of this attitude can be found in 
Davies' and Vaughan's 'Introductory Notice' (cp. the Golden Treasury edition of the 



Republic, p. vi): 'Mr. Grote, in his zeal to take Plato down from his super-human pedestal, 
may be somewhat too ready to attribute to him the compositions which have been judged 
unworthy of so divine a philosopher.' It does not seem to occur to the writers that their 
judgement of Plato should depend on what he wrote, and not vice versa; and that, if these 
compositions are genuine and unworthy, Plato was not quite so divine a philosopher. (For 
Plato's divinity, see also Simplicius mArist. de coelo, 32b44, 319al5, etc.) 

4. The formulation of {a) emulates one of Kant's, who describes a just constitution as 'a 
constitution that achieves the greatest possible freedom of human individuals by framing the 
laws in such a way that the freedom of each can co-exist with that of all others' {Critique oj 
Pure Reason'^, 373); see also his Theory of Right, where he says: 'Right (or justice) is the 
sum total of the conditions which are necessary for everybody's free choice to co-exist with 
that of everybody else, in accordance with a general law of liberty.' Kant believed that this 
was the aim pursued by Plato in the Republic; from which we may see that Kant was one of 
the many philosophers who either were deceived by Plato or who idealized him by imputing 
to him their own humanitarian ideas. I may remark, in this connection, that Kant's ardent 
liberalism is very little appreciated in English and American writings on political philosophy 
(in spite of Hastie's Principles of Politics). He is only too often claimed to be a 
forerunner of Hegel; but in view of the fact that he recognized in the romanticism of both 
Herder and Fichte a doctrine diametrically opposed to his own, this claim is grossly unjust to 
Kant, and there can be no doubt that he would have strongly resented it. It is the tremendous 
influence of Hegelianism that led to a wide acceptance of this, I believe, completely 
untenable claim. 

5. Cp. text to notes 32/33 to chapter 5. 

6. Cp. text to notes 25-29, chapter 5. The quotations in the present paragraph are: (1) 
Republic, 433a; (2) Republic, 434a^; (3) Republic, 44 Id. With Plato's statement, in the first 
quotation, 'we have repeated over and again', cp. also esp. Republic, 397e, where the theory 
of justice is carefully prepared, and, of course. Republic, 369b-c, quoted in text to note 29, 
chapter 5. See also notes 23 and 40 to the present chapter. 

7. As pointed out in chapter 4 (note 18 and text, and note 29), Plato does not say much about 



slaves in the Republic, although what he says is significant enough; but he dispels all doubts 
about his attitude in the Laws (cp. especially G. R. Morrow's article in Mind, referred to in 
note 29 to chapter 4). 

8. The quotations are from Barker, Greek Political Theory, I, p. 180. Barker states (pp. 176 f) 
that 'Platonic Justice' is 'social justice', and correctly emphasizes its holistic nature. He 
mentions (178 f.) the possible criticism that this formula does 'not ... touch the essence of 
what men generally mean by justice', i.e. 'a principle for dealing with the clash of wills', i.e. 
justice as pertaining to individuals. But he thinks that 'such an objection is beside the point', 
and that Plato's idea is 'not a matter of law' but 'a conception of social morality' (179); and 
he goes on to assert that this treatment of justice corresponded, in a way, to the current 
Greek ideas of justice: 'Nor was Plato, in conceiving justice in this sense, very far removed 
from the current ideas in Greece.' He does not even mention that there exists some evidence 
to the contrary, as here discussed in the next notes, and text. 

9. Cp. Gorgias, 488e, ff.; the passage is more fully quoted and discussed in section VIII below 
(see note 48 to this chapter, and text). For Aristotle's theory of slavery, see note 3 to chapter 
II and text. The quotations from Aristotle in this paragraph are: (1) and (2) Nicom. Ethics, V, 
4, 7, and 8; (3) Politics, III, 12, 1 (1282b; see also notes 20 and 30 to this chapter. The 
passage contains a reference to the Nicom. Eth.); {A) Nicom. Ethics, V, 4, 9; (5) Politics, IV 
(VI), 2, 1 (1317b).— In thQ Nicom. Ethics, V, 3, 7 (cp. also Pol, III, 9, 1; 1280a), Aristotle 
also mentions that the meaning of 'justice' varies in democratic, oligarchic, and aristocratic 
states, according to their different ideas of 'merit'. *(What follows here was first added in the 
American edition of 1950.) 

For Plato's views, in the Laws, on political justice and equality, see especially the passage 
on the two kinds of equality {Laws, 757b-d) quoted below under (1). For the fact, 
mentioned here in the text, that not only virtue and breeding but also wealth should count in 
the distribution of honours and of spoils (and even size and good looks), see Laws, 744c, 
quoted in note 20 (1) to the present chapter, where other relevant passages are also 
discussed. 

(1) In ihQLaws, 757b-d, Plato discusses 'two kinds of equality'. 'The one of these ... is 



equality of measure, weight, or number [i.e. numerical or arithmetical equality]; but the 
truest and best equality . . . distributes more to the greater and less to the smaller, giving each 
his due measure, in accordance with nature ... By granting the greater honour to those who 
are superior in virtue, and the lesser honour to those who are inferior in virtue and breeding, 
it distributes to each what is proper, according to this principle of [rational] proportions . 
And this is precisely what we shall call ""political justice'". And whoever may found a state 
must make this the sole aim of his legislation this justice alone which, as stated, is 
natural equality, and which is distributed, as the situation requires, to unequals.' This second 
of the two equalities which constitutes what Plato here calls 'political justice' (and what 
Aristotle calls 'distributive justice'), and which is described by Plato (and Aristotle) as 
'proportionate equality' — the truest, best, and most natural equality — was later called 
'geometrical' (Gorgias 508a; see also 465b/c, and Plutarch, Moralia 719b, f ), as opposed to 
the lower and democratic ' arithmeticaV equality. On this identification, the remarks under 
(2) may throw some hght. 

(2) According to tradition (see Comm. in Arist. Graeca, pars XV, Berlin, 1897, p. 117, 29, 
din&pars XVIII, Berlin, 1900, p. 118, 18), an inscription over the door of Plato's academy 
said: 'Nobody untrained in geometry may enter my house!' I suspect that the meaning of 
this is not merely an emphasis upon the importance of mathematical studies, but that it 
means: 'Arithmetic (i.e. more precisely, Pythagorean number theory) is not enough; you 
must know geometry!' And I shall attempt to sketch the reasons which make me believe that 
the latter phrase adequately sums up one of Plato's most important contributions to science. 
See also Addendum, p. 3 19. 

As is now generally believed, the earher Pythagorean treatment of geometry adopted a 
method somewhat similar to the one nowadays called 'arithmetization'. Geometry was 
treated as part of the theory of integers (or 'natural' numbers, i.e. of numbers composed of 
monads or 'indivisible units'; cp. Republic, 525e) and of their 'logoV, i.e. their 'rational' 
proportions. For example, the Pythagorean rectangular triangles were those with sides in 
such rational proportions. (Examples are 3:4:5; or 5:12:13.) A general formula ascribed to 
Pythagoras is this: 2n + 1: 2n(n + 1): 2n (n + 1) + 1. But this formula, derived from the 
'gnomo-n, is not general enough, as the example 8:15:17 shows. A general formula, from 



which the Pythagorean can be obtained by putting m = n + 1, is this: m - n : 2mn: m + n 
(where m > n). Since this formula is a close consequence of the so-called 'Theorem of 
Pythagoras' (if taken together with that kind of Algebra which seems to have been known to 
the early Pythagoreans), and since this formula was, apparently, not only unknown to 
Pythagoras but even to Plato (who proposed, according to Proclus, another non-general 
formula), it seems that the 'Theorem of Pythagoras' was not known, in its general form, to 
either Pythagoras or even to Plato. (See for a less radical view on this matter T. Heath, A 
History of Greek Mathematics, 1921, vol. I, pp. 80-2. The formula described by me as 
'general' is essentially that of Euclid; it can be obtained from Heath's unnecessarily 
complicated formula on p. 82 by first obtaining the three sides of the triangle and by 
multiplying them by 2/mn, and then by substituting in the result m and n and p and q.) 
The discovery of the irrationality of the square root of two (alluded to by Plato in the 
Greater Hippias and in the Meno; cp. note 10 to chapter 8; see also Aristotle, Anal. Priora, 
41a26 f ) destroyed the Pythagorean programme of 'arithmetizing' geometry, and with it, it 
appears, the vitality of the Pythagorean Order itself. The tradition that this discovery was at 
first kept secret is, it seems, supported by the fact that Plato still calls the irrational at first 
'arrhe-tos\ i.e. the secret, the unmentionable mystery; cp. the Greater Hippias, 303b/c; 
Republic, 546c. (A later term is 'the non-commensurable'; cp. Theaetetus, 147c, din& Laws, 
820c. The term 'alogos' seems to occur first in Democritus, who wrote two books On 
Illogical Lines and Atoms (or and Full Bodies) which are lost; Plato knew the term, as 
proved by his somewhat disrespectful allusion to Democritus' title in the Republic, 534d, but 
never used it himself as a synonym for 'arrhe-tos\ The first extant and indubitable use in 
this sense is in Aristotle's Anal. Post., 76b9. See also T. Heath, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 84 f , 156 
f. and my first Addendum on p. 3 19, below.) 

It appears that the breakdown of the Pythagorean programme, i.e. of the arithmetical method 
of geometry, led to the development of the axiomatic method of Euchd, that is to say, of a 
new method which was on the one side designed to rescue, from the breakdown, what could 
be rescued (including the method of rational proof), and on the other side to accept the 
irreducibility of geometry to arithmetic. Assuming all this, it would seem highly probable 
that Plato's role in the transition from the older Pythagorean method to that of Euclid was an 



exceedingly important one — in fact, that Plato was one of the first to develop a specifically 
geometrical method aiming at rescuing what could be rescued from, and at cutting the losses 
of, the breakdown of Pythagoreanism. Much of this must be considered as a highly 
uncertain historical hypothesis, but some confirmation may be found in Aristotle, Anal. 
Post., 76b9 (mentioned above), especially if this passage is compared with ihQLaws, 818c, 
895e (even and odd), and 819e/820a, 820c (incommensurable). The passage reads: 
'Arithmetic assumes the meaning of "odd" and "even", geometry that of "irrational" ...'(Or 
'incommensurable'; c^. Anal. Priora, 41a26 f, 50a37. See also Metaphysics, 983a20, 
106 lb 1-3, where the problem of irrationality is treated as if it were the proprium of 
geometry, and 1089a, where, as in Anal. Post., 76b40, there is an allusion to the 'square 
foot' method of the Theaetetus, 147d.) Plato's great interest in the problem of irrationality is 
shown especially in two of the passages mentioned above, the Theaetetus, 147c-148a, and 
Laws, 819d-822d, where Plato declares that he is ashamed of the Greeks for not being alive 
to the great problem of incommensurable magnitudes. 

Now I suggest that the 'Theory of the Primary Bodies' (in the Timaeus, 53c to 62c, and 
perhaps even down to 64a; see also Republic, 528b-d) was part of Plato's answer to the 
challenge. It preserves, on the one hand, the atomistic character of Pythagoreanism — the 
indivisible units ('monads') which also play a role in the school >of the Atomists — and it 
introduces, on the other hand, the irrationalities (of the square roots of two and three) whose 
admission into the world had become unavoidable. It does so by taking two of the offending 
rectangular triangles — the one which is half of a square and incorporates the square root of 
two, and the one which is half of an equilateral triangle and incorporates the square root of 
three — as the units of which everything else is composed. Indeed, the doctrine that these two 
irrational triangles are the limits (peras; cp. Meno, 75d-76a) or Forms of all elementary 
physical bodies may be said to be one of the central physical doctrines of the Timaeus. 
All this would suggest that the warning against those untrained in geometry (an allusion to it 
may perhaps be found in the Timaeus, 54a) might have had the more pointed significance 
mentioned above, and that it may have been connected with the belief that geometry is 
something of higher importance than is arithmetic. (Cp. Timaeus, 31c.) And this, in turn, 
would explain why Plato's 'proportionate equality', said by him to be something more 



aristocratic than the democratic arithmetical or numerical equality, was later identified with 
the 'geometrical equality', mentioned by Plato in the Gorgias, 508a (cp. note 48 to this 
chapter), and why (for example by Plutarch, loc. cit.) arithmetic and geometry were 
associated with democracy and Spartan aristocracy respectively — in spite of the fact, then 
apparently forgotten, that the Pythagoreans had been as aristocratically minded as Plato 
himself; that their programme had stressed arithmetic; and that 'geometrical', in their 
language, is the name of a certain kind of numerical (i.e. arithmetical) proportion. 
(3) In the Timaeus, Plato needs for the construction of the Primary Bodies an Elementary 
Square and an Elementary Equilateral Triangle. These two, in turn, are composed of two 
different kinds of sub -elementary trianglesdiAihQ half-square which incorporates 02, and the 
half-equilateral which incorporates 03 respectively. The question why he chooses these two 
sub -elementary triangles, instead of the Square and the Equilateral itself, has been much 
discussed; and similarly a second question — see below under (4) — ^why he constructs his 
Elementary Squares out of four sub-elementary half-squares instead of two, and the 
Elementary Equilateral out of six sub-elementary half-equilaterals instead of two. (See the 
first two of the three figures below.) 

Concerning the first of these two questions, it seems to have been generally overlooked that 
Plato, with his burning interest in the problem of irrationality, would not have introduced the 
two irrationalities 02 and 03 (which he explicitly mentions in 54b) had he not been anxious 
to introduce precisely these irrationalities as irreducible elements into his world . (Comford, 
Plato's Cosmology , pp. 214 and 231 ff, gives a long discussion of both questions, but the 
common solution which he offers for both — ^his 'hypothesis' as he calls it on p. 234 — 
appears to me quite unacceptable; had Plato wanted to achieve some 'grading' like the one 
discussed by Comford — ^note that there is no hint in Plato that anything smaller than what 
Comford calls 'Grade B' exists — it would have been sufficient to divide into two the sides of 
the Elementary Squares and Equilaterals of what Cornford calls 'Grade B', building each of 
them up from four elementary figures which do not contain any irrationalities.) But if Plato 
was anxious to introduce these irrationalities into the world, as the sides of sub-elementary 
triangles of which everything else is composed, then he must have believed that he could, in 
this way, solve a problem; and this problem, I suggest, was that of 'the nature of (the 



commensurable and) the uncommensurable' {Laws, 820c). This problem, clearly, was 
particularly hard to solve on the basis of a cosmology which made use of anything like 
atomistic ideas, since irrationals are not multiples of any unit able to measure rationals; but if 
the unit measures themselves contain sides in 'irrational ratios', then the great paradox might 
be solved; for then they can measure both, and the existence of irrationals was no longer 
incomprehensible or 'irrational'. 

But Plato knew that there were more irrationalities than 02 and 03, for he mentions in the 
Theaetetus the discovery of an infinite sequence of irrational square roots (he also speaks, 
148b, of 'similar considerations concerning solids', but this need not refer to cubic roots but 
could refer to the cubic diagonal, i.e. to 03); and he also mentions in the Greater Hippias 
(303b-c; cp. Heath, op. cit, 304) the fact that by adding (or otherwise composing) 
irrationals, other irrational numbers may be obtained (but also rational numbers — ^probably 
an allusion to the fact that, for example, 2 minus 02 is irrational; for this number, plus 02, 
gives of course a rational number). In view of these circumstances it appears that, if Plato 
wanted to solve the problem of irrationality by way of introducing his elementary triangles, 
he must have thought that all irrationals (or at least their multiples) can be composed by 
adding up {a) units; (b) 02; (c) 03; and multiples of these. This, of course, would have been 
a mistake, but we have every reason to believe that no disproof existed at the time; and the 
proposition that there are only two kinds of atomic irrationalities — the diagonals of the 
squares and of cubes — and that all other irrationalities are commensurable relative to {a) the 
unit; {b) 02; and (c) 03, has a certain amount of plausibility in it if we consider the relative 
character of irrationalities. (I mean the fact that we may say with equal justification that the 
diagonal of a square with unit side is irrational or that the side of a square with a unit 
diagonal is irrational. We should also remember that Euchd, in Book X, def 2, still calls all 
incommensurable square roots 'commensurable by their squares'.) Thus Plato may well 
have believed in this proposition, even though he could not possibly have been in the 
possession of a valid proof of his conjecture. (A disproof was apparently first given by 
Euclid.) Now there is undoubtedly a reference to some unproved conjecture in the very 
passage in the Timaeus in which Plato refers to the reason for choosing his sub-elementary 
triangles, for he writes {Timaeus, 53c/d): 'all triangles are derived from two, each having one 



right angle of these triangles, one [the half-square] has on either side half of a right 
angle, ... and equal sides; the other [the scalene] ... has unequal sides. These two we assume 
as the first principles ... according to an account which combines likelihood [or likely 
conjecture] with necessity [proof]. Principles which are still further removed than these are 
known to heaven, and to such men as heaven favours.' And later, after explaining that there 
is an endless number of scalene triangles, of which 'the best' must be selected, and after 
explaining that he takes the half-equilateral as the best, Plato says (Timaeus, 54a/b; Comford 
had to emend the passage in order to fit it into his interpretation; cp. his note 3 to p. 214): 
'The reason is too long a story; but if anybody puts this matter to the test, and proves that it 
has this property, then the prize is his, with all our good will.' Plato does not say clearly 
what 'this property' means; it must be a (provable or refutable) mathematical property which 
justifies that, having chosen the triangle incorporating 02, the choice of that incorporating 
03 is 'the best'; and I think that, in view of the foregoing considerations, the property which 
he had in mind was the conjectured relative rationality of the other irrationals, i.e. relative to 
the unit, and the square roots of two and three. 




Plalo'6 Elementary Square, composed of Plato's Elementary Equilateral, composed 
(bur sub-elementary isosceles lectangular of six suk)-elementary scalene rectangular 
triangles triangles 



The rectangle ABCD has an area exceeding that of the drcJe by 

less than 1 pro mille 



(4) An additional reason for our interpretation, although one for which I do not find any 
further evidence in Plato's text, may perhaps emerge from the following consideration. It is a 
curious fact that 02 + 03 very nearly approximates p. (Cp. E. Borel, Space and Time, 1926, 
1960, p. 216; my attention was drawn to this fact, in a different context, by W. Marinelh.) 
The excess is less than 0.0047, i.e. less than 1 1/2 pro mille of p, and a better approximation 
to 71 was hardly known at the time. A kind of explanation of this curious fact is that the 
arithmetical mean of the areas of the circumscribed hexagon and the inscribed octagon is a 
good approximation of the area of the circle. Now it appears, on the one hand, that Bryson 
operated with the means of circumscribed and inscribed polygons (cp. Heath, op. cit., 224), 
and we know, on the other hand (from the Greater Hippias), that Plato was interested in the 
adding of irrationals, so that he must have added 02 + 03. There are thus two ways by 



which Plato may have found out the approximate equation 02 + 03 ~ n, and the second of 
these ways seems ahnost inescapable. It seems a plausible hypothesis that Plato knew of this 
equation, but was unable to prove whether or not it was a strict equality or only an 
approximation. 

But if this is so, then we can perhaps answer the 'second question' mentioned above under 
(3), i.e. the question why Plato composed his elementary square of four sub-elementary 
triangles (half-squares) instead of two, and his elementary equilateral of six sub-elementary 
triangles (half-equilaterals) instead of two. If we look at the first two of the figures above, 
then we see that this construction emphasizes the centre of the circumscribed and inscribed 
circles, and, in both cases, the radii of the circumscribed circle. (In the case of the 
equilateral, the radius of the inscribed circle appears also; but it seems that Plato had that of 
the circumscribed circle in mind, since he mentions it, in his description of the method of 
composing the equilateral, as the 'diagonal'; cp. the Timaeus, 54d/e; cp. also 54b.) 
If we now draw these two circumscribed circles, or more precisely, if we inscribe the 
elementary square and equilateral into a circle with the radius r, then we find that the sum of 
the sides of these two figures approximates rp; in other words, Plato's construction suggests 
one of the simplest approximate solutions of the squaring of the circle, as our three figures 
show. In view of all this, it may easily be the case that Plato's conjecture and his offer of 'a 
prize with all our good will', quoted above under (3), involved not only the general problem 
of the commensurability of the irrationalities, but also the special problem whether 02 + 03 
squares the unit circle. 

I must again emphasize that no direct evidence is known to me to show that this was in 
Plato's mind; but if we consider the indirect evidence here marshalled, then the hypothesis 
does perhaps not seem too far-fetched. I do not think that it is more so than Cornford's 
hypothesis; and if true, it would give a better explanation of the relevant passages. 
(5) If there is anything in our contention, developed in section (2) of this note, that Plato's 
inscription meant 'Arithmetic is not enough; you must know geometry!' and in our 
contention that this emphasis was connected with the discovery of the irrationality of the 
square roots of 2 and 3, then this might throw some light on the Theory of Ideas, and on 
Aristotle's much debated reports. It would explain why, in view of this discovery, the 



Pythagorean view that things (forms, shapes) are numbers, and moral ideas ratios of 
numbers, had to disappear — perhaps to be replaced, as in the Timaeus, by the doctrine that 
the elementary forms, or limits ('peras'; cp. the passage from the Meno, 75d-76a, referred to 
above), or shapes, or ideas of things, are triangles. But it would also explain why, one 
generation later, the Academy could return to the Pythagorean doctrine. Once the shock 
caused by the discovery of irrationality had worn off, mathematicians began to get used to 
the idea that the irrationals must be numbers, in spite of everything, since they stand in the 
elementary relations of greater or less to other (rational) numbers. This stage reached, the 
reasons against Pythagoreanism disappeared, although the theory that shapes are numbers or 
ratios of numbers meant, after the admission of irrationals, something different from what it 
had meant before (a point which possibly was not fully appreciated by the adherents of the 
new theory). See also Addendum I, p. 319.* 

10 . The well-known representation of Themis as blindfolded, i.e. disregarding the suppliant's 
station, and as carrying scales, i.e. as distributing equality or as balancing the claims and 
interests of the contesting individuals, is a symbolic representation of the equalitarian idea of 
justice. This representation cannot, however, be used here as an argument in favour of the 
contention that this idea was current in Plato's time; for, as Prof E. H. Gombrich kindly 
informs me, it dates from the Renaissance, and is inspired by a passage in Plutarch's De 
Iside et Osiride, but not by classical Greece. *On the other hand, the representation of Dike 
- with scales is classical (for such a representation, by Timochares, one generation after 
Plato, see R. Eisler, The Royal Art of Astrology , 1946, pp. 100, 266, and Plate 5), and goes 
back, probably, to Hesiod's identification of the constellation of Virgo with Dike - (in view 
of the neighbouring scales). And in view of the other evidence given here to show the 
association of Justice or Dike - with distributive equality, the scales are likely to mean the 
same as in the case of Themis.* 

11 . Republic, 440c-d. The passage concludes with a characteristic sheep-dog metaphor: 'Or 
else, until he has been called back, and calmed down, by the voice of his own reason, like a 
dog by his shepherd?' Cp. note 32 (2) to chapter 4. 

12 . Plato, in fact, implies this when he twice presents Socrates as rather doubtful where he 



should now look out for justice. (Cp. 368b, ff., 432b, ff.) 

13 . Adam obviously overlooks (under the influence of Plato) the equalitarian theory in his note 
to Republic, 33 le, ff., where he, probably correctly, says that 'the view that Justice consists 
in doing good to friends and harm to enemies, is a faithful reflection of prevalent Greek 
morality'. But he is wrong when he adds that this was 'an all but universal view'; for he 
forgets his own evidence (note to 561e28), which shows that equality before the laws 
('isonomy') 'was the proud claim of democracy'. See also notes 14 and 17 to this chapter. 
One of the oldest (if not the oldest) reference to 'isonomy' is to be found in a fragment due 
to Alcmaeon the physician (early fifth century; see Diels^, chapter 24, fr. 4); he speaks of 
isonomy as a condition of health, and opposes it to 'monarchy' — the dominance of one 
over many. Here we have a political theory of the body, or more precisely, of human 
physiology. Cp. also notes 32 to chapter 5 and 59 to chapter 10. 

14 . A passing reference to equality (similar to that in the Gorgias, 483c/d; see also this note, 
below, and note 47 to this chapter) is made in Glaucon's speech in Republic, 359c; but the 
issue is not taken up. (For this passage cp. note 50 to this chapter.) 

In Plato's abusive attack upon democracy (see text to notes 14-18, chapter 4), three scornful 
jocular references to equalitarianism occur. The first is a remark to the effect that democracy 
'distributes equality to equals and to unequals alike' (558c; cp. Adam's note to 55 8c 16; see 
also note 2 1 to this chapter); this is intended as an ironical criticism. (Equality has been 
connected with democracy before, viz. in the description of the democratic revolution; cp. 
Rep., 557a, quoted in the text to note 13, chapter 4.) The second characterizes the 
'democratic man' as gratifying all his desires 'equally', whether they may be good or bad; 
he is therefore called an 'equalitarianist' ('isonomist'), a punning allusion to the idea of 
'equal laws for all' or 'equality before the law' ('isonomy'; cp. notes 13 and 17 to this 
chapter). This pun occurs in Republic, 56 le. The way for it is well paved, since the word 
'equal' has already been used three times {Rep., 561b and c) to characterize an attitude of 
the man to whom all desires and whims are 'equal'. The third of these cheap cracks is an 
appeal to the reader's imagination, typical even nowadays of this kind of propaganda: 'I 
nearly forgot to mention the great role played by these famous "equal laws", and by this 



famous "liberty", in the interrelations between men and women {Rep., 563b). 
Besides the evidence of the importance of equalitarianism mentioned here (and in the text to 
notes 9-10 to this chapter), we must consider especially Plato's own testimony in (1) the 
Gorgias, where he writes (488e/489a; see also notes 47, 48, and 50 to the present chapter): 
'Does not the multitude (i.e. here: the majority of the people) believe ... that justice is 
equality?' 

(2) The Menexenus (238e-239a; see note 19 to this chapter, and text). The passages in the 
Laws on equality are later than \hQ Republic, and cannot be used as testimony for Plato's 
awareness of the issue when writing the Republic; but see text to notes 9, 20 and 21 to this 
chapter. 

15 . Plato himself says, in connection with the third remark (563b; cp. the last note): 'Shall we 
utter whatever rises to our lips?'; by which he apparently wishes to indicate that he does not 
see any reason to suppress the joke. 

16 . 1 believe thatThucydides' (II, 37 ff ) version of Pericles' oration can be taken as practically 
authentic. In all likelihood, he was present when Pericles spoke; and in any case he would 
have reconstructed it as faithfully as possible. There is much reason to believe that in those 
times it was not extraordinary for a man to learn another's oration even by heart (cp. Plato's 
Phaedrus), and a faithful reconstruction of a speech of this kind is indeed not as difficult as 
one might think. Plato knew the oration, taking either Thucydides' version or another 
source, which must have been extremely similar to it, as authentic. Cp. also notes 3 1 and 
34/35 to chapter 10. (It may be mentioned here that early in his career, Pericles had made 
rather dubious concessions to the popular tribal instincts and to the equally popular group 
egoism of the people; I have in mind the legislation concerning citizenship in 451 B.C. But 
later he revised his attitude towards these matters, probably under the influence of such men 
as Protagoras.) 

17 . Cp. Herodotus, III, 80, and especially the eulogy on 'isonomy', i.e. equality before the law 
(III, 80, 6); see also notes 13 and 14 to this chapter. The passage from Herodotus, which 
influenced Plato in other ways also (cp. note 24 to chapter 4), is one which Plato ridicules in 
the Republic just as he ridicules Pericles' oration; cp. note 14 to chapter 4, and 34 to chapter 



10. 

18 . Even the naturalist Aristotle does not always refer to this naturalistic version of 
equalitarianism; for instance, his formulation of the principles of democracy in Politics, 
13 17b (cp. note 9 to this chapter, and text), is quite independent of it. But it is perhaps even 
more interesting that in the Gorgias, in which the opposition of nature and convention plays 
such an important role, Plato presents equalitarianism without burdening it with the dubious 
theory of the natural equality of all men (see 488e/489a, quoted in note 14 to this chapter, 
and 483d, 484a, and 508a). 

19 . Cp. Menexenus, 238e/239a. The passage immediately follows a clear allusion to Pericles' 
oration (viz., to the second sentence quoted in the text to note 17, in this chapter). — It seems 
not improbable that the reiteration of the term 'equal birth' in that passage is meant as a 
scornful allusion to the 'low' birth of Pericles' and Aspasia's sons, who were recognized as 
Athenian citizens only by special legislation in 429 B.C. (Cp. E. Meyer, Gesch. d. Altertums, 
vol. IV, p. 14, note to No. 392, and p. 323, No. 558.) 

It has been held (even by Grote; cp. his Plato, III, p. 11) that Plato in the Menexenus, 'in his 
own rhetorical discourse, ... drops the ironical vein', i.e. that the middle part of the 
Menexenus, from which the quotation in the text is taken, is not meant ironically. But in 
view of the quoted passage on equality, and in view of Plato's open scorn in the Republic 
when he deals with this point (cp. note 14 to this chapter), this opinion seems to me 
untenable. And it appears to me equally impossible to doubt the ironical character of the 
passage immediately preceding the one quoted in the text where Plato says of Athens (cp. 
238c/d): 'In this time as well as at present ... our government was always an aristocracy 
though it is sometimes called a democracy, it is really an aristocracy, that is to say, a rule of 
the best, with the approval of the many ...' In view of Plato's hatred of democracy, this 
description needs no further comment. *Another undoubtedly ironical passage is 245c-d 
(cp. note 48 to chapter 8) where 'Socrates' praises Athens for its consistent hatred of 
foreigners and barbarians. Since elsewhere (in the Republic, 562e, f , quoted in note 48 to 
chapter 8) in an attack on democracy — and this means Athenian democracy — Plato scorns 
Athens because of its liberal treatment of foreigners, his praise in the Menexenus cannot be 



anything but irony; again the liberality of Athens is ridiculed by a pro-Spartan partisan. 
(Strangers were forbidden to reside in Sparta, by a law of Lycurgus; cp. Aristophanes' Birds, 
1012.) It is interesting, in this connection, that in \hQ Menexenus (236a; cp. note 15 (1) to 
chapter 10) where 'Socrates' is an orator who attacks Athens, Plato says of 'Socrates' that he 
was a pupil of the oligarchic party leader Antiphon the Orator (of Rhamnus; not to be 
confused with Antiphon the Sophist, who was an Athenian); especially in view of the fact 
that 'Socrates' produces a parody of a speech recorded by Thucydides, who in fact seems to 
have been a pupil of Antiphon whom he greatly admired.* For the genuineness of the 
Menexenus, see also note 35 to chapter 10. 

20. Laws, 757a; cp. the whole passage, 757a-e, of which the main parts are quoted above, in 
note 9 (1) to this chapter. 

(1) For what I call the standard objection against equalitarianism, cp. also Laws, 744b, ff. 'It 
would be excellent if everybody could . . . have all things equal; but since this is impossible 
...', etc. The passage is especially interesting in view of the fact that Plato is often described 
as an enemy of plutocracy by many writers who judge him only by the Republic. But in this 
important passage of the Laws (i.e. 744b, ff.) Plato demands that 'political offices, and 
contributions, as well as distributions, should be proportional to the value of a citizen's 
wealth. And they should depend not only on his virtue or that of his ancestors or on the size 
of his body and his good looks, but also upon his wealth or his poverty. In this way, a man 
will receive honours and offices as equitably as possible, i.e. in proportion to his wealth, 
although according to a principle of unequal distribution.' *The doctrine of the unequal 
distribution of honour and, we may assume, of spoils, in proportion to wealth and bodily 
size, is probably a residue from the heroic age of conquest. The wealthy who are heavily 
and expensively armed, and those who are strong, contribute more to the victory than the 
others. (The principle was accepted in Homeric times, and it can be found, as R. Eisler 
assures me, in practically all known cases of conquering war hordes.)* The basic idea of this 
attitude, viz., that it is unjust to treat unequals equally, can be found, in a passing remark, as 
early as the Protagoras, 337a (see also Gorgias, 508a, f, mentioned in notes 9 and 48 to 
this chapter); but Plato did not make much use of the idea before writing the Laws. 

(2) For Aristotle's elaboration of these ideas, cp. esp. his Politics, III, 9, 1, 1280a (see also 



12 82b- 12 84b and 1301b29), where he writes: 'AH men cling to justice of some kind, but 
their conceptions are imperfect, and do not embrace the whole Idea. For example, justice is 
thought (by democrats) to be equality; and so it is, although it is not equality for all, but only 
for equals. And justice is thought (by oligarchs) to be inequality; and so it is, although it is 
not inequality for all, but only for unequals.' Cp. also Nichom. Eth., 1 13 lb27, 1 158b30 ff. 

(3) Against all this anti-equalitarianism, I hold, with Kant, that it must be the principle of all 
morality that no man should consider himself more valuable than any other person. And I 
assert that this principle is the only one acceptable, considering the notorious impossibility 
of judging oneself impartially. I am therefore at a loss to understand the following remark of 
an excellent writer like Catlin {Principles, 314): 'There is something profoundly immoral in 
the morality of Kant which endeavours to roll all personalities level ... and which ignores 
the Aristotelian precept to render equals to equals and unequals to unequals. One man has 
not socially the same rights as another . . . The present writer would by no means be prepared 
to deny that ... there is something in "blood".' Now I ask: If there were something in 
'blood', or in inequality of talents, etc.; and even if it were worth while to waste one's time 
in assessing these differences; and even if one could assess them; why, then, should they be 
made the ground of greater rights and not only of heavier duties? (Cp. text to notes 31/32 to 
chapter 4.) I fail to see the profound immorality of Kant's equalitarianism. And I fail to see 
on what Catlin bases his moral judgement, since he considers morals to be a matter of taste. 
Why should Kant's 'taste' be profoundly immoral? (It is also the Christian 'taste'.) The only 
reply to this question that I can think of is that Catlin judges from his positivistic point of 
view (cp. note 18 (2) to chapter 5), and that he thinks the Christian and Kantian demand 
immoral because it contradicts the positively enforced moral valuations of our contemporary 
society. 

(4) One of the best answers ever given to all these anti-equalitarianists is due to Rousseau. I 
say this in spite of my opinion that his romanticism (cp. note 1 to this chapter) was one of 
the most pernicious influences in the history of social philosophy. But he was also one of the 
few really brilliant writers in this field. I quote one of his excellent remarks from the Origin 
of Inequality (see, for instance, the Everyman edition of ihQ Social Contract, p. 174; the 
itahcs are mine); and I wish to draw the reader's attention to the dignified formulation of the 



last sentence of this passage. 'I conceive that there are two kinds of inequality among the 
human species; one, which I call natural or physical because it is established by nature, and 
consists in a difference of age, health, bodily strength, and the qualities of the mind or of the 
soul; and another, which may be called moral or political inequality, because it depends on a 
kind of convention, and is established, or at least authorized, by the consent of men. This 
latter consists of the different privileges, which some men enjoy ...; such as that of being 
more rich, more honoured, or more powerful ... It is useless to ask what is the source of 
natural inequality, because that question is answered by the simple definition of the word. 
Again, it is still more useless to inquire whether there is any essential connection between 
the two inequalities; for this would be only asking, in other words, whether those who 
command are necessarily better than those who obey, and whether strength of body or of 
mind, or wisdom, or virtue, are always found ... in proportion to the power or wealth of a 
man; a question fit perhaps to be discussed by slaves in the hearing of their masters, but 
highly unbecoming to reasonable and free men in search of the truth.' 

21 . Republic, 558c; cp. note 14 to this chapter (the first passage in the attack on democracy). 

22 . Republic, 433b. Adam, who also recognizes that the passage is intended as an argument, 
tries to reconstruct the argument (note to 43 3b 11); but he confesses that 'Plato seldom leaves 
so much to be mentally supplied in his reasoning'. 

23 . Republic, 433e/434a. — For a continuation of the passage, cp. text to note 40 to this chapter; 
for the preparation for it in earlier parts of the Republic, see note 6 to this chapter. — ^Adam 
comments on the passage which I call the 'second argument' as follows (note to 433e35): 
'Plato is looking for a point of contact between his own view of Justice and the popular 
judicial meaning of the word ...' (See the passage quoted in the next paragraph in the text.) 
Adam tries to defend Plato's argument against a critic (Krohn) who saw, though perhaps not 
very clearly, that there was something wrong with it. 

24 . The quotations in this paragraph are from Republic, 430d, ff. 

25 . This device seems to have been successful even with a keen critic such as Gomperz, who, 
in his brief criticism {Greek Thinkers, Book V, II, 10; Germ, edn, vol. II, pp. 378/379), fails 
to mention the weaknesses of the argument; and he even says, commenting upon the first 



two books (V, II, 5; p. 368): 'An exposition follows which might be described as a miracle 
of clarity, precision, and genuine scientific character adding that Plato's interlocutors 
Glaucon and Adeimantus, 'driven by their burning enthusiasm ... dismiss and forestall all 
superficial solutions'. 

For my remarks on temperance, in the next paragraph of the text, see the following passage 
from Davies' and Vaughan's 'Analysis' (cp. the Golden Treasury edition of the Republic, p. 
xviii; italics mine): 'The essence of temperance is restraint. The essence of political 
temperance lies in recognizing the right of the governing body to the allegiance and 
obedience of the governed.'' This may show that my interpretation of Plato's idea of 
temperance is shared (though expressed in a different terminology) by followers of Plato. I 
may add that 'temperance', i.e. being satisfied with one's place, is a virtue in which all three 
classes share, although it is the only virtue in which the workers may participate. Thus the 
virtue attainable by the workers or money-earners is temperance; the virtues attainable by 
the auxiliaries are temperance and courage; by the guardians, temperance, courage, and 
wisdom. 

The 'lengthy preface', also quoted in the next paragraph, is from Republic, 432b, ff. 

26 . On the term 'collectivism', a terminological comment may be made here. What H. G. Wells 
calls 'collectivism' has nothing to do with what I call by that name. Wells is an individualist 
(in my sense of the word), as is shown especially by his Rights of Man and his Common 
Sense of War and Peace, which contain very acceptable formulations of the demands of an 
equalitarian individualism. But he also believes, rightly, in the rational planning of political 
institutions, with the aim of furthering the freedom and the welfare of individual human 
beings. This he calls 'collectivism'; to describe what I believe to be the same thing as his 
'collectivism', I should use an expression like: 'rational institutional planning for freedom'. 
This expression may be long and clumsy, but it avoids the danger that 'collectivism' may be 
interpreted in the anti-individualistic sense in which it is often used, not only in the present 
book. 

27 . Laws, 903c; cp. text to note 35, chapter 5. The 'preamble' mentioned in the text ('But he 
needs ... some words of counsel to act as a charm upon him', etc.) is Laws, 903b. 



28 . There are innumerable places in the Republic and in the Laws where Plato gives a warning 
against unbridled group egoism; cp., for instance, Republic, 519e, and the passages referred 
to in note 4 1 to this chapter. 

Regarding the identity often alleged to exist between collectivism and altruism, I may refer, 
in this connection, to the very pertinent question of Sherrington, who asks in Man on His 
Nature (p. 388): 'Are the shoal and the herd altruism?' 

29. For Dickens' mistaken contempt of Parliament, cp. also note 23 to chapter 7. 

30 . Aristotle's Politics, III, 12, 1 (1282b); cp. text to notes 9 and 20, to this chapter. (Cp. also 
Aristotle's remark in Pol, III, 9, 3, 1280a, to the effect that justice pertains to persons as well 
as to things.) With the quotation from Pericles later in this paragraph, cp. text to note 16 to 
this chapter, and to note 31 to chapter 10. 

31 . This remark is from a passage {Rep., 519e, f ) quoted in the text to note 35 to chapter 5. 

32. The important passages from the Laws quoted (1) in the present and (2) in the next 
paragraph are: 

{\)Laws, 739c, ff. Plato refers here to \hQ Republic, and apparently especially to Republic, 
462a ff, 424a, and 449e. (A list of passages on collectivism and holism can be found in 
note 35 to chapter 5. On his communism, see note 29 (2) to chapter 5 and other places there 
mentioned.) The passage here quoted begins, characteristically, with a quotation of the 
Pythagorean maxim 'Friends have in common all things they possess'. Cp. note 36 and text; 
also the 'common meals' mentioned in note 34. 

(2) Laws, 942a, f ; see next note. Both these passages are referred to as anti- individualistic 
by Gomperz {op. cit., vol. II, 406). See also Laws, 807d/e. 

33 . Cp. note 42, chapter 4, and text. — The quotation which follows in the present paragraph is 
Laws, 942a, f (see the preceding note). 

We must not forget that military education in the Laws (as in the Republic) obligatory for all 
those allowed to carry arms, i.e. for all citizens — for all those who have anything like civil 
rights (cp. Laws, 753b). All others are 'banausic', if not slaves (cp. Laws, 741e and 743d, 
and note 4 to chapter 11). 

It is interesting that Barker, who hates militarism, believes that Plato held similar views 



{Greek Political Theory, 298-301). It is true that Plato did not eulogize war, and that he even 
spoke against war. But many militarists have talked peace and practised war; and Plato's 
state is ruled by the military caste, i.e. by the wise ex-soldiers. This remark is as true for the 
Laws (cp. 753b) as it is for the Republic. 

34. Strictest legislation about meals — especially 'common meals' — and also about drinking 
habits plays a considerable part in Plato; cp., for instancQ, Republic, 416e, 458c, 547d/e; 
Laws, 625e, 633a (where the obligatory common meals are said to be instituted with a view 
to war), 762b, 780-783, 806c, f, 839c, 842b. Plato always emphasizes the importance of 
common meals, in accordance with Cretan and Spartan customs. Interesting also is the 
preoccupation of Plato's uncle Critias with these matters. (Cp. Diels^, Critias, fir. 33.) 

With the allusion to the anarchy of the 'wild beasts', at the end of the present quotation, cp. 
also Republic, 563c. 

35 . Cp. E. B. England's edition of the Laws, vol. I, p. 514, note to 739b8 ff. The quotations 
from Barker are from op. cit.; pp. 149 and 148. Countless similar passages can be found in 
the writings of most Platonists. See however Sherrington's remark (cp. note 28 to this 
chapter) that it is hardly correct to say that a shoal or a herd is inspired by altruism. Herd 
instinct and tribal egoism, and the appeal to these instincts, should not be mixed up with 
unselfishness. 

36 . C^. Republic, 424a, 449c; Phaedrus, 279c; Laws, 739c; see note 32 (1). (Cp. also Lysis, 
207c, and Euripides, Orest., 725.) For the possible connection of this principle with early 
Christian and Marxian communism, see note 29 (2) to chapter 5. 

Regarding the individualistic theory of justice and injustice of the Gorgias, cp. for instance 
the examples given in the Gorgias, 468b, ff., 508d/e. These passages probably still show 
Socratic influence (cp. note 56 to chapter 10). Socrates' individualism is most clearly 
expressed in his famous doctrine of the self-sufficiency of the good man; a doctrine which is 
mentioned by Plato in the Republic (387d/e) in spite of the fact that it flatly contradicts one 
of the main theses of the Republic, viz., that the state alone can be self-sufficient. (Cp. 
chapter 5, note 25, and the text to that and the following notes.) 

37 . Republic, 368b/c. 



38 . Cp. especially Republic, 344a, ff. 

39. Cp. Laws, 923b. 

40 . Republic, 434a-c. (Cp. also text to note 6 and note 23 to this chapter, and notes 27 (3) and 
31 to chapter 4.) 

41 . Republic, 466b/c. Cp. also ih^Laws, 715b/c, and many other passages against the anti- 
hoHstic misuse of class prerogatives. See also note 28 to this chapter, and note 25 (4) to 
chapter 7. 

42 . The problem here alluded to is that of the 'paradox of freedom'; cp. note 4 to chapter 7. — 
For the problem of state control in education, see note 13 to chapter 7. 

43 . Cp. Aristotle, Politics, III, 9, 6 ff. (1280a). Cp. Burke, French Revolution (edn 1815; vol. V, 
184; the passage is aptly quoted by Jowett in his notes to the passage of Aristotle's; see his 
edition of Aristotle's Politics, vol. II, 126). 

The quotation from Aristotle later in the paragraph is op. cit.. Ill, 9, 8, (1280b). 
Field, for instance, proffers a similar criticism (in his Plato and His Contemporaries, 117): 
'There is no question of the city and its laws exercising any educative effect on the moral 
character of its citizens.' However, Green has clearly shown (in his Lectures on Political 
Obligation) that it is impossible for the state to enforce morality by law. He would certainly 
have agreed with the formula: 'We want to moralize politics, and not to politicize morals.' 
(See end of this paragraph in the text.) Green's view is foreshadowed by Spinoza {Tract. 
Theol. Pol, chapter 20): 'He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to 
encourage vice than to smother it.' 

44 . I consider the analogy between civil peace and international peace, and between ordinary 
crime and international crime, as fundamental for any attempt to get international crime 
under control. For this analogy and its limitations as well as for the poverty of the historicist 
method in such problems, cp. note 7 to chapter 9. 

* Among those who consider rational methods for the establishment of international peace as a 
Utopian dream, H. J. Morgenthau may be mentioned (cp. his book. Scientific Man versus 



Power Politics, English edition, 1947). Morgenthau's position can be summed up as that of a 
disappointed historicist. He realizes that historical predictions are impossible; but since he 
assumes (with, for example, the Marxists) that the field of applicability of reason (or of the 
scientific method) is limited to the field of predictability, he concludes from the 
unpredictability of historical events that reason is inapplicable to the field of international 
affairs. 

The conclusion does not follow, because scientific prediction and prediction in the sense of 
historical prophecy are not the same. (None of the natural sciences, with practically the sole 
exception of the theory of the solar system, attempts anything resembling historical 
prophecy.) The task of the social sciences is not to predict 'trends' or 'tendencies' of 
development, nor is this the task of the natural sciences. 'The best the so-called "social laws" 
can do is exactly the best the so-called "natural laws" can do, namely, to indicate certain 
trends . . . Which conditions will actually occur and help one particular trend to materialize, 
neither the 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 conditions a 
certain trend will materialize', writes Morgenthau (pp. 120 ff; italics mine). But the natural 
sciences do not attempt the prediction of trends, and only historicists believe that they, and 
the social sciences, have such aims. Accordingly, the realization that these aims are not 
realizable will disappoint only the historicist. 'Many ... political scientists, however, claim 
that they can . . . actually . . . predict social events with a high degree of certainty. In fact, they 
... are the victims of ... delusions', writes Morgenthau. I certainly agree; but this merely 
shows that historicism is to be repudiated. To assume, however, that the repudiation of 
historicism means the repudiation of rationahsm in politics reveals a fundamentally 
historicist prejudice — the prejudice, namely, that historical prophecy is the basis of any 
rational politics. (I have mentioned this view as characteristic of historicism in the beginning 
of chapter 1 .) 

Morgenthau ridicules all attempts to bring power under the control of reason, and to 
suppress war, as springing from a rationalism and scientism which is inapplicable to society 
by its very essence. But clearly, he proves too much. Civil peace has been established in 
many societies, in spite of that essential lust for power which, according to Morgenthau's 



theory, should prevent it. He admits the fact, of course, but does not see that it destroys the 
theoretical basis of his romantic contentions.* 

45 . The quotation is from Aristotle's Politics, III, 9, 8, (1280). 

(1) 1 say in the text 'furthermore' because I believe that the passages alluded to in the text, 
i.Q. Politics, III, 9, 6, and III, 9, 12, are likely to represent Lycophron's views also. My 
reasons for believing this are the following. From III, 9, 6, to III, 9, 12, Aristotle is engaged 
in a criticism of the doctrine I have called protectionism. In III, 9, 8, quoted in the text, he 
directly attributes to Lycophron a concise and perfectly clear formulation of this doctrine. 
From Aristotle's other references to Lycophron (see (2) in this note), it is probable that 
Lycophron's age was such that he must have been, if not the first, at least one of the first to 
formulate protectionism. Thus it seems reasonable to assume (although it is anything but 
certain) that the whole attack upon protectionism, i.e. Ill, 9, 6, to III, 9, 12, is directed 
against Lycophron, and that the various but equivalent formulations of protectionism are all 
his. (It may also be mentioned that Plato describes protectionism as a 'common view' in 
Rep., 358c.) 

Aristotle's objections are all intended to show that the protectionist theory is unable to 
account for the local as well as the internal unity of the state. It overlooks, he holds (III, 9, 
6), the fact that the state exists for the sake of the good life in which neither slaves nor beasts 
can have a share (i.e. for the good life of the virtuous landed proprietor, for everybody who 
earns money is by his 'banausic' occupation prevented from citizenship). It also overlooks 
the tribal unity of the 'true' state which is (III, 9, 12) 'a community of well-being in families, 
and an aggregation of families, for the sake of a complete and self-sufficient life ... 
established among men who live in the same place, and who intermarry'. 

(2) For Lycophron's equalitarianism, see note 13 to chapter 5. — Jowett (in Aristotle's 
Politics, II, 126) describes Lycophron as 'an obscure rhetorician'; but Aristotle must have 
thought otherwise, since in his extant writings he mentions Lycophron at least six times. (In 
Pol., Rhet., Fragm., Metaph., Phys., Soph. El.) 

It is unlikely that Lycophron was much younger than Alcidamas, his colleague in Gorgias' 
school, since his equalitarianism would hardly have attracted so much attention if it had 
become known after Alcidamas had succeeded Gorgias as the head of the school. 



Lycophron's epistemological interests (mentioned by Aristotle in Metaphysics, 1045b9, and 
Physics, 185b27) are also a case in point, since they make it probable that he was a pupil of 
Gorgias' earlier period, i.e. before Gorgias confined himself practically exclusively to 
rhetoric. Of course, any opinion on Lycophron must be highly speculative, owing to the 
scanty information we have. 

46 . Barker, Greek Political Theory, I, p. 160. For Hume's criticism of the historical version of 
the contract theory, see note 43 to chapter 4. Concerning Barker's further contention (p. 
161) that Plato's justice, as opposed to that of the contract theory, is not 'something 
external', but rather, internal to the soul, I may remind the reader of Plato's frequent 
recommendations of most severe sanctions by which justice may be achieved; he always 
recommends the use of 'persuasion and force' (cp. notes 5, 10 and 18 to chapter 8). On the 
other hand, some modem democratic states have shown that it is possible to be liberal and 
lenient without increasing criminality. 

With my remark that Barker sees in Lycophron (as I do) the originator of the contract theory, 
cp. Barker, op. cit., p. 63: 'Protagoras did not anticipate the Sophist Lycophron in founding 
the doctrine of Contract.' (Cp. with this the text to note 27 to chapter 5.) 

47. Cp. Gorgias, 483b, f. 

48. Cp. Gorgias, 488e-489b; see also 527b. 

From the way in which Socrates replies here to Callicles, it seems possible that the historical 
Socrates (cp. note 56 to chapter 10) may have countered the arguments in support of a 
biological naturalism of Pindar's type by arguing like this: If it is natural that the stronger 
should rule, then it is also natural that equality should rule, since the multitude which shows 
its strength by the fact that it rules demands equality. In other words, he may have shown the 
empty, ambiguous character of the naturalistic demand. And his success might have inspired 
Plato to proffer his own version of naturalism. 

I do not wish to assert that Socrates' later remark (508a) on 'geometrical equality' must 
necessarily be interpreted as anti-equalitarian, i.e. why it must mean the same as the 
'proportionate equity' of the Laws, 744b, ff., and 757a-e (cp. notes 9 and 20 (1) to this 
chapter). This is what Adam suggests in his second note to Republic, 558cl5. But perhaps 



there is something in his suggestion; for the 'geometrical' equahty of the Gorgias, 508a, 
seems to allude to Pythagorean problems (cp. note 56 (6) to chapter 10; see also the remarks 
in that note on the Cratylus) and may well be an allusion to 'geometrical proportions'. 

49. Republic, 358e. Glaucon disclaims the authorship in 358c. In reading this passage, the 
reader's attention is easily distracted by the issue 'nature versus convention', which plays a 
major role in this passage as well as in Callicles' speech in the Gorgias. However, Plato's 
major concern in the Republic is not to defeat conventionalism, but to denounce the rational 
protectionist approach as selfish. (That the conventionalist contract theory was not Plato's 
main enemy emerges from notes 27-28 to chapter 5, and text.) 

50. If we compare Plato's presentation of protectionism in the Republic with that in the 
Gorgias, then we fmd that it is indeed the same theory, although in the Republic much less 
emphasis is laid on equality. But even equality is mentioned, although only in passing, viz., 
in Republic, 359c: 'Nature by conventional law, is twisted round and compelled by force 
to honour equality.' This remark increases the similarity with Callicles' speech. (See 
Gorgias, esp. 483c/d.) But as opposed to the Gorgias, Plato drops equality at once (or 
rather, he does not even take the issue up) and never returns to it; which makes it only the 
more obvious that he was at pains to avoid the problem. Instead, Plato revels in the 
description of the cynical egoism which he presents as the only source from which 
protectionism springs. (For Plato's silence on equalitarianism, cp. especially note 14 to this 
chapter, and text.) A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work (1926), p. 268, contends that 
while Callicles starts from 'nature', Glaucon starts from 'convention'. 

51 . Cp. Republic, 359a; my further allusions in the text are to 359b, 360d, ff.; see also 358c. 
For the 'rubbing in', cp. 359a-362c, and the elaboration down to 367e. Plato's description 
of the nihilistic tendencies of protectionism fills altogether nine pages in the Everyman 
edition of the Republic; an indication of the significance Plato attached to it. (There is a 
parallel passage in the Laws, 890a, f ) 

52 . When Glaucon has finished his presentation, Adeimantus takes his place (with a very 
interesting and indeed most pertinent challenge to Socrates to criticize utilitarianism), yet not 
until Socrates has stated that he thinks Glaucon 's presentation an excellent one (362d). 



Adeimantus' speech is an amendment of Glaucon's, and it reiterates the claim that what I 
call protectionism derives from Thrasymachus' nihilism (see especially 367a, ff). After 
Adeimantus, Socrates himself speaks, full of admiration for Glaucon as well as Adeimantus, 
because their belief in justice is unshaken in spite of the fact that they presented the case for 
injustice so excellently, i.e. the theory that it is good to inflict injustice as long as one can 
'get away with it'. By emphasizing the excellence of the arguments proffered by Glaucon 
and Adeimantus, 'Socrates' (i.e. Plato) implies that these arguments are a fair presentation of 
the views discussed; and he ultimately states his own theory, not in order to show that 
Glaucon's representation needs emendation, but, as he emphasizes, in order to show that, 
contrary to the opinions of the protectionists, justice is good, and injustice evil. (It should not 
be forgotten — cp. note 49 to this chapter — that Plato's attack is not directed against the 
contract theory as such but solely against protectionism; for the contract theory is soon 
{Rep., 369b-c; cp. text to note 29 to chapter 5) adopted by Plato himself, at least partially; 
including the theory that people 'gather into settlements' because 'every one expects in this 
way to further his own interests'.) 

It must also be mentioned that the passage culminates with the impressive remark of 
'Socrates' quoted in the text to note 37 to this chapter. This shows that Plato combats 
protectionism only by presenting it as an immoral and indeed unholy form of egoism. 
Finally, in forming our judgement on Plato's procedure, we must not forget that Plato likes 
to argue against rhetoric and sophistry; and indeed, that he is the man who by his attacks on 
the 'Sophists' created the bad associations connected with that word. I believe that we 
therefore have every reason to censor him when he himself makes use of rhetoric and 
sophistry in place of argument. (Cp. also note 10 to chapter 8.) 

53 . We may take Adam and Barker as representative of the Platonists mentioned here. Adam 
says (note to 358e, ff.) of Glaucon that he resuscitates Thrasymachus' theory, and he says 
(note to 373a, ff.) of Thrasymachus that his is 'the same theory which is afterwards (in 358e, 
ff.) represented by Glaucon'. Barker says {op. cit., 159) of the theory which I call 
protectionism and which he calls 'pragmatism', that it is 'in the same spirit as 
Thrasymachus'. 



54 . That the great sceptic Carneades beheved in Plato's presentation can be seen from Cicero 
{De Republica, III, 8; 13; 23), where Glaucon's version is presented, practically without 
alteration, as the theory adopted by Carneades. (See also text to notes 65 and 66 and note 56 
to chapter 10.) 

In this connection I may express my opinion, that one can find a great deal of comfort in the 
fact that anti-humanitarians have always found it necessary to appeal to our humanitarian 
sentiments; and also in the fact that they have frequently succeeded in persuading us of their 
sincerity. It shows that they are well aware that these sentiments are deeply rooted in most of 
us, and that the despised 'many' are too good, too candid, and too guileless, rather than too 
bad; while they are even ready to be told by their often unscrupulous 'betters' that they are 
unworthy and materialistically minded egoists who only want to 'fill their bellies like the 
beasts'. 



Notes to Chapter Seven 



The motto to this chapter is from the Laws, 690b. (Cp. note 28 to chapter 
5.) 

L Cp. text to notes 2/3 to chapter 6. 

2. Similar ideas have been expressed by J. S. Mill; thus he writes in his Logic (1st edn, p. 557 
f.): 'Although the actions of rulers are by no means wholly determined by their selfish 
interests, it is as security against those selfish interests that constitutional checks are 
required.' Similarly he writes in The Subjection of Women (p. 251 of the Everyman edition; 
italics mine): 'Who doubts that there may be great goodness, and great happiness and great 
affection, under the absolute government of a good man? Meanwhile laws and institutions 
require to be adapted, not to good men, but to bad Much as I agree with the sentence in 
italics, I feel that the admission contained in the first part of the sentence is not really called 
for. (Cp. especially note 25 (3) to this chapter.) A similar admission may be found in an 
excellent passage of his Representative Government (1861; see especially p. 49) where Mill 
combats the Platonic ideal of the philosopher king because, especially if his rule should be a 
benevolent one, it will involve the 'abdication' of the ordinary citizen's will, and ability, to 
judge a policy. 

It may be remarked that this admission of J. S. Mill's was part of an attempt to resolve the 
conflict between James Mill's Essay on Government and 'Macaulay's famous attack' on it 
(as J. S. Mill calls it; cp. his Autobiography, chapter V, One Stage Onward; 1st edition, 1873, 
pp. 157-61; Macaulay's criticisms were first published in tht Edinburgh Review, March 
1829, June 1829, and October 1829). This conflict played a great role in J. S. Mill's 
development; his attempt to resolve it determined, indeed, the ultimate aim and character of 
his Logic ('the principal chapters of what I afterwards pubHshed on the Logic of the Moral 
Sciences') as we hear from his Autobiography. 

The resolution of the conflict between his father and Macaulay which J. S. Mill proposes is 
this. He says that his father was right in believing that politics was a deductive science, but 
wrong in believing that 'the type of deduction (was) that of ... pure geometry', while 



Macaulay was right in believing that it was more experimental than this, but wrong in 
believing that it was like 'the purely experimental method of chemistry'. The true solution 
according to J. S. Mill {Autobiography, pp. 159 ff.) is this: the appropriate method of politics 
is the deductive one of dynamics — a method which, he believes, is characterized by the 
summation of effects as exemplified in the 'principle of the Composition of Forces'. (That 
this idea of J. S. Mill survived at any rate down to 1937 is shown in my The Poverty oj 
Historicism, p. 63.) 

I do not think that there is very much in this analysis (which is based, apart from other 
things, upon a misinterpretation of dynamics and chemistry). Yet so much would seem to be 
defensible. 

James Mill, like many before and after him, tried to 'deduce the science of government from 
the principles of human nature' as Macaulay said (towards the end of his first paper), and 
Macaulay was right, I think, to describe this attempt as 'utterly impossible'. Also, 
Macaulay's method could perhaps be described as more empirical, in so far as he made full 
use of historical facts for the purpose of refuting J. Mill's dogmatic theories. But the method 
which he practised has nothing to do with that of chemistry or with that which J. S. Mill 
believed to be the method of chemistry (or with the Baconian inductive method which, 
irritated by J. Mill's syllogisms, Macaulay praised). It was simply the method of rejecting 
invalid logical demonstrations in a field in which nothing of interest can be logically 
demonstrated, and of discussing theories and possible situations, in the light of alternative 
theories and of alternative possibilities, and of factual historical evidence. One of the main 
points at issue was that J. Mill believed that he had demonstrated the necessity for monarchy 
and aristocracy to produce a rule of terror — a point which was easily refuted by examples. J. 
S. Mill's two passages quoted at the beginning of this note show the influence of this 
refutation. 

Macaulay always emphasized that he only wanted to reject Mill's proofs, and not to 
pronounce on the truth or falsity of his alleged conclusions. This alone should have made it 
clear that he did not attempt to practise the inductive method which he praised. 

3. Cp. for instance E. Meyer's remark {Gesch. d. Altertums, V, p. 4) that 'power is, in its very 
essence, indivisible'. 



4. Cp. Republic, 562b-565e. In the text, I am alluding especially to 562c: 'Does not the 
excess' (of liberty) 'bring men to such a state that they badly want a tyranny?' Cp. 
furthermore 563d/e: 'And in the end, as you know well enough, they just do not take any 
notice of the laws, whether written or unwritten, since they want to have no despot of any 
kind over them. This then is the origin out of which tyranny springs.' (For the beginning of 
this passage, see note 19 to chapter 4.) 

Other remarks of Plato's on the paradoxes of freedom and of democracy are: Republic, 
564a: 'Then too much freedom is liable to change into nothing else but too much slavery, in 
the individual as well as in the state ... Hence it is reasonable to assume that tyranny is 
enthroned by no other form of government than by democracy. Out of what I believe is the 
greatest possible excess of freedom springs what is the hardest and most savage form of 
slavery.' See also Republic, 565c/d: 'And are not the common people in the habit of making 
one man their champion or party leader, and of exalting his position and making him 
great?' — 'This is their habit.' — 'Then it seems clear that whenever a tyranny grows up, this 
democratic party-leadership is the origin from which it springs.' 

The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of 
any restraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to 
enslave the meek. This idea is, in a slightly different form, and with a very different 
tendency, clearly expressed by Plato. 

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the 
disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are 
intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the 
intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, 
I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant 
philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check 
by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the 
right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not 
prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all 
argument; they may forbid their followers to Hsten to rational argument, because it is 
deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should 



therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should 
claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should 
consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should 
consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as 
criminal. 

Another of the less well-known paradoxes is the paradox of democracy, or more precisely, 
of majority-rule; i.e. the possibility that the majority may decide that a tyrant should rule. 
That Plato's criticism of democracy can be interpreted in the way sketched here, and that the 
principle of majority-rule may lead to self-contradictions, was first suggested, as far as I 
know, by Leonard Nelson (cp. note 25 (2) to this chapter). I do not think, however, that 
Nelson, who, in spite of his passionate humanitarianism and his ardent fight for freedom, 
adopted much of Plato's political theory, and especially Plato's principle of leadership, was 
aware of the fact that analogous arguments can be raised against all the different particular 
forms of the theory of sovereignty. 

All these paradoxes can easily be avoided if we frame our political demands in the way 
suggested in section ii of this chapter, or perhaps in some such manner as this. We demand a 
government that rules according to the principles of equalitarianism and protectionism; that 
tolerates all who are prepared to reciprocate, i.e. who are tolerant; that is controlled by, and 
accountable to, the public. And we may add that some form of majority vote, together with 
institutions for keeping the public well informed, is the best, though not infallible, means of 
controlling such a government. (No infallible means exist.) Cp. also chapter 6, the last four 
paragraphs in the text prior to note 42; text to note 20 to chapter 17; note 7 (4) to chapter 24; 
and note 6 to the present chapter. 

5. Further remarks on this point will be found in chapter 19, below. 

6. Cp. passage (7) in note 4 to chapter 2. 

The following remarks on the paradoxes of freedom and of sovereignty may possibly appear 
to carry the argument too far; since, however, the arguments discussed in this place are of a 
somewhat formal character, it may be just as well to make them more watertight, even if it 
involves something approaching hair-splitting. Moreover, my experience in debates of this 



kind leads me to expect that the defenders of the leader-principle, i.e. of the sovereignty of 
the best or the wisest, may actually offer the following counter-argument: (a) if 'the wisest' 
should decide that the majority should rule, then he was not really wise. As a further 
consideration they may support this by the assertion (b) that a wise man would never 
establish a principle which might lead to contradictions, like that of majority-rule. My reply 
to (b) would be that we need only to alter this decision of the 'wise' man in such a way that 
it becomes free from contradictions. (For instance, he could decide in favour of a 
government bound to rule according to the principle of equalitarianism and protectionism, 
and controlled by majority vote. This decision of the wise man would give up the 
sovereignty-principle; and since it would thereby become free from contradictions, it may be 
made by a 'wise' man. But of course, this would not free the principle that the wisest should 
rule from its contradictions. The other argument, namely (a), is a different matter. It comes 
dangerously close to defining the 'wisdom' or 'goodness' of a politician in such a way that 
he is called 'wise' or 'good' only if he is determined not to give up his power. And indeed, 
the only sovereignty-theory which is free from contradictions would be the theory which 
demands that only a man who is absolutely determined to cling to his power should rule. 
Those who believe in the leader-principle should frankly face this logical consequence of 
their creed. If freed from contradictions it implies, not the rule of the best or wisest, but the 
rule of the strong man, of the man of power. (Cp. also note 7 to chapter 24.) 

7. * Cp. my lecture 'Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition' (first published in The 
Rationalist Yearbook, 1949; now in my Conjectures and Refutations), where I try to show 
that traditions play a kind of intermediate and intermediary role between persons (and 
personal decisions) and institutions * 

8. For Socrates' behaviour under the Thirty, see Apology, 32c. The Thirty tried to implicate 
Socrates in their crimes, but he resisted. This would have meant death to him if the rule of 
the Thirty had continued a little longer. Cp. also notes 53 and 56 to chapter 10. 

For the contention, later in the paragraph, that wisdom means knowing the limitations of 
one's knowledge, see the Charmides, 167 a, 170a, where the meaning of 'know thyself is 
explained in this way; the Apology (cp. especially 23a-b) exhibits a similar tendency (of 



which there is still an echo in the Timaeus, 72a). For the important modification in the 
interpretation of 'know thyself which takes place in the Philebus, see note 26 to the present 
chapter. (Cp. also note 15 to chapter 8.) 

9. Cp. Plato's Phaedo, 96-99. The Phaedo is, I believe, still partly Socratic, but very largely 
Platonic. The story of his philosophical development told by the Socrates of the Phaedo has 
given rise to much discussion. It is, I believe, an authentic autobiography neither of Socrates 
nor of Plato. I suggest that it is simply P/ato 5 interpretation of Socrates' development. 
Socrates' attitude towards science (an attitude which combined the keenest interest in 
rational argument with a kind of modest agnosticism) was incomprehensible to Plato. He 
tried to explain it by referring to the backwardness of Athenian science in Socrates' day, as 
opposed to Pythagoreanism. Plato thus presents this agnostic attitude in such a way that it is 
no longer justified in the light of his newly acquired Pythagoreanism. (And he tries to show 
how much the new metaphysical theories of the soul would have appealed to Socrates' 
burning interest in the individual; cp. notes 44 and 56 to chapter 10, and note 58 to chapter 
8.) 

10 . It is the version that involves the square root of two, and the problem of irrationality; i.e. it 
is the very problem that precipitated the dissolution of Pythagoreanism. By refuting the 
Pythagorean arithmetization of geometry, it gave rise to the specific deductive-geometrical 
methods which we know from Euclid. (Cp. note 9 (2) to chapter 6.) The use of this problem 
in the Meno might be connected with the fact that there is a tendency in some parts of this 
dialogue to 'show off the author's (hardly Socrates') acquaintance with the 'latest' 
philosophical developments and methods. 

11 . Gorgias, 52 Id, f. 

12 . Cp. Grossman, Plato To-Day, 118. 'Faced by these three cardinal errors of Athenian 
Democracy ...' — How truly Crossman understands Socrates may be seen from op. cit., 93: 
'All that is good in our Western culture has sprung from this spirit, whether it is found in 
scientists, or priests, or politicians, or quite ordinary men and women who have refused to 
prefer political falsehoods to simple truth ... in the end, their example is the only force 
which can break the dictatorship of force and greed . . . Socrates showed that philosophy is 



nothing else than conscientious objection to prejudice and unreason.' 

13 . Cp. Grossman, op. cit., 117 f. (first group of italics mine). It seems that Grossman has for 
the moment forgotten that, in Plato's state, education is a class monopoly. It is true that in 
the Republic the possession of money is not a key to higher education. But this is quite 
unimportant. The important point is that only the members of the ruling class are educated. 
(Gp. note 33 to chapter 4.) Besides, Plato was, at least in his later life, anything but an 
opponent of plutocracy, which he much preferred to a classless or equalitarian society: cp. 
the passage from the Laws, 744b, ff., quoted in note 20 (1) to chapter 6. For the problem of 
state control in education, cp. also note 42 to that chapter, and notes 39-41, chapter 4. 

14 . Burnet takes (Greek Philosophy , I, 178) the Republic to be purely Socratic (or even pre- 
Socratic — a view which may be nearer to the truth; cp. especially A. D. Winspear, The 
Genesis of Plato's Thought, 1940). But he does not even seriously attempt to reconcile this 
opinion with an important statement which he quotes from Plato's Seventh Letter (326a, cp. 
Greek Philosophy , I, 218) which he believes to be authentic. Gp. note 56 (5, d) to chapter 
10. 

15 . Laws, 942c, quoted more fully in text to note 33, chapter 6. 

16 . Republic, 540c. 

17 . Gp. the quotations from the Republic, 473c-e, quoted in text to note 44, chapter 8. 

18 . Republic, 498b/c. Gp. the Laws, 634d/e, in which Plato praises the Dorian law that 'forbids 
any young man to question which of the laws are right and which are wrong, and makes 
them all unanimous in proclaiming that the laws are all good'. Only an old man may criticize 
a law, adds the old writer; and even he may do so only when no young man can hear him. 
See also text to note 21 to this chapter, and notes 17, 23 and 40 to chapter 4. 

19. Republic, 497d. 

20. Op. cit., 537c. The next quotations are from 537d-e, and 539d. The 'continuation of this 
passage' is 540b-c. Another most interesting remark is 536c-d, where Plato says that the 
persons selected (in the previous passage) for dialectical studies are decidedly too old for 
learning new subjects. 



21 . * Cp. H. Chemiss, The Riddle of the Early Academy, p. 79; and the Parmenides, 135c-d.* 
Grote, the great democrat, strongly comments on this point (i.e. on the 'brighter' passages of 
the Republic, 537c-540): 'The dictum forbidding dialectic debate with youth ... is decidedly 
anti-Socratic ... It belongs indeed to the case of Meletus and Anytus, in their indictment 
against Socrates ... It is identical with their charge against him, of corrupting the youth . . . 
And when we fmd him (= Plato) forbidding all such discourse at an earher age than thirty 
years — ^we remark as a singular coincidence that this is the exact prohibition which Critias 
and Charicles actually imposed upon Socrates himself, during the short-lived dominion of 
the Thirty Oligarchs at Athens.' (Grote, Plato, and the Other Companions of Socrates, edn 
1875, vol. 111,239.) 

22 . The idea, contested in the text, that those who are good in obeying will also be good in 
commanding is Platonic. Cp. Laws, 762e. 

Toynbee has admirably shown how successfully a Platonic system of educating rulers may 
work — in an arrested society; cp. ^4 Study of History, III, especially 33 ff.; cp. notes 32 (3) 
and 45 (2) to chapter 4. 

23 . Some may perhaps ask how an individualist can demand devotion to any cause, and 
especially to such an abstract cause as scientific inquiry. But such a question would only 
reveal the old mistake (discussed in the foregoing chapter), the identification of 
individualism and egoism. An individualist can be unselfish, and he can devote himself not 
only to the help of individuals, but also to the development of the institutional means for 
helping other people. (Apart from that, I do not think that devotion should be demanded, but 
only that it should be encouraged.) I believe that devotion to certain institutions, for 
instance, to those of a democratic state, and even to certain traditions, may fall well within 
the realm of individualism, provided that the humanitarian aims of these institutions are not 
lost sight of. Individualism must not be identified with an anti-institutional personalism. This 
is a mistake frequently made by individualists. They are right in their hostility to 
collectivism, but they mistake institutions for collectives (which claim to be aims in 
themselves), and therefore become anti-institutional personalists; which leads them 
dangerously close to the leader-principle. (I believe that this partly explains Dickens' hostile 



attitude towards Parliament.) For my terminology ('individualism' and 'collectivism') see 
text to notes 26-29 to chapter 6. 

24 . Cp. Samuel Butler, Erewhon (1872), p. 135 of the Everyman's edition. 

25 . Cp. for these events: Meyer, Gesch. d. Altertums, V, pp. 522-525, and 488f ; see also note 
69 to chapter 10. The Academy was notorious for breeding tyrants. Among Plato's pupils 
were Chairon, later the tyrant of Pellene; Eurastus and Coriscus, the tyrants of Skepsis (near 
Atarneus); and Hermias, later tyrant of Atarneus and Assos. (Cp. Athen., XI, 508, and 
Strabo, XIII, 610.) Hermias was, according to some sources, a direct pupil of Plato's; 
according to the so-called 'Sixth Platonic Letter', whose authenticity is questionable, he was 
perhaps only an admirer of Plato's, ready to accept his advice. Hermias became a patron of 
Aristotle, and of the third head of the Academy, Plato's pupil Xenocrates. 

For Perdiccas III, and his relations to Plato's pupil Euphacus, see Athen., XI, 508 ff., where 
Callippus is also referred to as Plato's pupil. 

(1) Plato's lack of success as an educator is not very surprising if we look at the principles of 
education and selection developed in the First Book of the Laws (from 637d and especially 
643a: 'Let me define the nature and meaning of education' to the end of 650b). For in this 
long passage he shows that there is one great instrument of educating, or rather, of selecting 
the man one can trust. It is wine, drunkenness, which will loose his tongue, and give you an 
idea of what he is really like. 'What is more fitting than to make use of wine, first of all to 
test the character of a man, and secondly, to train him? What is cheaper, and less 
objectionable?' (649d/e). So far, I have not seen the method of drinking discussed by any of 
the educationists who glorify Plato. This is strange, for the method is still widely in use, even 
though it is perhaps no longer so cheap, especially in the universities. 

(2) In fairness to the leader-principle, it must be admitted, however, that others have been 
more fortunate than Plato in their selection. Leonard Nelson (cp. note 4 to this chapter), for 
instance, who believed in this principle, seems to have had a unique power both of attracting 
and of selecting a number of men and women who have remained true to their cause, in the 
most trying and tempting circumstances. But theirs was a better cause than Plato's; it was the 
humanitarian idea of freedom and equalitarian justice. *(Some of Nelson's essays have just 



been published in an English translation, by Yale University Press, under the title Socratic 
Method and Critical Philosophy, 1949. The very interesting introductory essay is by Julius 
Kraft.)* 

(3) There remains this fundamental weakness in the theory of the benevolent dictator, a 
theory still flourishing even among some democrats. I have in mind the theory of the leading 
personality whose intentions are for the best for his people and who can be trusted. Even if 
that theory were in order; even if we believe that a man can continue, without being 
controlled or checked, in such an attitude: how can we assume that he will detect a successor 
of the same rare excellence? (Cp. also notes 3 and 4 to chapter 9, and note 69 to chapter 10.) 

(4) Concerning the problem of power, mentioned in the text, it is interesting to compare the 
Gorgias (525e, f) with the Republic (615d, f). The two passages are closely parallel. But 
the Gorgias insists that the greatest criminals are always 'men who come from the class 
which possesses power'; private persons may be bad, it is said, but not incurable. In the 
Republic, this clear warning against the corrupting influence of power is omitted. Most of the 
greatest sinners are still tyrants; but, it is said, 'there are also some private people among 
them'. (In the Republic, Plato relies on self-interest which, he trusts, will prevent the 
guardians from misusing their power; cp. Rep., 466b/c, quoted in text to note 41, chapter 6. 
It is not quite clear why self-interest should have such a beneficial effect on guardians, but 
not on tyrants.) 

26 . * In the early (Socratic) dialogues (e.g. in the Apology and the Charmides; cp. note 8 to the 
present chapter, note 15 to chapter 8 and note 56 (5) to chapter 10), the saying 'know 
thyself is interpreted as 'know how little you know'. The late (Platonic) dialogue Philebus, 
however, introduces a subtle but very important change. At first (48c/d, f ), the saying is 
here interpreted, by implication, in the same way; for the many who do not know themselves 
are said to be 'claiming, ... and lying, that they are wise'. But this interpretation is now 
developed as follows. Plato divides men into two classes, the weak and the powerful. The 
ignorance and folly of the weak man is described as laughable, while 'the ignorance of the 
strong' is 'appropriately called "evil" and "hateful" ...'. But this implies the Platonic 
doctrine that he who wields power ought to be wise rather than ignorant (or that only he 
who is wise ought to wield power); in opposition to the original Socratic doctrine that 



(everybody, and especially) he who wields power ought to be aware of his ignorance. 
(There is, of course, no suggestion in the Philebus that 'wisdom' in its turn ought to be 
interpreted as 'awareness of one's limitations'; on the contrary, wisdom involves here an 
expert knowledge of Pythagorean teaching, and of the Platonic Theory of Forms, as 
developed in the Sophist.)* 



Notes to Chapter Eight 



With the motto for this chapter, taken from Republic 540c-d, cp. note 37 
to this chapter, and note 12 to chapter 9, where the passage is quoted 
more fully. 

1. Republic, 475e; cp. for instance also 485c, f., 501c. 

2. Op. cit, 389b, f. 

3. Op. cit., 389c/d; cp. also Laws, 730b, ff. 

4. With this and the three following quotations, cp. Republic, 407e and 406c. See also 
Statesman, 293a, f , 295b-296e, etc. 

5. Cp. Laws, 720c. It is interesting to note that the passage (718c-722b) serves to introduce the 
idea that the statesman should use persuasion, together with force (722b); and since by 
'persuasion' of the masses, Plato means largely lying propaganda — cp. notes 9 and 10 to 
this chapter and the quotation from Republic , 414b/c, quoted there in the text — it turns out 
that Plato's thought in our passage from the Laws, in spite of this novel gentleness, is still 
pervaded by the old associations — the doctor-politician administering lies. Later on {Laws, 
857c/d), Plato complains about an opposite type of doctor: one who talks too much 
philosophy to his patient, instead of concentrating on the cure. It seems likely enough that 
Plato reports here some of his experiences when he fell ill while writing the Laws. 

6. Republic, 389b. — With the following short quotations cp. Republic, 459c. 

7. Cp. Kant, On Eternal Peace, Appendix. {Werke, ed. Cassirer, 1914, vol. VI, 457.) Cp. M. 
Campbell Smith's translation (1903), pp. 162 ff. 

8. Cp. Crossman, P/(3to To-Day (1937), 130; cp. also the immediately preceding pages. It 
seems that Crossman still believes that lying propaganda was intended only for the 
consumption of the ruled, and that Plato intended to educate the rulers to a full use of their 
critical faculties; for I fmd now (in The Listener, vol. 27, p. 750) that he writes: 'Plato 
believed in free speech, free discussion only for the select few.' But the fact is that he did 



not believe in it at all. Both in the Republic and in the Laws (cp. the passages quoted in notes 
18-21 to chapter 7, and text), he expresses his fear lest anybody who is not yet on the verge 
of old age should think or speak freely, and thus endanger the rigidity of the arrested 
doctrine, and therefore the petrifaction of the arrested society. See also the next two notes. 

9. Republic, 414b/c. In 414d, Plato reaffirms his hope of persuading 'the rulers themselves and 
the military class, and then the rest of the city', of the truth of his lie. Later he seems to have 
regretted his frankness; for in the Statesman, 269b, ff. (see especially 271b; cp. also note 6 
(4) to chapter 3), he speaks as if he believed in the truth of the same Myth of the Earthbom 
which, in the Republic, he had been reluctant (see note 11 to this chapter) to introduce even 
as a lordly 'lie'. 

* What I translate as a 'lordly lie' is usually translated 'noble lie' or 'noble falsehood' or even 
'spirited fiction'. 

The literal translation of the word 'gennaios' which I now translate by 'lordly' is 'high born' 
or 'of noble descent'. Thus 'lordly lie' is at least as literal as 'noble lie', but it avoids the 
associations which the term 'noble lie' might suggest, and which are in no way warranted by 
the situation, viz. a lie by which a man nobly takes something upon himself which 
endangers him — such as Tom Sawyer's lie by which he takes Becky's guilt upon himself 
and which Judge Thatcher (in chapter XXXV) describes as 'a noble, a generous, a 
magnanimous lie'. There is no reason whatever why the 'lordly lie' should be considered in 
this light; thus the translation 'noble lie' is just one of the typical attempts at idealizing Plato. 
— Cornford translates 'a ... bold flight of invention', and argues in a footnote against the 
translation 'noble lie'; he gives passages where 'gennaios' means 'on a generous scale'; and 
indeed, 'big lie' or 'grand lie' would be a perfectly appropriate translation. But Cornford at 
the same time argues against the use of the term 'lie'; he describes the myth as 'Plato's 
harmless allegory' and argues against the idea that Plato 'would countenance lies, for the 
most part ignoble, now called propaganda'; and in the next footnote he says: 'Note that the 
Guardians themselves are to accept this allegory, if possible. It is not "propaganda" foisted 
on the masses by the Rulers.' But all these attempts at idealization fail. Plato himself makes it 
quite clear that the lie is one for which one ought to feel ashamed; see the last quotation in 



note 11, below. (In the first edition of this book, I translated 'inspired lie', alluding to its 
'high birth', and suggested 'ingenious lie' as an alternative; this was criticized both as too 
free and as tendentious by some of my Platonic friends. But Cornford's 'bold flight of 
invention' takes 'gennaios' in precisely the same sense.) 
See also notes 10 and 18 to this chapter.* 

10 . Cp. Republic, 519e, f , quoted in the text to note 35 to chapter 5; on persuasion and force, 
see also Republic, 366d, discussed in the present note, below, and the passages referred to in 
notes 5 and 18 to this chapter. 

The Greek word ('peitho-'; its personification is an alluring goddess, an attendant of 
Aphrodite -) usually translated by persuasion can mean {a) 'persuasion by fair means' and 
{b) 'talking over by foul means', i.e. 'make-believe' (see below, sub. (D), i.e. Rep., 414c), 
and sometimes it means even 'persuasion by gifts', i.e. bribery (see below, sub. (D), i.e. 
Rep., 390e). Especially in the phrase 'persuasion and force', the term 'persuasion' is often 
{Rep. 548b) interpreted in sense {a), and the phrase is often (and often appropriately) 
translated 'by fair means or foul' (cp. Davies' and Vaughan's translation 'by fair means or 
foul', of the passage (C),Rep., 365d, quoted below). I believe, however, that Plato, when 
recommending 'persuasion and force' as instruments of political technique, uses the words 
in a more literal sense, and that he recommends the use of rhetorical propaganda together 
with violence. (Cp. Laws, 661c, 711c, 722b, 753a.) 

The following passages are significant for Plato's use of the term 'persuasion' in sense (b), 
and especially in connection with political propaganda. (A) Gorgias, 453a to 466a, 
especially 45 4h-45 5 a; Phaedrus, 260b, ft, Theaetetus, 20la; Sophist, 222c; Statesman, 
296b, ff., 304c/d; Philebus, 58a. In all these passages, persuasion (the 'art of persuasion' as 
opposed to the 'art of imparting true knowledge') is associated with rhetoric, make-believe, 
and propaganda. In the Republic, 364b, f , especially 364e-365d (cp. Laws, 909b), deserves 
attention. {B) In 364e ('they persuade', i.e. mislead into believing, 'not only individuals, but 
whole cities'), the term is used much in the same sense as in 414b/c (quoted in the text to 
note 9, this chapter), the passage of the 'lordly lie'. (Q 365d is interesting because it uses a 
term which Lindsay translates very aptly by 'cheating' as a kind of paraphrase for 
'persuading'. ('In order not to be caught ... we have the masters of persuasion at our 



disposal; ... thus hy persuasion and force, we shall escape punishment. But, it may be 
objected, one cannot cheat, or force, the gods ...') Furthermore {D) in Republic, 390e, f., the 
term 'persuasion' is used in the sense of bribery. (This must be an old use; the passage is 
supposed to be a quotation from Hesiod. It is interesting that Plato, who so often argues 
against the idea that men can 'persuade' or bribe the gods, makes some concession to it in 
the next passage, 399a/b.) Next we come to 414b/c, the passage of the 'lordly lie'; 
immediately after this passage, in 414c (cp. also the next note in this chapter), 'Socrates' 
makes the cynical remark {E): 'It would need much persuading to make anybody believe in 
this story.' Lastly, I may mention {F) Republic, Slid and 533e, where Plato speaks of 
persuasion or belief or faith (the root of the Greek word for 'persuasion' is the same as that 
of our 'faith') as a lower cognitive faculty of the soul, corresponding to the formation of 
(delusive) opinion about things in flux (cp. note 21 to chapter 3, and especially the use of 
'persuasion' in Tim., 51e), as opposed to rational knowledge of the unchanging Forms. For 
the problem of 'moral' persuasion, see also chapter 6 . especially notes 52/54 and text, and 
chapter 10, especially text to notes 56 and 65, and note 69. 

11 . Republic, 415a. The next quotation is from 415c. (See also the Cratylus, 398a.) Cp. notes 
12-14 to the present chapter and text, and notes 27 (3), 29, and 3 1 to chapter 4. 
(1) For my remark in the text, earlier in this paragraph, concerning Plato's uneasiness, see 
Republic, 414c-d, and last note, {E): 'It would need much persuading to make anybody 
believe in this story,' says Socrates. — 'You seem to be rather reluctant to tell it,' replies 
Glaucon. — 'You will understand my reluctance', says Socrates, 'when I have told 
it.' — 'Speak and don't be frightened', says Glaucon. This dialogue introduces what I call the 
first idea of the Myth (proffered by Plato in the Statesman as a true story; cp. note 9 to this 
chapter; see also Laws, 740a). As mentioned in the text, Plato suggests that it is this 'first 
idea' which is the reason for his hesitation, for Glaucon replies to this idea: 'Not without 
reason were you so long ashamed to tell your lie.' No similar rhetorical remark is made after 
Socrates has told 'the rest of the story', i.e., the Myth of Racialism. 

* (2) Concerning the autochthonous warriors, we must remember that the Athenian nobility 
claimed (as opposed to the Dorians) to be the aborigines of their country, born of the earth 



'like grasshoppers' (as Plato says in the Symposium, 191b; see also end of note 52 to the 
present chapter). It has been suggested to me by a friendly critic that Socrates' uneasiness, 
and Glaucon's comment that Socrates had reason to be ashamed, mentioned here under (1), 
is to be interpreted as an ironical allusion of Plato's to the Athenians who, in spite of their 
claim to be autochthonous, did not defend their country as they would defend a mother. But 
this ingenious suggestion does not appear to me a tenable one. Plato, with his openly 
admitted preference of Sparta, would be the last to charge the Athenians with lack of 
patriotism; and there would be no justice in such a charge, for in the Peloponnesian war, the 
Athenian democrats never gave in to Sparta (as will be shown in chapter 10), while Plato's 
own beloved uncle Critias did give in, and became the leader of a puppet government under 
the protection of the Spartans. If Plato intended to allude ironically to an inadequate defence 
of Athens, then it could be only an allusion to the Peloponnesian war, and thus a criticism of 
Critias — the last person whom Plato would criticize in this way. 

(3) Plato calls his Myth a 'Phoenician lie'. A suggestion which may explain this is due to R. 
Eisler. He points out that the Ethiopians, Greeks (the silver mines), Sudanese, and Syrians 
(Damascus) were in the Orient described, respectively, as golden, silver, bronze, and iron 
races, and that this description was utilized in Egypt for purposes of political propaganda 
(cp. also Daniel, ii. 31-45); and he suggests that the story of these four races was brought to 
Greece in Hesiod's time by the Phoenicians (as might be expected), and that Plato alludes to 
this fact* 

12 . The passage is from the Republic, 546a, ff.; cp. text to notes 36-40 to chapter 5. The 
intermixture of classes is clearly forbidden in 434c also; cp. notes 27 (3), 31 and 34 to 
chapter 4, and note 40 to chapter 6. 

The passage from \hQ Laws (930d-e) contains the principle that the child of a mixed 
marriage inherits the caste of his lesser parent. 

13 . Republic, 547a. (For the mixture theory of heredity, see also text to note 39/40 to chapter 5, 
especially 40 (2), and to notes 39-43, and 52, to the present chapter.) 

14- Op. cit, 415c. 

15 . Cp. Adam's note to Republic, 414b, ff., italics mine. The great exception is Grote {Plato, 



and the Other Companions of Socrates, London, 1875, III, 240), who sums up the spirit of 
the Republic, and its opposition to that of the Apology: 'In the ... Apology, we find Socrates 
confessing his own ignorance . . . But the Republic presents him in a new character ... He is 
himself on the throne of King Nomos: the infallible authority, temporal as well as spiritual, 
from which all public sentiment emanates, and by whom orthodoxy is determined ... He 
now expects every individual to fall into the place, and contract the opinions, prescribed by 
authority; including among these opinions deliberate ethical and political fictions, such as 
about the ... earthbom men ... Neither the Socrates of the Apology, nor his negative 
Dialectic, could be allowed to exist in the Platonic Republic' (Italics mine; see also Grote, 
op. cit., p. 188.) 

The doctrine that religion is opium for the people, although not in this particular formulation, 
turns out to be one of the tenets of Plato and the Platonists. (Cp. also note 17 and text, and 
especially note 18 to this chapter.) It is, apparently, one of the more esoteric doctrines of the 
school, i.e. it may be discussed only by sufficiently elderly members (cp. note 18 to chapter 
7) of the upper class. But those who let the cat out of the bag are prosecuted for atheism by 
the idealists. 

16 . For instance Adam, Barker, Field. 

17 . Cp. Diels, Vorsokratiker^ , Critias fragm. 25. (I have picked about eleven characteristic lines 
out of more than forty.) — It may be remarked that the passage commences with a sketch of 
the social contract (which even somewhat resembles Lycophron's equalitarianism; cp. note 
45 to chapter 6). On Critias, cp. especially note 48 to chapter 10. Since Burnet has suggested 
that the poetic and dramatic fragments known under the name of Critias should be attributed 
to the grandfather of the leader of the Thirty, it should be noted that Plato attributes to the 
latter poetic gifts in the Charmides, 157e; and in 162d, he alludes even to the fact that Critias 
was a dramatist. (Cp. also Xenophon's Memorabilia, I, iv, 18.) 

18 . Cp. the Laws, 909e. It seems that Critias' view later even became part of the Platonic school 
tradition, as indicated by the following passage from Aristotle's Metaphysics (1074b3) 
which at the same time provides another example of the use of the term 'persuasion' for 
'propaganda' (cp. notes 5 and 10 to this chapter). 'The rest ... has been added in the form of 



a myth, with a view to the persuasion of the mob, and to legal and general (political) 
expediency Cp. also Plato's attempt in the Statesman, 271a, f., to argue in favour of the 
truth of a myth in which he certainly did not believe. (See notes 9 and 15 to this chapter.) 

19. Laws, 908b. 

20. Op. cit, 909a. 

21 . For the conflict between good and evil, see op. cit., 904-906. See especially 906a/b (justice 
versus injustice; 'justice' means here, still, the collectivist justice of the Republic). 
Immediately preceding is 903c, a passage quoted above in the text to note 35 to chapter 5 
and to note 27 to chapter 6. See also note 32 to the present chapter. 

22. Op. cit., 905d-907b. 

23. The paragraph to which this note is appended indicates my adherence to an 'absolutist' 
theory of truth which is in accordance with the common idea that a statement is true ^/(and 
only if) it agrees with the facts it describes. This 'absolute' or 'correspondence theory of 
truth' (which goes back to Aristotle) was first clearly developed by A. Tarski ( Der 
Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen, Polish edn 1933, German translation 
1936), and is the basis of a theory of logic called by him Semantics (cp. note 29 to chapter 3 
and note 5 (2) to chapter 5); see also R. Carnap's Introduction to Semantics, 1942, which 
develops the theory of truth in detail. I am quoting from p. 28: 'It is especially to be noticed 
that the concept of truth in the sense just explained — we may call it the semantical concept 
of truth — is fundamentally different from concepts like "believed", "verified", "highly 
confirmed", etc' — A similar, though undeveloped view can be found in my Logik der 
Forschung (translated, 1959, as The Logic of Scientific Discovery), section 84; this was 
written before I became acquainted with Tarski's Semantics, which is the reason why my 
theory is only rudimentary. The pragmatist theory of truth (which derives from Hegelianism) 
was criticized by Bertrand Russell from the point of view of an absolutist theory of truth as 
early as 1907; and recently he has shown the connection between a relativist theory of truth 
and the creed of fascism. See Russell, Let the People Think, pp. 77, 79. 

24 . Especially Rep., 474c-502d. The following quotation is Rep., 475e. 



25 . For the seven quotations which follow, in this paragraph, see: (1) and (2), Republic, 476b; 
(3), (4), (5), op. cit., 500d-e; (6) and (7): op. cit., 501a/b; with (7), cp. also the parallel 
passage, op. cit., 484c. See, furthermore. Sophist, 253d/e; Laws, 964a-966a (esp. 965b/c). 

26 . Cp. op. cit., 501c. 

27 . Cp. especially Republic, 509a, f. — See 509b: 'The sun induces the sensible things to 
generate' (although he is not himself involved in the process of generation); similarly, 'you 
may say of the objects of rational knowledge that not only do they owe it to the Good that 
they can be known, but their reality and even their essence flows from it; although the Good 
is not itself an essence but transcends even essences in dignity and power.' (With 509b, cp. 
Aristotle, i)e Gen. et Corn, 336a 15, 31, 2ind Phys., 194b 13.) — In 510b, the Good is 
described as the absolute origin (not merely postulated or assumed), and in 511b, it is 
described as 'the first origin of everything'. 

28 . Cp. especially Republic, 508b, ff. — See 508b/c: 'What the Good has begotten in its own 
likeness' (viz. truth) 'is the link, in the intelligible world between reason and its objects' (i.e. 
the Ideas) 'in the same way as, in the visible world, that thing' (viz. light which is the 
offspring of the sun) 'which is the link between sight and its objects' (i.e. sensible things). 

29. Cp. op. cit., 505a; 534b, ff 

30. Cp. op. cit., 505d. 

31 . Philebus, 66a. 

32. Republic, 506d, ff , and 509-511. 

The definition of the Good, here quoted, as 'the class of the determinate (or finite, or limited) 
conceived as a unity' is, I believe, not so hard to understand, and is in full agreement with 
others of Plato's remarks. The 'class of the determinate' is the class of the Forms or Ideas, 
conceived as male principles, or progenitors, as opposed to the female, unlimited or 
indeterminate space (cp. note 15 (2) to chapter 3). These Forms or primogenitors are, of 
course, good, in so far as they are ancient and unchanging originals, and in so far as each of 
them is one as opposed to the many sensible things which it generates. If we conceive the 
class or race of the progenitors as many, then they are not absolutely good; thus the absolute 



Good can be visualized if we conceive them as a unity, as One — as the One primogenitor. 
(Cp. also Arist, Met., 988a 10.) 

Plato's Idea of the Good is practically empty. It gives us no indication of what is good, in a 
moral sense, i.e. what we ought to do. As can be seen especially from notes 27 and 28 to 
this chapter, all we hear is that the Good is highest in the realm of Form or Ideas, a kind of 
super-Idea, from which the Ideas originate, and receive their existence. All we could 
possibly derive from this is that the Good is unchangeable and prior or primary and 
therefore ancient (cp. note 3 to chapter 4), and One Whole; and, therefore, that those things 
participate in it which do not change, i.e., the good is what preserves (cp. notes 2 and 3 to 
chapter 4), and what is ancient, especially the ancient laws (cp. note 23 to chapter 4, note 7, 
paragraph on Platonism, to chapter 5, and note 18 to chapter 7), and that holism is good (cp. 
note 21 to the present chapter); i.e., we are again thrown back, in practice, to totalitarian 
morality (cp. text to notes 40/41 to chapter 6). 

If the Seventh Letter is genuine, then we have there (314b/c) another statement by Plato that 
his doctrine of the Good cannot be formulated; for he says of this doctrine: 'It is not capable 
of expression like other branches of study.' (Cp. also note 57 to chapter 10.) 
It is again Grote who clearly saw and criticized the emptiness of the Platonic Idea or Form of 
Good. After asking what this Good is, he says {Plato, III, 241 f.): 'This question is put ... 
But unfortunately it remains unanswered ... In describing the condition of other men's 
minds — ^that they divine a Real Good ... do everything in order to obtain it, but puzzle 
themselves in vain to grasp and determine what it is — he' (Plato) 'has unconsciously 
described the condition of his own.' It is surprising to see how few modem writers have 
taken any notice of Grote 's excellent criticism of Plato. 

For the quotations in the next paragraph of the text, see (1): Republic, 500b-c; (2): op. cit, 
485a/b. This second passage is very interesting. It is, as Adam reaffirms (note to 485b9), the 
first passage in which 'generation' and 'degeneration' are employed in this half-technical 
sense. It refers to the flux, and to Parmenides' changeless entities. And it introduces the main 
argument in favour of the rule of the philosophers. See also note 26 (1) to chapter 3 and note 
2 (2) to chapter 4. In the Laws, 689c-d, when discussing the 'degeneration' (688c) of the 
Dorian kingdom brought about by the 'worst ignorance' (the ignorance, namely, of not 



knowing how to obey those who are rulers by nature; see 689b), Plato explains what he 
means by wisdom: only such wisdom as aims at the greatest unity or 'unisonity' entitles a 
man to authority. And the term 'unisonity' is explained in the Republic, 591b and d, as the 
harmony of the ideas of justice (i.e. of keeping one's place) and of temperance (of being 
satisfied with it). Thus we are again thrown back to our starting point. 

33 . *A critic of this passage asserted that he could find no trace, in Plato, of any fear of 
independent thought. But we should remember Plato's insistence on censorship (see notes 
40 and 41 to chapter 4) and his prohibition of higher dialectical studies for anybody under 
50 years of age in the Republic (see notes 19 to 21 to chapter 7), to say nothing of the Laws 
(see note 18 to chapter 7, and many other passages).* 

34 . For the problem of the priest caste, see the Timaeus, 24a. In a passage which clearly alludes 
to the best or 'ancient' state of the Republic, the priest caste takes the place of the 
'philosophic race' of the Republic. Cp. also the attacks on priests (and even on Egyptian 
priests), diviners, and shamans, in the Statesman, 290c, f ; see also note 57 (2) to chapter 8, 
and note 29 to chapter 4. 

The remark of Adam's, quoted in the text in the paragraph after the next, is from his note to 
Republic, 547a3 (quoted above in text to note 43 to chapter 5). 

35 . Cp. for instance Republic, 484c, 500e, ff. 

36 Republic, 535a/b. All that Adam says (cp. his note to 535b8) about the term which I have 
translated by 'awe-inspiring' supports the usual view that the term means 'stern' or 'awful', 
especially in the sense of 'inspiring terror'. Adam's suggestion that we translate 'masculine' 
or 'virile' follows the general tendency to tone down what Plato says, and it clashes 
strangely with Theaetetus 149a. Lindsay translates: 'of... sturdy morals'. 

37 . Op. cit., 540c; see also 500c-d: 'the philosopher himself ... becomes godlike', and note 12 
to chapter 9, where 540c, f , is quoted more fully. — It is most interesting to note how Plato 
transforms the Parmenidian One when arguing in favour of an aristocratic hierarchy. The 
opposition one — many is not preserved, but gives rise to a system of grades: the one Idea — 
the few who come close to it — the more who are their helpers — the many, i.e. the mob (this 
division is fundamental in the Statesman). As opposed to this, Antisthenes' monotheism 



preserves the original Eleatic opposition between the One (God) and the Many (whom he 
probably considered as brothers because of their equal distance from God). — Antisthenes 
was influenced by Parmenides through Zeno's influence upon Gorgias. Probably there was 
also the influence of Democritus, who had taught: 'The wise man belongs to all countries 
alike, for the home of a great soul is the whole world.' 

38. Republic, 500d. 

39 . The quotations are from Republic, 459b, and ff.; cp. also notes 34 f. to chapter 4, and 
especially 40 (2) to chapter 5. Cp. also the three similes of the Statesman, where the ruler is 
compared with (1) the shepherd, (2) the doctor, (3) the weaver whose functions are 
explained as those of a man who blends characters by skilful breeding (3 10b, f ). 

40. Op. cit., 460a. My statement that Plato considers this law very important is based on the fact 
that Plato mentions it in the outline of the Republic in the Timaeus, 18d/e. 

41 . Op. cit., 460b. The 'suggestion is taken up' in 468c; see the next note. 

42 . Op. cit., 468c. Though it has been denied by my critics, my translation is correct, and so is 
my remark about 'the latter benefit'. Shorey calls the passage 'deplorable'. 

43 . For the Story of the Number and the Fall, cp. notes 13 and 52 to this chapter, notes 39/40 to 
chapter 5, and text. 

44 . Republic, 473 c-e. Note the opposition between (divine) rest, and the evil, i.e. change in the 
form of corruption, or degeneration. Concerning the term translated here by 'oligarchs' cp. 
the end of note 57, below. It is equivalent to 'hereditary aristocrats'. 

The phrase which, for stylistic reasons, I have put in brackets, is important, for in it Plato 
demands the suppression of all 'pure' philosophers (and unphilosophical politicians). A 
more literal translation of the phrase would be this: 'while the many' (who have) 'natures' 
(disposed or gifted) 'for drifting along, nowadays, in one alone of these two, are eliminated 
by force'. Adam admits that the meaning of Plato's phrase is 'that Plato refuses to sanction 
the exclusive pursuit of knowledge'; but his suggestion that we soften the meaning of the 
last words of the phrase by translating: 'are forcibly debarred from exclusively pursuing 
either' (italics his; cp. note to 473d24, vol. I, 330, of his edn of the Republic) has no 



foundation in the original, — only in his tendency to idealize Plato. The same holds for 
Lindsay's translation ('are forcibly debarred from this behaviour'). — Whom does Plato wish 
to suppress? I believe that 'the many' whose limited or incomplete talents or 'natures' Plato 
condemns here are identical (as far as philosophers are concerned) with the 'many whose 
natures are incomplete', mentioned in Republic, 495d; and also with the 'many' (professed 
philosophers) 'whose wickedness is inevitable', mentioned in 489e (cp. also 490e/491a); cp. 
notes 47, 56, and 59 to this chapter (and note 23 to chapter 5). The attack is, therefore, 
directed on the one hand against the 'uneducated' democratic politicians, on the other hand 
most probably mainly against the half-Thracian Antisthenes, the 'uneducated bastard', the 
equalitarian philosopher; cp. note 47, below. 

. Kant, On Eternal Peace, Second Supplement {Werke, ed. Cassirer, 1914, vol. VI, 456). 
Italics mine; I have also abbreviated the passage. (The 'possession of power' may well 
allude to Frederick the Great.) 

. Cp. for instance Gom^Qxz, Greek Thinkers, V, 12, 2 (German edn, vol. II , 382); or 
Lindsay's translation of the Republic. (For a criticism of this interpretation, cp. note 50, 
below.) 

. It must be admitted that Plato's attitude towards Antisthenes raises a highly speculative 
problem; this is of course connected with the fact that very little is known about Antisthenes 
from first-rate sources. Even the old Stoic tradition that the Cynic school or movement can 
be traced back to Antisthenes is at present often questioned (cp., for instance, G. C. Field's 
Plato, 1930, or D. R. Dudley, A History of Cynicism, 1937) although perhaps not on quite 
sufficient grounds (cp. Fritz's review of the last-mentioned book in Mind, vol. 47, p. 390). In 
view of what we know, especially from Aristotle, about Antisthenes, it appears to me highly 
probable that there are many allusions to him in Plato's writings; and even the one fact that 
Antisthenes was, apart from Plato, the only member of Socrates' inner circle who taught 
philosophy at Athens, would be a sufficient justification for searching Plato's work for such 
allusions. Now it seems to me rather probable that a series of attacks in Plato's work first 
pointed out by Duemmler (especially , 495d/e, mentioned below in note 56 to this 
chapter; i^ep., 535e, f.,Soph., 251b-e) represents these allusions. There is a definite 



resemblance (or so at least it appears to me) between these passages and Aristotle's scornful 
attacks on Antisthenes. Aristotle, who mentions Antisthenes' name, speaks of him as of a 
simpleton, and he speaks of 'uneducated people such as the Antistheneans' (cp. note 54 to 
chapter 11). Plato, in the passages mentioned, speaks in a similar way, but more sharply. 
The first passage I have in mind is from the Sophist, 251b, f, which corresponds very 
closely indeed to Aristotle's first passage. Regarding the two passages from the Republic, we 
must remember that, according to the tradition, Antisthenes was a 'bastard' (his mother came 
from barbarian Thrace), and that he taught in the Athenian gymnasium reserved for 
'bastards'. Now we fmd, in Republic, 535e, f. (cp. end of note 52 to this chapter), an attack 
which is so specific that an individual person must be intended. Plato speaks of 'people who 
dabble in philosophy without being restrained by a feeling of their own unworthiness', and 
he contends that 'the basebom should be debarred' from doing so. He speaks of the people 
as 'unbalanced' (or 'skew' or 'limping') in their love of work and of relaxation; and 
becoming more personal, he alludes to somebody with a 'crippled soul' who, though he 
loves truth (as a Socratic would), does not attain it, since he 'wallows in ignorance' 
(probably because he does not accept the theory of Forms); and he warns the city not to trust 
such limping 'bastards'. I think it likely that Antisthenes is the object of this undoubtedly 
personal attack; the admission that the enemy loves truth seems to me an especially strong 
argument, occurring as it does in an attack of extreme violence. But if this passage refers to 
Antisthenes, then it is very likely that a very similar passage refers to him also, viz. Republic, 
495d/e, where Plato again describes his victim as possessing a disfigured or crippled soul as 
well as body. He insists in this passage that the object of his contempt, in spite of aspiring to 
be a philosopher, is so depraved that he is not even ashamed of doing degrading 
('banausic'; cp. note 4 to chapter 11) manual labour. Now we know of Antisthenes that he 
recommended manual labour, which he held in high esteem (for Socrates' attitude, cp. 
Xenophon, Mem., II, 7, 10), and that he practised what he taught; a further strong argument 
that the man with the crippled soul is Antisthenes. 

Now in the same passage, Republic, 495d, there is also a remark about 'the many whose 
natures are incomplete', and who nevertheless aspire to philosophy. This seems to refer to 
the same group (the 'Antistheneans' of Aristotle) of 'many natures' whose suppression is 



demanded in Republic, 473c-e, discussed in note 44 to this chapter. — Cp. also Republic, 
489e, mentioned in notes 59 and 56 to this chapter. 

48 . We know (from Cicero, De Natura Deorum, and Philodemus, De Pietate) that Antisthenes 
was a monotheist; and the form in which he expressed his monotheism (there is only One 
God 'according to nature', i.e., to truth, although there are many 'according to convention') 
shows that he had in mind the opposition nature — convention which, in the mind of a 
former member of the school of Gorgias and contemporary of Alcidamas and Lycophron 
(cp. note 13 to chapter 5), must have been connected with equalitarianism. 
This in itself does not of course establish the conclusion that the half-barbarian Antisthenes 
believed in the brotherhood of Greeks and barbarians. Yet it seems to me extremely likely 
that he did. 

W. W. Tarn ( Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind; cp. note 13 (2) to chapter 5) 
has tried to show — I once thought successfully — that the idea of the unity of mankind can be 
traced back at least to Alexander the Great. I think that by a very similar line of reasoning, 
we can trace it back farther; to Diogenes, Antisthenes, and even to Socrates and the 'Great 
Generation' of the Periclean age (cp. note 27 to chapter 10, and text). This seems, even 
without considering the more detailed evidence, likely enough; for a cosmopolitan idea can 
be expected to occur as a corollary of such imperialist tendencies as those of the Periclean 
age {c^.Rep., 494c/d, mentioned in note 50 (5) to this chapter, and the First Alcibiades, 
105b, ff.; see also text to notes 9-22, 36 and 47 to chapter 10). This is especially likely if 
other equalitarian tendencies exist. I do not intend to belittle the significance of Alexander's 
deeds, but the ideas ascribed to him by Tarn seem to me, in a way, a renaissance of some of 
the best ideas of fifth-century Athenian imperialism. See also Addendum III, pp. 329 f. 
Proceeding to details, I may first say that there is strong evidence that at least in Plato's (and 
Aristotle's) time, the problem of equalitarianism was clearly seen to be concerned with two 
fully analogous distinctions, that between Greeks and barbarians on the one side and that 
between masters (or free men) and slaves on the other; cp. with this note 13 to chapter 5. 
Now we have very strong evidence that the fifth-century Athenian movement against 
slavery was not confined to a few intellectual-ists like Euripides, Alcidamas, Lycophron, 
Antiphon, Hippias, etc., but that it had considerable practical success. This evidence is 



contained in the unanimous reports of the enemies of Athenian democracy (especially the 
'Old Oligarch', Plato, Aristotle; cp. notes 17, 18 and 29 to chapter 4, and 36 to chapter 10). 
If we now consider in this light the admittedly scanty available evidence for the existence of 
cosmopolitism, it appears, I believe, reasonably strong — provided that we include the 
attacks of the enemies of this movement among the evidence. In other words, we must make 
full use of the attacks of the Old Oligarch, of Plato, and of Aristotle against the humanitarian 
movement, if we wish to assess its real significance. Thus the Old Oligarch (2, 7) attacks 
Athens for an eclectic cosmopolitan way of life. Plato's attacks on cosmopolitan and similar 
tendencies, although not frequent, are especially valuable. (I have in mind passages like 
Rep., 562e/563a — 'citizens, resident aliens, and strangers from abroad, are all on a footing 
of equality' — a passage which should be compared with the ironical description in 
Menexenus, 245c-d, in which Plato sarcastically eulogizes Athens for its consistent hatred of 
barbarians; Rep., 494c/d; of course, the passage Rep., 469b-471c, must be considered in this 
context too. See also end of note 19 to chapter 6.) Whether or not Tarn is right on 
Alexander, he hardly does full justice to the various extant statements of this fifth-century 
movement, for instance to Antiphon (cp. p. 149, note 6 of his paper) or Euripides or 
Hippias, or Democritus (cp. note 29 to chapter 10), or to Diogenes (p. 150, note 12) and 
Antisthenes. I do not think that Antiphon wanted only to stress the biological kinship 
between men, for he was undoubtedly a social reformer; and 'by nature' meant to him 'in 
truth'. It therefore seems to me practically certain that he attacked the distinction between 
Greeks and barbarians as being fictitious. Tarn comments on Euripides' fragment which 
states that a noble man can range the world like an eagle the air by remarking that 'he knew 
that an eagle has a permanent home-rock'; but this remark does not do full justice to the 
fragment; for in order to be a cosmopolitan, one need not give up one's permanent home. In 
the light of all this, I do not see why Diogenes' meaning was purely 'negative' when he 
replied to the question 'where are you from?' by saying that he was a cosmopolite, a citizen 
of the whole world; especially if we consider that a similar answer ('I am a man of the 
world') is reported of Socrates, and another ('The wise man belongs to all countries, for the 
home of a great soul is the whole world'; cp. Diels^, fr. 247; genuineness questioned by 
Tarn and Diels) of Democritus. 



Antisthenes' monotheism also must be considered in the light of this evidence. There is no 
doubt that this monotheism was not of the Jewish, i.e. tribal and exclusive, type. (Should the 
story of Diog. Laert., VI, 13, that Antisthenes taught in the Cynosarges, the gymnasium for 
'bastards', be true, then he must have deliberately emphasized his own mixed and barbarian 
descent.) Tarn is certainly right when he points out (p. 145) that Alexander's monotheism 
was connected with his idea of the unity of mankind. But the same should be said of the 
Cynic ideas, which were influenced, as I believe (see the last note), by Antisthenes, and in 
this way by Socrates. (Cp. especially the evidence of Cicero, Tuscul, V., 37, and of 
Epictetus, I, 9, 1, withAZ., VI, 2, 63-71; also Gorgias, 492e, withAZ., VI, 105. See also 
Epictetus, III, 22 and 24.) 

All this made it once appear to me not too unlikely that Alexander may have been genuinely 
inspired, as the tradition reports, by Diogenes' ideas; and thus by the equalitarian tradition. 
But in view of E. Badian's criticism of Tarn {Historia, 7, 1958, pp. 425 ff.) I feel now 
inclined to reject Tarn's claim; but not, of course, my views on the fifth-century movement. 

49. Cp. Republic, 469b-471c, especially 470b-d, and 469b/c. Here indeed we have (cp. the 
next note) a trace of something like the introduction of a new ethical whole, more embracing 
than the city; namely the unity of Hellenic superiority. As was to be expected (see the next 
note (1) (Z))), Plato elaborates the point in some detail. *(Cornford justly summarizes this 
passage when he says that Plato 'expresses no humanitarian sympathies extending beyond 
the borders of Hellas'; cp. The Republic of Plato, 1941, p. 165.)* 

50 . In this note, further arguments are collected bearing on the interpretation of Republic, 473e, 
and the problem of Plato s humanitarianism . I wish to express my thanks to my colleague. 
Prof H. D. Broadhead, whose criticism has greatly helped me to complete and clarify my 
argument. 

(1) One of Plato's standard topics (cp. the methodological remarks. Rep., 368e, 445c, 577c, 
and note 32 to chapter 5) is the opposition and comparison between the individual and the 
whole, i.e. the city. The introduction of a new whole, even more comprehensive than the 
city, viz. mankind, would be a most important step for a holist to take; it would need (a) 
preparation and (b) elaboration, (a) Instead of such a preparation we get the above 



mentioned passage on the opposition between Greeks and barbarians {Rep., 469b-471c). {b) 
Instead of an elaboration, we find, if anything, a withdrawal of the ambiguous expression 
'race of men'. First, in the immediate continuation of the key passage under consideration, 
i.e. of the passage of the philosopher king {Rep., 473d/e), there occurs a paraphrase of the 
questionable expression, in form of a summary or winding up of the whole speech; and in 
this paraphrase, Plato's standard opposition, city — individual, replaces that of city — human 
race. The paraphrase reads: 'No other constitution can establish a state of happiness, neither 
in private affairs nor in those of the city.' Secondly, a similar result is found if we analyse 
the six repetitions or variations (viz. 487e, 499b, 500e, 50 le, 536a-b, discussed in note 52 
below, and the summary 540d/e with the afterthought 541b) of the key passage under 
consideration (i.e. of Rep., 473d/e). In two of them (487e, 500e) the city alone is mentioned; 
in all the others, Plato's standard opposition city — individual again replaces that of city — 
human race. Nowhere is there a further allusion to the allegedly Platonic idea that 
sophocracy alone can save, not only the suffering cities, but all suffering mankind. — In view 
of all this it seems clear that in all these places only his standard opposition lingered in 
Plato's mind (without, however, the wish to give it any prominence in this connection), 
probably in the sense that sophocracy alone can attain the stability and the happiness — the 
divine rest — of any state, as well as that of all its individual citizens and their progeny (in 
which otherwise evil must grow — the evil of degeneration). 

(2) The term 'human' ('anthro- pinos') is used by Plato, as a rule, either in opposition to 
'divine' (and, accordingly, sometimes in a slightly disparaging sense, especially if the 
limitations of human knowledge or human art are to be stressed, cp. Timaeus, 29c/d; 77a, or 
Sophist, 266c, 268d, or Laws, 69 le, f., 854a), or in a zoological sense, in opposition, or with 
reference to, animals, for example, eagles. Nowhere except in the early Socratic dialogues 
(for one further exception, see this note under (6), below) do I find this term (or the term 
'man') used in a humanitarian sense, i.e. indicating something that transcends the distinction 
of nation, race, or class. Even a 'mental' use of the term 'human' is rare. (I have in mind a 
use such as mLaws, 737b: 'a humanly impossible piece of folly'.) In fact, the extreme 
nationahst views of Fichte and Spengler, quoted in chapter 12, text to note 79, are a pointed 
expression of the Platonic usage of the term 'human', as signifying a zoological rather than a 



moral category. A number of Platonic passages indicating this and similar usages may be 
given: Republic, 365d; 486a; 459b/c; 514b; 522c; 606e, f. (where Homer as a guide to 
human affairs is opposed to the composer of hymns to the gods); 620b. — Phaedo, 82b. — 
Cratylus, 392b. — Parmenides, 134e. — Theaetetus, 107b. — Crito, 46e. — Protagoras, 
344c. — Statesman, 274d (the shepherd of the human flock who is a god, not a man). — 
Laws 673d; 688d; 737b (890b is perhaps another example of a disparaging use — 'the men' 
seems here nearly equivalent with 'the many'). 

(3) It is of course true that Plato assumes a Form or Idea of Man; but it is a mistake to think 
that it represents what all men have in common; rather, it is an aristocratic ideal of a proud 
super-Greek; and on this is based a belief, not in the brotherhood of men, but in a hierarchy 
of 'natures', aristocratic or slavish, in accordance with their greater or lesser likeness to the 
original, the ancient primogenitor of the human race. (The Greeks are more like him than 
any other race.) Thus 'intelligence is shared by the gods with only a very few men' {Tim., 
51e; cp. Aristotle, in the text to note 3, chapter 11). 

(4) The 'City in Heaven' {Rep., 592b) and its citizens are, as Adam rightly points out, not 
Greek; but this does not imply that they belong to 'humanity' as he thinks (note to 470e30, 
and others); they are rather super-exclusive, super-Greek (they are 'above' the Greek city of 
470e, ff.) — more remote from the barbarians than ever. (This remark does not imply that the 
idea of the City in Heaven — as those of the Lion in Heaven, for example, and of other 
constellations — ^may not have been of oriental origin.) 

(5) Finally, it may be mentioned that the passage 499c/d rescinds the distinction between 
Greeks and barbarians no more than that between the past, the present, and the future: Plato 
tries here to give drastic expression to a sweeping generalization in regard to time and space; 
he wishes to say no more than: 'If at any time whatever, or if at any place whatever' (we 
may add: even in such an extremely unlikely place as a barbarian country) 'such a thing did 
happen, then ...' The remark. Republic, 494c/d, expresses a similar, though stronger, feeling 
of being faced with something approaching impious absurdity, a feeling here aroused by 
Alcibiades' hopes for a universal empire of Greeks and foreigners. (I agree with the views 
expressed by Field, Plato and His Contemporaries, 130, note 1, and by Tarn; cp. note 13 (2) 
to chapter 5.) 



To sum up, I am unable to find anything but hostility towards the humanitarian idea of a 
unity of mankind which transcends race and class, and I believe that those who fmd the 
opposite idealize Plato (cp. note 3 to chapter 6, and text) and fail to see the link between his 
aristocratic and anti-humanitarian exclusiveness and his theory of Ideas. See also this 
chapter, notes 51, 52, and 57, below. 

*(6) There is, to my knowledge, only one real exception, one passage which stands in 
flagrant contrast to all this. In a passage {Theaetetus, 174e, f), designed to illustrate the 
broad-mindedness and the universaHstic outlook of the philosopher, we read: 'Every man 
has had countless ancestors, and among them are in any case rich and poor, kings and 
slaves, barbarians and Greeks.' I do not know how to reconcile this interesting and definitely 
humanitarian passage — its emphasis on the parallelism master v. slave and Greek v. 
barbarian is reminiscent of all those theories which Plato opposes — with Plato's other views. 
Perhaps it is, like so much in the Gorgias, Socratic; and the Theaetetus is perhaps (as against 
the usual assumption) earlier than the Republic. See also my Addendum Hp. 320.* 

51 . The allusion is, I believe, to two places in the Story of the Number where Plato (by 
speaking of 'your race') refers to the race of men: 'concerning your own race' (546a/b; cp. 
note 39 to chapter 5, and text) and 'testing the metals within your races' (546d/e, f ; cp. 
notes 39 and 40 to chapter 5, and the next passage). Cp. also the arguments in note 52 to 
this chapter, concerning a 'bridge' between the two passages, i.e. the key passage of the 
philosopher king, and the Story of the Number. 

52 . Republic, 546d/e, f. The passage quoted here is part of the Story of the Number and the Fall 
of Man, 546a-547a, quoted in text to notes 39/40 to chapter 5; see also notes 13 and 43 to 
the present chapter. — My contention (cp. text to the last note) that the remark in the key 
passage of the philosopher king. Republic, 473e (cp. notes 44 and 50 to this chapter), 
foreshadows the Story of the Number, is strengthened by the observation that there exists a 
bridge, as it were, between the two passages. The Story of the Number is undoubtedly 
foreshadowed by Republic, 536a/b, a passage which, on the other hand, may be described 
as the converse (and so as a variation) of the philosopher king passage; for it says in effect 
that the worst must happen if the wrong men are selected as rulers, and it even finishes up 



with a direct reminiscence of the great wave: 'if we take men of another kind ... then we 
shall bring down upon philosophy another deluge of laughter'. This clear reminiscence is, I 
believe, an indication that Plato was conscious of the character of the passage (which 
proceeds, as it were, from the end of 473c-e back to its beginning), which shows what must 
happen if the advice given in the passage of the philosopher king is neglected. Now this 
'converse' passage (536a/b) may be described as a bridge between the 'key passage' (473e) 
and the 'Number-passage' (546a, ff.); for it contains unambiguous references to raciahsm, 
foreshadowing the passage (546d, f ) on the same subject to which the present note is 
appended. (This may be interpreted as additional evidence that raciahsm was in Plato's 
mind, and alluded to, when he wrote the passage of the philosopher king.) I now quote the 
beginning of the 'converse' passage (536a/b): 'We must distinguish carefully between the 
true-bom and the bastard. For if an individual or a city does not know how to look upon 
matters such as these, they will quite innocently accept the services of the unbalanced (or 
limping) bastards in any capacity; perhaps as friends, or even as rulers.' (Cp. also note 47 to 
this chapter.) 

For something like an explanation of Plato's preoccupation with matters of racial 
degeneration and racial breeding, see text to notes 6, 7, and 63 to chapter 10, in connection 
with note 39 (3) and 40 (2) to chapter 5. 

*For the passage about Codrus the martyr, quoted in the next paragraph of the text, see the 
Symposium, 208d, quoted more fully in note 4 to chapter 3. — R. R. Eisler {Caucasica, 5, 
1928, p. 129, note 237) asserts that 'Codrus' is a pre -Hellenic word for 'king'. This would 
give some further colour to the tradition that Athens' nobility was autochthonous. (See note 
1 1 (2) to this chapter; 52 to chapter 8; and Republic 368a and 580b/c.)* 

53. A. E. Taylor, Plato (1908, 1914), pp. 122 f I agree with this interesting passage as far as it 
is quoted in the text. I have, however, omitted the word 'patriot' after 'Athenian' since I do 
not fully agree with this characterization of Plato in the sense in which it is used by Taylor. 
For Plato's 'patriotism' cp. text to notes 14-18 to chapter 4. For the term 'patriotism', and 
the 'paternal state', cp. notes 23-26 and 45 to chapter 10. 

54 . Republic, 494b: 'But will not one who is of this type be first in everything, from childhood 



on?' 

55 . Op. cit., 496c: 'Of my own spiritual sign, I need not speak.' 

56 . Cp. what Adam says in his edn of the Republic, notes to 495d23 and 495e31, and my note 
47 to the present chapter. (See also note 59 to this chapter.) 

57 . Republic, 496c-d; cp. the Seventh Letter, 325d. (I do not think that Barker, Greek Political 
Theory, I, 107, n. 2, makes a good guess when he says of the passage quoted that 'it is 
possible ... that Plato is thinking of the Cynics'. The passage certainly does not refer to 
Antisthenes; and Diogenes, whom Barker must have in mind, was hardly famous when it 
was written, quite apart from the fact that Plato would not have referred to him in this way.) 
(1) Earlier in the same passage of X^q Republic, there is another remark which may be a 
reference to Plato himself Speaking of the small band of the worthy and those who belong 
to it, he mentions 'a nobly-born and well-bred character who was saved by flight' (or 'by 
exile'; saved, that is, from the fate of Alcibiades, who became a victim of flattery and 
deserted Socratic philosophy). Adam thinks (note to 496b9) that 'Plato was hardly exiled'; 
but the flight to Megara of Socrates' disciples after the death of their master may well stand 
out in Plato's memory as one of the turning-points of his life. That the passage refers to Dio 
is hardly possible since Dio was about 40 when he went into exile, and therefore well 
beyond the critical youthful age; and there was not (as in Plato's case) a parallelism with the 
Socratic companion Alcibiades (quite apart from the fact that Plato had resisted Dio's 
banishment, and had tried to get it rescinded). If we assume that the passage refers to Plato, 
then we shall have to assume the same of 502a: 'Who will doubt the possibility that kings or 
aristocrats may have a descendant who is a born philosopher?'; for the continuation of that 
passage is so similar to the previous one that they seem to refer to the same 'nobly-born 
character'. This interpretation of 502a is probable in itself, for we must remember that Plato 
always showed his family pride, for instance, in the eulogy on his father and on his brothers, 
whom he calls 'divine'. {Rep., 368a; I cannot agree with Adam, who takes the remark as 
ironical; cp. also the remark on Plato's alleged ancestor Codrus in Symp., 20 8d, together 
with his alleged descent from Attica's tribal kings.) If this interpretation is adopted, the 
reference in 499b-c to 'rulers, kings, or their sons', which fits Plato perfectly (he was not 



only a Codride, but also a descendant of the ruler Dropides), would have to be considered in 
the same light, i.e. as a preparation for 502a. But this would solve another puzzle. I have in 
mind 499b and 502a. It is difficult, if not impossible, to interpret these passages as attempts 
to flatter the younger Dionysius, since such an interpretation could hardly be reconciled with 
the unmitigated violence and the admittedly (576a) personal background of Plato's attacks 
(572-580) upon the older Dionysius. It is important to note that Plato speaks in all three 
passages (473d, 499b, 502a) about hereditary kingdoms (which he opposes so strongly to 
tyrannies) and about 'dynasties'; but we know from Aristotle's Politics, 1292b2 (cp. Meyer, 
Gesch. d. Altertums, V, p. 56) and 1293all, that 'dynasties' are hereditary oligarchic 
families, and therefore not so much the families of a tyrant like Dionysius, but rather what 
we call now aristocratic famihes, like that of Plato himself. Aristotle's statement is supported 
by Thucydides, IV, 78, and Xenophon, Hellenica, V, 4, 46. (These arguments are directed 
against Adam's second note to 499bl3.) See also note 4 to chapter 3. 

(2) Another important passage which contains a revealing self-reference is to be found in the 
Statesman. Here the essential characteristic of the royal statesman is assumed (258b, 292c) 
to be his knowledge or science; and the result is another plea for sophocracy: 'The only right 
government is that in which the rulers are true Masters of Science' (293c). And Plato proves 
that 'the man who possesses the Royal Science, whether he rules or does not rule, must, as 
our argument shows, be proclaimed royal' (292e/293a). Plato certainly claimed to possess 
the Royal Science; accordingly, this passage implies unequivocally that he considered 
himself a 'man who must be proclaimed royal'. This illuminating passage must not be 
neglected in any attempt to interpret the Republic. (The Royal Science, of course, is again 
that of the romantic pedagogue and breeder of a master class which must provide the fabric 
for covering and holding together the other classes — ^the slaves, labourers, clerks, etc., 
discussed in 289c, ff The task of the Royal Science is thus described as that of 
'interweaving' (blending, mixing) 'of the characters of temperate and courageous men, 
when they have been drawn together, by kingscraft, into a community life of unanimity and 
friendship'. See also notes 40 (2) to chapter 5; 29 to chapter 4; and note 34 to the present 
chapter.)* 



58 . In a famous passage in the Phaedo (89d) Socrates warns against misanthropy or hatred of 
men (with which he compares misology or distrust in rational argument). See also note 28 
and 56 to chapter 10, and note 9 to chapter 7. 

The next quotation in this paragraph is from Republic, 489b/c. — The connection with the 
previous passages is more obvious if the whole of 488 and 489 is considered, and especially 
the attack in 489e upon the 'many' philosophers whose wickedness is inevitable, i.e. the 
same 'many' and 'incomplete natures' whose suppression is discussed in notes 44 and 47 to 
this chapter. 

An indication that Plato had once dreamt of becoming the philosopher king and saviour of 
Athens can be found, I believe, in the Laws, 704a-707c, where Plato tries to point out the 
moral dangers of the sea, of seafaring, trade, and imperialism. (Cp. Aristotle, Pol, 1326b- 
1327a, and my notes 9-22 and 36 to chapter 10, and text.) 

See especially Laws, 704d: 'If the city were to be built on the coast, and well supplied with 
natural harbours ... then it would need a mighty saviour, and indeed, a super-human 
legislator, to make her escape variability and degeneration.' Does this not read as if Plato 
wanted to show that his failure in Athens was due to the super-human difficulties created by 
the geography of the place? (But in spite of all disappointments — cp. note 25 to chapter 7 — 
Plato still believes in the method of winning over a tyrant; cp. Laws, 710c/d, quoted in text 
to note 24 to chapter 4.) 

59 . There is a passage (beginning in Republic, 498d/e; cp. note 12 to chapter 9) in which Plato 
even expresses his hope that 'the many' may change their minds and accept philosophers as 
rulers, once they have learned (perhaps from the Republic!) to distinguish between the 
genuine philosopher and the pseudo-philosopher. 

With the last two lines of the paragraph in the text, cp. Republic, 473e-474a, and 517a/b. 

60 . Sometimes such dreams have even been openly confessed. F. Nietzsche, The Will to Power 
(ed. 1911, Book IV, Aphor. 958; the reference is to Theages, 125e/126a), writes: 'In Plato's 
Theages it is written: "Every one of us wants to be the lord of all men, if it were only 
possible — and most of all he would like to be the Lord God Himself." This is the spirit which 
must come again.' I need not comment upon Nietzsche's political views; but there are other 



philosophers, Platonists, who have naively hinted that if a Platonist were, by some lucky 
accident, to gain power in a modem state, he would move towards the Platonic Ideal, and 
leave things at least nearer perfection than he found them. men born into an "oligarchy" 
or "democracy"', we read (in the context this may well be an allusion to England in 1939), 
with the ideals of Platonic philosophers and finding themselves, by some fortunate turn of 
circumstance, possessed of supreme political power, would certainly try to actualise the 
Platonic State, and even if they were not completely successful, as they might be, would at 
least leave the commonwealth nearer to that model than they found it.' (Quoted from A. E. 
Taylor, 'The Decline and Fall of the State in Republic, VIII', Mind, N.S. 48, 1939, p. 31.) 
The argument in the next chapter is directed against such romantic dreams. 

* A searching analysis of the Platonic lust for power can be found in H. Kelsen's brilliant 
article Platonic Love (The American Imago, vol. Ill, 1942, pp. 1 ff.).* 

61 . Op. cit., 520a-521c, the quotation is from 520d. 

62. Cp. G. B. Stem, The Ugly Dachshund, 1938. 



Notes to Chapter Nine 



The motto, from Les Thibaults, by Roger Martin du Gard, is quoted from 
p. 575 of the English edition {Summer 1914, London, 1940). 

1. My description of Utopian social engineering seems to coincide with that kind of social 
engineering advocated by M. Eastman in Marxism: is it Science?; see especially pp. 22 ff. I 
have the impression that Eastman's views represent the swing of the pendulum from 
historicism to Utopian engineering. But I may possibly be mistaken, and what Eastman 
really has in mind may be more in the direction of what I call piecemeal engineering. 
Roscoe Pound's conception of 'social engineering' is clearly 'piecemeal'; cp. note 9 to 
chapter 3. See also note 18 (3) to chapter 5. 

2. I believe that there is, from the ethical point of view, no symmetry between suffering and 
happiness, or between pain and pleasure. Both the greatest happiness principle of the 
Utilitarians and Kant's principle 'Promote other people's happiness ...' seem to me (at least 
in their formulations) wrong on this point which, however, is not completely decidable by 
rational argument. (For the irrational aspect of ethical beliefs, see note 11 to the present 
chapter, and for the rational aspect, sections II and especially III of chapter 24). In my 
opinion (cp. note 6 (2) to chapter 5) human suffering makes a direct moral appeal, namely, 
the appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is 
doing well anyway. (A further criticism of the Utilitarian formula 'Maximize pleasure' is that 
it assumes, in principle, a continuous pleasure-pain scale which allows us to treat degrees of 
pain as negative degrees of pleasure. But, from the moral point of view, pain cannot be 
outweighed by pleasure, and especially not one man's pain by another man's pleasure. 
Instead of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, one should demand, more 
modestly, the least amount of avoidable suffering for all; and further, that unavoidable 
suffering — such as hunger in times of an unavoidable shortage of food — should be 
distributed as equally as possible.) There is some kind of analogy between this view of 
ethics and the view of scientific methodology which I have advocated in my The Logic oj 
Scientific Discovery. It adds to clarity in the field of ethics if we formulate our demands 



negatively, i.e. if we demand the elimination of suffering rather than the promotion of 
happiness. Similarly, it is helpful to formulate the task of scientific method as the elimination 
of false theories (from the various theories tentatively proffered) rather than the attainment of 
established truths. 

3. A very good example of this kind of piecemeal engineering, or perhaps of the 
corresponding piecemeal technology, are C. G. F. Simkin's two articles on 'Budgetary 
Reform' in the Australian Economic Record (1941, pp. 192 ff., and 1942, pp. 16 ff.). I am 
glad to be able to refer to these two articles since they make conscious use of the 
methodological principles which I advocate; they thus show that these principles are useful 
in the practice of technological research. 

I do not suggest that piecemeal engineering cannot be bold, or that it must be confined to 
'smallish' problems. But I think that the degree of complication which we can tackle is 
governed by the degree of our experience gained in conscious and systematic piecemeal 
engineering. 

4. This view has recently been emphasized by F. A. von Hayek in various interesting papers 
(cp. for instance his Freedom and the Economic System, Public Policy Pamphlets, Chicago, 
1939). What I call 'Utopian engineering' corresponds largely, I believe, to what Hayek 
would call 'centralized' or 'collectivist' planning. Hayek himself recommends what he calls 
'planning for freedom'. I suppose he would agree that this would take the character of 
'piecemeal engineering'. One could, I believe, formulate Hayek's objections to collectivist 
planning somewhat like this. If we try to construct society according to a blueprint, then we 
may find that we cannot incorporate individual freedom in our blueprint; or if we do, that we 
cannot realize it. The reason is that centralized economic planning eliminates from economic 
life one of the most important functions of the individual, namely his function as a chooser 
of the product, as a free consumer. In other words, Hayek's criticism belongs to the realm of 
social technology. He points out a certain technological impossibility, namely that of 
drafting a plan for a society which is at once economically centralized and individualistic. 

* Readers of Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944) may feel puzzled by this note; for Hayek's 
attitude in this book is so explicit that no room is left for the somewhat vague comments of 



my note. But my note was printed before Hayek's book was published; and although many 
of his leading ideas were foreshadowed in his earlier writings, they were not yet quite as 
explicit as in The Road to Serfdom. And many ideas which, as a matter of course, we now 
associate with Hayek's name were unknown to me when I wrote my note. 
In the light of what I know now about Hayek's position, my summary of it does not appear 
to me to be mistaken, although it is, no doubt, an understatement of his position. The 
following modifications may perhaps put the matter right. 

{a) Hayek would not himself use the word 'social engineering' for any political activity 
which he would be prepared to advocate. He objects to this term because it is associated 
with a general tendency which he has called 'scientism' — ^the naive belief that the methods 
of the natural sciences (or, rather, what many people believe to be the methods of the natural 
sciences) must produce similarly impressive results in the social field. (Cp. Hayek's two 
series of articles, Scientism and the Study of Society, Economica, IX-XI 1942-44, and The 
Counter-revolution of Science, ibid., VIII, 1941.) 

If by 'scientism' we mean a tendency to ape, in the field of social science, what are 
supposed to be the methods of the natural sciences, then historicism can be described as a 
form of scientism. Atypical and influential scientistic argument in favour of historicism is, in 
brief, this: 'We can predict eclipses; why should we not be able to predict revolutions?'; or, 
in a more elaborate form: 'The task of science is to predict; thus the task of the social 
sciences must be to make social, i.e. historical, predictions.' I have tried to refute this kind of 
argument (cp. my The Poverty of Historicism, and 'Prediction and Prophecy, and their 
Significance for Social Theory', Proceedings of the Xth International Congress of 
Philosophy, Amsterdam, 1948; now in my Conjectures and Refutations); and in this sense, I 
am opposed to scientism. 

But if by 'scientism' we should mean the view that the methods of the social sciences are, to 
a very considerable extent, the same as those of the natural sciences, then I should be 
obliged to plead 'guilty' to being an adherent of 'scientism'; indeed, I believe that the 
similarity between the social and the natural sciences can even be used for correcting wrong 
ideas about the natural sciences by showing that these are much more similar to the social 
sciences than is generally supposed. 



It is for this reason that I have continued to use Roscoe Pound's term 'social engineering' in 
Roscoe Pound's sense, which as far as I can see, is free of that 'scientism' which, I think, 
must be rejected. 

Terminology apart, I still think that Hayek's views can be interpreted as favourable to what I 
call 'piecemeal engineering'. On the other hand, Hayek has given a much clearer 
formulation of his views than my old outline indicates. The part of his views which 
corresponds to what I should call 'social engineering' (in Pound's sense) is his suggestion 
that there is an urgent need, in a free society, to reconstruct what he describes as its 'legal 
framework'.'^ 

5. Bryan Magee has drawn my attention to what he rightly calls 'de Tocqueville's superbly put 
argument' in L 'ancien regime. 

6. The problem whether or not a good end justifies bad means seems to arise out of such cases 
as whether one should lie to a sick man in order to set his mind at rest; or whether one 
should keep a people in ignorance in order to make them happy; or whether one should 
begin a long and bloody civil war in order to estabUsh a world of peace and beauty. 

In all these cases the action contemplated is to bring about first a more immediate result 
(called 'the means') which is considered an evil, in order that a secondary result (called 'the 
end') may be brought about which is considered a good. 
I think that in all such cases three different kinds of questions arise. 

(a) How far are we entitled to assume that the means will in fact lead to the expected end? 
Since the means are the more immediate result, they will in most cases be the more certain 
result of the contemplated action, and the end, which is more remote, will be less certain. 
The question here raised is a factual question rather than one of moral valuations. It is the 
question whether, as a matter of fact, the assumed causal connection between the means and 
the end can be relied upon; and one might therefore reply that, if the assumed causal 
connection does not hold, the case was simply not one of means and ends. 
This may be true. But in practice, the point here considered contains what is perhaps the 
most important moral issue. For although the question (whether the contemplated means will 
bring about the contemplated end) is a factual one, our attitude towards this question raises 



some of the most fundamental moral problems'si4thQ problem whether we ought to rely, in 
such cases, on our conviction that such a causal connection holds; or in other words, 
whether we ought to rely, dogmatically, on causal theories, or whether we should adopt a 
sceptical attitude towards them, especially where the immediate result of our action is, in 
itself, considered evil. 

This question is perhaps not so important in the first of our three examples, but it is so in the 
two others. Some people may feel very certain that the causal connections assumed in these 
two cases hold; but the connection may be a very remote one; and even the emotional 
certainty of their belief may itself be the result of an attempt to suppress their doubts. (The 
issue, in other words, is that between the fanatic and the rationalist in the Socratic sense — the 
man who tries to know his intellectual limitations.) The issue will be the more important the 
greater the evil of 'the means'. However that may be, to educate oneself so as to adopt an 
attitude of scepticism towards one's causal theories, and one of intellectual modesty, is, 
without doubt, one of the most important moral duties. 

But let us assume that the assumed causal connection holds, or in other words, that there is a 
situation in which one can properly speak of means and ends. Then we have to distinguish 
between two further questions, (b) and (c). 

(b) Assuming that the causal relation holds, and that we can be reasonably certain of it, the 
problem becomes, in the main, one of choosing the lesser of two evils — that of the 
contemplated means and that which must arise if these means are not adopted. In other 
words, the best of ends do not as such justify bad means, but the attempt to avoid results 
may justify actions which are in themselves producing bad results. (Most of us do not doubt 
that it is right to cut off a man's limb in order to save his life.) 

In this connection it may become very important that we are not really able to assess the 
evils in question. Some Marxists, for example (cp. note 9 to chapter 19), believe that there 
would be far less suffering involved in a violent social revolution than in the chronic evils 
inherent in what they call 'Capitalism'. But even assuming that this revolution leads to a 
better state of affairs — how can they evaluate the suffering in the one state and in the other? 
Here, again, a factual question arises, and it is again our duty not to over-estimate our factual 
knowledge. Besides, granted that the contemplated means will on balance improve the 



situation — have we ascertained whether other means would not achieve better results, at a 
lesser price? 

But the same example raises another very important question. Assuming, again, that the sum 
total of suffering under 'Capitalism' would, if it continues for several generations, outweigh 
the suffering of civil war — can we condemn one generation to suffer for the sake of later 
generations? (There is a great difference between sacrificing oneself for the sake of others, 
and between sacrificing others — or oneself and others — for some such end.) 
(c) The third point of importance is that we must not think that the so-called 'end', as a final 
result, is more important than the intermediate result, the 'means'. This idea, which is 
suggested by such sayings as 'All is well that ends well', is most misleading. First, the so- 
called 'end' is hardly ever the end of the matter. Secondly, the means are not, as it were, 
superseded once the end is achieved. For example, 'bad' means, such as a new powerful 
weapon used in war for the sake of victory, may, after this 'end' is achieved, create new 
trouble. In other words, even if something can be correctly described as a means to an end, 
it is, very often, much more than this. It produces other results apart from the end in 
question; and what we have to balance is not the (past or present) means against (future) 
ends, but the total results, as far as they can be foreseen, of one course of action against 
those of another. These results spread over a period of time which includes intermediate 
results; and the contemplated 'end' will not be the last to be considered. 

7. (1) I believe that the parallelism between the institutional problems of civil and of 
international peace is most important. Any international organization which has legislative, 
administrative and judicial institutions as well as an armed executive which is prepared to 
act should be as successful in upholding international peace as are the analogous institutions 
within the state. But it seems to me important not to expect more. We have been able to 
reduce crime within the states to something comparatively unimportant, but we have not 
been able to stamp it out entirely. Therefore we shall, for a long time to come, need a police 
force which is ready to strike, and which sometimes does strike. Similarly, I beheve that we 
must be prepared for the probability that we may not be able to stamp out international 
crime. If we declare that our aim is to make war impossible once and for all, then we may 
undertake too much, with the fatal result that we may not have a force which is ready to 



strike when these hopes are disappointed. The failure of the League of Nations to take action 
against aggressors was, at least in the case of the attack on Manchukuo, due largely to the 
general feeling that the League had been established in order to end all wars and not to wage 
them. This shows that propaganda for ending all wars is self-defeating. We must end 
international anarchy, and be ready to go to war against any international crime. (Cp. 
especially H. Mannheim, War and Crime, 1941; and A. D. Lindsay, 'War to End War', in 
Background and Issues, 1940.) 

But it is also important to search for the weak spot in the analogy between civil and 
international peace, that is to say, for the point where the analogy breaks down. In the case 
of civil peace, upheld by the state, there is the individual citizen to be protected by the state. 
The citizen is, as it were, a 'natural' unit or atom (although there is a certain 'conventional' 
element even in the conditions of citizenship). On the other hand, the members or units or 
atoms of our international order will be states. But a state can never be a 'natural' unit like 
the citizen; there are no natural boundaries to a state. The boundaries of a state change, and 
can be defined only by applying the principle of a status quo; and since every status quo 
must refer to an arbitrarily chosen date, the determination of the boundaries of a state is 
purely conventional. 

The attempt to find some 'natural' boundaries for states, and accordingly, to look upon the 
state as a 'natural' unit, leads to the principle of the national state and to the romantic 
fictions of nationalism, raciahsm, and tribahsm. But this principle is not 'natural', and the 
idea that there exist natural units like nations, or linguistic or racial groups, is entirely 
fictitious. Here, if anywhere, we should learn fi"om history; for since the dawn of history, 
men have been continually mixed, unified, broken up, and mixed again; and this cannot be 
undone, even if it were desirable. 

There is a second point in which the analogy between civil and international peace breaks 
down. The state must protect the individual citizen, its units or atoms; but the international 
organization also must ultimately protect human individuals, and not its units or atoms, i.e. 
states or nations. 

The complete renunciation of the principle of the national state (a principle which owes its 
popularity solely to the fact that it appeals to tribal instincts and that it is the cheapest and 



surest method by which a poHtician who has nothing better to offer can make his way), and 
the recognition of the necessarily conventional demarcation of a// states, together with the 
further insight that human individuals and not states or nations must be the ultimate concern 
even of international organizations, will help us to realize clearly, and to get over, the 
difficulties arising from the breakdown of our fundamental analogy. (Cp. also chapter 12, 
notes 51-64 and text, and note 2 to chapter 13.) 

(2) It seems to me that the remark that human individuals must be recognized to be the 
ultimate concern not only of international organizations, but of all politics, international as 
well as 'national' or parochial, has important applications. We must realize that we can treat 
individuals fairly, even if we decide to break up the power-organization of an aggressive 
state or 'nation' to which these individuals belong. It is a widely held prejudice that the 
destruction and control of the military, political and even of the economic power of a state or 
'nation' implies misery or subjugation for its individual citizens. But this prejudice is as 
unwarranted as it is dangerous. 

It is unwarranted provided that an international organization protects the citizens of the thus 
weakened state against exploitation of their political and military weakness. The only 
damage to the individual citizen that cannot be avoided is one to his national pride; and if 
we assume that he was a citizen of an aggressor country, then this is a damage which will be 
unavoidable in any case, provided the aggression has been warded off. 
The prejudice that we cannot distinguish between the treatment of a state and of its 
individual citizens is also very dangerous, for when it comes to the problem of dealing with 
an aggressor country, it necessarily creates two factions in the victorious countries, viz., the 
faction of those who demand harsh treatment and those who demand leniency. As a rule, 
both overlook the possibility of treating a state harshly, and, at the same time, its citizens 
leniently. 

But if this possibility is overlooked, then the following is likely to happen. Immediately after 
the victory the aggressor state and its citizens will be treated comparatively harshly. But the 
state, the power-organization, will probably not be treated as harshly as might be reasonable 
because of a reluctance to treat innocent individuals harshly, that is to say, because the 
influence of the faction for leniency will make itself felt somehow. In spite of this reluctance. 



it is likely that individuals will suffer beyond what they deserve. After a short time, 
therefore, a reaction is likely to occur in the victorious countries. Equalitarian and 
humanitarian tendencies are likely to strengthen the faction for leniency until the harsh 
pohcy is reversed. But this development is not only likely to give the aggressor state a 
chance for a new aggression; it will also provide it with the weapon of the moral indignation 
of one who has been wronged, while the victorious countries are likely to become afflicted 
with the diffidence of those who feel that they may have done wrong. 

This very undesirable development must in the end lead to a new aggression. It can be 
avoided if, and only if, from the start, a clear distinction is made between the aggressor state 
(and those responsible for its acts) on the one hand, and its citizens on the other hand. 
Harshness towards the aggressor state, and even the radical destruction of its power 
apparatus, will not produce this moral reaction of humanitarian feelings in the victorious 
countries if it is combined with a policy of fairness towards the individual citizens. 
But is it possible to break the political power of a state without injuring its citizens 
indiscriminately? In order to prove that this is possible I shall construct an example of a 
pohcy which breaks the political and military power of an aggressor state without violating 
the interests of its individual citizens. 

The fringe of the aggressor country, including its sea-coast and its main (not all) sources of 
water power, coal, and steel, could be severed from the state, and administered as an 
international territory, never to be returned. Harbours as well as the raw materials could be 
made accessible to the citizens of the state for their legitimate economic activities, without 
imposing any economic disadvantages on them, on the condition that they invite 
international commissions to control the proper use of these facilities. Any use which may 
help to build up a new war potential is forbidden, and if there is reason for suspicion that the 
internationalized facilities and raw materials may be so used, their use has at once to be 
stopped. It then rests with the suspect party to invite and to facilitate a thorough 
investigation, and to offer satisfactory guarantees for a proper use of its resources. 
Such a procedure would not eliminate the possibility of a new attack but it would force the 
aggressor state to make its attack on the internationalized territories prior to building up a 
new war potential. Thus such an attack would be hopeless provided the other countries have 



retained and developed their war potential. Faced with this situation the former aggressor 
state would be forced to change its attitude radically, and adopt one of co-operation. It 
would be forced to invite the international control of its industry and to facilitate the 
investigation of the international controlling authority (instead of obstructing them) because 
only such an attitude would guarantee its use of the facilities needed by its industries; and 
such a development would be likely to take place without any further interference with the 
internal politics of the state. 

The danger that the internationalization of these facilities might be misused for the purpose 
of exploiting or of humiliating the population of the defeated country can be counteracted 
by international legal measures that provide for courts of appeal, etc. 

This example shows that it is not impossible to treat a state harshly and its citizens leniently. 

(I have left parts (1) and (2) of this note exactly as they were written in 1942. Only in part 
(3), which is non-topical, have I made an addition, after the first two paragraphs.)* 
(3) But is such an engineering approach towards the problem of peace scientific? Many will 
contend, I am sure, that a truly scientific attitude towards the problems of war and peace 
must be different. They will say that we must first study the causes of war. We must study 
the forces that lead to war, and also those that may lead to peace. It has been recently 
claimed, for instance, that 'lasting peace' can come only if we consider ftilly the 'underlying 
dynamic forces' in society that may produce war or peace. In order to find out these forces, 
we must, of course, study history. In other words, we must approach the problem of peace 
by a historicist method, and not by a technological method. This, it is claimed, is the only 
scientific approach. 

The historicist may, with the help of history, show that the causes of war can be found in the 
clash of economic interests; or in the clash of classes; or of ideologies, for instance, freedom 
versus tyranny; or in the clash of races, or of nations, or of imperialisms, or of militarist 
systems; or in hate; or in fear; or in envy; or in the wish to take revenge; or in all these things 
together, and in countless others. And he will thereby show that the task of removing these 
causes is extremely difficult. And he will show that there is no point in constructing an 
international organization, as long as we have not removed the causes of war, for instance 
the economic causes, etc. 



Similarly, psychologism may argue that the causes of war are to be found in 'human nature', 
or, more specifically, in its aggressiveness, and that the way to peace is that of preparing for 
other outlets for aggression. (The reading of thrillers has been suggested in all seriousness — 
in spite of the fact that some of our late dictators were addicted to them.) 
I do not think that these methods of dealing with this important problem are very promising. 
And I do not believe, more especially, in the plausible argument that in order to establish 
peace we must ascertain the cause or the causes of war. 

Admittedly, there are cases where the method of searching for the causes of some evil, and 
of removing them, may be successful. If I feel a pain in my foot I may find that it is caused 
by a pebble and remove it. But we must not generalize from this. The method of removing 
pebbles does not even cover all cases of pains in my foot. In some such cases I may not find 
'the cause'; and in others I may be unable to remove it. 

In general, the method of removing causes of some undesirable event is apphcable only if 
we know a short list of necessary conditions (i.e. a list of conditions such that the event in 
question never happens except if one at least of the conditions on the list is present) and if 
all of these conditions can be controlled, or, more precisely, prevented. (It may be remarked 
that necessary conditions are hardly what one describes by the vague term 'causes'; they 
are, rather, what are usually called 'contributing causes'; as a rule, where we speak of 
'causes' we mean a set of sufficient conditions.) But I do not think that we can hope to 
construct such a hst of the necessary conditions of war. Wars have broken out under the 
most varying circumstances. Wars are not simple phenomena, such as, perhaps, 
thunderstorms. There is no reason to beheve that by calling a vast variety of phenomena 
'wars', we ensure that they are all 'caused' in the same way. 

All this shows that the apparently unprejudiced and convincingly scientific approach, the 
study of the 'causes of war', is, in fact, not only prejudiced, but also liable to bar the way to 
a reasonable solution; it is, in fact, pseudo -scientific. 

How far should we get if, instead of introducing laws and a police force, we approached the 
problem of criminality 'scientifically', i.e. by trying to find out what precisely are the causes 
of crime? I do not imply that we cannot here or there discover important factors contributing 
to crime or to war, and that we cannot avert much harm in this way; but this can well be 



done after we have got crime under control, i.e. after we have introduced our poHce force. 
On the other hand, the study of economic, psychological, hereditary, moral, etc., 'causes' of 
crime, and the attempt to remove these causes, would hardly have led us to fmd out that a 
police force (which does not remove the cause) can bring crime under control. Quite apart 
from the vagueness of such phrases as 'the cause of war', the whole approach is anything 
but scientific. It is as if one insisted that it is unscientific to wear an overcoat when it is cold; 
and that we should rather study the causes of cold weather, and remove them. Or, perhaps, 
that lubricating is unscientific, since we should rather find out the causes of friction and 
remove them. This latter example shows, I believe, the absurdity of the apparently scientific 
criticism; for just as lubrication certainly reduces the 'causes' of friction, so an international 
police force (or another armed body of this kind) may reduce an important 'cause' of war, 
namely the hope of 'getting away with it'. 

8. I have tried to show this in my The Logic of Scientific Discovery. I believe, in accordance 
with the methodology outlined, that systematic piecemeal engineering will help us to build 
an empirical social technology, reached by the method of trial and error. Only in this way, I 
believe, can we begin to build an empirical social science. The fact that such a social science 
hardly exists so far, and that the historical method is incapable of furthering it much, is one 
of the strongest arguments against the possibility of large-scale or Utopian social 
engineering. See also my The Poverty ofHistoricism. 

9. For a very similar formulation, see John Carruthers' lecture Socialism & Radicalism 
(published as a pamphlet by the Hammersmith Socialist Society, London, 1894). He argues 
in a typical manner against piecemeal reform: 'Every palliative measure brings its own evil 
with it, and the evil is generally greater than that it was intended to cure. Unless we make up 
our minds to have a new garment altogether, we must be prepared to go in rags, for patching 
will not improve the old one.' (It should be noted that by 'radicalism', used by Carruthers in 
the title of his lecture, he means about the opposite of what is meant here. Carruthers 
advocates an uncompromising programme of canvas-cleaning and attacks 'radicalism', i.e. 
the programme of 'progressive' reforms advocated by the 'radical liberals'. This use of the 
term 'radical' is, of course, more customary than mine; nevertheless, the term means 



originally 'going to the root' — of the evil, for instance — or 'eradicating the evil'; and there is 
no proper substitute for it.) 

For the quotations in the next paragraph of the text (the 'divine original' which the artist- 
politician must 'copy'), see Republic, 500e/501a. See also notes 25 and 26 to chapter 8. 
In Plato's Theory of Forms are, I believe, elements which are of great importance for the 
understanding, and for the theory, of art. This aspect of Platonism is treated by J. A. Stewart, 
in his book Plato s Doctrine of Ideas (1909), 128 ff. I believe, however, that he stresses too 
much the object of pure contemplation (as opposed to that 'pattern' which the artist not only 
visualizes, but which he labours to reproduce, on his canvas). 

10 . Republic, 520c. For the 'Royal Art', see especially the Statesman; cp. note 57 (2) to chapter 
8. 

11. It has often been said that ethics is only a part of aesthetics, since ethical questions are 
ultimately a matter of taste. (Cp. for instance G. E. G. Catlin, The Science and Methods oj 
Politics, 315 ff.) If by saying this, no more is meant than that ethical problems cannot be 
solved by the rational methods of science, I agree. But we must not overlook the vast 
difference between moral 'problems of taste' and problems of taste in aesthetics. If I dislike 
a novel, a piece of music, or perhaps a picture, I need not read it, or listen to it, or look at it. 
Aesthetic problems (with the possible exception of architecture) are largely of a private 
character, but ethical problems concern men, and their lives. To this extent, there is a 
fundamental difference between them. 

12 . For this and the preceding quotations, cp. Republic, 500d-501a (italics mine); cp. also notes 
29 (end) to chapter 4, and 25, 26, 37, 38 (especially 25 and 38) to chapter 8. 

The two quotations in the next paragraph are from ihQ Republic, 541a, and from the 
Statesman, 293c-e. 

It is interesting (because it is, I believe, characteristic of the hysteria of romantic radicalism 
with its hubrisMiis ambitious arrogance of godlikeness) to see that both passages of the 
RepublicMthQ canvas-cleaning of 500d, ff., and the purge of 541a — are preceded by 
reference to the godlikeness of the philosophers; cp. 500c-d, 'the philosopher becomes ... 
godlike himself, and 540c-d (cp. note 37 to chapter 8 and text), 'And the state will erect 



monuments, at the expense of the pubHc, to commemorate them; and sacrifices will be 
offered to them, as demigods, ... or at least as men who are blessed by grace, and godlike.' 
It is also interesting (for the same reasons) that the first of these passages is preceded by the 
passage (498d/e, f.; see note 59 to chapter 8) in which Plato expresses his hope that 
philosophers may become, as rulers, acceptable even to 'the many'. 

* Concerning the term 'liquidate' the following modem outburst of radicalism may be quoted: 
'Is it not obvious that if we are to have socialism — real and permanent socialism — all the 
fundamental opposition must be "liquidated" (i.e. rendered politically inactive by 
disfranchisement, and if necessary by imprisonment)?' This remarkable rhetorical question 
is printed on p. 18 of the still more remarkable pamphlet Christians in the Class Struggle, by 
Gilbert Cope, with a Foreword by the Bishop of Bradford. (1942; for the historicism of this 
pamphlet, see note 3 to chapter 1.) The Bishop, in his Foreword, denounces 'our present 
economic system' as 'immoral and un-Christian', and he says that 'when something is so 
plainly the work of the devil . . . nothing can excuse a minister of the Church from working 
for its destruction'. Accordingly, he recommends the pamphlet 'as a lucid and penetrating 
analysis'. 

A few more sentences may be quoted from the pamphlet. 'Two parties may ensure partial 
democracy, but a full democracy can be established only by a single party ...' (p. 17). — 'In 
the period of transition ... the workers ... must be led and organized by a single party which 
tolerates the existence of no other party fundamentally opposed to it ...' (p. 19). — 'Freedom 
in the sociahst state means that no one is allowed to attack the principle of common 
ownership, but everyone is encouraged to work for its more effective realization and 
operation ... The important matter of how the opposition is to be nullified depends upon the 
methods used by the opposition itself (p. 18). 

Most interesting of all is perhaps the following argument (also to be found on p. 18) which 
deserves to be read carefully: 'Why is it possible to have a sociahst party in a capitahst 
country if it is not possible to have a capitahst party in a socialist state? The answer is simply 
that the one is a movement involving all the productive forces of a great majority against a 
small minority, while the other is an attempt of a minority to restore their position of power 
and privilege by renewed exploitation of the majority.' In other words, a ruling 'small 



minority' can afford to be tolerant, while a 'great majority' cannot afford to tolerate a 'small 
minority'. This simple answer is indeed a model of 'a lucid and penetrating analysis', as the 
Bishop puts it* 

13 . Cp. for this development also chapter 13, especially note 7, and text. 

14 . It seems that romanticism, in literature as well as in philosophy, may be traced back to 
Plato. It is well known that Rousseau was directly influenced by him (cp. note 1 to chapter 
6). Rousseau also knew Plato's Statesman (cp. the Social Contract, Book II, ch. VII, and 
Book III, ch. VI) with its eulogy of the early hill-shepherds. But apart from this direct 
influence, it is probable that Rousseau derived his pastoral romanticism and love for 
primitivity indirectly from Plato; for he was certainly influenced by the Italian Renaissance, 
which had rediscovered Plato, and especially his naturalism and his dreams of a perfect 
society of primitive shepherds (cp. notes 11 (3) and 32 to chapter 4 and note 1 to chapter 6). 
— It is interesting that Voltaire recognized at once the dangers of Rousseau's romantic 
obscurantism; just as Kant was not prevented by his admiration for Rousseau from 
recognizing this danger when he was faced with it in Herder's 'Ideas' (cp. also note 56 to 
chapter 12, and text). 



Notes to Chapter Ten 



This chapter's motto is taken from the Symposium, 193d. 

1. Cp. Republic, 419a, ff., 421b, 465c, ff., and 519e; see also chapter 6 . especially sections II 
and IV. 

2. I am thinking not only of the medieval attempts to arrest society, attempts that were based 
on the Platonic theory that the rulers are responsible for the souls, the spiritual welfare of the 
ruled (and on many practical devices developed by Plato in the Republic and in the Laws), 
but I am thinking also of many later developments. 

3. 1 have tried, in other words, to apply as far as possible the method which I have described in 

my The Logic of Scientific Discovery. 

4. Cp. especially Republic, 566e; see also below, note 63 to this chapter. 

5 . In my story there should be 'no villains . . . Crime is not interesting ... It is what men do at 
their best, with good intentions ... that really concerns us'. I have tried as far as possible to 
apply this methodological principle to my interpretation of Plato. (The formulation of the 
principle quoted in this note I have taken from G. B. Shaw's Preface to Saint Joan; see the 
first sentences in the section 'Tragedy, not Melodrama'.) 

6. For Heraclitus, see chapter 2 . For Alcmaeon's and Herodotus' theories of isonomy, see 
notes 13, 14, and 17, to chapter 6. For Phaleas of Chalcedon's economic equalitarianism, 
see Aristotle's Politics, 1266a, and Diels^, chapter 39 (also on Hippodamus). For 
Hippodamus of Miletus, see Aristotle's Politics, 1267b22, and note 9 to chapter 3. Among 
the first political theorists, we must, of course, also count the Sophists, Protagoras, Antiphon, 
Hippias, Alcidamas, Lycophron; Critias (cp. Diels^, fr. 6, 30-38, and note 17 to chapter 8), 
and the Old Oligarch (if these were two persons); and Democritus. 

For the terms 'closed society' and 'open society', and their use in a somewhat similar sense 
by Bergson, see the Note to the Introduction. My characterization of the closed society as 
magical and of the open society as rational and critical of course makes it impossible to 
apply these terms without idealizing the society in question. The magical attitude has by no 



means disappeared from our life, not even in the most 'open' societies so far realized, and I 
think it unlikely that it can ever completely disappear. In spite of this, it seems to be possible 
to give some useful criterion of the transition from the closed society to the open. The 
transition takes place when social institutions are first consciously recognized as man-made, 
and when their conscious alteration is discussed in terms of their suitability for the 
achievement of human aims or purposes. Or, putting the matter in a less abstract way, the 
closed society breaks down when the supernatural awe with which the social order is 
considered gives way to active interference, and to the conscious pursuit of personal or 
group interests. It is clear that cultural contact through civilization may engender such a 
breakdown, and, even more, the development of an impoverished, i.e. landless, section of 
the ruling class. 

I may mention here that I do not like to speak of 'social breakdown' in a general way. I 
think that the breakdown of a closed society, as described here, is a fairly clear affair, but in 
general the term 'social breakdown' seems to me to convey very little more than that the 
observer does not like the course of the development he describes. I think that the term is 
much misused. But I admit that, with or without reason, the member of a certain society 
might have the feeling that 'everything is breaking down'. There is little doubt that to the 
members of the ancien regime or of the Russian nobility, the French or the Russian 
revolution must have appeared as a complete social breakdown; but to the new rulers it 
appeared very differently. 

Toynbee (cp. A Study of History, V, 23-35; 338) describes 'the appearance of schism in the 
body social' as a criterion of a society which has broken down. Since schism, in the form of 
class disunion, undoubtedly occurred in Greek society long before the Peloponnesian war, it 
is not quite clear why he holds that this war (and not the breakdown of tribalism) marks what 
he describes as the breakdown of Hellenic civilization. (Cp. also note 45 (2) to chapter 4, 
and note 8 to the present chapter.) 

Concerning the similarity between the Greeks and the Maoris, some remarks can be found in 
Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy^, especially pp. 2 and 9. 

7. I owe this criticism of the organic theory of the state, together with many other suggestions, 
to J. Popper-Lynkeus; he writes {Die allgemeine Ndhrpflicht, 2nd edn, 1923, pp. 71 f): 'The 



excellent Menenius Agrippa ... persuaded the insurgent plebs to return' (to Rome) 'by 
telling them his simile of the body's members who rebelled against the belly ... Why did not 
one of them say: "Right, Agrippa! If there must be a belly, then we, the plebs, want to be the 
belly from now on; and you ... may play the role of the members!'" (For the simile, see Livy 
II, 32, and Shakespeare's Coriolanus, Act 1, Scene 1.) It is perhaps interesting to note that 
even a modem and apparently progressive movement like 'Mass-Observation' makes 
propaganda for the organic theory of society (on the cover of its pamphlet, F/ra^ Year's 
Work, 1937-38). See also note 31 to chapter 5. 

On the other hand, it must be admitted that the tribal 'closed society' has something like an 
'organic' character, just because of the absence of social tension. The fact that such a society 
may be based on slavery (as it was the case with the Greeks) does not create in itself a social 
tension, because slaves sometimes form no more part of society than its cattle; their 
aspirations and problems do not necessarily create anything that is felt by the rulers as a 
problem within society. Population growth, however, does create such a problem. In Sparta, 
which did not send out colonies, it led first to the subjugation of neighbouring tribes for the 
sake of winning their territory, and then to a conscious effort to arrest all change by 
measures that included the control of population increase through the institution of 
infanticide, birth control, and homosexuality. All this was seen quite clearly by Plato, who 
always insisted (perhaps under the influence of Hippodamus) on the need for a fixed 
number of citizens, and who recommended in the Laws colonization and birth control, as he 
had earher recommended homosexuality (explained in the same way in Aristotle's Politics, 
1272a23) as means for keeping the population constant; ^QQLaws, 740d-741a, and 838e. 
(For Plato's recommendation of infanticide in the Republic, and for similar problems, see 
especially note 34 to chapter 4; furthermore, notes 22 and 63 to chapter 10, and 39 (3) to 
chapter 5 .) 

Of course, all these practices are far from being completely explicable in rational terms; and 
the Dorian homosexuality, more especially, is closely connected with the practice of war, 
and with the attempts to recapture, in the life of the war horde, an emotional satisfaction 
which had been largely destroyed by the breakdown of tribahsm; see especially the 'war 
horde composed of lovers', glorified by Plato in the Symposium, 178e. In the Laws, 636b, f , 



836b/c, Plato deprecates homosexuality (cp., however, 83 8e). 

8. I suppose that what I call the 'strain of civilization' is similar to the phenomenon which 
Freud had in mind when writing Civilization and its Discontents. Toynbee speaks of a Sense 
of Drift {A Study of History, V, 412 ff.), but he confines it to 'ages of disintegration', while I 
find my strain very clearly expressed in Heraclitus (in fact, traces can be found in Hesiod) — 
long before the time when, according to Toynbee, his 'Hellenic society' begins to 
'disintegrate'. Meyer speaks of the disappearance of 'The status of birth, which had 
determined every man's place in life, his civil and social rights and duties, together with the 
security of earning his living' {Geschichte des Altertums, III, 542). This gives an apt 
description of the strain in Greek society of the fifth century B.C. 

9. Another profession of this kind which led to comparative intellectual independence, was 
that of a wandering bard. I am thinking here mainly of Xenophanes, the progressivist; cp. 
the paragraph on 'Protagoreanism' in note 7 to chapter 5. (Homer also may be a case in 
point.) It is clear that this profession was accessible to very few men. 

I happen to have no personal interest in matters of commerce, or in commercially minded 
people. But the influence of commercial initiative seems to me rather important. It is hardly 
an accident that the oldest known civilization, that of Sumer, was, as far as we know, a 
commercial civilization with strong democratic features; and that the arts of writing and 
arithmetic, and the beginnings of science, were closely connected with its commercial life. 
(Cp. also text to note 24 to this chapter.) 

10 . Thucydides, I, 93 (I mostly follow Jowett's translation). For the problem of Thucydides' 
bias, cp. note 15 (1) to this chapter. 

11. This and the next quotation: op. cit., I, 107. Thucydides' story of the treacherous oligarchs 
can hardly be recognized in Meyer's apologetic version {Gesch. d. Altertums, III, 594), in 
spite of the fact that he has no better sources; it is simply distorted beyond recognition. (For 
Meyer's partiality, see note 15 (2) to the present chapter.) — For a similar treachery (in 479 
B.C. on the eve of Plataea) cp. Plutarch's ^raftV/e^, 13. 

12 . Thucydides, III, 82-84. The following conclusion of the passage is characteristic of the 
element of individualism and humanitarianism present in Thucydides, a member of the Great 



Generation (see below, and note 27 to this chapter) and, as mentioned above, a moderate: 
'When men take revenge, they are reckless; they do not consider the future, and do not 
hesitate to annul those common laws of humanity on which every individual must rely for 
his own deliverance should he ever be overtaken by calamity; they forget that in their own 
hour of need they will look for them in vain.' For a further discussion of Thucydides' bias 
see note 15 (1) to this chapter. 

13 . Aristotle, PoMc^, VIII, (V), 9, 10/11; 1310a. Aristotle does not agree with such open 
hostility; he thinks it wiser that 'true Oligarchs should affect to be advocates of the people's 
cause'; and he is anxious to give them good advice: 'They should take, or they should at 
least pretend to take, the opposite line, by including in their oath the pledge: I shall do no 
harm to the people.' 

14 . Thucydides, II, 9. 

15 . Cp. E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, IV (1915), 368. 

(1) In order to judge Thucydides' alleged impartiality, or rather, his involuntary bias, one 
must compare his treatment of the most important affair of Plataea which marked the 
outbreak of the first part of the Peloponnesian war (Meyer, following Lysias, calls this part 
the Archidamian war; cp. Meyer, Gesch. d. Altertums, IV, 307, and V, p. vii) with his 
treatment of the Melian affair, Athens' first aggressive move in the second part (the war of 
Alcibiades). The Archidamian war broke out with an attack on democratic Plataea — a 
lightning attack made without declaration of war by Thebes, a partner of totalitarian Sparta, 
whose friends inside Plataea, the oligarchic fifth column, had by night opened the doors of 
Plataea to the enemy. Though most important as the immediate cause of the war, the incident 
is comparatively briefly related by Thucydides (II, 1-7); he does not comment upon the 
moral aspect, apart from calling 'the affair of Plataea a glaring violation of the thirty years 
truce'; but he censures (II, 5) the democrats of Plataea for their harsh treatment of the 
invaders, and even expresses doubts whether they did not break an oath. This method of 
presentation contrasts strongly with the famous and most elaborate, though of course 
fictitious, Melian Dialogue {Thuc, V, 85-113) in which Thucydides tries to brand Athenian 
imperialism. Shocking as the Melian affair seems to have been (Alcibiades may have been 



responsible; cp. Plutarch, ^/c, 16), the Athenians did not attack without warning, and tried 
to negotiate before using force. 

Another case in point, bearing on Thucydides' attitude, is his eulogy (in VIII, 68) of the 
oligarchic party leader, the orator Antiphon (who is mentioned in Plato's Menexenus, 236a, 
as a teacher of Socrates; cp. end of note 19 to chapter 6). 

(2) E. Meyer is one of the greatest modem authorities on this period. But to appreciate his 
point of view one must read the following scornful remarks on democratic governments 
(there are a great many passages of this kind): 'Much more important' (viz., than to arm) 
'was it to continue the entertaining game of party-quarrels, and to secure unlimited freedom, 
as interpreted by everybody according to his particular interests.' (V, 61.) But is it more, I 
ask, than an 'interpretation according to his particular interests' when Meyer writes: 'The 
wonderful freedom of democracy, and of her leaders, have manifestly proved their 
inefficiency.' (V, 69.) About the Athenian democratic leaders who in 403 B.C. refused to 
surrender to Sparta (and whose refusal was later even justified by success — although no 
such justification is necessary), Meyer says: 'Some of these leaders might have been honest 
fanatics; ... they might have been so utterly incapable of any sound judgement that they 
really believed' (what they said, namely:) 'that Athens must never capitulate.' (IV, 659.) 
Meyer censures other historians in the strongest terms for being biased. (Cp. e.g. the notes in 
V, 89 and 102, where he defends the older tyrant Dionysius against allegedly biased attacks, 
and 113 bottom to 114 top, where he is also exasperated by some anti-Dionysian 'parroting 
historians'.) Thus he calls Grote 'an Enghsh radical leader', and his work 'not a history, but 
an apology for Athens', and he proudly contrasts himself with such men: 'It will hardly be 
possible to deny that we have become more impartial in questions of politics, and that we 
have arrived thereby at a more correct and more comprehensive historical judgement. ' (All 
this in III, 239.) 

Behind Meyer's point of view stands — Hegel. This explains everything (as will be clear, I 
hope, to readers of chapter 12). Meyer's Hegelianism becomes obvious in the following 
remark, which is an unconscious but nearly literal quotation from Hegel; it is in III, 256, 
when Meyer speaks of a 'flat and moralizing evaluation, which judges great political 
undertakings with the yardstick of civil morality' (Hegel speaks of 'the litany of private 



virtues'), 'ignoring the deeper, the truly moral factors of the state, and of historical 
responsibilities'. (This corresponds exactly to the passages from Hegel quoted in chapter 12, 
below; cp. note 75 to chapter 12.) I wish to use this opportunity once more to make it clear 
that I do not pretend to be impartial in my historical judgement. Of course I do what I can to 
ascertain the relevant facts. But I am aware that my evaluations (like anybody else's) must 
depend entirely on my point of view. This I admit, although I fully believe in my point of 
view, i.e. that my evaluations are right. 

16. Cp. Meyer, op. cit., IV, 367. 

17. Cp. Meyer, op. cit., IV, 464. 

18 . It must however be kept in mind that, as the reactionaries complained, slavery was in 
Athens on the verge of dissolution. Cp. the evidence mentioned in notes 17, 18 and 29 to 
chapter 4; furthermore, notes 13 to chapter 5, 48 to chapter 8, and 27-37 to the present 
chapter. 

19. Cp. Meyer, op. cit., IV, 659. 

Meyer comments upon this move of the Athenian democrats: 'Now when it was too late they 
made a move towards a political constitution which later helped Rome ... to lay the 
foundations of its greatness.' In other words, instead of crediting the Athenians with a 
constitutional invention of the first order, he reproaches them; and the credit goes to Rome, 
whose conservatism is more to Meyer's taste. 

The incident in Roman history to which Meyer alludes is Rome's alliance, or federation, 
with Gabii. But immediately before, and on the very page on which Meyer describes this 
federation (in V, 135) we can read also: 'All these towns, when incorporated with Rome, lost 
their existence ... without even receiving a political organization of the type of Attica's 
"demes".' A little later, in V, 147, Gabii is again referred to, and Rome in her generous 
'liberality' again contrasted with Athens; but at the turn of the same page Meyer reports 
without criticism Rome's looting and total destruction of Veil, which meant the end of 
Etruscan civilization. 

The worst perhaps of all these Roman destructions is that of Carthage. It took place at a 
moment when Carthage was no longer a danger to Rome, and it robbed Rome, and us, of 



most valuable contributions which Carthage could have made to civilization. I only mention 
the great treasures of geographical information which were destroyed there. (The story of the 
decline of Carthage is not unlike that of the fall of Athens in 404 B.C., discussed in this 
chapter below; see note 48. The oligarchs of Carthage preferred the fall of their city to the 
victory of democracy.) 

Later, under the influence of Stoicism, derived indirectly from Antisthenes, Rome began to 
develop a very liberal and humanitarian outlook. It reached the height of this development 
in those centuries of peace after Augustus (cp. for instance Toynbee, A Study of History, V, 
pp. 343-346), but it is here that some romantic historians see the beginning of her decline. 
Regarding this decline itself, it is, of course, naive and romantic to believe, as many still do, 
that it was due to the degeneration caused by long-continued peace, or to demoralization, or 
to the superiority of the younger barbarian peoples, etc.; in brief, to over-feeding. (Cp. note 
45 (3) to chapter 4.) The devastating result of violent epidemics (cp. H. Zinsser, Rats, Lice, 
and History, 1937, pp. 131 ff.) and the unchecked and progressive exhaustion of the soil, 
and with it a breakdown of the agricultural basis of the Roman economic system (cp. V. G. 
Simkhovitch, 'Hay and History', and 'Rome's Fall Reconsidered', in Towards the 
Understanding of Jesus, 1927), seem to have been some of the main causes. Cp. also W. 
Hegemann, Entlarvte Geschichte (1934). 

20 . Thucydides, VII, 28; cp. Meyer, op. cit., IV, 535. The important remark that 'this would 
yield more' enables us, of course, to fix an approximate upper limit for the ratio between the 
taxes previously imposed and the volume of trade. 

21 . This is an allusion to a grim little pun which I owe to R Milford: 'A Plutocracy is preferable 
to a Lootocracy.' 

22 . Plato, Republic, 423b. For the problem of keeping the size of the population constant, cp. 
note 7, above. 

23 . Cp. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, IV, 577. 

24 . Op. cit., V, 27. Cp. also note 9 to this chapter, and text to note 30 to chapter 4. *For the 
passage from the Laws, see 742a-c. Plato elaborates here the Spartan attitude. He lays down 
'a law that forbids private citizens to possess any gold or silver ... Our citizens should be 



allowed only such coins as are legal tender among ourselves, but valueless elsewhere . . . For 
the sake of an expeditionary force, or official visit abroad, such as embassies or other 
necessary missions ... it is necessary that the state should always possess Hellenic (gold) 
coinage. And if a private citizen should ever be obliged to go abroad, he may do so, 
provided he has duly obtained permission from the magistrates. And should he have, upon 
his return, any foreign money left, then he must surrender it to the state, and accept its 
equivalent in home currency. And should anybody be found to keep it, then it must be 
confiscated, and he who imported it, and anybody who failed to inform against him, should 
be liable to curses and condemnations, and, in addition, to a fine of not less than the amount 
of the money involved.' Reading this passage, one wonders whether one does not wrong 
Plato in describing him as a reactionary who copied the laws of the totalitarian township of 
Sparta; for here he anticipates by more than 2000 years the principles and practices which 
nowadays are nearly universally accepted as sound policy by the most progressive Western 
European democratic governments (who, like Plato, hope that some other government will 
look after the 'Universal Hellenic gold currency'). 

A later passage {Laws, 950d) has, however, less of a liberal Western ring. 'First, no man 
under forty years shall obtain permission for going abroad to whatever place it may be. 
Secondly, nobody shall obtain such permission in a private capacity: in a public capacity, 
permission may be granted only to heralds, ambassadors, and to certain missions of 
inspection ... And these men, after their return, will teach the young that the political 
institutions of other countries are inferior to their own.' 

Similar laws are laid down for the reception of strangers. For 'intercommunication between 
states necessarily results in a mixing of characters . . . and in importing novel customs; and 
this must cause the greatest harm to people who enjoy ... the right laws' (949e/950a).* 

25 . This is admitted by Meyer {op. cit, IV, 433 f ), who in a very interesting passage says of 
the two parties: 'each of them claims that it defends "the paternal state" and that the 
opponent is infected with the modern spirit of selfishness and revolutionary violence. In 
reality, both are infected . . . The traditional customs and religion are more deeply rooted in 
the democratic party; its aristocratic enemies who fight under the flag of the restoration of 



the ancient times, are ... entirely modernized.' Cp. also op. cit., V, 4 f., 14, and the next 
note. 

26 . From Aristotle's Athenian Constitution, ch. 34, §3, we learn that the Thirty Tyrants 
professed at first what appeared to Aristotle a 'moderate' programme, viz., that of the 
'paternal state'. — For the nihilism and the modernity of Critias, cp. his theory of religion 
discussed in chapter 8 (see especially note 17 to that chapter) and note 48 to the present 
chapter. 

27 . It is most interesting to contrast Sophocles' attitude towards the new faith with that of 
Euripides. Sophocles complains (cp. Meyer, op. cit, IV, III): 'It is wrong that ... the lowly 
born should flourish, while the brave and nobly born are unfortunate.' Euripides replies 
(with Antiphon; cp. note 13 to chapter 5) that the distinction between the nobly and the low 
born (especially slaves) is merely verbal: 'The name alone brings shame upon the slave.' — 
For the humanitarian element in Thucydides, cp. the quotation in note 12 to this chapter. For 
the question how far the Great Generation was connected with cosmopolitan tendencies, see 
the evidence marshalled in note 48 to chapter 8 — especially the hostile witnesses, i.e. the 
Old Oligarch, Plato, and Aristotle. 

28. 'Misologists', or haters of rational argument, are compared by Socrates to 'misanthropists', 
or haters of men; cp. the Phaedo, 89c. In contrast, cp. Plato's misanthropic remark in the 
Republic, 496c-d (cp. notes 57 and 58 to chapter 8). 

29 . The quotations in this paragraph are from Democritus' fragments, Diels, Vorsokratiker^ , 
fragments number 41; 179; 34;261; 62; 55;251;247 (genuineness questioned by Diels and 
by Tarn, cp. note 48 to chapter 8); 118. 

30 . Cp. text to note 16, chapter 6. 

31. Cp. Thucydides, II, 37-41. Cp. also the remarks in note 16 to chapter 6. 

32. Cp. T. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, Book V, ch. 13,3 (Germ, edn, II, 407). 

33 . Herodotus' work with its pro-democratic tendency (cp. for example. III, 80) appeared about 
a year or two after Pericles' oration (cp. Meyer, Gesch. d. Altertums, IV, 369). 

34 . This has been pointed out for instance by T. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, V, 13, 2 (Germ. 



edn, II, 406 f.); the passages in the Republic to which he draws attention are: 557d and 561c, 
ff. The similarity is undoubtedly intentional. Cp. also Adam's edition of the Republic, vol. II, 
235, note to 557d26. See also theZam, 699d/e, ff., and 704d-707d. For a similar 
observation regarding Herodotus III, 80, see note 17 to chapter 6. 

35 . Some hold the Menexenus to be spurious, but I believe that this shows only their tendency 
to idealize Plato. The Menexenus is vouched for by Aristotle, who quotes a remark from it as 
due to the 'Socrates of the Funeral Dialogue' {Rhetoric, I, 9, 30 = 1367b8; and III, 14, 11 = 
1415b30). See especially also end of note 19 to chapter 6; also note 48 to chapter 8 and 
notes 15(1) and 61 to the present chapter. 

36 . The Old Oligarch's (or the Pseudo-Xenophon's) Constitution of Athens was pubHshed in 
424 B.C. (according to Kirchhoff, quoted by Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, Germ, edn, I, 477). 
For its attribution to Critias, cp. J. E. ^dindys, Aristotle's Constitution of Athens , Introduction 
IX, especially note 3. See also notes 18 and 48 to this chapter. Its influence upon 
Thucydides is, I think, noticeable in the passages quoted in notes 10 and 11 to this chapter. 
For its influence upon Plato, see especially note 59 to chapter 8, and Laws, 704a-707d. (Cp. 
Aristotle, Politics, 1326b-1327a; Cicero, De Republica, II, 3 and 4.) 

37 . I am alluding to M. M. Rader's book. No Compromise — The Conflict between Two Worlds 
(1939), an excellent criticism of the ideology of fascism. 

With the allusion, later in this paragraph, to Socrates' warning against misanthropy and 
misology, cp. note 28, above. 

38 . *(1) For the theory that what may be called 'the invention of critical thought' consists in the 
foundation of a new tradition — the tradition of critically discussing the traditional myths and 
theories — see my 'Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition,' The Rationalist Annual , 1949; 
now in Conjectures and Refutations . (Only such a new tradition can explain the fact that, in 
the Ionian School, the three first generations produced three different philosophies.)* 

(2) Schools (especially Universities) have retained certain aspects of tribalism ever since. But 
we must think not only of their emblems, or of the Old School Tie with all its social 
implications of caste, etc., but also of the patriarchal and authoritarian character of so many 
schools. It was not just an accident that Plato, when he had failed to re-establish tribalism. 



founded a school instead; nor is it an accident that schools are so often bastions of reaction, 
and school teachers dictators in pocket edition. 

As an illustration of the tribalistic character of these early schools, I give here a list of some 
of the taboos of the early Pythagoreans. (The Hst is from Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy'^, 
106, who takes it from Diels; cp. Vorsokratiker^, vol. I, pp. 97 ff.; but see also Aristoxenus' 
evidence in op. cil, p. 101.) Burnet speaks of 'genuine taboos of a thoroughly primitive 
type'. — To abstain from beans. — ^Not to pick up what has fallen. — ^Not to touch a white 
cock. — ^Not to break bread. — ^Not to step over a crossbar. — ^Not to stir the fire with iron. — 
Not to eat from a whole loaf — ^Not to pluck a garland. — ^Not to sit on a quart measure. — ^Not 
to eat the heart. — ^Not to walk on highways. — ^Not to let the swallows share one's roof — 
When the pot is taken off the fire, not to leave the mark of it in the ashes, but to stir them 
together. — Not to look in a mirror beside a light. — After rising from the bedclothes, to roll 
them together and to smooth out the impress of the body. 

39 . An interesting parallelism to this development is the destruction of tribalism through the 
Persian conquests. This social revolution led, as Meyer points out (op. cil, vol. Ill, 167 ff), 
to the emergence of a number of prophetic, i.e. in our terminology, of historicist, religions of 
destiny, degeneration, and salvation, among them that of the 'chosen people', the Jews (cp. 
chapter 1). 

Some of these religions were also characterized by the doctrine that the creation of the world 
is not yet concluded, but still going on. This must be compared with the early Greek 
conception of the world as an edifice and with the Heraclitean destruction of this conception, 
described in chapter 2 (see note 1 to that chapter). It may be mentioned here that even 
Anaximander felt uneasy about the edifice. His stress upon the boundless or indeterminate 
or indefinite character of the building-material may have been the expression of a feeling 
that the building may possess no definite framework, that it may be in flux (cp. next note). 
The development of the Dionysian and the Orphic mysteries in Greece is probably 
dependent upon the religious development of the east (cp. Herodotus, II, 81). 
Pythagoreanism, as is well known, had much in common with Orphic teaching, especially 
regarding the theory of the soul (see also note 44 below). But Pythagoreanism had a 



definitely 'aristocratic' flavour, as opposed to the Orphic teaching which represented a kind 
of 'proletarian' version of this movement. Meyer {op. cit. III, p. 428, § 246) is probably 
right when he describes the beginnings of philosophy as a rational counter-current against 
the movement of the mysteries; cp. Heraclitus' attitude in these matters (fragm. 5, 14, 15; 
and 40, 129, Diels^; 124-129; and 16-17, Bywater). He hated the mysteries and Pythagoras; 
the Pythagorean Plato despised the mysteries. {Rep., 364e, f; cp. however Adam's 
Appendix IV to Book IX of the Republic, vol. II, 378 ff., of his edition.) 

40 . For Anaximander (cp. the preceding note), see Diels^, fragm. 9: 'The origin of things ... is 
some indeterminate (or boundless) nature; ... out of those things from which existing things 
are generated, into these they dissolve again, by necessity. For they do penance to one 
another for their offence (or injustice), according to the order of time.' That individual 
existence appeared to Anaximander as injustice was the interpretation of Gomperz {Greek 
Thinkers, Germ, edn, vol. I, p. 46; note the similarity to Plato's theory of justice); but this 
interpretation has been severely criticized. 

41 . Parmenides was the first to seek his salvation from this strain by interpreting his dream of 
the arrested world as a revelation of true reality, and the world of flux in which he lived as a 
dream. 'The real being is indivisible. It is always an integrated whole, which never breaks 
away from its order; it never disperses, and thus need not re-unite.' (D5, fragm. 4.) For 
Parmenides, cp. also note 22 to chapter 3, and text. 

42 . Cp. note 9 to the present chapter (and note 7 to chapter 5). 

43. Cp. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, III, 443, and IV, 120 f. 

44 . J. Burnet, 'The Socratic Doctrine of the SouV , Proceedings of the British Academy, VIII 
(1915/16), 235 ff. I am the more anxious to stress this partial agreement since I cannot agree 
with Burnet in most of his other theories, especially those that concern Socrates' relations to 
Plato; his opinion in particular that Socrates is politically the more reactionary of the two 
{Greek Philosophy, I, 210) appears to me untenable. Cp. note 56 to this chapter. 
Regarding the Socratic doctrine of the soul, I believe that Burnet is right in insisting that the 
saying 'care for your souls' is Socratic; for this saying expresses Socrates' moral interests. 
But I think it highly improbable that Socrates held any metaphysical theory of the soul. The 



theories of the Phaedo, the Republic, etc., seem to me undoubtedly Pythagorean. (For the 
Orphic-Pythagorean theory that the body is the tomb of the soul, cp. Adam, Appendix IV to 
Book IX of the Republic; see also note 39 to this chapter.) And in view of Socrates' clear 
statement in ihQ Apology, 19c, that he had 'nothing whatever to do with such things' (i.e. 
with speculations on nature; see note 56 (5) to this chapter), I strongly disagree with 
Burnet's opinion that Socrates was a Pythagorean; and also with the opinion that he held any 
definite metaphysical doctrine of the 'nature' of the soul. 

I believe that Socrates' saying 'care for your souls' is an expression of his moral (and 
intellectual) individuahsm. Few of his doctrines seem to be so well attested as his 
individuahstic theory of the moral self-sufficiency of the virtuous man. (See the evidence 
mentioned in notes 25 to chapter 5 and 36 to chapter 6.) But this is most closely connected 
with the idea expressed in the sentence 'care for your souls'. In his emphasis on self- 
sufficiency, Socrates wished to say: They can destroy your body, but they cannot destroy 
your moral integrity. If the latter is your main concern, they cannot do any really serious 
harm to you. 

It appears that Plato, when becoming acquainted with the Pythagorean metaphysical theory 
of the soul, felt that Socrates' moral attitude needed a metaphysical foundation, especially a 
theory of survival. He therefore substituted for 'they cannot destroy your moral integrity' the 
idea of the indestructibility of the soul. (Cp. also notes 9f. to chapter 7.) 
Against my interpretation, it may be contended by both metaphysicians and positivists that 
there can be no such moral and non-metaphysical idea of the soul as I ascribe to Socrates, 
since any way of speaking of the soul must be metaphysical. I do not think that I have much 
hope of convincing Platonic metaphysicians; but I shall attempt to show positivists (or 
materiahsts, etc.) that they too believe in a 'soul', in a sense very similar to that which I 
attribute to Socrates, and that most of them value that 'soul' more highly than the body. 
First of all, even positivists may admit that we can make a perfectly empirical and 
'meaningful', although somewhat unprecise, distinction between 'physical' and 'psychical' 
maladies. In fact, this distinction is of considerable practical importance for the organization 
of hospitals, etc. (It is quite probable that one day it may be superseded by something more 
precise, but that is a different question.) Now most of us, even positivists, would, if we had 



to choose, prefer a mild physical malady to a mild form of insanity. Even positivists would 
moreover probably prefer a lengthy and in the end incurable physical illness (provided it 
was not too painful, etc.) to an equally lengthy period of incurable insanity, and perhaps 
even to a period of curable insanity. In this way, I believe, we can say without using 
metaphysical terms that they care for their 'souls' more than for their 'bodies'. (Cp. Phaedo, 
82d: they 'care for their souls and are not servants of their bodies'; see also Apology, 29d- 
30b.) And this way of speaking would be quite independent of any theory they might have 
concerning the 'soul'; even if they should maintain that, in the last analysis, it is only part of 
the body, and all insanity only a physical malady, our conclusion would still hold. (It would 
come to something like this: that they value their brains more highly than other parts of their 
bodies.) 

We can now proceed to a similar consideration of an idea of the 'soul' which is closer still to 
the Socratic idea. Many of us are prepared to undergo considerable physical hardship for the 
sake of purely intellectual ends. We are, for example, ready to suffer in order to advance 
scientific knowledge; and also for the sake of furthering our own intellectual development, 
i.e. for the sake of attaining 'wisdom'. (For Socrates' intellectualism, cp. for instance the 
Crito, 44d/e, and 47b.) Similar things could be said of the furthering of moral ends, for 
instance, equalitarian justice, peace, etc. (Cp. Crito, 47e/48a, where Socrates explains that he 
means by 'soul' that part of us which is 'improved by justice and depraved by injustice'.) 
And many of us would say, with Socrates, that these things are more important to us than 
things like health, even though we like to be in good health. And many may even agree with 
Socrates that the possibility of adopting such an attitude is what makes us proud to be men, 
and not animals. 

All this, I believe, can be said without any reference to a metaphysical theory of the 'nature 
of the soul'. And I see no reason why we should attribute such a theory to Socrates in the 
face of his clear statement that he had nothing to do with speculations of that sort. 

45 . In the Gorgias, which is, I believe, Socratic in parts (although the Pythagorean elements 
which Gomperz has noted show, I think, that it is largely Platonic; cp. note 56 to this 
chapter), Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates an attack on 'the ports and ship-yards and 
walls' of Athens, and on the tributes or taxes imposed upon her allies. These attacks, as they 



stand, are certainly Plato's, which may explain why they sound very much like those of the 
oligarchs. But I think it quite possible that Socrates may have made similar remarks, in his 
anxiety to stress the things which, in his opinion, mattered most. But he would, I believe, 
have loathed the idea that his moral criticism could be turned into treacherous oHgarchic 
propaganda against the open society, and especially, against its representative, Athens. (For 
the question of Socrates' loyalty, cp. esp. note 53 to this chapter, and text.) 

46 . The typical figures, in Plato's works, are Callicles and Thrasymachus. Historically, the 
nearest realizations are perhaps Theramenes and Critias; Alcibiades also, whose character 
and deeds, however, are very hard to judge. 

47 . The following remarks are highly speculative and do not bear upon my arguments. 

I consider it possible that the basis of the First Alcibiades is Plato's own conversion by 
Socrates, i.e. that Plato may in this dialogue have chosen the figure of Alcibiades to hide 
himself. There might have been a strong inducement for him to tell the story of his 
conversion; for Socrates, when accused of being responsible for the misdeeds of Alcibiades, 
Critias, and Charmides (see below), had referred, in his defence before the court, to Plato as 
a living example, and as a witness, of his true educational influence. It seems not unlikely 
that Plato with his urge to literary testimony felt that he had to tell the tale of Socrates' 
relations with himself, a tale which he could not tell in court (cp. Taylor, Socrates, note 1 to 
p. 105). By using Alcibiades' name and the special circumstances surrounding him (e.g. his 
ambitious political dreams which might well have been similar to those of Plato before his 
conversion) he would attain his apologetic purpose (cp. text to notes 49-50), showing that 
Socrates' moral influence in general, and in particular on Alcibiades, was very different from 
what his prosecutors maintained it to be. I think it not unlikely that the Charmides is also, 
largely, a self-portrait. (It is not without interest to note that Plato himself undertook similar 
conversions, but as far as we can judge, in a different way; not so much by direct personal 
moral appeal, but rather by an institutional teaching of Pythagorean mathematics, as a pre- 
requisite for the dialectical intuition of the Idea of the Good. Cp. the stories of his attempted 
conversion of the younger Dionysius.) For the First Alcibiades and related problems, see 
also Grote's Plato, I, especially pp. 351-355. 



48 . Cp. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums , V, 38 (and Xenophon's Hellenica, II, 4, 22). In the 
same volume, on pp. 19-23 and 36-44 (see especially p. 36) can be found all the evidence 
needed for justifying the interpretation given in the text. The Cambridge Ancient History 
(1927, vol. V; cp. especially pp. 369 ff.) gives a very similar interpretation of the events. 
It may be added that the number of full citizens killed by the Thirty during the eight months 
of terror approached probably 1,500, which is, as far as we know, not much less than one- 
tenth (probably about 8 per cent.) of the total number of full citizens left after the war, or 1 
per cent, per month — an achievement hardly surpassed even in our own day. 
Taylor writes of the Thirty {Socrates, Short Biographies, 1937, p. 100, note 1): 'It is only fair 
to remember that these men probably "lost their heads" under the temptation presented by 
their situation. Critias had previously been known as a man of wide culture whose political 
leanings were decidedly democratic' I believe that this attempt to minimize the 
responsibility of the puppet government, and especially of Plato's beloved uncle, must fail. 
We know well enough what to think of the shortlived democratic sentiments professed in 
those days at suitable occasions by the young aristocrats. Besides, Critias' father (cp. Meyer, 
vol. IV, p. 579, and Lys., 12, 43, and 12, 66), and probably Critias himself, had belonged to 
the oligarchy of the Four Hundred; and Critias' extant writings show his treacherous pro- 
Spartan leanings as well as his oligarchic outlook (cp., for instance, Diels^, 45) and his blunt 
nihilism (cp. note 17 to chapter 8) and his ambition (cp. Diels^, 15; cp. also Xenophon's 
Memorabilia, I, 2, 24; and his Hellenica, II, 3, 36 and 47). But the decisive point is that he 
simply tried to give consistent effect to the programme of the 'Old Oligarch', the author of 
the Pseudo-Xenophontic Constitution of Athens (cp. note 36 to the present chapter): to 
eradicate democracy; and to make a determined attempt to do so with Spartan help, should 
Athens be defeated. The degree of violence used is the logical result of the situation. It does 
not indicate that Critias lost his head; rather, that he was very well aware of the difficulties, 
i.e. of the democrats' still formidable power of resistance. 

Meyer, whose great sympathy for Dionysius I proves that he is at least not prejudiced 
against tyrants, says about Critias {op. cit., V, p. 17), after a sketch of his amazingly 
opportunistic political career, that 'he was just as unscrupulous as Lysander', the Spartan 
conqueror, and therefore the appropriate head of Lysander' s puppet government. 



It seems to me that there is a striking similarity between the characters of Critias, the soldier, 
esthete, poet, and sceptical companion of Socrates, and of Frederick II of Prussia, called 'the 
Great', who also was a soldier, an aesthete, a poet, and a sceptical disciple of Voltaire, as 
well as one of the worst tyrants and most ruthless oppressors in modem history. (On 
Frederick, cp. W. Hegemann, Entlarvte Geschichte, 1934; see especially p. 90 on his attitude 
towards religion, reminiscent of that of Critias.) 

49 . This point is very well explained by Taylor, Socrates, Short Biographies, 1937, p. 103, who 
follows here Burnet's note to Plato's Euthyphro, 4c, 4. — The only point in which I feel 
inclined to deviate, but only very slightly, from Taylor's excellent treatment {op. cit., 103, 
120) of Socrates' trial is in the interpretation of the tendencies of the charge, especially of 
the charge concerning the introduction of 'novel religious practices' {op. cit., 109 and 111 
f). 

50 . Evidence to show this can be found in Taylor's Socrates, 113-115; cp. especially 115, note 
1, where Aeschines, I, 173, is quoted: 'You put Socrates the Sophist to death because he was 
shown to have educated Critias.' 

51 . It was the policy of the Thirty to implicate as many people in their acts of terrorism as they 
could; cp. the excellent remarks by Taylor in Socrates, 101 f (especially note 3 to p. 101). 
For Chaerephon, see note 56, (5) e 6 to the present chapter. 

52 . As Crossman and other do; cp. Crossman, Plato To-Day, 91/92. I agree in this point with 
Taylor, Socrates, 116; see also his notes 1 and 2 to that page. 

That the plan of the prosecution was not to make a martyr of Socrates; that the trial could 
have been avoided, or managed differently, had Socrates been prepared to compromise, i.e. 
to leave Athens, or even to promise to keep quiet, all this seems fairly clear in view of 
Plato's (or Socrates') allusions in the Apology as well as in the Crito. (Cp. Crito, 45e and 
especially 52b/c, where Socrates says that he would have been permitted to emigrate had he 
offered to do so at the trial.) 

53 . Cp. especially Crito, 53b/c, where Socrates explains that, if he were to accept the 
opportunity for escape, he would confirm his judges in their belief; for he who corrupts the 
laws is likely to corrupt the young also. 



The Apology and Crito were probably written not long after Socrates' death. The Crito 
(possibly the earlier of the two) was perhaps written upon Socrates' request that his motives 
in declining to escape should be made known. Indeed, such a wish may have been the first 
inspiration of the Socratic dialogues. T. Gomperz (Greek Thinkers, V, 11, 1, Germ, edn, II, 
358) believes the Crito to be of later date and explains its tendency by assuming that it was 
Plato who was anxious to stress his loyalty. 'We do not know' writes Gomperz, 'the 
immediate situation to which this small dialogue owes its existence; but it is hard to resist the 
impression that Plato is here most interested in defending himself and his group against the 
suspicion of harbouring revolutionary views.' Although Gomperz's suggestion would easily 
fit into my general interpretation of Plato's views, I feel that the Crito is much more likely to 
be Socrates' defence than Plato's. But I agree with Gomperz's interpretation of its tendency. 
Socrates had certainly the greatest interest in defending himself against a suspicion which 
endangered his hfe's work. — Regarding this interpretation of the contents of the Crito, I 
again agree fully with Taylor (Socrates, 124 f ). But the loyalty of the Crito and its contrast 
to the obvious disloyalty of the Republic which quite openly takes sides with Sparta against 
Athens seems to refute Burnet's and Taylor's view that the Republic is Socratic, and that 
Socrates was more strongly opposed to democracy than Plato. (Cp. note 56 to this chapter.) 
Concerning Socrates' affirmation of his loyalty to democracy, cp. especially the following 
passages of the Crito: 51d/e, where the democratic character of the laws is stressed, i.e. the 
possibility that the citizen might change the laws without violence, by rational argument (as 
Socrates puts it, he may try to convince the laws); — 52b, f., where Socrates insists that he 
has no quarrel with the Athenian constitution; — 53c/d, where he describes not only virtue 
and justice but especially institutions and laws (those of Athens) as the best things among 
men; — 54c, where he says that he may be a victim of men, but insists that he is not a victim 
of the laws. 

In view of all these passages (and especially of Apology, 32c; cp. note 8 to chapter 7), we 
must, I believe, discount the one passage which looks very different, viz. 52e, where 
Socrates by implication praises the constitutions of Sparta and Crete. Considering especially 
52b/c, where Socrates said that he was not curious to know other states or their laws, one 
may be tempted to suggest that the remark on Sparta and Crete in 52e is an interpolation. 



made by somebody who attempted to reconcile the Crito with later writings, especially with 
the Republic. Whether that is so or whether the passage is a Platonic addition, it seems 
extremely unlikely that it is Socratic. One need only remember Socrates' anxiety not to do 
anything which might be interpreted as pro-Spartan, an anxiety of which we know from 
^Qno^horv's Anabasis, III, 1, 5. There we read that 'Socrates feared that he' (i.e. his friend, 
the young Xenophon — another of the young black sheep) 'might be blamed for being 
disloyal; for Cyrus was known to have assisted the Spartans in the war against Athens.' (This 
passage is certainly much less suspect than the Memorabilia; there is no influence of Plato 
here, and Xenophon actually accuses himself, by implication, of having taken his 
obligations to his country too lightly, and of having deserved his banishment, mentioned in 
op. cit, V, 3, 7, and VII, 7, 57.) 

54 . Apology, 30e/3 la. 

55 . Platonists, of course, would all agree with Taylor who says in the last sentence of his 
Socrates: 'Socrates had just one "successor" — Plato.' Only Grote seems sometimes to have 
held views similar to those stated in the text; what he says, for instance, in the passage 
quoted here in note 2 1 to chapter 7 (see also note 1 5 to chapter 8) can be interpreted as at 
least an expression of doubt whether Plato did not betray Socrates. Grote makes it perfectly 
clear that the Republic (not only the Laws) would have furnished the theoretical basis for 
condemning the Socrates of the Apology, and that this Socrates would never have been 
tolerated in Plato's best state. And he even points out that Plato's theory agrees with the 
practical treatment meted out to Socrates by the Thirty. (An example showing that the 
perversion of his master's teaching by a pupil is a thing that can succeed, even if the master 
is still alive, famous, and protests in public, can be found in note 58 to chapter 12.) 

For the remarks on the Laws, made later in this paragraph, see especially the passages of the 
Laws referred to in notes 19-23 to chapter 8. Even Taylor, whose opinions on these 
questions are diametrically opposed to those presented here (see also the next note), admits: 
'The person who first proposed to make false opinions in theology an offence against the 
state, was Plato himself, in the tenth Book of the Laws.' (Taylor, op. cit., 108, note 1.) 
In the text, I contrast especially Plato's Apology and Crito with his Laws. The reason for this 



choice is that nearly everybody, even Burnet and Taylor (see the next note), would agree 
that the Apology and the Crito represent the Socratic doctrine, and that the Laws may be 
described as Platonic. It seems to me therefore very diffi-cult to understand how Burnet and 
Taylor could possibly defend their opinion that Socrates' attitude towards democracy was 
more hostile than Plato's. (This opinion is expressed in Burnet's Greek Philosophy, I, 209 f , 
and in Taylor's Socrates, 150 f , and 170 f ) I have seen no attempt to defend this view of 
Socrates, who fought for freedom (cp. especially note 53 to this chapter) and died for it, and 
of Plato, who wrote the Laws. 

Burnet and Taylor hold this strange view because they are committed to the opinion that the 
Republic is Socratic and not Platonic; and because it may be said that the Republic is slightly 
less anti-democratic than the Platonic Statesman and the Laws. But the differences between 
the Republic and the Statesman as well as the Laws are very slight indeed, especially if not 
only the first books of the Laws are considered but also the last; in fact, the agreement of 
doctrine is rather closer than one would expect in two books separated by at least one 
decade, and probably by three or more, and most dissimilar in temperament and style (see 
note 6 to chapter 4, and many other places in this book where the similarity, if not identity, 
between the doctrines of the Laws and the Republic is shown). There is not the slightest 
internal difficulty in assuming that the Republic and the Laws are both Platonic; but Burnet's 
and Taylor's own admission that their theory leads to the conclusion that Socrates was not 
only an enemy of democracy but even a greater enemy than Plato shows the difficulty if not 
absurdity of their view that not only the Apology and the Crito are Socratic but the Republic 
as well. For all these questions, see also the next note, and the Addenda, III, B(2), below. 

56 . I need hardly say that this sentence is an attempt to sum up my interpretation of the 
historical role of Plato's theory of justice (for the moral failure of the Thirty, cp. Xenophon's 
Hellenica, II, 4, 40-42); and particularly of the main political doctrines of the Republic; an 
interpretation which tries to explain the contradictions among the early dialogues, especially 
the Gorgias, and the Republic, as arising from the fundamental difference between the views 
of Socrates and those of the later Plato. The cardinal importance of the question which is 
usually called the Socratic Problem may justify my entering here into a lengthy and partly 
methodological debate. 



(1) The older solution of the Socratic Problem assumed that a group of the Platonic 
dialogues, especially the Apology and the Crito, is Socratic (i.e., in the main historically 
correct, and intended as such) while the majority of the dialogues are Platonic, including 
many of those in which Socrates is the main speaker, as for instance the Phaedo and the 
Republic. The older authorities justified this opinion often by referring to an 'independent 
witness', Xenophon, and by pointing out the similarity between the Xenophontic Socrates 
and the Socrates of the 'Socratic' group of dialogues, and the dissimilarities between the 
Xenophontic 'Socrates' and the 'Socrates' of the Platonic group of dialogues. The 
metaphysical theory of Forms or Ideas, more especially, was usually considered Platonic. 

(2) Against this view, an attack was launched by J. Burnet, who was supported by A. E. 
Taylor. Burnet denounced the argument on which the 'older solution' (as I call it) is based as 
circular and unconvincing. It is not sound, he held, to select a group of dialogues solely 
because the theory of Forms is less prominent in them, to call them Socratic, and then to say 
that the theory of Forms was not Socrates' but Plato's invention. And it is not sound to claim 
Xenophon as an independent witness since we have no reason whatever to beheve in his 
independence, and good reason to believe that he must have known a number of Plato's 
dialogues when he commenced writing the Memorabilia. Burnet demanded that we should 
proceed from the assumption that Plato really meant what he said, and that, when he made 
Socrates pronounce a certain doctrine, he believed, and wished his readers to believe, that 
this doctrine was characteristic of Socrates' teaching. 

(3) Although Burnet's views on the Socratic Problem appear to me untenable, they have 
been most valuable and stimulating. A bold theory of this kind, even if it is false, always 
means progress; and Burnet's books are full of bold and most unconventional views on his 
subject. This is the more to be appreciated as a historical subject always shows a tendency to 
become stale. But much as I admire Burnet for his brilliant and bold theories, and much as I 
appreciate their salutary effect, I am, considering the evidence available to me, unable to 
convince myself that these theories are tenable. In his invaluable enthusiasm, Burnet was, I 
beheve, not always critical enough towards his own ideas. This is why others have found it 
necessary to criticize these ideas instead. 

Regarding the Socratic Problem, I believe with many others that the view which I have 



described as the 'older solution' is fundamentally correct. This view has lately been well 
defended, against Burnet and Taylor, especially by G. C. Field {Plato and His 
Contemporaries, 1930) and A. K. Rogers {The Socratic Problem, 1933); and many other 
scholars seem to adhere to it. In spite of the fact that the arguments so far offered appear to 
me convincing, I may be permitted to add to them, using some results of the present book. 
But before proceeding to criticize Burnet, I may state that it is to Burnet that we owe our 
insight into the following principle of method. Plato 's evidence is the only first-rate evidence 
available to us; all other evidence is secondary. (Burnet has applied this principle to 
Xenophon; but we must apply it also to Aristophanes, whose evidence was rejected by 
Socrates himself, in the Apology; see under (5), below.) 

(4) Burnet explains that it is his method to assume 'that Plato really meant what he said'. 
According to this methodological principle, Plato's 'Socrates' must be intended as a portrait 
of the historical Socrates. (Cp. Greek Philosophy, I, 128, 212 f., and note on p. 349/50; cp. 
Taylor's Socrates, 14 f , 32 f , 153.) I admit that Burnet's methodological principle is a 
sound starting point. But I shall try to show, under (5), that the facts are such that they soon 
force everybody to give it up, including Burnet and Taylor. They are forced, like all others, 
to interpret what Plato says. But while others become conscious of this fact, and therefore 
careful and critical in their interpretations, it is inevitable that those who cling to the belief 
that they do not interpret Plato but simply accept what he said make it impossible for 
themselves to examine their interpretations critically. 

(5) The facts that make Burnet's methodology inapplicable and force him and all others to 
interpret what Plato said, are, of course, the contradictions in Plato's alleged portrait of 
Socrates. Even if we accept the principle that we have no better evidence than Plato's, we 
are forced by the internal contradictions in his writing not to take him at his word, and to 
give up the assumption that he 'really meant what he said'. If a witness involves himself in 
contradictions, then we cannot accept his testimony without interpreting it, even if he is the 
best witness available. I give first only three examples of such internal contradictions. 

{a) The Socrates of the Apology very impressively repeats three times (18b-c; 19c-d; 23d) 
that he is not interested in natural philosophy (and therefore not a Pythagorean): 'I know 
nothing, neither much nor little, about such things', he said (19c); 'I, men of Athens, have 



nothing whatever to do with such things' (i.e. with speculations about nature). Socrates 
asserts that many who are present at the trial could testify to the truth of this statement; they 
have heard him speak, but neither in few nor in many words has anybody ever heard him 
speak about matters of natural philosophy. {Ap., 19, c-d.) On the other hand, we have {a') 
the Phaedo (cp. especially 108d, f, with the passages of the Apology referred to) and the 
Republic. In these dialogues, Socrates appears as a Pythagorean philosopher of 'nature'; so 
much so that both Burnet and Taylor could say that he was in fact a leading member of the 
Pythagorean school of thought. (Cp. Aristotle, who says of the Pythagoreans 'their 
discussions ... are all about nature'; see Metaphysics, end of 989b.) 

Now I hold that (a) and («') flatly contradict each other; and this situation is made worse by 
the fact that the dramatic date of the Republic is earlier and that of the Phaedo later than that 
of the Apology. This makes it impossible to reconcile {a) with {a') by assuming that Socrates 
either gave up Pythagoreanism in the last years of his life, between the Republic and the 
Apology, or that he was converted to Pythagoreanism in the last month of his life. 
I do not pretend that there is no way of removing this contradiction by some assumption or 
interpretation. Burnet and Taylor may have reasons, perhaps even good reasons, for trusting 
the Phaedo and the Republic rather than the Apology. (But they ought to realize that, 
assuming the correctness of Plato's portrait, any doubt of Socrates' veracity in the Apology 
makes of him one who lies for the sake of saving his skin.) Such questions, however, do not 
concern me at the moment. My point is rather that in accepting evidence {a') as against {a), 
Burnet and Taylor are forced to abandon their fundamental methodological assumption 'that 
Plato really meant what he said'; they must interpret. 

But interpretations made unawares must be uncritical; this can be illustrated by the use made 
by Burnet and Taylor of Aristophanes' evidence. They hold that Aristophanes' jests would 
be pointless if Socrates had not been a natural philosopher. But it so happens that Socrates (I 
always assume, with Burnet and Taylor, that the Apology is historical) foresaw this very 
argument. In his apology, he warned his judges against precisely this very interpretation of 
Aristophanes, insisting most earnestly {Ap., 19c, ff.; see also 20c-e) that he had neither little 
nor much to do with natural philosophy, but simply nothing at all. Socrates felt as if he were 
fighting against shadows in this matter, against the shadows of the past {Ap., 18d-e); but we 



can now say that he was also fighting the shadows of the future. For when he challenged his 
fellow-citizens to come forward — ^those who beUeved Aristophanes and dared to call 
Socrates a liar — not one came. It was 2,300 years before some Platonists made up their 
minds to answer his challenge. 

It may be mentioned, in this connection, that Aristophanes, a moderate anti-democrat, 
attacked Socrates as a 'sophist', and that most of the sophists were democrats. 

(b) In the Apology (40c, ff.) Socrates takes up an agnostic attitude towards the problem of 
survival; (Z)') the Phaedo consists mainly of elaborate proofs of the immortality of the soul. 
This difficulty is discussed by Burnet (in his edition of the Phaedo, 1911, pp. xlviii ff.), in a 
way which does not convince me at all. (Cp. notes 9 to chapter 7, and 44 to the present 
chapter.) But whether he is right or not, his own discussion proves that he is forced to give 
up his methodological principle and to interpret what Plato says. 

(c) The Socrates of the Apology holds that the wisdom even of the wisest consists in the 
realization of how little he knows, and that, accordingly, the Delphian saying 'know thyself 
must be interpreted as 'know thy limitations'; and he implies that the rulers, more than 
anybody else, ought to know their limitations. Similar views can be found in other early 
dialogues. But the main speakers of the Statesman and the Laws propound the doctrine that 
the powerful ought to be wise; and by wisdom they no longer mean a knowledge of one's 
limitations, but rather the initiation into the deeper mysteries of dialectic philosophy — the 
intuition of the world of Forms or Ideas, or the training in the Royal Science of politics. The 
same doctrine is expounded, in the Philebus, even as part of a discussion of the Delphian 
saying. (Cp. note 26 to chapter 7.) 

{d) Apart from these three flagrant contradictions, I may mention two further contradictions 
which could easily be neglected by those who do not believe that the Seventh Letter is 
genuine, but which seem to me fatal to Burnet who maintains that the Seventh Letter is 
authentic. Burnet's view (untenable even if we neglect this letter; cp. for the whole question 
note 26 (5) to chapter 3) that Socrates but not Plato held the theory of Forms, is contradicted 
in 342a, ff, of this letter; and his view that the Republic, more especially, is Socratic, in 326a 
(cp. note 14 to chapter 7). Of course, all these difficulties could be removed, but only by 
interpretation. 



(e) There are a number of similar although at the same time more subtle and more important 
contradictions which have been discussed at some length in previous chapters, especially in 
chapters 6, 7 and 8. 1 may sum up the most important of these. 

(el) The attitude towards men, especially towards the young, changes in Plato's portrait in a 
way which cannot be Socrates' development. Socrates died for the right to talk freely to the 
young, whom he loved. But in the Republic, we fmd him taking up an attitude of 
condescension and distrust which resembles the disgruntled attitude of the Athenian Stranger 
(admittedly Plato himself) in the Laws and the general distrust of mankind expressed so 
often in this work. (Cp. text to notes 17-18 to chapter 4; 18-21 to chapter 7; and 57-58 to 
chapter 8.) 

(el) The same sort of thing can be said about Socrates' attitude towards truth and free 
speech. He died for it. But in the Republic, 'Socrates' advocates lying; in the admittedly 
Platonic Statesman, a lie is offered as truth, and in the Laws, free thought is suppressed by 
the establishment of an Inquisition. (Cp. the same places as before, and furthermore notes 1- 
23 and 40-41 to chapter 8; and note 55 to the present chapter.) 

(e3) The Socrates of the Apology and some other dialogues is intellectually modest; in the 
Phaedo, he changes into a man who is assured of the truth of his metaphysical speculations. 
In the Republic, he is a dogmatist, adopting an attitude not far removed from the petrified 
authoritarianism of the Statesman and of the Laws. (Cp. text to notes 8-14 and 26 to chapter 
7; 15 and 33 to chapter 8; and (c) in the present note.) 

{eA) The Socrates of the Apology is an individualist; he believes in the self-sufficiency of the 
human individual. In the Gorgias, he is still an individualist. In the Republic, he is a radical 
collectivist, very similar to Plato's position in the Laws. (Cp. notes 25 and 35 to chapter 5; 
text to notes 26, 32, 36 and 48-54 to chapter 6 and note 45 to the present chapter.) 
{eS) Again we can say similar things about Socrates' equalitarianism. In the Meno, he 
recognizes that a slave participates in the general intelhgence of all human beings, and that 
he can be taught even pure mathematics; in the Gorgias, he defends the equalitarian theory 
of justice. But in ihe Republic, he despises workers and slaves and is as much opposed to 
equalitarianism as is Plato in the Timaeus and in the Laws. (Cp. the passages mentioned 
under {e 4); furthermore, notes 18 and 29 to chapter 4; note 10 to chapter 7, and note 50 (3) 



to chapter 8, where Timaeus, 51e, is quoted.) 

(e6) The Socrates of the Apology and Crito is loyal to Athenian democracy. In the Meno and 
in the Gorgias (cp. note 45 to this chapter) there are suggestions of a hostile criticism; in the 
Republic (and, I believe, in the Menexenus), he is an open enemy of democracy; and 
although Plato expresses himself more cautiously in the Statesman and in the beginning of 
the Laws, his political tendencies in the later part of the Laws are admittedly (cp. text to note 
32 to chapter 6) identical with those of the 'Socrates' of the Republic. (Cp. notes 53 and 55 
to the present chapter and notes 7 and 14-18 to chapter 4.) 

The last point may be further supported by the following. It seems that Socrates, in the 
Apology, is not merely loyal to Athenian democracy, but that he appeals directly to the 
democratic party by pointing out that Chaerephon, one of the most ardent of his disciples, 
belonged to their ranks. Chaerephon plays a decisive part in the Apology, since by 
approaching the Oracle, he is instrumental in Socrates' recognition of his mission in life, and 
thereby ultimately in Socrates' refusal to compromise with the Demos. Socrates introduces 
this important person by emphasizing the fact {ApoL, 20e/21a) that Chaerephon was not 
only his friend, but also a friend of the people, whose exile he shared, and with whom he 
returned (presumably, he participated in the fight against the Thirty); that is to say, Socrates 
chooses as the main witness for his defence an ardent democrat. (There is some independent 
evidence for Chaerephon's sympathies, such as in Aristophanes' Clouds, 104, 501 ff. 
Chaerephon's appearance in the Charmides may be intended to create a kind of balance; the 
prominence of Critias and Charmides would otherwise create the impression of a pro-Thirty 
manifesto.) Why does Socrates emphasize his intimacy with a militant member of the 
democratic party? We cannot assume that this was merely special pleading, intended to 
move his judges to be more merciful: the whole spirit of his apology is against this 
assumption. The most likely hypothesis is that Socrates, by pointing out that he had disciples 
in the democratic camp, intended to deny, by implication, the charge (which also was only 
implied) that he was a follower of the aristocratic party and a teacher of tyrants. The spirit of 
the Apology excludes the assumption that Socrates was pleading friendship with a 
democratic leader without being truly sympathetic with the democratic cause. And the same 
conclusion must be drawn from the passage (ApoL, 32b-d) in which he emphasizes his faith 



in democratic legality, and denounces the Thirty in no uncertain terms. 
(6) It is simply the internal evidence of the Platonic dialogues which forces us to assume that 
they are not entirely historical. We must therefore attempt to interpret this evidence, by 
proffering theories which can be critically compared with the evidence, using the method of 
trial and error. Now we have very strong reason to believe that the Apology is in the main 
historical, for it is the only dialogue which describes a public occurrence of considerable 
importance and well known to a great number of people. On the other hand, we know that 
the Laws are Plato's latest work (apart from the doubtful Epinomis), and that they are frankly 
'Platonic'. It is, therefore, the simplest assumption that the dialogues will be historical or 
Socratic so far as they agree with the tendencies of the Apology, and Platonic where they 
contradict these tendencies. (This assumption brings us practically back to the position 
which I have described above as the 'older solution' of the Socratic Problem.) 
If we consider the tendencies mentioned above under {e l) to {e 6), we find that we can 
easily order the most important of the dialogues in such a way that for any single one of 
these tendencies the similarity with the Socratic Apology decreases and that with the Platonic 
Laws increases. This is the series. 

Apology and Crito — Meno — Gorgias — Phaedo — Republic — Statesman — Timaeus — Laws. 
Now the fact that this series orders the dialogues according to all the tendencies (el) to (e 6) 
is in itself a corroboration of the theory that we are here faced with a development in Plato's 
thought. But we can get quite independent evidence. 'Stylometric' investigations show that 
our series agrees with the chronological order in which Plato wrote the dialogues. Lastly, the 
series, at least up to the Timaeus, exhibits also a continually increasing interest in 
Pythagoreanism (and Eleaticism). This must therefore be another tendency in the 
development of Plato's thought. 

A very different argument is this. We know, from Plato's own testimony in the Phaedo, that 
Antisthenes was one of Socrates' most intimate friends; and we also know that Antisthenes 
claimed to preserve the true Socratic creed. It is hard to beheve that Antisthenes would have 
been a friend of the Socrates of the Republic. Thus we must find a common point of 
departure for the teaching of Antisthenes and Plato; and this common point we find in the 
Socrates of the Apology and Crito, and in some of the doctrines put into the mouth of the 



'Socrates' of the Meno, Gorgias, and Phaedo. 

These arguments are entirely independent of any work of Plato's which has ever been 
seriously doubted (as the Alcibiades I or the Theages or the Letters). They are also 
independent of the testimony of Xenophon. They are based solely upon the internal 
evidence of some of the most famous Platonic dialogues. But they agree with this secondary 
evidence, especially with the Seventh Letter, where in a sketch of his own mental 
development (325 f.), Plato even refers, unmistakably, to the key passage of the Republic as 
his own central discovery: T had to state ... that ... never will the race of men be saved from 
its plight before either the race of the genuine and true philosophers gains political power, or 
the ruling men in the cities become genuine philosophers, by the grace of God.' (326a; cp. 
note 14 to chapter 7, and (d) in this note, above.) I cannot see how it is possible to accept, 
with Burnet, this letter as genuine without admitting that the central doctrine of the Republic 
is Plato's, not Socrates'; that is to say, without giving up the fiction that Plato's portrait of 
Socrates in the Republic is historical. (For further evidence, cp. for instance Aristotle, 
Sophist. El, 183b7: 'Socrates raised questions, but gave no answers; for he confessed that 
he did not know.' This agrees with the Apology, but hardly with the Gorgias, and certainly 
not with the Phaedo or the Republic. See furthermore Aristotle's famous report on the 
history of the theory of Ideas, admirably discussed by Field, 0/7. cit; cp. also note 26 to 
chapter 3 .) 

(7) Against evidence of this character, the type of evidence used by Burnet and Taylor can 
have little weight. The following is an example. As evidence for his opinion that Plato was 
politically more moderate than Socrates, and that Plato's family was rather 'Whiggish', 
Burnet uses the argument that a member of Plato's family was named 'Demos'. (Cp. Gorg., 
48 Id, 513b. — It is not, however, certain, although probable, that Demos' father Pyrilampes 
here mentioned is really identical with Plato's uncle and stepfather mentioned in Charm., 
158a, dindParm., 126b, i.e. that Demos was a relation of Plato's.) What weight can this 
have, I ask, compared with the historical record of Plato's two tyrant uncles; with the extant 
political fragments of Critias (which remain in the family even if Burnet is right, which he 
hardly is, in attributing them to his grandfather; cp. Greek Phil, I, 338, note 1, with 
Charmides, 157e and 162d, where the poetical gifts of Critias the tyrant are alluded to); with 



the fact that Critias' father had belonged to the OHgarchy of the Four Hundred {Lys., 12, 66); 
and with Plato's own writings which combine family pride with not only anti-democratic but 
even anti-Athenian tendencies? (Cp. the eulogy, in Timaeus, 20a, of an enemy of Athens 
like Hermocrates of Sicily, father-in-law of the older Dionysius.) The purpose behind 
Burnet's argument is, of course, to strengthen the theory that the Republic is Socratic. 
Another example of bad method may be taken from Taylor, who argues {Socrates, note 2 on 
p. 148 f.; cp. also p. 162) in favour of the view that the Phaedo is Socratic (cp. my note 9 to 
chapter 7): 'In the Phaedo [72e] ... the doctrine that "learning is just recognition" is 
expressly said by Simmias' (this is a slip of Taylor's pen; the speaker is Cebes) 'speaking to 
Socrates, to be "the doctrine j^ow are so constantly repeating". Unless we are willing to 
regard the Phaedo as a gigantic and unpardonable mystification, this seems to me proof that 
the theory really belongs to Socrates.' (For a similar argument, see Burnet's edition of the 
Phaedo, p. xii, end of chapter ii.) On this I wish to make the following comments: (a) It is 
here assumed that Plato considered himself a historian when writing this passage, for 
otherwise his statement would not be 'a gigantic and unpardonable mystification'; in other 
words, the most questionable and the most central point of the theory is assumed, (b) But 
even if Plato had considered himself a historian (I do not think that he did), the expression 'a 
gigantic ... etc' seems to be too strong. Taylor, not Plato, puts 'you' in italics. Plato might 
only have wished to indicate that he is going to assume that the readers of the dialogue are 
acquainted with this theory. Or he might have intended to refer to the Meno, and thus to 
himself (This last explanation is I think almost certainly true, in view Phaedo, 73a, f, 
with the allusion to diagrams.) Or his pen might have slipped, for some reason or other. 
Such things are bound to occur, even to historians. Burnet, for example, has to explain 
Socrates' Pythagoreanism; to do this he makes Parmenides a Pythagorean rather than a pupil 
of Xenophanes, of whom he writes {Greek Philosophy, I, 64): 'the story that he founded the 
Eleatic school seems to be derived from a playful remark of Plato's which would also prove 
Homer to have been a Heraclitean.' To this, Burnet adds the footnote: 'Plato, Soph., 242d. 
See E. Gn Ph. , p. 140'. Now I believe that this statement of a historian clearly implies four 
things, (1) that the passage of Plato which refers to Xenophanes is playful, i.e. not meant 
seriously, (2) that this playfulness manifests itself in the reference to Homer, that is, (3) by 



remarking that he was a HeracHtean, which would, of course, be a very playful remark since 
Homer lived long before Heraclitus, and (4) that there is no other serious evidence 
connecting Xenophanes with the Eleatic School. But none of these four implications can be 
upheld. For we fmd, (1) that the passage in the Sophist (242d) which refers to Xenophanes is 
not playful, but that it is recommended by Burnet himself, in the methodological appendix to 
his Early Greek Philosophy , as important and as full of valuable historical information; (2) 
that it contains no reference at all to Homer; and (3) that another passage which contains this 
reference {Theaet., 179d/e; cp. 152d/e, 160d) with which Burnet mistakenly identified 
Sophist, 242d, in Greek Philosophy , I (the mistake is not made in his Early Greek 
Philosophy^), does not refer to Xenophanes; nor does it call Homer a Heraclitean, but it says 
the opposite, namely, that some of Heraclitus' ideas are as old as Homer (which is, of 
course, much less playful); and (4), there is a clear and important passage in Theophrastus 
{Phys. op., fragm. 8 = Simp lie iu s, P/?;;^. , 28, 4) ascribing to Xenophanes a number of 
opinions which we know Parmenides shared with him and linking him with Parmenides — to 
say nothing of D.L. ix, 21-3, or of Timaeus ap. Clement ^S^rom 1, 64, 2. This heap of 
misunderstandings, misinterpretations, misquotations, and misleading omissions (for the 
created myth, see Kirk and Raven, p. 265) can be found in one single historical remark of a 
truly great historian such as Burnet. From this we must learn that such things do happen, 
even to the best of historians: all men are fallible. (A more serious example of this kind of 
fallibility is the one discussed in note 26 (5) to chapter 3.) 

(8) The chronological order of those Platonic dialogues which play a role in these arguments 
is here assumed to be nearly the same as that of the stylometric list of Lutoslawski {The 
Origin and Growth of Plato 's Logic, 1897). A list of those dialogues which play a role in the 
text of this book will be found in note 5 to chapter 3. It is drawn up in such a way that there 
is more uncertainty of date within each group than between the groups. A minor deviation 
from the stylometric list is the position of the Euthyphro which for reasons of its content 
(discussed in text to note 60 to this chapter) appears to me to be probably later than the 
Crito; but this point is of little importance. (Cp. also note 47 to this chapter.) 

57 . There is a famous and rather puzzling passage in the Second Letter (314c): 'There is no 
writing of Plato nor will there ever be. What goes by his name really belongs to Socrates 



turned young and handsome.' The most likely solution of this puzzle is that the passage, if 
not the whole letter, is spurious. (Cp. Field, Plato and His Contemporaries, 200 f , where he 
gives an admirable summary of the reasons for suspecting the letter, and especially the 
passages '312d-313c and possibly down to 314c'; concerning 314c, an additional reason is, 
perhaps, that the forger might have intended to allude to, or to give his interpretation of, a 
somewhat similar remark in the Seventh Letter, 341b/c, quoted in note 32 to chapter 8.) But 
if for a moment we assume with Burnet {Greek Philosophy , I, 212) that the passage is 
genuine, then the remark 'turned young and handsome' certainly raises a problem, 
especially as it cannot be taken literally since Socrates is presented in all the Platonic 
dialogues as old and ugly (the only exception is the Parmenides, where he is hardly 
handsome, although still young). If genuine, the puzzling remark would mean that Plato 
quite intentionally gave an idealized and not an historical account of Socrates; and it would 
fit our interpretation quite well to see that Plato was indeed conscious of re-interpreting 
Socrates as a young and handsome aristocrat who is, of course, Plato himself (Cp. also note 
1 1 (2) to chapter 4, note 20 (1) to chapter 6, and note 50 (3) to chapter 8.) 

58 . I am quoting from the first paragraph of Davies' and Vaughan's introduction to their 
translation of the Republic. Cp. Crossman, Plato To-Day, 96. 

59 . (1) The 'division' or 'split' in Plato's soul is one of the most outstanding impressions of his 
work, and especially of the Republic. Only a man who had to struggle hard to uphold his 
self-control or the rule of his reason over his animal instincts could emphasize this point as 
much as Plato did; cp. the passages referred to in note 34 to chapter 5, especially the story of 
the beast in man (Rep., 588c), which is probably of Orphic origin, and in notes 15 (l)-(4), 
17, and 19 to chapter 3, which not only show an astonishing similarity with psycho- 
analytical doctrines, but might also be claimed to exhibit strong symptoms of repression. 
(See also the beginning of Book IX, 571d and 575a, which sound like an exposition of the 
doctrine of the Oedipus Complex. On Plato's attitude to his mother, some light is perhaps 
thrown by Republic, 548e-549d, especially in view of the fact that in 548e his brother 
Glaucon is identified with the son in question.) *An excellent statement of the conflicts in 
Plato, and an attempt at a psychological analysis of his will to power, are made by H. Kelsen 



in The American Imago, vol. 3, 1942, pp. 1-110, and Werner Fite, The Platonic Legend, 
1939.* 

Those Platonists who are not prepared to admit that from Plato's longing and clamouring for 
unity and harmony and unisonity, we may conclude that he was himself disunited and 
disharmonious, may be reminded that this way of arguing was invented by Plato. (Cp. 
Symposium, 200a, f , where Socrates argues that it is a necessary and not a probable 
inference that he who loves or desires does not possess what he loves and desires.) 
What I have called Plato's political theory of the soul (see also text to note 32 to chapter 5), 
i.e. the division of the soul according to the class-divided society, has long remained the 
basis of most psychologies. It is the basis of psycho-analysis too. According to Freud's 
theory, what Plato had called the ruling part of the soul tries to uphold its tyranny by a 
'censorship', while the rebellious proletarian animal-instincts, which correspond to the social 
underworld, really exercise a hidden dictatorship; for they determine the policy of the 
apparent ruler. — Since Heraclitus' 'flux' and 'war', the realm of social experience has 
strongly influenced the theories, metaphors, and symbols by which we interpret the physical 
world around us (and ourselves) to ourselves. I mention only Darwin's adoption, under the 
influence of Malthus, of the theory of social competition. 

(2) A remark may be added here on mysticism, in its relation to the closed and open society, 
and to the strain of civilization. 

As McTaggart has shown, in his excellent study Mysticism (see his Philosophical Studies, 
edited by S. V. Keeling, 1934, esp. pp. 47 ff. ), the ftindamental ideas of mysticism are two: 
{a) the doctrine of the mystic union, i.e. the assertion that there is a greater unity in the world 
of realities than that which we recognize in the world of ordinary experience, and (b) the 
doctrine of the mystic intuition, i.e. the assertion that there is a way of knowing which 
'brings the known into closer and more direct relation with what is known' than is the 
relation between the knowing subject and the known object in ordinary experience. 
McTaggart rightly asserts (p. 48) that 'of these two characteristics the mystic unity is the 
more fundamental', since the mystic intuition is 'an example of the mystic unity'. We may 
add that a third characteristic, less fundamental still, is (c) the mystic love, which is an 
example of mystic unity and mystic intuition. 



Now it is interesting (and this has not been seen by McTaggart) that in the history of Greek 
Philosophy, the doctrine of the mystic unity was first clearly asserted by Parmenides in his 
hohstic doctrine of the one (cp. note 41 to the present chapter); next by Plato, who added an 
elaborate doctrine of mystic intuition and communion with the divine (cp. chapter 8), of 
which doctrine there are just the very first beginnings in Parmenides; next by Aristotle, e.g. 
m De Anima, 425b30 f : 'The actual hearing and the actual sound are merged into one'; cp. 
Rep. 507c, ff., 430a20, and 431al: 'Actual knowledge is identical with its object' (see also 
De Anima, 404bl6, diVid Metaphysics, 1072b20 and 1075a2, and cp. Plato's Timaeus, 45b-c, 
Aldi-&;Meno, 81a, ff. ; Phaedo, 79d); and next by the Neo-Platonists, who elaborated the 
doctrine of the mystic love, of which only the beginning can be found in Plato (for example, 
in his doctrine, 475 ff., that the philosopher /ove^ truth, which is closely connected 
with the doctrines of hohsm and the philosopher's communion with the divine truth). 
In view of these facts and of our historical analysis, we are led to interpret mysticism as one 
of the typical reactions to the breakdown of the closed society; a reaction which, in its 
origin, was directed against the open society, and which may be described as an escape into 
the dream of a paradise in which the tribal unity reveals itself as the unchanging reality. 
This interpretation is in direct conflict with that of Bergson in his Two Sources of Morality 
and Religion; for Bergson asserts that it is mysticism which makes the leap from the closed 
to the open society. 

* But it must of course be admitted (as Jacob Viner very kindly pointed out to me in a letter) 
that mysticism is versatile enough to work in any political direction; and even among the 
apostles of the open society, mystics and mysticism have their representatives. It is the 
mystic inspiration of a better, a less divided, world which undoubtedly inspired not only 
Plato, but also Socrates.* 

It may be remarked that in the nineteenth century, especially in Hegel and Bergson, we find 
an evolutionary mysticism, which, by extolling change, seems to stand in direct opposition to 
Parmenides' and Plato's hatred of change. And yet, the underlying experience of these two 
forms of mysticism seems to be the same, as shown by the fact that an over-emphasis on 
change is common to both. Both are reactions to the frightening experience of social 
change: the one combined with the hope that change may be arrested; the other with a 



somewhat hysterical (and undoubtedly ambivalent) acceptance of change as real, essential 
and welcome. — Cp. also notes 32-33 to chapter 11, 36 to chapter 12, and 4, 6, 29, 32 and 
58 to chapter 24. 

60 . The Euthyphro, an early dialogue, is usually interpreted as an unsuccessful attempt of 
Socrates to define piety. Euthyphro himself is the caricature of a popular 'pietist' who knows 
exactly what the gods wish. To Socrates' question 'What is piety and what is impiety?' he is 
made to answer: 'Piety is acting as I do! That is to say, prosecuting any one guilty of 
murder, sacrilege, or of any similar crime, whether he be your father or your mother 
while not to prosecute them is impiety' (5, d/e). Euthyphro is presented as prosecuting his 
father for having murdered a serf (According to the evidence quoted by Grote, Plato, I, note 
to p. 3 12, every citizen was bound by Attic law to prosecute in such cases.) 

61 . Menexenus, 235b. Cp. note 35 to this chapter, and the end of note 19 to chapter 6. 

62 . The claim that if you want security you must give up liberty has become a mainstay of the 
revolt against freedom. But nothing is less true. There is, of course, no absolute security in 
life. But what security can be attained depends on our own watchfulness, enforced by 
institutions to help us watch — i.e. by democratic institutions which are devised (using 
Platonic language) to enable the herd to watch, and to judge, their watch-dogs. 

63 . With the 'variations' and 'irregularities', cp. Republic, 547a, quoted in the text to notes 39 
and 40 to chapter 5. Plato's obsession with the problems of propagation and birth control 
may perhaps be explained in part by the fact that he understood the implications of 
population growth. Indeed (cp. text to note 7 to this chapter) the 'Fall', the loss of the tribal 
paradise, is caused by a 'natural' or 'original' fault of man, as it were: by a maladjustment in 
his natural rate of breeding. Cp. also notes 39 (3) to ch. 5, and 34 to ch. 4. With the next 
quotation further below in this paragraph, cp. Republic, 566e, and text to note 20 to chapter 
4. — Crossman, whose treatment of the period of tyranny in Greek history is excellent (cp. 
Plato To-Day, 27-30), writes: 'Thus it was the tyrants who really created the Greek State. 
They broke down the old tribal organization of primitive aristocracy ...' (op. cit., 29). This 
explains why Plato hated tyranny, perhaps even more than freedom: cp. Republic, 577c. — 
(See, however, note 69 to this chapter.) His passages on tyranny, especially 565-568, are a 



brilliant sociological analysis of a consistent power-politics. I should like to call it the first 
attempt towards a logic of power. (I chose this term in analogy to F. A. von Hayek's use of 
the term logic of choice for the pure economic theory.) — The logic of power is fairly simple, 
and has often been applied in a masterly way. The opposite kind of politics is much more 
difficult; partly because the logic of anti-power politics, i.e. the logic of freedom, is hardly 
understood yet. 

64 . It is well known that most of Plato's political proposals, including the proposed communism 
of women and children, were 'in the air' in the Periclean period. Cp. the excellent summary 
in Adam's edition of the Republic, vol. I, p. 354 f , *and A. D. Winspear, The Genesis oj 
Plato's Thought, 1940.* 

65 . Cp. V. Pareto, Treatise on General Sociology, §1843 (English translation: The Mind and 
Society, 1935, vol. Ill, pp. 1281); cp. note 1 to chapter 13, where the passage is quoted more 
fully. 

66 . Cp. the effect which Glaucon's presentation of Lycophron's theory had on Cameades (cp. 
note 54 to chapter 6), and later, on Hobbes. The professed 'a-morality' of so many Marxists 
is also a case in point. Leftists frequently believe in their own immorality. (This, although 
not much to the point, is sometimes more modest and more pleasant than the dogmatic self- 
righteousness of many reactionary moralists.) 

67 . Money is one of the symbols as well as one of the difficulties of the open society. There is 
no doubt that we have not yet mastered the rational control of its use; its greatest misuse is 
that it can buy political power. (The most direct form of this misuse is the institution of the 
slave-market; but just this institution is defended in Republic, 563b; cp. note 17 to chapter 4; 
and in th^Laws, Plato is not opposed to the political influence of wealth; cp. note 20 (1) to 
chapter 6.) From the point of view of an individualistic society, money is fairly important. It 
is part of the institution of the (partially) free market, which gives the consumer some 
measure of control over production. Without some such institution, the producer may 
control the market to such a degree that he ceases to produce for the sake of consumption, 
while the consumer consumes largely for the sake of production. — The sometimes glaring 
misuse of money has made us rather sensitive, and Plato's opposition between money and 



friendship is only the first of many conscious or unconscious attempts to utiHze these 
sentiments for the purpose of poHtical propaganda. 

68 . The group-spirit of tribalism is, of course, not entirely lost. It manifests itself, for instance, 
in the most valuable experiences of friendship and comradeship; also, in youthful tribalistic 
movements like the boy-scouts (or the German Youth Movement), and in certain clubs and 
adult societies, as described, for instance, by Sinclair Lewis in Babbitt. The importance of 
this perhaps most universal of all emotional and aesthetic experiences must not be 
underrated. Nearly all social movements, totalitarian as well as humanitarian, are influenced 
by it. It plays an important role in war, and is one of the most powerful weapons of the 
revolt against freedom; admittedly also in peace, and in revolts against tyranny, but in these 
cases its humanitarianism is often endangered by its romantic tendencies. — conscious and 
not unsuccessful attempt to revive it for the purpose of arresting society and of perpetuating 
a class rule seems to have been the English Public School System. ('No one can grow up to 
be a good man unless his earliest years were given to noble games' is its motto, taken from 
Republic, 558b.) 

Another product and symptom of the loss of the tribalistic group-spirit is, of course, Plato's 
emphasis upon the analogy between politics and medicine (cp. chapter 8, especially note 4), 
an emphasis which expresses the feeling that the body of society is sick, i.e. the feeling of 
strain, of drift. 'From the time of Plato on, the minds of political philosophers seem to have 
recurred to this comparison between medicine and politics,' says G. E. G. Catlin {A Study oj 
the Principles of Politics, 1930, note to 458, where Thomas Aquinas, G. Santayana, and 
Dean Inge are quoted to support his statement; cp. also the quotations in op. cit, note to 37, 
from Mill's Logic). Catlin also speaks most characteristically {op. cit., 459) of 'harmony' and 
of the 'desire for protection, whether assured by the mother or by society'. (Cp. also note 18 
to chapter 5.) 

69 . Cp. chapter 7 (note 24 and text; see Athen., XI, 508) for the names of nine such disciples of 
Plato (including the younger Dionysius and Dio). I suppose that Plato's repeated insistence 
upon the use, not only of force, but of 'persuasion and force' (cp. Laws, 722b, and notes 5, 
10, and 18 to chapter 8), was meant as a criticism of the tactics of the Thirty, whose 



propaganda was indeed primitive. But this would imply that Plato was well aware of Pareto's 
recipe for utilizing sentiments instead of fighting them. That Plato's friend Dio (cp. note 25 
to chapter 7) ruled Syracuse as a tyrant is admitted even by Meyer in his defence of Dio 
whose fate he explains, in spite of his admiration for Plato as a politician, by pointing out the 
'gulf between' (the Platonic) 'theory and practice' {op. cil, V, 999). Meyer says of Dio ( he. 
cit.), 'The ideal king had become, externally, indistinguishable from the contemptible 
tyrant.' But he believes that, internally as it were, Dio remained an idealist, and that he 
suffered deeply when political necessity forced murder (especially that of his ally 
Heraclides) and similar measures upon him. I think, however, that Dio acted according to 
Plato's theory; a theory which, by the logic of power, drove Plato in the Laws to admit even 
the goodness of tyranny (709e, ff.; at the same place, there may also be a suggestion that the 
debacle of the Thirty was due to their great number: Critias alone would have been all right). 

70 . The tribal paradise is, of course, a myth (although some primitive people, most of all the 
Eskimos, seem to be happy enough). There may have been no sense of drift in the closed 
society, but there is ample evidence of other forms of fear — fear of demoniac powers behind 
nature. The attempt to revive this fear, and to use it against the intellectuals, the scientists, 
etc., characterizes many late manifestations of the revolt against freedom. It is to the credit of 
Plato, the disciple of Socrates, that it never occurred to him to present his enemies as the 
offspring of the sinister demons of darkness. In this point, he remained enlightened. He had 
little inclination to idealize the evil which was to him simply debased, or degenerate, or 
impoverished goodness. (Only in one passage in the Laws, 896e and 898c, there is what 
may be a suggestion of an abstract idealization of the evil.) 

71 . A final note may be added here in connection with my remark on the return to the beasts. 
Since the intrusion of Darwinism into the field of human problems (an intrusion for which 
Darwin should not be blamed) there have been many 'social zoologists' who have proved 
that the human race is bound to degenerate physically, because insufficient physical 
competition, and the possibility of protecting the body by the efforts of the mind, prevent 
natural selection from acting upon our bodies. The first to formulate this idea (not that he 
believed in it) was Samuel Butler, who wrote: 'The one serious danger which this writer' (an 



Erewhonian writer) 'apprehended was that the machines' (and, we may add, civihzation in 
general) 'would so ... lessen the severity of competition, that many persons of inferior 
physique would escape detection and transmit their inferiority to their descendants.' 
{Erewhon, 1872; cp. Everyman's edition, p. 161.) The first as far as I know to write a bulky 
volume on this theme was W. Schallmayer (cp. note 65 to chapter 12), one of the founders 
of modem racialism. In fact, Butler's theory has been continually rediscovered (especially 
by 'biological naturalists' in the sense of chapter 5, above). According to some modem 
writers (see, for example, G. H. Estabrooks, M<3«.- The Mechanical Misfit, 1941), man made 
the decisive mistake when he became civilized, and especially when he began to help the 
weak; before this, he was an almost perfect man-beast; but civilization, with its artificial 
methods of protecting the weak, leads to degeneration, and therefore must ultimately destroy 
itself In reply to such arguments, we should, I think, first admit that man is likely to 
disappear one day from this world; but we should add that this is also tme of even the most 
perfect beasts, to say nothing of those which are only 'almost perfect'. The theory that the 
human race might live a little longer if it had not made the fatal mistake of helping the weak 
is most questionable; but even if it were tme — is mere length of survival of the race really all 
we want? Or is the almost perfect man-beast so eminently valuable that we should prefer a 
prolongation of his existence (he did exist for quite a long time, anyway) to our experiment 
of helping the weak? 

Mankind, I believe, has not done so badly. In spite of the treason of some of its intellectual 
leaders, in spite of the stupefying effects of Platonic methods in education and the 
devastating results of propaganda, there have been some surprising successes. Many weak 
men have been helped, and for nearly a hundred years slavery has been practically 
abolished. Some say it will soon be re-introduced. I feel more optimistic; and, after all, it will 
depend on ourselves. But even if all this should be lost again, and even if we had to retum to 
the almost perfect man-beast, this would not alter the fact that once upon a time (even if the 
time was short), slavery did disappear fi"om the face of the earth. This achievement and its 
memory may, I believe, compensate some of us for all our misfits, mechanical or otherwise; 
and it may even compensate some of us for the fatal mistake made by our forefathers when 
they missed the golden opportunity of arresting all change — of retuming to the cage of the 



closed society and establishing, for ever and ever, a perfect zoo of almost perfect monkeys. 



Notes to Volume II 



Notes to Chapter Eleven 



1. That Aristotle's criticism of Plato is very frequently, and in important places, unmerited, has 
been admitted by many students of the history of philosophy. It is one of the few points in 
which even the admirers of Aristotle find it difficult to defend him, since usually they are 
admirers of Plato as well. Zeller, to quote just one example, comments (cp. Aristotle and the 
Earlier Peripatetics, English translation by Costelloe and Muirhead, 1897, II, 261, n. 2), 
upon the distribution of land in Aristotle's Best State: 'There is a similar plan in Plato's Laws, 
745c seqq.; Aristotle, however, in Politics 1265b24 considers Plato's arrangement, merely 
on account of a trifling difference, highly objectionable.' A similar remark is made by G. 
Grote, Aristotle (Ch. XIV, end of second paragraph). In view of many criticisms of Plato 
which strongly suggest that envy of Plato's originality is part of his motive, Aristotle's 
much-admired solemn assurance {Nicomachean Ethics, I, 6, 1) that the sacred duty of giving 
preference to truth forces him to sacrifice even what is most dear to him, namely, his love 
for Plato, sounds to me somewhat hypocritical. 

2. Cp. Th. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers (I am quoting from the German edition. III, 298, i.e. 
Book 7, Ch. 31, § 6). See especially Aristotle's Politics, 1313a. 

G. C. Field (in Plato and His Contemporaries, 114 f ) defends Plato and Aristotle against the 
'reproach ... that, with the possibility, and, in the case of the latter, the actuality of this' (i.e. 
the Macedonian conquest) 'before their eyes, they ... say nothing of these new 
developments'. But Field's defence (perhaps directed against Gomperz) is unsuccessful, in 
spite of his strong comments upon those who make such a reproach. (Field says: 'this 
criticism betrays ... a singular lack of understanding.') Of course, it is correct to claim, as 
Field does, 'that a hegemony like that exercised by Macedon ... was no new thing'; but 
Macedon was in Plato's eyes at least half-barbarian and therefore a natural enemy. Field is 
also right in saying that 'the destruction of independence by Macedon' was not a complete 
one; but did Plato or Aristotle foresee that it was not to become complete? I believe that a 
defence like Field's cannot possibly succeed, simply because it would have to prove too 
much; namely, that the significance of Macedon 's threat could not have been clear, at the 



time, to any observer; but this is disproved, of course, by the example of Demosthenes. The 
question is: why did Plato, who like Isocrates had taken some interest in pan-Hellenic 
nationalism (cp. notes 48-50 to chapter S,Rep., 470, and the Eighth Letter, 353e, which 
Field claims to be 'certainly genuine') and who was apprehensive of a 'Phoenician and 
Oscan' threat to Syracuse, why did he ignore Macedon's threat to Athens? A likely reply to 
the corresponding question concerning Aristotle is: because he belonged to the pro- 
Macedonian party. A reply in Plato's case is suggested by Zeller {op. cit., II, 41) in his 
defence of Aristotle's right to support Macedon: 'So satisfied was Plato of the intolerable 
character of the existing political position that he advocated sweeping changes.' ('Plato's 
follower', Zeller continues, referring to Aristotle, 'could the less evade the same convictions, 
since he had a keener insight into men and things . . . ') In other words, the answer might be 
that Plato's hatred of Athenian democracy exceeded so much even his pan-Hellenic 
nationahsm that he was, like Isocrates, looking forward to the Macedonian conquest. 

3. This and the following three quotations are from Aristotle's Politics, 1254b-1255a; 1254a; 
1255a; 1260a.— See also: 1252a, f (I, 2, 2-5); 1253b, ff (I, 4, 386, and especially I, 5); 
1313b (V, 11, 11). Furthermore: Metaphysics, 1075a, where freemen and slaves are also 
opposed 'by nature'. But we find also the passage: 'Some slaves have the souls of freemen, 
and others their bodies' {Politics, 1254b). Cp. with Plato's Timaeus, 51e, quoted in note 50 
(2), to chapter 8. — For a trifling mitigation, and a typically 'balanced judgement' of Plato's 
Laws, see Politics, 1260b: 'Those' (this is a somewhat typical Aristotelian way of referring to 
Plato) 'are wrong who forbid us even to converse with slaves and say that we should only 
use the language of command; for slaves must be admonished' (Plato had said, in Laws, 
lllQ, that they should not be admonished) 'even more than children.' Zeller, in his long list 
of the personal virtues of Aristotle {op. cit., I, 44), mentions his 'nobility of principles' and 
his 'benevolence to slaves'. I cannot help remembering the perhaps less noble but certainly 
more benevolent principle put forward much earlier by Alcidamas and Lycophron, namely, 
that there should be no slaves at all. W. D. Ross {Aristotle, 2nd ed., 1930, pp. 241 ff.) 
defends Aristotle's attitude towards slavery by saying: 'Where to us he seems reactionary, he 
may have seemed revolutionary to them', viz., to his contemporaries. In support of this 
view, Ross mentions Aristotle's doctrine that Greek should not enslave Greek. But this 



doctrine was hardly very revolutionary since Plato had taught it, probably half a century 
before Aristotle. And that Aristotle's views were indeed reactionary can be best seen from 
the fact that he repeatedly finds it necessary to defend them against the doctrine that no man 
is a slave by nature, and further from his own testimony to the anti-slavery tendencies of the 
Athenian democracy. 

An excellent statement on Aristotle's Politics can be found in the beginning of Chapter XIV 
of G. Grote's Aristotle, from which I quote a few sentences: 'The scheme ... of government 
proposed by Aristotle, in the two last books of his Politics, as representing his own ideas of 
something like perfection, is evidently founded upon the Republic of Plato: from whom he 
differs in the important circumstance of not admitting either community of property or 
community of wives and children. Each of these philosophers recognizes one separate class 
of inhabitants, relieved from all private toil and all money-getting employments, and 
constituting exclusively the citizens of the commonwealth. This small class is in effect the 
city — the commonwealth: the remaining inhabitants are not a part of the commonwealth, they 
are only appendages to it — indispensable indeed, but still appendages, in the same manner 
as slaves or cattle.' Grote recognizes that Aristotle's Best State, where it deviates from the 
Republic, largely copies Plato's Laws. Aristotle's dependence upon Plato is prominent even 
where he expresses his acquiescence in the victory of democracy; cp. especially Politics, III, 
15; 11-13; 1286b (a parallel passage is IV, 13; 10; 1297b). The passage ends by saying of 
democracy: 'No other form of government appears to be possible any longer'; but this result 
is reached by an argument that follows very closely Plato's story of the decline and fall of 
the state in Books VIII-IX of the Republic; and this in spite of the fact that Aristotle criticizes 
Plato's story severely (for instance in V, 12; 1316a, f ). 

4. Aristotle's use of the word 'banausic' in the sense of 'professional' or 'money earning' is 
clearly shown in Politics, VIII, 6, 3 ff. (1340b) and especially 15 f (1341b). Every 
professional, for example a flute player, and of course every artisan or labourer, is 
'banausic', that is to say, not a free man, not a citizen, even though he is not a real slave; the 
status of a 'banausic' man is one of 'partial or limited slavery' (Politics, I, 14; 13; 1260a/b). 
The word 'banausos' derives, I gather, from a pre-Hellenic word for 'fire-worker'. Used as 
an attribute it means that a man's origin and caste 'disqualify him from prowess in the field'. 



(Cp. Greenidge, quoted by Adam in his edition of the Republic, note to 495e30.) It may be 
translated by 'low-caste', 'cringing', 'degrading', or in some contexts by 'upstart'. Plato 
used the word in the same sense as Aristotle. In the (74 le and 743d), the term 

'banausia' is used to describe the depraved state of a man who makes money by means 
other than the hereditary possession of land. See also the Republic, 495e and 590c. But if we 
remember the tradition that Socrates was a mason; and Xenophon's story (Mem. II, 7); and 
Antisthenes' praise of hard work; and the attitude of the Cynics; then it seems unlikely that 
Socrates agreed with the aristocratic prejudice that money earning must be degrading. (The 
Oxford English Dictionary proposes to render 'banausic' as 'merely mechanical, proper to a 
mechanic', and quotes GrotQ, Eth. Fragm., vi, 227 = Aristotle, 2nd edn, 1880, p. 545; but 
this rendering is much too narrow, and Grote's passage does not justify this interpretation, 
which may originally rest upon a misunderstanding of Plutarch. It is interesting that in 
Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream the term 'mere mechanicals' is used precisely in 
the sense of 'banausic' men; and this use might well be connected with a passage on 
Archimedes in North's translation of the Life of Marcellus .) 

In Mind, vol. 47, there is an interesting discussion between A. E. Taylor and F. M. Cornford, 
in which the former (pp. 197 ff.) defends his view that Plato, when speaking of 'the god' in 
a certain passage of the Timaeus, may have had in mind a 'peasant cultivator' who 'serves' 
by bodily labour; a view which is, I think most convincingly, criticized by Cornford (pp. 
329 ff.). Plato's attitude towards all 'banausic' work, and especially manual labour, bears on 
this problem; and when (p. 198, note) Taylor uses the argument that Plato compares his gods 
'with shepherds or sheep-dogs in charge of a flock of sheep' {Laws, 90 le, 907a), then we 
could point out that the activities of nomads and hunters are quite consistently considered by 
Plato as noble or even divine; but the sedentary 'peasant cultivator' is banausic and 
depraved. Cp. note 32 to chapter 4, and text. 

5. The two passages that follow are from Politics (1337b, 4 and 5). 

6. The 1939 edition of the Pocket Oxford Dictionary still says: 'liberal ... (of education) fit for 
a gentleman, of a general literary rather than technical kind'. This shows most clearly the 
everlasting power of Aristotle's influence. 



I admit that there is a serious problem of a professional education, that of narrow- 
mindedness. But I do not believe that a 'literary' education is the remedy; for it may create 
its own peculiar kind of narrow-mindedness, its peculiar snobbery. And in our day no man 
should be considered educated if he does not take an interest in science. The usual defence 
that an interest in electricity or stratigraphy need not be more enhghtening than an interest in 
human affairs only betrays a complete lack of understanding of human affairs. For science is 
not merely a collection of facts about electricity, etc.; it is one of the most important spiritual 
movements of our day. Anybody who does not attempt to acquire an understanding of this 
movement cuts himself off from the most remarkable development in the history of human 
affairs. Our so-called Arts Faculties, based upon the theory that by means of a literary and 
historical education they introduce the student into the spiritual life of man, have therefore 
become obsolete in their present form. There can be no history of man which excludes a 
history of his intellectual struggles and achievements; and there can be no history of ideas 
which excludes the history of scientific ideas. But literary education has an even more 
serious aspect. Not only does it fail to educate the student, who is often to become a teacher, 
to an understanding of the greatest spiritual movement of his own day, but it also often fails 
to educate him to intellectual honesty. Only if the student experiences how easy it is to err, 
and how hard to make even a small advance in the field of knowledge, only then can he 
obtain a feeling for the standards of intellectual honesty, a respect for truth, and a disregard 
of authority and bumptiousness. But nothing is more necessary to-day than the spread of 
these modest intellectual virtues. 'The mental power', T. H. Huxley wrote in A Liberal 
Education, 'which will be of most importance in your ... life will be the power of seeing 
things as they are without regard to authority . . . But at school and at college, you shall know 
of no source of truth but authority.' I admit that, unfortunately, this is true also of many 
courses in science, which by some teachers is still treated as if it was a 'body of knowledge', 
as the ancient phrase goes. But this idea will one day, I hope, disappear; for science can be 
taught as a fascinating part of human history — as a quickly developing growth of bold 
hypotheses, controlled by experiment, and by criticism. Taught in this way, as a part of the 
history of 'natural philosophy', and of the history of problems and of ideas, it could become 
the basis of a new liberal University education; of one whose aim, where it cannot produce 



experts, will be to produce at least men who can distinguish between a charlatan and an 
expert. This modest and liberal aim will be far beyond anything that our Arts Faculties 
nowadays achieve. 

7. Politics, VIII, 3, 2 (1337b): 'I must repeat over and again, that the first principle of all action 
is leisure.' Previously, in VII, 15, 1 f (1334a), we read: 'Since the end of individuals and of 
states is the same . . . they should both contain the virtues of leisure . . . For the proverb says 
truly, "There is no leisure for slaves".' Cp. also the reference in note 9 to this section, and 
Metaphysics, 1072b23. 

Concerning Aristotle's 'admiration and deference for the leisured classes', cp. for example 
the following passage from thQ Politics, IV (VII), 8, 4-5 (1293b/1294a): 'Birth and 
education as a rule go together with wealth . . . The rich are already in possession of those 
advantages the want of which is a temptation to crime, and hence they are called noblemen 
and gentlemen. Now it appears to be impossible that a state should be badly governed if the 
best citizens rule . . . ' Aristotle, however, not only admires the rich, but is also, like Plato, a 
racialist (cp. op. cit.. Ill, 13, 2-3, 1283a): 'The nobly born are citizens in a truer sense of the 
word than the low bom ... Those who come from better ancestors are likely to be better 
men, for nobility is excellence of race.' 

8. Cp. Th. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers. (I am quoting from the German edition, vol. Ill, 263, i.e. 
book 6, ch. 27, § 7.) 

9. Cp. Nicomachean Ethics, X, 7, 6. The Aristotelian phrase, 'the good life', seems to have 
caught the imagination of many modern admirers who associate with this phrase something 
like a 'good life' in the Christian sense — a life devoted to help, service, and the quest for the 
'higher values'. But this interpretation is the result of a mistaken idealization of Aristotle's 
intentions; Aristotle was exclusively concerned with the 'good life' of feudal gentlemen, and 
this 'good life' he did not envisage as a life of good deeds, but as a life of refined leisure, 
spent in the pleasant company of friends who are equally well situated. 

10 . I do not think that even the term 'vulgarization' would be too strong, considering that to 
Aristotle himself 'professional' means 'vulgar', and considering that he certainly made a 
profession of Platonic philosophy. Besides, he made it dull, as even Zeller admits in the 



midst of his eulogy {op. cit., I, 46): 'He cannot inspire us ... at all in the same way as Plato 
does. His work is drier, more professional ... than Plato's has been.' 

11 . Plato presented in the Timaeus (42a f , 90e f , and especially 91d f ; see note 6 (7) to 
chapter 3) a general theory of the origin of species by way of degeneration, down from the 
Gods and the first man. Man first degenerates into a woman, then further to the higher and 
lower animals and to the plants. It is, as Gomperz says {Greek Thinkers, book 5, ch. 19, § 3; 
I am quoting from the German edition, vol. 11, 482), 'a theory of descent in the literal sense 
or a theory of devolution, as opposed to the modern theory of evolution which, since it 
assumes an ascending sequence, might be called a theory of ascent.' Plato's mythical and 
possibly semi-ironical presentation of this theory of descent by degeneration makes use of 
the Orphic and Pythagorean theory of the transmigration of the soul. All this (and the 
important fact that evolutionary theories which made the lower forms precede the higher 
were in vogue at least as early as Empedocles) must be remembered when we hear from 
Aristotle that Speusippus, together with certain Pythagoreans, believed in an evolutionary 
theory according to which the best and most divine, which are first in rank, come last in the 
chronological order of development. Aristotle speaks {Met., 1072b30) of 'those who 
suppose, with the Pythagoreans and Speusippus, that supreme beauty and goodness are not 
present in the beginning'. From this passage we may conclude, perhaps, that some 
Pythagoreans had used the myth of transmigration (possibly under the influence of 
Xenophanes) as the vehicle of a 'theory of ascent'. This surmise is supported by Aristotle, 
who says {Met., 1091a34): 'The mythologists seem to agree with some thinkers of the 
present day' (an allusion, I suppose, to Speusippus) '... who say that the good as well as the 
beautiful make their appearance in nature only after nature has made some progress.' It also 
seems as if Speusippus had taught that the world will in the course of its development 
become a Parmenidian Owe — an organized and fully harmonious whole. (Cp.Me?., 
1092a 14, where a thinker who maintains that the more perfect always comes from the 
imperfect, is quoted as saying that 'the One itself does not yet exist'; cp. dXsoMet, 
1091 all.) Aristotle himself consistently expresses, at the places quoted, his opposition to 
these 'theories of ascent'. His argument is that it is a complete man that produces man, and 
that the incomplete seed is not prior to man. In view of this attitude, Zeller can hardly be 



right in attributing to Aristotle what is practically the Speusippian theory. (Cp. Zeller, 
Aristotle, etc., vol. II, 28 f. A similar interpretation is propounded by H. F. Osborn, From the 
Greeks to Darwin, 1908, pp. 48-56.) We may have to accept Gomperz's interpretation, 
according to which Aristotle taught the eternity and invariability of the human species and 
at least of the higher animals. Thus his morphological orders must be interpreted as neither 
chronological nor genealogical. (Cp. Greek Thinkers, book 6, ch. 11, § 10, and especially 
ch. 13, §§ 6 f., and the notes to these passages.) But there remains, of course, the possibility 
that Aristotle was inconsistent in this point, as he was in many others, and that his arguments 
against Speusippus are due to his wish to assert his independence. See also note 6 (7) to 
chapter 3, and notes 2 and 4 to chapter 4. 

12 . Aristotle's First Mover, that is, God, is prior in time (though he is eternal) and has the 
predicate of goodness. For the evidence concerning the identification of formal and final 
cause mentioned in this paragraph, see note 1 5 to this chapter. 

13 . For Plato's biological teleology see Timaeus, 73a-76e. Gomperz comments rightly {Greek 
Thinkers, book 5, ch. 19, § 7; German edn, vol. II, 495 f ) that Plato's teleology is only 
understandable if we remember that 'animals are degenerate men, and that their organization 
may therefore exhibit purposes which were originally only the ends of man'. 

14 . For Plato's version of the theory of the natural places, see Timaeus, 60b-63a, and 
especially 63b f. Aristotle adopts the theory with only minor changes and explains like Plato 
the 'lightness' and 'heaviness' of bodies by the 'upward' and 'downward' direction of their 
natural movements towards their natural places; cp. for instance P/^j^^/c^, 192b 13; also 
Metaphysics, 1065b 10. 

15 . Aristotle is not always quite definite and consistent in his statements on this problem. Thus 
he writes in ihQ Metaphysics (1044a35): 'What is the formal cause (of man)? His Essence. 
The final cause? His end. ^ut perhaps these two are the same.' In other parts of the same 
work he seems to be more assured of the identity between the Form and the end of a change 
or movement. Thus we read (1069b/1070a): 'Everything that changes ... is changed by 
something into something. That by which it is changed is the immediate mover; ... that into 
which it is changed, the Form.' And later (1070a, 9/10): 'There are three kinds of substance: 



first, matter secondly, the nature towards which it moves; and thirdly, the particular 
substance which is composed of these two.' Now since what is here called 'nature' is as a 
rule called 'Form' by Aristotle, and since it is here described as an end of movement, we 
have: Form = end. 

16 . For the doctrine that movement is the realization or actualization of potentialities, see for 
instance Metaphysics, Book IX; or 1065b 17, where the term 'buildable' is used to describe a 
definite potentiality of a prospective house: 'When the "buildable" ... actually exists, then it 
is being built; and this is the process of building.' Cp. also Aristotle's Physics, 201b4 f; 
furthermore, see Gomperz, op. cit, book 6, ch. 11, § 5. 

17. Cp. Metaphysics, 1049b5. See further Book V, ch. IV, and especially 1015al2 f , Book VII, 
ch. IV, especially 1029b 15. 

18 . For the definition of the soul as the First Entelechy, see the reference given by Zeller, op. 
cit., vol. II, p. 3, n. 1. For the meaning of Entelechy as formal cause, see op. cit., vol. I, 379, 
note 2. Aristotle's use of this term is anything but precise. (See also Met., 1035bl5.) Cp. also 
note 19 to chapter 5, and text. 

19 . For this and the next quotation see Zeller, op. cit, I, 46. 

20. Cp. Politics, II, 8, 21 (1269a), with its references to Plato's various Myths of the Earthborn 
{Rep., 414c; Pol, 271a; Tim., 22c; Laws, 677a). 

21 . Cp. YLQgQl, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, transl. by J. Sibree, London 1914, 
Introduction, 23; see also Loewenberg's Hegel — Selections (The Modern Student's Library), 
366. — The whole Introduction, especially this and the following pages, shows clearly 
Hegel's dependence upon Aristotle. That Hegel was aware of it is shown by the way in 
which he alluded to Aristotle on p. 59 (Loewenberg's edition, 412). 

22 . Hegel, op. cit., 23 (Loewenberg's edition, 365). 

23. Cp. Caird, Hegel (Blackwood 191 1), 26 f 

24 . The next quotations are from the place referred to in notes 21 and 22. 

25 . For the following remarks, sqq Hegel's Philosophical Propaedeutics, 2nd Year, 



Phenomenology of the Spirit, transl. by W. T. Harris (Loewenberg's edition, 68 ff.). I deviate 
slightly from this translation. My remarks allude to the following interesting passages: § 23: 
'The impulse of self-consciousness' ('self-consciousness' in German means also self- 
assertion; cp. the end of chapter 16) 'consists in this: to realize its ... "true nature" ... It is 
therefore ... active ... in asserting itself externally ...' § 24: 'Self-consciousness has in its 
culture, or movement, three stages: ... (2) in so far as it is related to another self the 
relation of master and slave (domination and servitude) Hegel does not mention any other 
'relation to another self. — We read further: '(3) The Relation of Master and Slave ... § 32: 
In order to assert itself as free being and to obtain recognition as such, self-consciousness 
must exhibit itself to another self ... § 33: ... With the reciprocal demand for recognition 
there enters ... the relation of master and slave between them ... § 34: Since ... each must 
strive to assert and prove himself ... the one who prefers hfe to freedom enters into a 
condition of slavery, thereby showing that he has not the capacity' ('nature' would have 
been Aristotle's or Plato's expression) '... for his independence ... § 35: ... The one who 
serves is devoid of selfhood and has another self in place of his own ... The master, on the 
contrary, looks upon the servant as reduced, and upon his own individual will as preserved 
and elevated ... § 36: The individual will of the servant ... is cancelled in his fear of the 
master ...' etc. It is difficult to overlook an element of hysteria in this theory of human 
relations and their reduction to mastership and servitude. I hardly doubt that Hegel's method 
of burying his thoughts under heaps of words, which one must remove in order to get to his 
meaning (as a comparison between my various quotations and the original may show) is one 
of the symptoms of his hysteria; it is a kind of escape, a way of shunning the daylight. I do 
not doubt that this method of his would make as excellent an object for psycho-analysis as 
his wild dreams of domination and submission. (It must be mentioned that Hegel's dialectics 
— see the next chapter — carries him, at the end of § 36 here quoted, beyond the master- 
slave relation 'to the universal will, the transition to positive freedom'. As will be seen from 
chapter 12 (especially sections II and IV), these terms are just euphemisms for the 
totalitarian state. Thus, mastership and servitude are very appropriately 'reduced to 
components' of totalitarianism.) With Hegel's remark quoted here (cp. § 35) that the slave is 
the man who prefers hfe to freedom, compare Plato's remark (Republic, 387a) that free men 



are those who fear slavery more than death. In a sense, this is true enough; those who are 
not prepared to fight for their freedom will lose it. But the theory which is implied by both 
Plato and Hegel, and which is very popular with later authors also, is that men who give in 
to superior force, or who do not die rather than give in to an armed gangster, are, by nature, 
'born slaves' who do not deserve to fare better. This theory, I assert, can be held only by the 
most violent enemies of civilization. 

26 . For a criticism of Wittgenstein's view that, while science investigates matters of fact, the 
business of philosophy is the clarification of meaning, see notes 46 and especially 5 1 and 52 
to this chapter. (Cp. further, H. Gomperz, 'The Meanings of Meaning', in Philosophy oj 
Science, vol. 8, 1941, especially p. 183.) For the whole problem to which this digression 
(down to note 54 to this chapter) is devoted, viz. the problem of methodological essentialism 
versus methodological nominalism, cp. notes 27-30 to chapter 3, and text; see further 
especially note 38 to the present chapter. 

27 . For Plato's, or rather Parmenides', distinction between knowledge and opinion (a distinction 
which continued to be popular with more modern writers, for example with Locke and 
Hobbes), see notes 22 and 26 to chapter 3, and text; further, notes 19 to chapter 5, and 25- 
27 to chapter 8. For Aristotle's corresponding distinction, cp. for example Metaphysics 
1039b31 2ind Anal. Post., I, 33 (88b30 ff); II, 19 (100b5). 

For Aristotle's distinction between demonstrative and intuitive knowledge, see the last 
chapter of the ^««/. Post. (II, 19, especially 100b 5-17; see also 72b 18-24, 75b31, 84a31, 
90a6-91all.) For the connection between demonstrative knowledge and the 'causes' of a 
thing which are 'distinct from its essential nature' and thereby require a middle term, see op. 
cit, II, 8 (especially 93a5, 93b26). For the analogous connection between intellectual 
intuition and the 'indivisible form' which it grasps — the indivisible essence and individual 
nature which is identical with its cause — see op. cit., 72b24, 77a4, 85al, 88b35. See also op. 
cit, 90a31: 'To know the nature of a thing is to know the reason why it is' (i.e. its cause); 
and 93b21: 'There are essential natures which are immediate, i.e. basic premises.' For 
Aristotle's recognition that we must stop somewhere in the regression of proofs or 
demonstrations, and accept certain principles without proof, see for example Metaphysics, 



1006a7: 'It is impossible to prove everything, for then there would arise an infinite 
regression See also Anal. Post., II, 3 (90b, 18-27). 

I may mention that my analysis of Aristotle's theory of definition agrees largely with that of 
Grote, but partly disagrees with that of Ross. The very great difference between the 
interpretations of these two writers may be just indicated by two quotations, both taken from 
chapters devoted to the analysis of Aristotle's Anal. Post., Book II. 'In the second book, 
Aristotle turns to consider demonstration as the instrument wherohy definition is reached.' 
(Ross, Aristotle, 2nd edn, p. 49.) This may be contrasted with: 'The Definition can never be 
demonstrated, for it declares only the essence of the subject whereas Demonstration 
assumes the essence to be known ...' (Grote, Aristotle, 2nd edn, 241; see also 240/241. Cp. 
also end of note 29 below.) 

28. Cp. Aristotle's Metaphysics, 103 lb? and 1031b20. See also 996b20: 'We have knowledge 
of a thing if we know its essence.' 

29 . 'A definition is a statement that describes the essence of a thing' (Aristotle, Topics, I, 5, 
101b36; VII, 3, 153a, 153al5, etc. See also Met., 1042al7)— 'The definition ... reveals the 
essential nature' {Anal. Post., II, 3, 91al). — 'Definition is ... a statement of the nature of the 
thing' (93b28). — 'Only those things have essences whose formulae are definitions.' {Met., 
1030a5 f) — 'The essence, whose formula is a definition, is also called the substance of a 
thing.' {Met., 1017b21) — 'Clearly, then, the definition is the formula of the essence ...' 
{Met., 1031al3). 

Regarding the principles, i.e. the starting points or basic premises of proofs, we must 
distinguish between two kinds. (1) The logical principles (cp. Met., 996b25 ff.) and (2) the 
premises from which proofs must proceed and which cannot be proven in turn if an infinite 
regression is to be avoided (cp. note 27 to this chapter). The latter are definitions: 'The basic 
premises of proofs are definitions' {Anal. Post., II, 3, 90b23; cp. 89al7, 90a35, 90b23). See 
also Ross, Aristotle, p. 45/46, commenting upon Anal. Post., I, 4, 20-74a4: 'The premises of 
science', Ross writes (p. 46), 'will, we are told, be per se in either sense {a) or sense (Z)).' On 
the previous page we learn that a premise is necessary per se (or essentially necessary) in the 
senses {a) and {b) if it rests upon a definition. 



30 . 'If it has a name, then there will be a formula of its meaning', says Aristotle {Met., 1030al4; 
see also 1030b24); and he explains that not every formula of the meaning of a name is a 
definition; but if the name is one of a species of a genus, then the formula will be a 
definition. 

It is important to note that in my use (I follow here the modern use of the word) 'definition' 
always refers to the whole definition sentence, while Aristotle (and others who follow him in 
this, e.g. Hobbes) sometimes uses the word also as a synonym for 'defmiens'. 
Definitions are not of particulars, but only of universals {c^.Met., 1036a28) and only of 
essences, i.e. of something which is the species of a genus (i.e. a last differentia; cp. Met, 
103 8a 19) and an indivisible form, see also Anal. Post. II, 13., 97b6 f. 

3 1 . That Aristotle's treatment is not very lucid may be seen from the end of note 27 to this 
chapter, and from a further comparison of these two interpretations. The greatest obscurity is 
in Aristotle's treatment of the way in which, by a process of induction, we rise to definitions 
that are principles; cp. especially Post, II, 19, pp. 100a, f 

32 . For Plato's doctrine, see notes 25-27 to chapter 8, and text. 

Grote writes {Aristotle, 2nd ed., 260): 'Aristotle had inherited from Plato his doctrine of an 
infallible Nous or Intellect, enjoying complete immunity from error.' Grote continues to 
emphasize that, as opposed to Plato, Aristotle does not despise observational experience, but 
rather assigns to his Nous (i.e. intellectual intuition) 'a position as terminus and correlate to 
the process of Induction' {loc. cit, see also op. cit, p. 577). This is so; but observational 
experience has apparently only the function of priming and developing our intellectual 
intuition for its task, the intuition of the universal essence; and, indeed, nobody has ever 
explained how definitions, which are beyond error, can be reached by induction. 

33 . Aristotle's view amounts to the same as Plato's in so far as there is for both, in the last 
instance, no possible appeal to argument. All that can be done is to assert dogmatically of a 
certain definition that it is a true description of its essence; and if asked why this and no 
other description is true, all that remains is an appeal to the 'intuition of the essence'. 
Aristotle speaks of induction in at least two senses — in a more heuristic sense of a method 
leading us to 'intuit the general principle' (cp. An. Pri, 67a22f , 27b25-33, Post, 71a7, 



81a38-b5, 100b4 f.) and in a more empirical sense {cp. An. Pri., 68bl5-37, 69al6,^/t. 
Post, 78a35, 81b5 ff., Topics, 105al3, 156a4, 157a34). 

A case of an apparent contradiction, which, however, might be cleared up, is 77a4, where 
we read that a definition is neither universal nor particular. I suggest that the solution is not 
that a definition is 'not strictly a judgement at all' (as G. R. G. Mure suggests in the Oxford 
translation), but that it is not simply universal but 'commensurate', i.e. universal and 
necessary. (Cp. 73b26, 96b4, 97b25.) 

For the 'argument' of Anal. Post, mentioned in the text, see 100b6 ff. For the mystical union 
of the knowing and the known in De Anima, see especially 425b30 f, 430a20, 431al; the 
decisive passage for our purpose is 430b27 f : 'The intuitive grasp of the definition ... of the 
essence is never in error . . . just as . . . the seeing of the special object of sight can never be in 
error.' For the theological passages of the Metaphysics, see especially 1072b20 ('contact') 
and 1075a2. See also notes 59 (2) to chapter 10, 36 to chapter 12, and notes 3, 4, 6, 29-32, 
and 58 to chapter 24. 

For 'the whole body of fact' mentioned in the next paragraph, see the end of Anal. Post. 
(100bl5 f). 

It is remarkable how similar the views of Hobbes (a nominalist but not a methodological 
nominalist) are to Aristotle's methodological essentialism. Hobbes too believes that 
definitions are the basic premises of all knowledge (as opposed to opinion). 

34 . I have developed this view of scientific method in my Logic of Scientific Discovery; see, 
e.g. pp. 278 ff. and pp. 315 ff., for a fuller translation from Erkenntnis, vol. 5 (1934) where I 
say: 'We shall have to get accustomed to interpreting sciences as systems of hypotheses 
(instead of "bodies of knowledge"), i.e. of anticipations that cannot be established, but 
which we use as long as they are corroborated, and of which we are not entitled to say that 
they are "true" or "more or less certain" or even "probable".' 

35 . The quotation is from my note in Erkenntnis, vol. 3 (1933), now retranslated in The Logic 
of Scientific Discovery, pp. 312 ff.; it is a variation and generalization of a statement on 
geometry made by Einstein in his Geometry and Experience. 

36 . It is, of course, not possible to estimate whether theories, argument, and reasoning, or else 



observation and experiment, are of greater significance for science; for science is always 
theory tested by observation and experiment. But it is certain that all those 'positivists' who 
try to show that science is the 'sum total of our observations', or that it is observational 
rather than theoretical, are quite mistaken. The role of theory and argument in science can 
hardly be overrated. — Concerning the relation between proof and logical argument in 
general, see note 47 to this chapter. 

37 . Cp. e.g. Met., 1030a, 6 and 14 (see note 30 to this chapter). 

38 . I wish to emphasize that I speak here dibout nominalism versus essentialism in a purely 
methodological way. I do not take up any position towards the metaphysical problem of 
universals, i.e. towards the metaphysical problem of nominalism versus essentialism (a term 
which I suggest should be used instead of the traditional term 'realism'); and I certainly do 
not advocate a metaphysical nominahsm, although I advocate a methodological nominahsm. 
(See also notes 27 and 30 to chapter 3.) 

The opposition between nominalist and essentialist definitions made in the text is an attempt 
to reconstruct the traditional distinction between 'verbal' and 'real' definitions. My main 
emphasis, however, is on the question whether the definition is read from the right to the left 
or from the left to the right; or, in other words, whether it replaces a long story by a short 
one, or a short story by a long one. 

39 . My contention that in science only nominalist definitions occur (I speak here of explicit 
definitions only and neither of implicit nor of recursive definitions) needs some defence. It 
certainly does not imply that terms are not used more or less 'intuitively' in science; this is 
clear if only we consider that all chains of definitions must start with undefined terms, whose 
meaning can be exemplified but not defined. Further, it seems clear that in science, 
especially in mathematics, we often first use a term, for instance 'dimension' or 'truth', 
intuitively, but proceed later to define it. But this is a rather rough description of the 
situation. A more precise description would be this. Some of the undefined terms used 
intuitively can be sometimes replaced by defined terms of which it can be shown that they 
fulfil the intentions with which the undefined terms have been used; that is to say, to every 
sentence in which the undefined terms occurred (e.g. which was interpreted as analytic) 



there is a corresponding sentence in which the newly defined term occurs (which follows 
from the definition). 

One certainly can say that K. Menger has recursively defined 'Dimension' or that A. Tarski 
has defined 'Truth'; but this way of expressing matters may lead to misunderstandings. What 
has happened is that Menger gave a purely nominal definition of classes of sets of points 
which he labelled '^-dimensional', because it was possible to replace the intuitive 
mathematical concept '^-dimensional' by the new concept in all important contexts; and the 
same can be said of Tarski's concept 'Truth'. Tarski gave a nominal definition (or rather a 
method of drafting nominal definitions) which he labelled 'Truth', since a system of 
sentences could be derived from the definition corresponding to those sentences (like the 
law of the excluded middle) which had been used by many logicians and philosophers in 
connection with what they called 'Truth'. 

40 . If anything, our language would gain precision if we were to avoid definitions and take the 
immense trouble of always using the defining terms instead of the defined terms. For there is 
a source of imprecision in the current methods of definition: Carnap has developed (in 1934) 
what appears to be the first method of avoiding inconsistencies in a language using 
definitions. C^. Logical Syntax of Language, 1937, §22, p. 67. (See also Hilbert-Bernays, 
Grundlagen d. Math., 1939, II, p. 295, note 1.) Carnap has shown that in most cases a 
language admitting definitions will be inconsistent even if the definitions satisfy the general 
rules for forming definitions. The comparative practical unimportance of this inconsistency 
merely rests upon the fact that we can always eliminate the defined terms, replacing them by 
the defining terms. 

41 . Several examples of this method of introducing the new term only after the need has arisen 
may be found in the present book. Dealing, as it does, with philosophical positions, it can 
hardly avoid introducing, for the sake of brevity, names for these positions. This is the 
reason why I have to make use of so many 'isms'. But in many cases these names are 
introduced only after the positions in question have been described. 

42 . In a more systematic criticism of the essentialist method, three problems might be 
distinguished which essentialism can neither escape nor solve. (1) The problem of 



distinguishing clearly between a mere verbal convention and an essentialist definition which 
'truly' describes an essence. (2) The problem of distinguishing 'true' essential definitions 
from 'false' ones. (3) The problem of avoiding an infinite regression of definitions. — I shall 
briefly deal with the second and third of these problems only. The third of these problems 
will be dealt with in the text; for the second, see notes 44 (1) and 54 to this chapter. 

43 . The fact that a statement is true may sometimes help to explain why it appears to us as self- 
evident. This is the case with '2 +2 =4', or with the sentence 'the sun radiates light as well 
as heat'. But the opposite is clearly not the case. The fact that a sentence appears to some or 
even to all of us to be 'self-evident', that is to say, the fact that some or even all of us believe 
firmly in its truth and cannot conceive of its falsity, is no reason why it should be true. (The 
fact that we are unable to conceive of the falsity of a statement is in many cases only a 
reason for suspecting that our power of imagination is deficient or undeveloped.) It is one of 
the gravest mistakes if a philosophy ever offers self-evidence as an argument in favour of 
the truth of a sentence; yet this is done by practically all idealist philosophies. It shows that 
idealist philosophies are often systems of apologetics for some dogmatic beliefs. 

The excuse that we are often in such a position that we must accept certain sentences for no 
better reason than that they are self-evident, is not valid. The principles of logic and of 
scientific method (especially the 'principle of induction' or the 'law of uniformity of nature') 
are usually mentioned as statements which we must accept, and which we cannot justify by 
anything but self-evidence. Even if this were so, it would be franker to say that we cannot 
justify them, and leave it at that. But, in fact, there is no need for a 'principle of induction'. 
(Cp. my The Logic of Scientific Discovery.) And as far as the 'principles of logic' are 
concerned, much has been done in recent years which shows that the self-evidence theory is 
obsolete. (Cp. especially C2LYr\2L^'s Logical Syntax of Language and his Introduction to 
Semantics.) See also note 44 (2). 

44 . (1) If we apply these considerations to the intellectual intuition of essences, then we can see 
that essentialism is unable to solve the problem: How can we find out whether or not a 
proposed definition which is formally correct is true also; and especially, how can we decide 
between two competing definitions? It is clear that for the methodological nominalist the 



answer to a question of this kind is trivial. For let us assume that somebody maintains (with 
the Oxford Dictionary) that 'A puppy is a vain, empty-headed, impertinent young man', and 
that he insists upon upholding this definition against somebody who clings to our previous 
definition. In this case, the nominalist, if he is patient enough to do so, will point out that a 
quarrel about labels does not interest him, since their choice is arbitrary; and he may 
suggest, if there is any danger of ambiguity, that one can easily introduce two different 
labels, for example 'puppy l' and 'puppy2'. And if a third party should support that 'A 
puppy is a brown dog', then the nominalist will patiently suggest the introduction of the 
label 'puppyS'. But should the contesting parties continue to quarrel, either because 
somebody insists that only his puppy is the legitimate one, or because he insists that his 
puppy must, at least, be labelled 'puppy l', then even a very patient nominahst would only 
shrug his shoulders. (In order to avoid misunderstandings, it should be said that 
methodological nominalism does not discuss the question of the existence of universals; 
Hobbes, accordingly, is not a methodological nominalist, but what I should call an 
onto logical nominalist.) 

The same trivial problem, however, raises insurmountable difficulties for the essentiahst 
method. We have already supposed that the essentialist insists that, for instance, 'A puppy is 
a brown dog' is not a correct definition of the essence of 'puppiness'. How can he defend 
this view? Only by an appeal to his intellectual intuition of essences. But this fact has the 
practical consequence that the essentialist is reduced to complete helplessness, if his 
definition is challenged. For there are only two ways in which he can react. The one is to 
reiterate stubbornly that his intellectual intuition is the only true one, to which, of course, his 
opponent may reply in the same way, so that we reach a deadlock instead of the absolutely 
final and indubitable knowledge which we were promised by Aristotle. The other is to admit 
that his opponent's intuition may be as true as his own, but that it is of a different essence, 
which he unfortunately denotes by the same name. This would lead to the suggestion that 
two different names should be used for the two different essences, for example 'puppy l' and 
'puppy r. But this step means giving up the essentialist position altogether. For it means that 
we start with the defining formula and attach to it some label, i.e. that we proceed 'from the 
right to the left'; and it means that we shall have to attach these labels arbitrarily. This can be 



seen by considering that the attempt to insist that a puppyl is, essentially, a young dog, 
while the brown dog can only be a puppy2, would clearly lead to the same difficulty which 
has driven the essentialist into his present dilemma. Accordingly, every definition must be 
considered as equally admissible (provided it is formally correct); which means, in 
Aristotelian terminology, that one basic premise is just as true as another (which is contrary 
to it) and that Ht is impossible to make a false statement' . (This seems to have been pointed 
out by Antisthenes; see note 54 to this chapter.) Thus the Aristotehan claim that intellectual 
intuition is a source of knowledge as opposed to opinion, unerringly and indubitably true, 
and that it furnishes us with definitions which are the safe and necessary basic premises of 
all scientific deduction, is baseless in every single one of its points. And a definition turns 
out to be nothing but a sentence which tells us that the defined term means the same as the 
defining formula, and that each can be replaced by the other. Its nominalist use permits us to 
cut a long story short and is therefore of some practical advantage. But its essen-tialist use 
can only help us to replace a short story by a story which means the same but is much 
longer. This use can only encourage verbalism. 

(2) For a criticism of Husserl's intuition of essences, cp. J. Kraft, From Husserl to Heidegger 
(in German, 1932). See also note 8 to chapter 24. Of all authors who hold related views, M. 
Weber had probably the greatest influence upon the treatment of sociological problems. He 
advocated for the social sciences a 'method of intuitive understanding'; and his 'ideal types' 
largely correspond to the essences of Aristotle and Husserl. It is worth mentioning that 
Weber saw, in spite of these tendencies, the inadmissibility of appeals to self-evidence. 'The 
fact that an interpretation possesses a high degree of self-evidence proves in itself nothing 
about its empirical validity' {Ges. Aufsaetze, 1922, p. 404); and he says quite rightly that 
intuitive understanding 'must always be controlled by ordinary methods'. {Loc. cit, italics 
mine.) But if that is so, then it is not a characteristic method of a science of 'human 
behaviour' as he thinks; it also belongs to mathematics, physics, etc. And it turns out that 
those who believe that intuitive understanding is a method pecuhar to sciences of 'human 
behaviour' hold such views mainly because they cannot imagine that a mathematician or a 
physicist could become so well acquainted with his object that he could 'get the feel of it', in 
the way in which a sociologist 'gets the feel' of human behaviour. 



45 . 'Science assumes the definitions of all its terms (Ross, Aristotle, 44; cp. Anal. Post., I, 
2); see also note 30 to this chapter. 

46 . The following quotation is from R. H. S. Grossman, Plato To-Day 1937, pp. 71 f 

A very similar doctrine is expressed by M. R. Cohen and E. Nagel in their book. An 
Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (1936), p. 232: 'Many of the disputes about the 
true nature of property, of religion, of law, . . . would assuredly disappear if the precisely 
defined equivalents were substituted for these words.' (See also notes 48 and 49 to this 
chapter.) 

The views concerning this problem expressed by Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico- 
Philosophicus (1921/22) and by several of his followers are not as definite as those of 
Grossman, Cohen, and Nagel. Wittgenstein is an anti-metaphysician. 'The book', he writes 
in the preface, 'deals with the problems of philosophy and shows, I believe, that the method 
of formulating these problems rests on the misunderstanding of the logic of our language.' 
He tries to show that metaphysics is 'simply nonsense' and tries to draw a limit, in our 
language, between sense and nonsense: 'The limit can ... be drawn in languages and what 
lies on the other side of the limit will be simply nonsense.' According to Wittgenstein's 
book, propositions have sense. They are true or false. Philosophical propositions do not 
exist; they only look like propositions, but are, in fact, nonsensical. The limit between sense 
and nonsense coincides with that between natural science and philosophy: 'The totality of 
true propositions is the total natural science (or the totality of the natural sciences). — 
Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences.' The true task of philosophy, therefore, is not 
to formulate propositions; it is, rather, to clarify propositions : 'The result of philosophy is 
not a number of "philosophical propositions", but to make propositions clear.' Those who 
do not see that, and propound philosophical propositions, talk metaphysical nonsense. 
(It should be remembered, in this connection, that a sharp distinction between meaningful 
statements which have sense, and meaningless linguistic expressions which may look like 
statements but which are without sense, was first made by Russell in his attempt to solve the 
problems raised by the paradoxes which he had discovered. Russell's division of 
expressions which look like statements is threefold, since statements which may be true or 
false, and meaningless or nonsensical pseudo-statements, may be distinguished. It is 



important to note that this use of the terms 'meaningless' or 'senseless' partly agrees with 
ordinary use, but is much sharper, since ordinarily one often calls real statements 
'meaningless', for example, if they are 'absurd', i.e. self-contradictory, or obviously false. 
Thus a statement asserting of a certain physical body that it is at the same time in two 
different places is not meaningless but a false statement, or one which contradicts the use of 
the term 'body' in classical physics; and similarly, a statement asserting of a certain electron 
that it has a precise place and momentum is not meaningless — as some physicists have 
asserted, and as some philosophers have repeated — ^but it simply contradicts modem 
physics.) 

What has been said so far can be summed up as follows. Wittgenstein looks for a line of 
demarcation between sense and nonsense, and finds that this demarcation coincides with 
that between science and metaphysics, i.e. between scientific sentences and philosophical 
pseudo-propositions. (That he wrongly identifies the sphere of the natural sciences with that 
of true sentences shall not concern us here; see, however, note 51 to this chapter.) This 
interpretation of his aim is corroborated when we read: 'Philosophy limits the ... sphere of 
natural science.' (All sentences so far quoted are from pp. 75 and 77.) 

How is the line of demarcation ultimately drawn? How can 'science' be distinguished fi"om 
'metaphysics', and thereby 'sense' from 'nonsense'? It is the reply given to this question 
which establishes the similarity between Wittgenstein's theory and that of Grossman and the 
rest. Wittgenstein implies that the terms or 'signs' used by scientists have meaning, while the 
metaphysician 'has given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions'; this is what he 
writes (pp. 187 and 189): 'The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing 
except what can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has 
nothing to do with philosophy: and then always when someone else wished to say 
something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain 
signs in his propositions.' In practice, this implies that we should proceed by asking the 
metaphysician: 'What do you mean by this word? What do you mean by that word?' In 
other words, we demand a definition from him; and if it is not forthcoming, we assume that 
the word is meaningless. 

This theory, as will be shown in the text, overlooks the facts {a) that a witty and 



unscrupulous metaphysician every time he is asked, 'What do you mean by this word?', will 
quickly proffer a definition, so that the whole game develops into a trial of patience; (b) that 
the natural scientist is in no better logical position than the metaphysician; and even, if 
compared with a metaphysician who is unscrupulous, in a worse position. 
It may be remarked that Schlick, m Erkenntnis, 1, p. 8, where he deals with Wittgenstein's 
doctrine, mentions the difficulty of an infinite regress; but the solution he suggests (which 
seems to lie in the direction of inductive definitions or 'constitutions', or perhaps of 
operationalism; cp. note 50 to this chapter) is neither clear nor able to solve the problem of 
demarcation. I think that certain of the intentions of Wittgenstein and Schlick in demanding 
a philosophy of meaning are fulfilled by that logical theory which Tarski has called 
'Semantics'. But I also believe that the correspondence between these intentions and 
Semantics does not go far; for Semantics propounds propositions ; it does not only 'clarify' 
them. — These comments upon Wittgenstein are continued in notes 51-52 to the present 
chapter. (See also notes 8 (2) and 32 to chapter 24; and 10 and 25 to chapter 25.) 

47 . It is important to distinguish between a logical deduction in general, and a proof or 
demonstration in particular. A proof or demonstration is a deductive argument by which the 
truth of the conclusion is finally established; this is how Aristotle uses the term, demanding 
(for example, in Anal. Post., I, 4, pp. 73a, ff.) that the 'necessary' truth of the conclusion 
should be established; and this is how Carnap uses the term (see especially Logical Syntax, § 
10, p. 29, § 47, p. 171), showing that conclusions which are 'demonstrable' in this sense are 
'analytically' true. (Into the problems concerning the terms 'analytic' and 'synthetic', I shall 
not enter here.) 

Since Aristotle, it has been clear that not all logical deductions are proofs (i.e. 
demonstrations); there are also logical deductions which are not proofs; for example, we can 
deduce conclusions from admittedly false premises, and such deductions are not called 
proofs. Non-demonstrative deductions are called by Carnap 'derivations' (loc. cit.). It is 
interesting that a name for these non-demonstrative deductions has not been introduced 
earlier; it shows the preoccupation with proofs, a preoccupation which arose from the 
Aristotelian prejudice that 'science' or 'scientific knowledge' must establish all its 



statements, i.e. accept them either as self-evident premises, or prove them. But the position is 
this. Outside of pure logic and pure mathematics nothing can be proved. Arguments in other 
sciences (and even some within mathematics, as I. Lakatos has shown) are not proofs but 
merely derivations. 

It may be remarked that there is a far-reaching parallelism between the problems of 
derivation on the one side and definition on the other, and between the problems of the truth 
of sentences and that of the meaning of terms. 

A derivation starts with premises and leads to a conclusion; a definition starts (if we read it 
from the right to the left) with the defining terms and leads to a defined term. A derivation 
informs us about the truth of the conoXusion, provided we are informed about the truth of the 
premises; a definition informs us about the meaning of the defined term, provided we are 
informed about the meaning of the defining terms. Thus a derivation shifts the problem of 
truth back to the premises, without ever being able to solve it; and a definition shifts the 
problem of meaning back to the defining terms, without ever being able to solve it. 

48 . The reason why the defining terms are likely to be rather less clear and precise than the 
defined terms is that they are as a rule more abstract and general. This is not necessarily true 
if certain modern methods of definition are employed ('definition by abstraction', a method 
of symbolic logic); but it is certainly true of all those definitions which Grossman can have 
in mind, and especially of all Aristotelian definitions (by genus and differentia). 

It has been held by some positivists, especially under the infiuence of Locke and Hume, that 
it is possible to define abstract terms like those of science or of politics (see text to next note) 
in terms of particular, concrete observations or even of sensations. Such an 'inductive' 
method of definition has been called by Carnap 'constitution'. But we can say that it is 
impossible to 'constitute' universals in terms of particulars. (With this, cp. my The Logic oj 
Scientific Discovery, especially sections 14, pp. 64 ff., and 25, p. 93; and Carnap's 
'Testability and Meaning', in Philosophy of Science, vol. 3, 1936, pp. 419 ff., and vol. 4, pp. 
Iff.) 

49 . The examples are the same as those which Cohen and Nagel, op. cit, 232 f , recommend 
for definition. (Cp. note 46 to this chapter.) 



Some general remarks on the uselessness of essentialist definitions may be added here. (Cp. 
also end of note 44 (1) to this chapter.) 

(1) The attempt to solve a factual problem by reference to definitions usually means the 
substitution of a merely verbal problem for the factual one. (There is an excellent example of 
this method in Aristotle's Physics, II, 6, towards the end.) This may be shown for the 
following examples, {a) There is a factual problem: Can we return to the cage of tribalism? 
And by what means? (b) There is a moral problem: Should we return to the cage? 

The philosopher of meaning, if faced by {a) or {b), will say: It all depends on what you 
mean by your vague terms; tell me how you define 'return', 'cage', 'tribalism', and with the 
help of these definitions I may be able to decide your problem. Against this, I maintain that if 
the decision can be made with the help of the definitions, if it follows from the definitions, 
then the problem so decided was merely a verbal problem; for it has been solved 
independently of facts or of moral decisions. 

(2) An essentialist philosopher of meaning may do even worse, especially in connection 
with problem {b); he may suggest, for example, that it depends upon 'the essence' or 'the 
essential character' or perhaps upon 'the destiny' of our civilization whether or not we 
should try to return. (See also note 61 (2) to this chapter.) 

(3) Essentialism and the theory of definition have led to an amazing development in Ethics. 
The development is one of increasing abstraction and loss of touch with the basis of all 
ethics — ^the practical moral problems, to be decided by us here and now. It leads first to the 
general question, 'What is good?' or 'What is the Good?'; next to 'What does "Good" 
mean?' and next to 'Can the problem "What does 'Good' mean?" be answered?' or 'Can 
"good" be defined?' G. E. Moore, who raised this last problem in his Principia Ethica, was 
certainly right in insisting that 'good' in the moral sense cannot be defined in 'naturalistic' 
terms. For, indeed, if we could, it would mean something like 'bitter' or 'sweet' or 'green' or 
'red'; and it would be utterly irrelevant from the point of view of morality. Just as we need 
not attain the bitter, or the sweet, etc., there would be no reason to take any moral interest in 
a naturahstic 'good'. But although Moore was right in what is perhaps justly considered his 
main point, it may be held that an analysis of good or of any other concept or essence can in 
no way contribute to an ethical theory which bears upon the only relevant basis of all ethics, 



the immediate moral problem that must be solved here and now. Such an analysis can lead 
only to the substitution of a verbal problem for a moral one. (Cp. also note 18 (1) to chapter 
5, especially upon the irrelevance of moral judgements.) 

50 . I have in mind the methods of 'constitution' (see note 48 to this chapter), 'implicit 
definition', 'definition by correlation', and 'operational definition'. The arguments of the 
'operationalists' seem to be in the main true enough; but they cannot get over the fact that in 
their operational definitions, or descriptions, they need universal terms which have to be 
taken as undefined; and to them, the problem applies again. 

A few hints or allusions may be added here concerning the way we 'use our terms'. For the 
sake of brevity, these hints will refer without explanation to certain technicalities; they may 
therefore, in the present form, not be generally understandable. 

Of the so-called implicit definitions, especially in mathematics, Camap has shown 
{Symposion I, 1927, 355 ff.; cp. also his Abriss) that they do not 'define' in the ordinary 
sense of this word; a system of implicit definitions cannot be considered as defining a 
'model', but it defines a whole class of 'models'. Accordingly, the system of symbols 
defined by a system of implicit definitions cannot be considered as a system of constants, 
but they must be considered as variables (with a definite range, and bound by the system in 
a certain way to one another). I believe that there is a limited analogy between this situation 
and the way we 'use our terms' in science. The analogy can be described in this way. In a 
branch of mathematics in which we operate with signs defined by implicit definition, the fact 
that these signs have no 'definite meaning' does not affect our operating with them, or the 
precision of our theories. Why is that so? Because we do not overburden the signs. We do 
not attach a 'meaning' to them, beyond that shadow of a meaning that is warranted by our 
implicit definitions. (And if we attach to them an intuitive meaning, then we are careful to 
treat this as a private auxiliary device, which must not interfere with the theory.) In this way, 
we try to keep, as it were, within the 'penumbra of vagueness' or of ambiguity, and to avoid 
touching the problem of the precise limits of this penumbra or range; and it turns out that we 
can achieve a great deal without discussing the meaning of these signs; for nothing depends 
on their meaning. In a similar way, I believe, we can operate with these terms whose 
meaning we have learned 'operationally'. We use them, as it were, so that nothing depends 



upon their meaning, or as little as possible. Our 'operational definitions' have the advantage 
of helping us to shift the problem into a field in which nothing or little depends on words. 
Clear speaking is speaking in such a way that words do not matter. 

51 . Wittgenstein teaches in the Tractatus (cp. note 46 to this chapter where further cross- 
references are given) that philosophy cannot propound propositions, and that all 
philosophical propositions are in fact senseless pseudo-propositions. Closely connected with 
this is his doctrine that the true task of philosophy is not to propound sentences but to clarify 
them: 'The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. — Philosophy is not a 
theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.' ( Op. cit., p. 
77.) 

The question arises whether this view is in keeping with Wittgenstein's fundamental aim, the 
destruction of metaphysics by unveiling it as meaningless nonsense. In my The Logic oj 
Scientific Discovery (see especially pp. 311 ff), I have tried to show that Wittgenstein's 
method leads to a merely verbal solution and that it must give rise, in spite of its apparent 
radicalism, not to the destruction or to the exclusion or even to the clear demarcation of 
metaphysics, but to their intrusion into the field of science, and to their confusion with 
science. The reasons for this are simple enough. 

(1) Let us consider one of Wittgenstein's sentences, for example, 'philosophy is not a theory 
but an activity'. Surely, this is not a sentence belonging to 'total natural science (or the 
totality of the natural sciences)'. Therefore, according to Wittgenstein (see note 46 to this 
chapter), it cannot belong to 'the totality of true propositions'. On the other hand, it is not a 
false proposition either (since if it were, its negation would have to be true, and to belong to 
natural science). Thus we arrive at the result that it must be 'meaningless' or 'senseless' or 
'nonsensical'; and the same holds for most of Wittgenstein 's propositions . This consequence 
of his doctrine is recognized by Wittgenstein himself, for he writes (p. 189): 'My 
propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as 
senseless ...' The result is important. Wittgenstein's own philosophy is senseless, and it is 
admitted to be so. 'On the other hand', as Wittgenstein says in his Preface, 'the truth of the 
thoughts communicated here seems to me unassailable and definite. I am, therefore, of the 
opinion that the problems have in essentials been finally solved.' This shows that we can 



communicate unassailably and definitely true thoughts by way of propositions which are 
admittedly nonsensical, and that we can solve problems 'finally' by propounding nonsense. 
(Cp. also note 8 (2, b) to chapter 24.) 

Consider what this means. It means that all the metaphysical nonsense against which Bacon, 
Hume, Kant, and Russell have fought for centuries may now comfortably settle down, and 
even frankly admit that it is nonsense. (Heidegger does so; cp. note 87 to chapter 12.) For 
now we have a new kind of nonsense at our disposal, nonsense that communicates thoughts 
whose truth is unassailable and definitive; in other words, deeply significant nonsense. 
I do not deny that Wittgenstein's thoughts are unassailable and definitive. For how could 
one assail them? Obviously, whatever one says against them must be philosophical and 
therefore nonsense. And it can be dismissed as such. We are thus faced with that kind of 
position which I have described elsewhere, in connection with Hegel (cp. note 33 to chapter 
12) as 2i reinforced dogmatism . 'All you need', I wrote in my Logik der Forschung (now 
translated as The Logic of Scientific Discovery: see p. 51), p. 21, 'is to determine the 
conception of "sense" or of "meaning" in a suitably narrow way, and you can say of all 
uncomfortable questions that you cannot find any "sense" or "meaning" in them. By 
recognizing the problems of natural science alone as "meaningful", every debate about the 
concept of meaning must become nonsensical. Once enthroned, the dogma of meaning is 
for ever raised above the possibility of attack. It is "unassailable and definitive".' 
(2) But not only does Wittgenstein's theory invite every kind of metaphysical nonsense to 
pose as deeply significant; it also blurs what I have called (op. cit., p. 7) the problem of 
demarcation. This he does because of his naive idea that there is something 'essentially' or 
'by nature' scientific and something 'essentially' or 'by nature' metaphysical and that it is 
our task to discover the 'natural' demarcation between these two. 'Positivism', I may quote 
myself again {pp. cit, p. 8), 'interprets the problem of demarcation in a naturalistic way; 
instead of interpreting this question as one to be decided according to practical usefulness, it 
asks for a difference that exists "by nature", as it were, between natural science and 
metaphysics.' But it is clear that the philosophical or methodological task can only be to 
suggest and to devise a useful demarcation between these two. This can hardly be done by 
characterizing metaphysics as 'senseless' or 'meaningless'. First, because these terms are 



better fitted for giving vent to one's personal indignation about metaphysicians and 
metaphysical systems than for a technical characterization of a line of demarcation. 
Secondly, because the problem is only shifted, for we must now ask: 'What do "meaningful" 
and "meaningless" mean?' If 'meaningful' is only an equivalent for 'scientific', and 
'meaningless' for 'non-scientific', then we have clearly made no progress. For reasons such 
as these I suggested {pp. cit, 8 ff., 21 f., 227) that we eliminate the emotive terms 
'meaning', 'meaningful', 'meaningless', etc., from the methodological discussion altogether. 
(Recommending that we solve the problem of demarcation by using falsifiability or 
testability, or degrees of testability, as criterion of the empirical character of a scientific 
system, I suggested that it was of no advantage to introduce 'meaningful' as an emotive 
equivalent of 'testable'.) *In spite of my explicit refusal to regard falsifiability or testability 
(or anything else) as a 'criterion of meaning', I find that philosophers frequently attribute to 
me the proposal to adopt this as a criterion of meaning or of 'meaningfulness'. (See, for 
example. Philosophic Thought in France and in the United States, edited by M. Farber, 
1950, p. 570.)* 

But even if we eliminate all reference to 'meaning' or 'sense' from Wittgenstein's theories, 
his solution of the problem of demarcating science from metaphysics remains most 
unfortunate. For since he identifies 'the totality of true propositions' with the totality of 
natural science, he excludes all those hypotheses from 'the sphere of natural science' which 
are not true. And since we can never know of a hypothesis whether or not it is true, we can 
never know whether or not it belongs to the sphere of natural science. The same unfortunate 
result, namely, a demarcation that excludes all hypotheses from the sphere of natural 
science, and therefore includes them in the field of metaphysics, is attained by 
Wittgenstein's famous 'principle of verification', as I pointed out in Erkenntnis, 3 (1933), p. 
427. (For a hypothesis is, strictly speaking, not verifiable, and if we speak loosely, then we 
can say that even a metaphysical system like that of the early atomists has been verified.) 
Again, this conclusion has been drawn in later years by Wittgenstein himself, who, 
according to Schlick (cp. my The Logic of Scientific Discovery, note 7 to section 4), asserted 
in 1931 that scientific theories are 'not really propositions', i.e. not meaningful. Theories, 
hypotheses, that is to say, the most important of all scientific utterances, are thus thrown out 



of the temple of natural science, and therefore put on a level with metaphysics. 
Wittgenstein's original view in the Tractatus can only be explained by the assumption that 
he overlooked the difficulties connected with the status of a scientific hypothesis which 
always goes far beyond a simple enunciation of fact; he overlooked the problem of 
universality or generality. In this, he followed in the footsteps of earlier positivists, notably 
of Comte, who wrote (cp. his Early Essays on Social Philosophy, edited by H. D. Hutton, 
1911, p. 223; see F. A. von Hayek, Economica, VIII, 1941, p. 300): 'Observation of facts is 
the only solid basis of human knowledge ... a proposition which does not admit of being 
reduced to a simple enunciation of fact, special or general, can have no real and intelligible 
sense.' Comte, although he remained unaware of the gravity of the problem hidden behind 
the simple phrases 'general fact', at least mentions this problem, by inserting the words 
'special or general'. If we omit these words, then the passage becomes a very clear and 
concise formulation of Wittgenstein's fundamental criterion of sense or meaning, as 
formulated by him in the Tractatus (all propositions are truth-functions of, and therefore 
reducible to, atomic propositions, i.e. pictures of atomic facts), and as expounded by Schlick 
in 193 1. — Comte 's criterion of meaning was adopted by J. S. Mill. 

To sum up. The anti-metaphysical theory of meaning in Wittgenstein's Tractatus, far from 
helping to combat metaphysical dogmatism and oracular philosophy, represents a reinforced 
dogmatism that opens wide the door to the enemy, deeply significant metaphysical 
nonsense, and throws out, by the same door, the best friend, that is to say, scientific 
hypothesis. 

52 . It appears that irrationalism in the sense of a doctrine or creed that does not propound 
connected and debatable arguments but rather propounds aphorisms and dogmatic 
statements which must be 'understood' or else left alone, will generally tend to become the 
property of an esoteric circle of the initiated. And, indeed, this prognosis seems to be partly 
corroborated by some of the publications that come from Wittgenstein's school. (I do not 
wish to generalize; for example, everything I have seen of F. Waismann's writing is 
presented as a chain of rational and exceedingly clear arguments, and entirely free from the 
attitude of 'take it or leave if .) 



Some of these esoteric publications seem to be without a serious problem; to me, they 
appear to be subtle for subtlety's sake. It is significant that they come from a school which 
started by denouncing philosophy for the barren subtlety of its attempts to deal with pseudo- 
problems. 

I may end this criticism by stating briefly that I do not think that there is much justification 
for fighting metaphysics in general, or that anything worth while will result from such a 
fight. It is necessary to solve the problem of the demarcation of science from metaphysics. 
But we should recognize that many metaphysical systems have led to important scientific 
results. I mention only the system of Democritus; and that of Schopenhauer which is very 
similar to that of Freud. And some, for instance those of Plato or Malebranche or 
Schopenhauer, are beautiful structures of thought. But I believe, at the same time, that we 
should fight those metaphysical systems which tend to bewitch and to confuse us. But 
clearly, we should do the same even with un-metaphysical and anti-metaphysical systems, if 
they exhibit this dangerous tendency. And I think that we cannot do this at one stroke. We 
have rather to take the trouble to analyse the systems in some detail; we must show that we 
understand what the author means, but that what he means is not worth the effort to 
understand it. (It is characteristic of all these dogmatic systems and especially of the esoteric 
systems that their admirers assert of all critics that 'they do not understand'; but these 
admirers forget that understanding must lead to agreement only in the case of sentences with 
a trivial content. In all other cases, one can understand and disagree.) 

53 . Cp. Schopenhauer, Grundprobleme (4th edn, 1890, p. 147). He comments upon 
'intellectually intuiting reason that makes its pronouncements from the tripod of the oracle' 
(hence my term 'oracular philosophy'); and he continues: 'This is the origin of that 
philosophic method which entered the stage immediately after Kant, of this method of 
mystifying and imposing upon people, of deceiving them and throwing dust in their eyes — 
the method of windbaggery. One day this era will be recognized by the history of 
philosophy as the age of dishonesty.' (Then follows the passage quoted in the text.) 
Concerning the irrationahst attitude of 'take it or leave if, cp. also text to notes 39-40 to 
chapter 24. 



54 . Plato's theory of definition (cp. note 27 to chapter 3 and note 23 to chapter 5), which 
Aristotle later developed and systematized, met its main opposition (1) from Antisthenes, (2) 
from the school of Isocrates, especially Theopompus. 

(1) Simplicius, one of the best of our sources on these very doubtful matters, presents 
Antisthenes {ad Arist. Categ., pp. 66b, 67b) as an opponent of Plato's theory of Forms or 
Ideas, and in fact, of the doctrine of essentialism and intellectual intuition altogether. 'I can 
see a horse, Plato', Antisthenes is reported to have said, 'but I cannot see its horseness.' (A 
very similar argument is attributed by a lesser source, D.L., VI, 53, to Diogenes the Cynic, 
and there is no reason why the latter should not have used it too.) I think that we may rely 
upon Simplicius (who appears to have had access to Theophrastus), considering that 
Aristotle's own testimony in the Metaphysics (especially in Met., 1043b24) squares well with 
this anti-essentialism of Antisthenes. 

The two passages in the Metaphysics in which Aristotle mentions Antisthenes' objection to 
the essentialist theory of definitions are both very interesting. In the first {Met., 1024b32) we 
hear that Antisthenes raised the point discussed in note 44 (1) to this chapter; that is to say, 
that there is no way of distinguishing between a 'true' and a 'false' definition (of 'puppy', 
for example) so that two apparently contradictory definitions would only refer to two 
different essences, 'puppy l' and 'puppy 2'; thus there would be no contradiction, and it 
would hardly be possible to speak of false sentences. 'Antisthenes', Aristotle writes about 
this criticism, 'showed his crudity by claiming that nothing could be described except by its 
proper formula, one formula for one thing; from which it followed that there could be no 
contradiction; and almost that it was impossible to make a false statement.' (The passage has 
usually been interpreted as containing Antisthenes' positive theory, instead of his criticism 
of the doctrine of definition. But this interpretation neglects Aristotle's context. The whole 
passage deals with the possibility of false definitions, i.e. with precisely that problem which 
gives rise, in view of the inadequacy of the theory of intellectual intuition, to the difficulties 
described in note 44 (1). And it is clear from Aristotle's text that he is troubled by these 
difficulties as well as by Antisthenes' attitude towards them.) The second passage {Met., 
1043b24) also agrees with the criticism of essentialist definitions developed in the present 
chapter. It shows that Antisthenes attacked essentialist definitions as useless, as merely 



substituting a long story for a short one; and it shows further that Antisthenes very wisely 
admitted that, although it is useless to define, it is possible to describe or to explain a thing 
by referring to the similarity it bears to a thing already known, or, if it is composite, by 
explaining what its parts are. 'Indeed there is', Aristotle writes, 'something in that difficulty 
which has been raised by the Antisthenians and other such-like uneducated people. They 
said that what a thing is' (or the 'what is it' of a thing) 'cannot be defined; for the so-called 
definition, they say, is nothing but a long formula. But they admit that it is possible to 
explain, for example of silver, what sort of a thing it is; for we may say that it is similar to 
tin.' From this doctrine it would follow, Aristotle adds, 'that it is possible to give a definition 
and a formula of the composite kind of things or substances, whether they are sensible 
things, or objects of intellectual intuition; but not of their primary parts ...'(In the sequel, 
Aristotle wanders off, trying to link this argument with his doctrine that a defining formula is 
composed of two parts, genus and differentia, which are related, and united, like matter and 
form.) 

I have dealt here with this matter since it appears that the enemies of Antisthenes, for 
example Aristotle (cp. Topics, I, 104b21), cited what he said in a manner which has led to 
the impression that it is not Antisthenes' criticism of essentialism but rather his positive 
doctrine. This impression was made possible by mixing it up with another doctrine probably 
held by Antisthenes; I have in mind the simple doctrine that we must speak plainly, just 
using each term in one meaning, and that in this way we can avoid all those difficulties 
whose solution is unsuccessfully attempted by the theory of definitions. 
All these matters are, as mentioned before, very uncertain, owing to the scantiness of our 
evidence. But I think that Grote is likely to be right when he characterizes 'this debate 
between Antisthenes and Plato' as the 'first protest of Nominalism against the doctrine of an 
extreme Reahsm' (or in our terminology, of an extreme essentialism). Grote 's position may 
be thus defended against Field's attack {Plato and His Contemporaries, 167) that it is 'quite 
wrong' to describe Antisthenes as a nominahst. 

In support of my interpretation of Antisthenes, I may mention that against the scholastic 
theory of definitions, very similar arguments were used by Descartes (cp. The Philosophical 
Works, translated by Haldane and Ross, 1911, vol. I, p. 317) and, less clearly, by Locke 



(Essay, Book III, ch. Ill, § 11, to ch. IV, § 6; also ch. X, §§ 4 to 11; see especially ch. IV, § 
5). Both Descartes and Locke, however, remained essentialists. Essentialism itself was 
attacked by Hobbes (cp. note 33 above) and by Berkeley who might be described as one of 
the first to hold a methodological nominalism, quite apart from his ontological nominalism; 
see also note 7 (2) to chapter 25. 

(2) Of other critics of the Platonic -Aristotelian theory of definition, I mention only 
Theopompus (quoted by Epictetus, II, 17, 4-10; see Grote, Plato, I, 324). I think it likely 
that, as opposed to the generally accepted view, Socrates himself would not have favoured 
the theory of definitions; what he seems to have combated was the merely verbal solution of 
ethical problems; and his so-called attempted definitions of ethical terms, considering their 
negative results, may well be attempts to destroy verbalist prejudices. 

(3) I wish to add here that in spite of all my criticism I am very ready to admit Aristotle's 
merits. He is the founder of logic, and down to Principia Mathematica, all logic can be said 
to be an elaboration and generalization of the Aristotelian beginnings. (A new epoch in logic 
has indeed begun, in my opinion, though not with the so-called 'non-Aristotelian' or 'multi- 
valued' systems, but rather with the clear distinction between 'object- language' and 'meta- 
language'.) Furthermore, Aristotle has the great merit of having tried to tame idealism by his 
common-sense approach which insists that only individual things are 'real' (and that their 
'forms' and 'matter' are only aspects or abstractions). *Yet this very approach is responsible 
for the fact that Aristotle does not even attempt to solve Plato's problem of universals (see 
notes 19 and 20 to chapter 3, and text), i.e., the problem of explaining why certain things 
resemble one another and others do not. For why should there not be as many different 
Aristotelian essences in things as there are things?* 

55 . The influence of Platonism especially upon the Gospel of St. John is clear; and this 
influence is less noticeable in the earlier Gospels, though I do not assert that it is absent. 
Nevertheless the Gospels exhibit a clearly anti-intellectualist and anti-philosophizing 
tendency. They avoid an appeal to philosophical speculation, and they are definitely against 
scholarship and dialectics, for instance, that of the 'scribes'; but scholarship means, in this 
period, interpreting the scriptures in a dialectical and philosophical sense, and especially in 
the sense of the Neo-Platonists. 



56 . The problem of nationalism and the superseding of Jewish parochial tribalism by 
internationalism plays a most important part in the early history of Christianity; the echoes of 
these struggles can be found in the Acts (especially 10, 15 ff; 11, 1-18; see also St. Matthew 
3, 9, and the polemics against tribal feeding taboos in Acts 10, 10-15). It is interesting that 
this problem turns up together with the social problem of wealth and poverty, and with that 
of slavery; see Galatians 3, 28; and especially ^c^^ 5, 1-11, where the retention of private 
property is described as mortal sin. 

The survival in the Ghettos of eastern Europe, down to 1914 and even longer, of arrested 
and petrified forms of Jewish tribalism is very interesting. (Cp. the way in which the Scottish 
tribes attempted to cling to their tribal life.) 

57 . The quotation is from Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. VI, p. 202; the passage deals with 
the motive for the persecution of Christianity by the Roman rulers, who were usually very 
tolerant in matters of religion. 'The element in Christianity', Toynbee writes, 'that was 
intolerable to the Imperial Government was the Christians' refusal to accept the 
Government's claim that it was entitled to compel its subjects to act against their conscience 
... So far from checking the propagation of Christianity, the martyrdoms proved the most 
effective agencies of conversion ...' 

58. For Julian's Neo-Platonic Anti-Church with its Platonizing hierarchy, and his fight against 
the 'atheists', i.e. Christianity, cp. for example Toynbee, op. cit, V, pp. 565 and 584; I may 
quote a passage from J. Geffken (quoted by Toynbee, loc. cit.): 'In Jamblichus' (a pagan 
philosopher and number-mystic and founder of the Syrian school of Neo-Platonists, living 
about A.D. 300) 'the individual religious experience ... is eliminated. Its place is taken by a 
mystical church with sacraments, by a scrupulous exactness in carrying out the forms of 
worship, by a ritual that is closely akin to magic, and by a clergy ... Julian's ideas about the 
elevation of the priesthood reproduce . . . exactly the standpoint of Jamblichus, whose zeal 
for the priests, for the details of the forms of worship, and for a systematic orthodox doctrine 
has prepared the ground for the construction of a pagan church.' We can recognize in these 
principles of the Syrian Platonist and of Julian the development of the genuine Platonic (and 
perhaps also late Jewish; cp. note 56 to this chapter) tendency to resist the revolutionary 



religion of individual conscience and humaneness by arresting all change and by 
introducing a rigid doctrine kept pure by a philosophic priest caste and by rigid taboos. (Cp. 
text to notes 14 and 18-23 to chapter 7; and chapter 8, especially text to note 34.) With 
Justinian's prosecution of non-Christians and heretics and his suppression of philosophy in 
529, the tables are turned; it is now Christianity which adopts totalitarian methods and the 
control of conscience by violence. The dark ages begin. 

59 . For Toynbee's warning against an interpretation of the rise of Christianity in the sense of 
Pareto's advice (for which cp. notes 65 to chapter 10 and 1 to chapter 13) see, for example, 
A Study of History, V, 709. 

60 . For Critias' and Plato's and Aristotle's cynical doctrine that religion is opium for the people, 
cp. notes 5 to 18 (especially 15 and 18) to chapter 8. (See also Aristotle's Topics, I, 2, 
101a30 ff.) For later examples (Polybius and Strabo) see, for example, Toynbee, op. cit., V, 
646 f, 561. Toynbee quotes from Polybius {Historiae, VI, 56): 'The point in which the 
Roman constitution excels others most conspicuously is to be found, in my opinion, in its 
handling of Religion . . . The Romans have managed to forge the main bond of their social 
order ... out of superstition.' etc. And he quotes from Strabo: 'A rabble ... cannot be 
induced to answer to the call of Philosophic Reason ... In dealing with people of that sort, 
you cannot do without superstition.' etc. In view of this long series of Platonizing 
philosophers who teach that religion is 'opium for the people' I fail to see how the 
imputation of similar motives to Constantine can be described as anachronistic. 

It may be mentioned that it is a formidable opponent of whom Toynbee says, by implication, 
that he lacks historical sense: Lord Acton. For he writes (cp. his History of Freedom, 1909, 
p. 30 f., italics mine) of Constantine's relation to the Christians: 'Constantine, in adopting 
their faith, intended neither to abandon his predecessor's scheme of policy nor to renounce 
the fascinations of arbitrary authority, but to strengthen his throne with the support of a 
religion which had astonished the world by its power of resistance . . . ' 

61 . I admire the mediaeval cathedrals as much as anybody, and I am perfectly prepared to 
recognize the greatness and uniqueness of medieval craftsmanship. But I believe that 
sstheticism must never be used as an argument against humanitarianism. 



The eulogy of the Middle Ages seems to begin with the Romantic movement in Germany, 
and it has become fashionable with the renaissance of this Romantic movement which 
unfortunately we are witnessing at the present time. It is, of course, an anti-rationahst 
movement; it will be discussed from another point of view in chapter 24. 
The two attitudes towards the Middle Ages, rationahsm and anti-rationahsm, correspond to 
two interpretations of 'history' (cp. chapter 25). 

(1) The rationalist interpretation of history views with hope those periods in which man 
attempted to look upon human affairs rationally. It sees in the Great Generation and 
especially in Socrates, in early Christianity (down to Constantine), in the Renaissance and 
the period of the Enlightenment, and in modern science, parts of an often interrupted 
movement, the efforts of men to free themselves, to break out of the cage of the closed 
society, and to form an open society. It is aware that this movement does not represent a 
'law of progress' or anything of that sort, but that it depends solely upon ourselves, and 
must disappear if we do not defend it against its antagonists as well as against laziness and 
indolence. This interpretation sees in the intervening periods dark ages with their Platonizing 
authorities, their hierarchies of priest and tribalist orders of knights. 

A classical formulation of this interpretation has been made by Lord Acton {op. cit, p. 1; 
italics mine). 'Liberty,' he writes, 'next to religion, has been the motive of good deeds and 
the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, two thousand five 
hundred and sixty years ago ... In every age its progress has been beset by its natural 
enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the 
strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food. During long intervals 
it has been utterly arrested ... No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult to overcome, 
as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true liberty. If hostile interests have 
wrought much injury, false ideas have wrought still more.' 

It is strange how strong a feeling of darkness prevails in the dark ages. Their science and 
their philosophy are both obsessed by the feeling that the truth has once been known, and 
has been lost. This expresses itself in the belief in the lost secret of the ancient philosopher's 
stone and in the ancient wisdom of astrology no less than in the belief that an idea cannot be 
of any value if it is new, and that every idea needs the backing of ancient authority (Aristotle 



and the Bible). But the men who felt that the secret key to wisdom was lost in the past were 
right. For this key is faith in reason, and liberty. It is the free competition of thought, which 
cannot exist without freedom of thought. 

(2) The other interpretation agrees with Toynbee in seeing, in Greek as well as in modern 
rationalism (since the Renaissance), an aberration from the path of faith. 'To the present 
writer's eye', Toynbee says {A Study of History, vol. V, pp. 6 f , note; italics mine), 'the 
common element of rationalism which may be discernible in the Hellenic and Western 
Civilization is not so distinctive as to mark this pair of societies off from all other 
representatives of the species ... If we regard the Christian element of our Western 
Civilization as being the essence of it, then our reversion to Hellenism might be taken to be, 
not a fulfilment of the potentialities of Western Christendom, but an aberration from the 
proper path of Western growth — in fact, a false step which it may or may not be possible 
now to retrieve.' 

In contrast to Toynbee, I do not doubt for a minute that it is possible to retrieve this step and 
to return to the cage, to the oppressions, superstition, and pestilences, of the Middle Ages. 
But I believe that we had much better not do so. And I contend that what we ought to do will 
have to be decided by ourselves, through free decisions, and not by historicist essentiahsm; 
nor, as Toynbee holds (see also note 49 (2) to this chapter), by 'the question of what the 
essential Character of the Western Civilization may be'. 

(The passages here quoted from Toynbee are parts of his reply to a letter from Dr. E. Bevan; 
and Bevan 's letter, i.e. the first of his two letters quoted by Toynbee, seems to me to present 
very clearly indeed what I call the rationalist interpretation.) 

62 . See H. Zinsser, Rats, Lice, and History (1937), pp. 80 and 83; italics mine. 

Concerning my remark in the text, at the end of this chapter, that Democritus' science and 
morals still live with us, I may mention that a direct historical connection leads from 
Democritus and Epicurus via Lucretius not only to Gassendi but undoubtedly to Locke also. 
'Atoms and the void' is the characteristic phrase whose presence always reveals the 
influence of this tradition; and as a rule, the natural philosophy of 'atoms and the void' goes 
together with the moral philosophy of an altruistic hedonism or utilitarianism. In regard to 
hedonism and utilitarianism, I believe that it is indeed necessary to replace their principle: 



maximize pleasure! by one which is probably more in keeping with the original views of 
Democritus and Epicurus, more modest, and much more urgent. I mean the rule: minimize 
pain! I believe (cp. chapters 9, 24, and 25) that it is not only impossible but very dangerous 
to attempt to maximize the pleasure or the happiness of the people, since such an attempt 
must lead to totalitarianism. But there is little doubt that most of the followers of Democritus 
(down to Bertrand Russell, who is still interested in atoms, geometry, and hedonism) would 
have little quarrel with the suggested re-formulation of their pleasure principle provided it is 
taken for what it is meant, and not for an ethical criterion. 



Notes to Chapter Twelve 



General Note to this Chapter. Wherever possible, I refer in these notes to 
Selections, i.e. to Hegel: Selections, edited by J. Loewenberg, 1929. 
(From The Modern Student s Library of Philosophy .) This excellent and 
easily accessible selection contains a great number of the most 
characteristic passages from Hegel, so that it was possible in many cases 
to choose the quotations from them. Quotations from the Selections will, 
however, be accompanied by references to editions of the original texts. 
Wherever possible I have referred to 'JVW\ i.e. to Hegel's Sdmtliche 
Werke, herausgegeben von H. Glockner, Stuttgart (from 1927 on). An 
important version of the Encyclopedia, however, which is not included in 
WW, is quoted as 'Encycl. 1870', i.e., G. W. F. Hegel, Encyclopddie, 
herausgegeben von K. Rosenkranz, Berlin 1870. Passages from the 
Philosophy of Law {ox Philosophy of Right) are quoted by paragraph 
numbers, and the letter L indicates that the passage is from the lecture 
notes added by Gans in his edition of 1833. 1 have not always adopted the 
wording of the translators. 

L In his Inaugural Dissertation, i)e Orbitis Planetarum, 1801. (The asteroid Ceres had been 
discovered on the 1 st of January, 1801.) 

2. Democritus, fragm., 118 (D^); cp. text to note 29 to chapter 10. 

3. Schopenhauer, Grundprobleme (4th edn, 1890), p. 147; cp. note 53 to chapter 11. 

4. The whole Philosophy of Nature is full of such definitions. H. Stafford Hatfield, for 
instance, translates (cp. his translation of Bavink, The Anatomy of Modern Science, pp. 30) 
Hegel's definition of heat: 'Heat is the self-restoration of matter in its form-lessness, its 
liquidity the triumph of its abstract homogeneity over specific defmiteness, its abstract, 
purely self-existing continuity, as negation of negation, is here set as activity.' Similar is, for 
example, Hegel's definition of electricity. 

For the next quotation see Hegel's Briefe, I, 373, quoted by Wallace, The Logic of Hegel 



(transl., pp. xiv f., italics mine). 

5. Cp. Falkenberg, History of Modern Philosophy (6th German edn, 1908, 612; cp. the English 
translation by Armstrong, 1895, 632). 

6. I have in mind the various philosophies of 'evolution' or 'progress' or 'emergence' such as 
those of H. Bergson, S. Alexander, Field-Marshal Smuts or A. N. Whitehead. 

7. The passage is quoted and analysed in note 43 (2), below. 

8. For the eight quotations in this paragraph, cp. Selections, pp. 389 (= WW, vi, 71), 447, 443, 
446 (three quotations); 388 (two quotations) (= WW, xi, 70). The passages are from The 
Philosophy of Law (§§ 272L, 25 8L, 269L, 270L); the first and the last are from the 
Philosophy of History. 

For Hegel's holism, and for his organic theory of the state, see for example his reference to 
Menenius Agrippa {Livy, II, 32; for a criticism, see note 7 to chapter 10) in the Philosophy oj 
Law, § 269L; and his classical formulation of the opposition between the power of an 
organized body and the powerless 'heap, or aggregate, of atomic units', at the end of § 290L 
(cp. also note 70 to this chapter). 

Two other very important points in which Hegel adopts Plato's political teaching are: (1) The 
theory of the One, the Few, and the Many; see, for example, op. cit., § 273: The monarch is 
one person; the few enter the scene with the executive; and the many ... with the legislative; 
also the reference is to 'the many' in § 301, etc. (2) The theory of the opposition between 
knowledge and opinion (cp. the discussion of op. cit., § 270, on freedom of thought, in the 
text between notes 37 and 38, below), which Hegel uses for characterizing public opinion as 
the 'opinion of the many' or even as the 'caprice of the many', cp. op. cit., §§ 316 ff., and 
note 76, below. 

For Hegel's interesting criticism of Plato, and the even more interesting twist he gives to his 
own criticism, cp. note 43 (2) to this chapter. 

9. For these remarks, cp. especially chapter 25. 

10 . Cp. Selections, xii (J. Loewenberg in the Introduction to the Selections). 

11 . I have in mind not only his immediate philosophical predecessors (Fichte, Schlegel, 



Schelling, and especially Schleiermacher), or his ancient sources (Heraclitus, Plato, 
Aristotle), but especially Rousseau, Spinoza, Montesquieu, Herder, Burke (cp. section IV to 
this chapter), and the poet Schiller. Hegel's indebtedness to Rousseau, Montesquieu (cp. The 
Spirit of the Laws, XIX, 4 f.), and Herder, for his Spirit of the Nation, is obvious. His 
relations to Spinoza are of a different character. He adopts, or rather adapts, two important 
ideas of the determinist Spinoza. The first is that there is no freedom but in the rational 
recognition of the necessity of all things, and in the power which reason, by this recognition, 
may exert over the passions. This idea is developed by Hegel into an identification of reason 
(or 'Spirit') with freedom, and of his teaching that freedom is the truth of necessity 
{Selections, 213, Encycl. 1870, p. 154). The second idea is Spinoza's strange moral 
positivism, his doctrine that might is right, an idea which he contrived to use for the fight 
against what he called tyranny i.e. the attempt to wield power beyond the limits of one's 
actual power. Spinoza's main concern being the freedom of thought, he taught that it is 
impossible for a ruler to force men's thoughts (for thoughts are free), and that the attempt to 
achieve the impossible is tyrannical. On this doctrine, he based his support of the power of 
the secular state (which, he naively hoped, would not curtail the freedom of thought) as 
against the Church. Hegel also supported the state against the Church, and he paid lip- 
service to the demand for freedom of thought whose great political significance he realized 
(cp. the preface to the Phil, of Law); but at the same time he perverted this idea, claiming that 
the state must decide what is true and false, and may suppress what it deems to be false (see 
the discussion of the Phil, of Law, § 270, in the text between notes 37 and 38, below). From 
Schiller, Hegel took (incidentally without acknowledgement or even indication that he was 
quoting) his famous dictum 'The history of the world is the World's court of justice'. But 
this dictum (at the end of § 340 of the Phil, of Law; cp. text to note 26) implies a good deal 
of Hegel's historicist political philosophy; not only his worship of success and thus of 
power, but also his peculiar moral positivism, and his theory of the reasonableness of 
history. 

The question whether Hegel was influenced by Vico seems to be still open. (Weber's 
German translation of the New Science was published in 1822.) 

12 . Schopenhauer was an ardent admirer not only of Plato but also of Heraclitus. He believed 



that the mob fill their bellies like the beast; he adopted Bias' dictum 'all men are wicked' as 
his device; and he believed that a Platonic aristocracy was the best government. At the same 
time, he hated nationahsm, and especially German nationalism. He was a cosmopolite. The 
rather repulsive expressions of his fear and hatred of the revolutionaries of 1848 can be 
partly explained by his apprehension that under 'mob rules' he might lose his independence, 
and partly by his hatred of the nationahst ideology of the movement. 

13 . For Schopenhauer's suggestion of this motto (taken from Cymbeline, Act V, Sc. 4) see his 
Will in Nature (4th edn, 1878), p. 7. The two following quotations are from his Works (2nd 
edn, 1888), vol. V, 103 f , and vol. II, pp. xvii, f (i.e. Preface to the second edn of the World 
as Will and Idea; the italics are mine). I believe that everybody who has studied 
Schopenhauer must be impressed by his sincerity and truthfulness. Cp. also the judgement 
of Kierkegaard, quoted in the text to notes 19/20 to chapter 25. 

14 . Schwegler's first publication (1839) was an essay in memory of Hegel. The quotation is 
from his History of Philosophy, transl. by H. Stirling, 7th edn, p. 322. 

15 . 'To English readers Hegel was first introduced in the powerful statement of his principles 
by Dr. Hutchinson Stirling', writes E. Caird {Hegel, 1883, Preface, p. vi); which may show 
that Stirling was taken quite seriously. The following quotation is from Stirling's Annotations 
to Schwegler's History, p. 429. I may remark that the motto of the present chapter is taken 
from p. 441 of the same work. 

16 . Stirling writes {op. cit., 441): 'The great thing at last for Hegel was a good citizen, and for 
him who was already that, there was to Hegel's mind no call for philosophy. Thus he tells a 
M. Duboc who writes to him about his difficulties with the system, that, as a good head of a 
house and father of a family, possessed of a faith that is firm, he has pretty well enough, and 
may consider anything further, in the way of philosophy, for instance, as but ... an 
intellectual luxury.' Thus, according to Stirling, Hegel was not interested in clearing up a 
difficulty in his system, but merely in converting 'bad' citizens into 'good' ones. 

17 . The following quotation is from Stirling, op. cit., 444 f Stirling continues the last sentence 
quoted in the text: 'I have gained much from Hegel, and will always thankfully 



acknowledge that much, but my position in his regard has been simply that of one who, in 
making the unintelligible intelligible, would do a service to the public' And he ends the 
paragraph by saying: 'My general aim ... I conceive to be identical with Hegel's ... that, 
namely, of a Christian philosopher.' 

18 . Cp., for example, A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy. 

19 . I take this passage from the most interesting study. Nationalism and the Cultural Crisis in 
Prussia, 1806-1815, by E. N. Anderson (1939), p. 270. Anderson's analysis is critical of 
nationalism, and he clearly recognizes the neurotic and hysterical element in it (cp., for 
example, pp. 6 f ). And yet I cannot entirely agree with his attitude. Led, I suppose, by the 
historian's desire for objectivity, he seems to me to take the nationalist movement too 
seriously. I cannot agree, more particularly, with his condemnation of King Frederick 
William for his lack of understanding of the nationalist movement. 'Frederick William 
lacked the capacity for appreciating greatness', Anderson writes on p. 271, 'whether in an 
ideal or in an action. The course into nationalism which the rising German literature and 
philosophy opened so brilliantly for others remained closed to him.' But by far the best of 
German literature and philosophy was anti-nationalistic; Kant and Schopenhauer were both 
anti-national, and even Goethe kept away from nationalism; and it is unjustifiable to demand 
of anybody, and especially of a simple, candid, conservative like the king, that he should get 
excited about Fichte's windbaggery. Many will fully agree with the king's judgement when 
he spoke {loc. cit.) of 'eccentric, popular scribbling'. Although I agree that the king's 
conservatism was very unfortunate, I feel the greatest respect for his simplicity, and his 
resistance to the wave of nationalist hysteria. 

20 . Cp. Selections, xi (J. Loewenberg in the Introduction to the Selections). 

21 . Cp. notes 19 to chapter 5 and 18 to chapter 11, and text. 

22 . For this quotation see Selections, 103 (= WW, iii, 116); for the next one, see Selections, 130 
(= G. W. F. Hegel, Werke, Berlin and Leipzig 1832-1887, vol. vi, 224). For the last 
quotation in this paragraph, see Selections, 131 (= Werke, 1832-1887, vol. vi, 224-5). 

23. Cp. Selections, 103 (= WW, iii, 103). 



24. Cp. Selections, 128 (= WW, iii, 141). 

25 . I am alluding to Bergson, and especially to his Creative Evolution. (Engl, transl. by A. 
Mitchell, 1913.) It appears that the Hegelian character of this work is not sufficiently 
recognized; and, indeed, Bergson 's lucidity and reasoned presentation of his thought 
sometimes make it difficult to realize how much his philosophy depends on Hegel. But if we 
consider, for example, that Bergson teaches that the essence is change, or if we read 
passages like the following (cp. op. cit., 275 and 278), then there remains little doubt. 
'Essential also is the progress to reflection', writes Bergson. 'If our analysis is correct, it is 
consciousness, or rather super-consciousness, that is at the origin of life . . . Consciousness 
corresponds exactly to the living being's power of choice; it is co-extensive with the fringe 
of possible action that surrounds real action: consciousness is synonymous with invention 
di.ndwith freedom.' (Italics mine.) The identification of consciousness (or Spirit) with 
freedom is the Hegelian version of Spinoza. This goes so far that theories can be found in 
Hegel which I feel inclined to describe as 'unmistakably Bergsonian'; for example, 'The 
very essence of Spirit is activity; it realizes its potentiality; it makes itself its own deed, its 
own work ...' {Selections, 435 = WW, xi, 113.) 

26 . Cp. notes 21 to 24 to chapter 11, and text. Another characteristic passage is this (cp. 
Selections, 409 = WW, xi, 89): 'The principle of Development involves also the existence of 
a latent germ of being — a capacity or potentiality striving to realize itself.' — For the 
quotation later in the paragraph, cp. Selections, 468 (i.e. Phil, of Law, § 340; see also note 
11, above). 

27 . Considering, on the other hand, that even a second-hand Hegelianism, i.e. a third-or fourth- 
hand Fichteanism and Aristotelianism, has often been noisily acclaimed as an original 
achievement, it is perhaps a little hard on Hegel to say that he was unoriginal. (But cp. note 
11.) 

28. Cp. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd edn, p. 514 (top); see also p. 518 (end of section 
5); for the motto of my Introduction, see Kant's letter to Mendelssohn of April 8th, 1766. 

29 . Cp. note 53 to chapter 11, and text. 



30 . It is perhaps reasonable to assume that what one usually calls the 'spirit of a language' is 
very largely the traditional standard of clarity introduced by the great writers of that 
particular language. There are some further traditional standards in a language, apart from 
clarity, for example, standards of simplicity, of ornamentation, of brevity, etc.; but the 
standard of clarity is perhaps the most important of them; and it is a cultural inheritance 
which should be carefully guarded. Language is one of the most important institutions of 
social life, and its clarity is a condition of its functioning as a means of rational 
communication. Its use for the communication of emotions is much less important, for we 
can communicate a great deal of emotion without saying a word. 

* It may be worth saying that Hegel, who had learned from Burke something about the 
importance of the historical growth of traditions, did in fact do much to destroy the 
intellectual tradition which Kant had founded, both by his doctrine of 'the cunning of 
reason' which reveals itself in passion (see notes 82, 84 and text), and by his actual method 
of arguing. But he did more. By his historical relativism — by his theory that truth is relative, 
dependent on the spirit of the age — he helped to destroy the tradition of searching for truth, 
and of respecting truth. See also section IV of this chapter, and my paper, 'Towards a 
Rational Theory of Tradition' (in The Rationalist Annual , 1949; now in my Conjectures and 
Refutations) * 

3 1 . Attempts to refute Kant's Dialectics (his doctrine of Antinomies) seem to be very rare. 
Serious criticism attempting to clarify and restate Kant's arguments can be found in 
Schopenhauer's World as Will and Idea and in J. F. Fries' New or Anthropological Critique 
of Reason, second German edn, 1828, pp. xxiv ff. I have tried to interpret Kant as holding 
that mere speculation cannot establish anything where experience cannot help to weed out 
false theories. (Cp. Mind, 49, 1940, p. 416; also. Conjectures and Refutations, pp. 326 f. In 
the same volume of Mind, pp. 204 ff., there is a careful and interesting criticism of Kant's 
argument by M. Fried.) For an attempt to make sense of Hegel's dialectical theory of reason 
as well as of his collectivist interpretation of reason (his 'objective spirit'), see the analysis of 
the social or interpersonal aspect of scientific method in chapter 23, and the corresponding 
interpretation of 'reason' in chapter 24. 



32 . I have given a detailed justification of this in 'What is Dialectic?' {Mind, 49, pp. 403 ff.; see 
especially the last sentence on p. 410: also, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 321). See also a 
further note under the title. Are Contradictions Embracing? *This has since appeared in 
Mind, 52, 1943, pp. 47 ff. After it was written I received Carnap's Introduction to Semantics, 
1942, where he uses the term 'comprehensive', which seems preferable to 'embracing'. See 
especially § 30 of Carnap's book.* 

In 'What is Dialectic?' a number of problems are treated which are only touched upon in the 
present book; especially the transition from Kant to Hegel, Hegel's dialectics, and his 
philosophy of identity. Although a few statements from that paper have been repeated here, 
the two presentations of the problems are in the main complementary to one another. Cp. 
also the next notes, down to note 36. 

33 . Cp. Selections, xxviii (the German quotation; for similar quotations see WW, iv, 618, and 
Werke 1832-1887, vol. vi, 259). For the idea of dc reinforced dogmatism mentioned in this 
paragraph, cp. 'What is Dialectic?', p. 417, and Conjectures and Refutations , p. 327; see 
also note 5 1 to chapter 1 1 . 

34 . Cp. 'What is Dialectic?' especially from p. 414, where the problem, 'How can our mind 
grasp the world?' is introduced, down to p. 420 {Conjectures and Refutations, pp. 325-30). 

35. 'Everything actual is an Idea', says Hegel. Cp. Selections, 103 (= WW, iii, 116); and from 
the perfection of the Idea, moral positivism follows. See also Selections, 388 (= WW, xi, 70), 
i.e. the last passage quoted in the text to note 8; see, furthermore, § 6 of the Encyclopcedia, 
and the Preface as well as § 270L of the Philosophy of Right. — I need hardly add that the 
'Great Dictator' in the previous paragraph is an allusion to Chaplin's film. 

36. Cp. Selections, 103 (= WW, iii, 116). See also Selections, 128, § 107 (= WW, iii, 142). 
Hegel's philosophy of identity shows, of course, the influence of the mystic theory of 
knowledge of Aristotle — the doctrine of the unity of the knowing subject and the known 
object. (Cp. notes 33 to chapter 11, 59-70 to chapter 10, notes 4, 6, and 29-32, and 58, to 
chapter 24.) 

To my remarks in the text about Hegel's philosophy of identity, it may be added that Hegel 
believed, with most of the philosophers of his time, that logic is the theory of thinking or of 



reasoning. (See 'What is Dialectic?' p. 418.) This, together with the philosophy of identity, 
has the consequence that logic is considered as the theory of thought, or of reason, or of the 
Ideas or notions, or of the Real. From the further premise that thought develops dialectically, 
Hegel can deduce that reason, the Ideas or notions, and the Real, all develop dialectically; 
and he further gets Logic = Dialectics and Logic = Theory of Reality. This latter doctrine is 
known as Hegel's pan-logism. 

On the other hand, Hegel can derive from these premises that notions develop dialectically, 
i.e. are capable of a kind of self-creation and self-development, out of nothing. (Hegel 
begins this development with the Idea of Being which presupposes its opposite, i.e. Nothing, 
and creates the transition from Nothing to Being, i.e. Becoming.) There are two motives for 
this attempt to develop notions out of nothing. The one is the mistaken idea that philosophy 
has to start without any presuppositions. (This idea has been recently reaffirmed by Husserl; 
it is discussed in chapter 24; cp. note 8 to that chapter, and text.) This leads Hegel to start 
from 'nothing'. The other motive is the hope of giving a systematic development and 
justification of Kant's Table of Categories. Kant had made the remark that the first two 
categories of each group are opposed to each other, and that the third is a kind of synthesis 
of the first. This remark (and the influence of Fichte) led Hegel to hope that he could derive 
all categories 'dialectically', out of nothing, and thereby justify the 'necessity' of all the 
categories. 

37. Cp. Selections, xvi (= Werke, 1832-1887, vi, 153-4). 

38. Cp. Anderson, Nationalism, etc., 294. — The king promised the constitution on May 22, 
1815. — The story of the 'constitution' and the court-physician seems to have been told of 
most of the princes of the period (for example, of the emperor Francis I as well as his 
successor Ferdinand I of Austria). — The next quotation is from Selections, 246 f. {= Encycl. 
1870, pp. 437-8). 

39 . Cp. Selections, 248 f {= Encycl. 1870, pp. 437-8; italics partly mine). 

40. Cp. note 25 to chapter 11. 

41 . For the paradox of freedom, cp. note 43 (1) below; the four paragraphs in the text before 



note 42 to chapter 6; notes 4 and 6 to chapter 7, and note 7 to chapter 24; and the passages 
in the text. (See also note 20 to chapter 17.) For Rousseau's restatement of the paradox of 
freedom, cp. the Social Contract, Book I, chapter VIII, second paragraph. For Kant's 
solution, cp. note 4 to chapter 6. Hegel frequently alludes to this Kantian solution (cp. 
Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, Introduction to the Theory of Law, § C; Works, ed. by 
Cassirer, VII, p. 31); for example in his Philosophy of Law, § 29; and § 270, where, 
following Aristotle and Burke (cp. note 43 to chapter 6 and text), Hegel argues against the 
theory (due to Lycophron and Kant) that 'the state's specific function consists in the 
protection of everybody's life, property, and caprice', as he sneeringly puts it. 
For the two quotations at the beginning and end of this paragraph, cp. Selections, 248 £, and 
249 i=Encycl. 1870, p. 439). 

42 . For the quotations, cp. Selections, 250 {= En eye I. 1870, pp. 440-41). 

43. (1) For the following quotations, cp. Selections, 251 (§ 540 = Encycl. 1870, p. 441); 25 If 
(first sentence of § 541 = Encycl. 1870, p. 442); and 253 f (beginning of § 542, italics partly 
mine = Encycl. 1870, p. 443). These are the passages from the Encyclopcedia. The 'parallel 
passage' from the Philosophy of Law is: § 273 (last paragraph) to § 281. The two quotations 
are from § 275, and from § 279, end of first paragraph (italics mine). For a similarly dubious 
use of the paradox of freedom, cp. Selections, 394 (= WW, xi, 76): 'If the principle of regard 
for the individual will is recognized as the only basis of political liberty . . . then we have, 
properly speaking, no Constitution' See also Selections, 400 f (= WW, xi, 80-81), and 449 
(see the Philosophy of Law, § 274). 

Hegel himself summarizes his twist {Selections, 401 = WW, xi, 82): 'At an earlier stage of the 
discussion, we established ...first, the Idea of Freedom as the absolute and final aim ... We 
then recognized the State as the moral Whole and the Reality of Freedom ...'Thus we begin 
with freedom and end with the totalitarian state. One can hardly present the twist more 
cynically. 

(2) For another example of a dialectic twist, viz., that of reason into passion and violence, 
see end of (g) in section IV, below, of the present chapter (text to note 84). Particularly 
interesting in this connection \s Hegel's criticism of Plato . (See also notes 7 and 8 above. 



and text.) Hegel, paying lip-service to all modern and 'Christian' values, not only to 
freedom, but even to the 'subjective freedom' of the individual, criticizes Plato's holism or 
collectivism {Phil, of Law, § 185): 'The principle of the self-sufficient ... personality of the 
individual, the principle of subjective freedom, is denied its right by ... Plato. This principle 
dawned ... in the Christian religion and ... in the Roman World.' This criticism is excellent, 
and it proves that Hegel knew what Plato was about; in fact, Hegel's reading of Plato agrees 
very well with my own. For the untrained reader of Hegel, this passage might even prove the 
injustice of branding Hegel as a collectivist. But we have only to turn to § 70L of the same 
work in order to see that Plato's most radical collectivist saying, 'You are created for the 
sake of the whole, and not the whole for the sake of you', is fully subscribed to by Hegel, 
who writes: 'A single person, it hardly needs saying, is something subordinate, and as such 
he must dedicate himself to the ethical whole', i.e. the state. This is Hegel's 'individualism'. 
But why, then, does he criticize Plato? Why does he emphasize the importance of 
'subjective freedom'? §§ 316 and 317 of \hQ Philosophy of Law give an answer to this 
question. Hegel is convinced that revolutions can be avoided only by granting the people, as 
a kind of safety valve, a certain small amount of freedom which should not go beyond an 
irrelevant opportunity to give vent to their feelings. Thus he writes {op. cit., §§316, 317L, 
italics mine): 'In our day ... the principle of subjective freedom is of great importance and 
significance ... Everybody wishes to participate in discussions and deliberations. But once 
he has had his say, ... his subjectivity is gratified and he will put up with a lot. In France, 
freedom of speech has proved far less dangerous than silence imposed by force; with the 
latter . . . men have to swallow everything, while if they are permitted to argue, they have an 
outlet as well as some satisfaction; and in this way, a thing may be pushed ahead more 
easily.' It must be difficult to surpass the cynicism exhibited by this discussion in which 
Hegel gives vent, so freely, to his feeling concerning 'subjective freedom' or, as he often 
calls it so solemnly, 'the principle of the modern world'. 

To sum up. Hegel agrees with Plato completely, except that he criticizes Plato's failure to 
provide the ruled with the illusion of 'subjective freedom'. 

44 . The astonishing thing is that these despicable services could be successful, that even serious 
people have been deceived by Hegel's dialectical method. As an example it may be 



mentioned that even such a critical and enhghtened fighter for freedom and reason as C. E. 
Vaughan fell a victim to Hegel's hypocrisy, when he expressed his belief in Hegel's 'belief 
in freedom and progress which, on Hegel's own showing, is ... the essence of his creed'. 
(Cp. C. E. Vaughan, Studies in the History of Political Philosophy, vol. II, 296; italics mine.) 
It must be admitted that Vaughan criticized Hegel's 'undue leaning towards the established 
order' (p. 178); he even said of Hegel that 'no one could ... be more ready ... to assure the 
world that the most retrograde and oppressive institutions ... must ... be accepted as 
indisputably rational' (p. 295); yet he trusted 'Hegel's own showing' so much that he took 
features of this kind as mere 'extravagances' (p. 295), as 'shortcomings for which it is easy 
to allow' (p. 182). Moreover, his strongest and perfectly justified comment, that Hegel 
'discovers the last word of political wisdom, the coping stone ... of history, in the Prussian 
Constitution' (p. 182), was not fated to be published without an antidote restoring the 
reader's confidence in Hegel; for the editor of Vaughan's posthumous Studies destroys the 
force of Vaughan's comment by adding in a foot-note, with reference to a passage from 
Hegel which he assumes to be the one alluded to by Vaughan (he does not refer to the 
passage quoted here in the text to notes 47, 48, and 49), 'but perhaps the passage hardly 
justifies the comment . . . ' 

45 . See note 36 to this chapter. An indication of this dialectical theory may be found as early as 
in Aristotle's Physics, I, 5. 

46 . I am greatly indebted to E. H. Gombrich, who permitted me to adopt the main ideas of this 
paragraph from his excellent criticism of my presentation of Hegel (communicated to me by 
letter). 

For Hegel's view that 'the Absolute Spirit manifests itself in the history of the world', see his 
Philosophy of Law, § 259L. For his identification of the 'Absolute Spirit' with the 'World 
Spirit', see op. cit., § 339L. For the view that perfection is the aim of Providence, and for 
Hegel's attack on the (Kantian) view that the plan of Providence is inscrutable, see op. cit. , § 
343. (For M. B. Foster's interesting counterattacks, see note 19 to chapter 25.) For Hegel's 
use of (dialectical) syllogisms, see especially the Encyclopcedia, § 181 ('the syllogism is the 
rational, and everything rational'); § 198, where the state is described as a triad of 



syllogisms; and §§ 575 to 577, where Hegel's whole system is presented as such a triad of 
syllogisms. According to this last passage, we might infer that 'history' is the realm of the 
'second syllogism' (§ 576); cp. Selections, 309 f. For the first passage (from section III of 
the Introduction to the Philosophy of History), see Selections, 348 f. — For the next passage 
(from the Encyclopcedia) see Selections, 262 f. 

47 . Cp. Selections, 442 (last paragraph = WW, xi, 119-20). The last quotation in this paragraph 
is from the same place. 

Concerning the three steps, cp. Selections, 360, 362, 398 (= WW, xi, 44, 46, 79-80). See 
also Hegel's Philosophy of History (transl. by J. Sibree, 1857, quoted from the edition of 
1914), p. 110: 'The East knew ... only that One is free; the Greek and the Roman World, 
that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form 
therefore which we observe in History is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, 
the third Monarchy.' 

(For the further treatment of the three steps, cp. op. cit., pp. 117, 260, 354.) 

48. For the next three quotations cp. Hegel's Philosophy of History, 429; Selections, 358, 359 
(= WW, xi, 43-44). 

The presentation in the text simplifies the matter somewhat; for Hegel first divides {Phil, oj 
Hist., 356 ff.) the Germanic World into three periods which he describes (p. 358) as the 
'Kingdoms of the Father, the Son and the Spirit'; and the kingdom of the Spirit is again 
subdivided into the three periods mentioned in the text. 

49 . For the following three passages, cp. the Philosophy of History, pp. 354, 476, 476-7. 

50. See especially text to note 75 to this chapter. 

51 . Cp. especially notes 48-50 to chapter 8. 

52 . Cp. Hegel's Philosophy of History, p. 418. (The translator writes: 'Germanized Sclaves'.) 

53 . Masaryk has been described sometimes as a 'philosopher king'. But he was certainly not a 
ruler of the kind Plato would have liked; for he was a democrat. He was very interested in 
Plato, but he idealized Plato and interpreted him democratically. His nationalism was a 
reaction to national oppression, and he always fought against nationalist excesses. It may be 



mentioned that his first printed work in the Czech language was an article on Plato's 
patriotism. (Cp. K. Capek's biography of Masaryk, the chapter on his period as a university 
student.) Masaryk's Czechoslovakia was probably one of the best and most democratic 
states that ever existed; but in spite of all that, it was built on the principle of the national 
state, on a principle which in this world is inapplicable. An international federation in the 
Danube basin might have prevented much. 

54 . See chapter 7 . For the quotation from Rousseau, later in the paragraph, cp. the Social 
Contract, book I, ch. VII (end of second paragraph). For Hegel's view concerning the 
doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, see the passage from § 279 of ihQ Philosophy oj 
Law quoted in text to note 6 1 to this chapter. 

55 . Cp. Herder, quoted by Zimmern, Modern Political Doctrines (1939), p. 165 f. (The passage 
quoted in my text is not characteristic of Herder's empty verbalism, which was criticized by 
Kant.) 

56 . Cp. note 7 to chapter 9 

For the two quotations from Kant, further on in this paragraph, cp. Works (ed. by E. 
Cassirer), vol. IV, p. 179; and p. 195. 

57 . Cp. Fichte's Briejwechsel (ed. Schulz, 1925), II, p. 100. The letter is partly quoted by 
AndQYSon, Nationalism, etc., p. 30. (Cp. also HQgQmann, Entlarvte Geschichte, 2nd ed., 
1934, p. 118.) — The next quotation is from Anderson, op. cit., p. 34 f. — For the quotations 
in the next paragraph, cp. op. cit., 36 f; italics mine. 

It may be remarked that an originally anti-German feeling is common to many of the 
founders of German nationalism; which shows how far nationalism is based upon a feeling 
of inferiority. (Cp. notes 61 and 70 to this chapter.) As an example, Anderson says ( op. cit, 
79) about E. M. Arndt, later a famous nationahst: 'When Amdt travelled through Europe in 
1798-9, he called himself a Swede because, as he said, the name German "stinks in the 
world"; not, he added characteristically, through the fault of the common people.' 
Hegemann insists rightly {op. cit. ,118) that the German spiritual leaders of the time turned 
especially against the barbarism of Prussia, and he quotes Winckelmann, who said, 'I would 
rather be a Turkish eunuch than a Prussian'; and Lessing, who said, 'Prussia is the most 



slavish country in Europe'; and he refers to Goethe, who passionately hoped that relief 
would come from Napoleon. And Hegemann, who is also the author of a book against 
Napoleon, adds: 'Napoleon was a despot; ... whatever we have to say against him, it must 
be admitted that by his victory of Jena he had forced the reactionary state of Frederick to 
introduce a few reforms that had been long overdue.' 

An interesting judgement on the Germany of 1800 can be found in KanVs Anthropology 
(1800), where he deals, not quite seriously, with national characteristics. Kant writes 
(Works, vol. VIII, 213,211,212; italics mine) of the German 'His bad side is the compulsion 
to imitate others and his low opinion of himself with respect to his own originality ...; and 
especially a certain pedantic inclination to classify himself painstakingly in relation to other 
citizens, according to a system of rank and of prerogatives. In this system of rank, he is 
inexhaustible in the invention of titles, and thus slavish out of pedantry ... Of all civilized 
peoples, the German submits most easily and most lastingly to the government under which 
he happens to live, and he is further removed than any other from a love of change and from 
resistance to the established order. His character is a kind of phlegmatic reason.' 

58 . Cp. Kant's Works, vol. VIII, 516. Kant, who had been immediately ready to help when 
Fichte appealed to him as an unknown author in distress, hesitated for seven years after the 
anonymous publication of Fichte 's first book to speak his mind about Fichte, although he 
was pressed to do so from various sides, for example by Fichte himself, who posed as the 
fulflller of the Kantian promise. Ultimately, Kant published his Public Explanation 
Regarding Fichte, as a reply 'to the solemn demand made by a reviewer in the name of the 
public', that he should speak his mind. He declared that, in his view, 'Fichte 's system was 
totally untenable'; and he declined to have anything to do with a philosophy which 
consisted of 'barren subtleties'. And after praying (as quoted in the text) that God may 
protect us from our friends, Kant goes on to say: 'For there may be also ... fraudulent and 
perfidious friends who are scheming for our ruin, although they speak the language of 
benevolence; one cannot be sufficiently cautious in order to avoid the traps they set for us.' 
If Kant, a most balanced, benevolent, and conscientious person, was moved to say things 
such as these, then we have every reason to consider his judgement seriously. But I have 
seen so far no history of philosophy which clearly states that, in Kant's opinion, Fichte was 



a dishonest impostor, although I have seen many histories of philosophy that try to explain 

away Schopenhauer's indictments, for example, by hinting that he was envious. 

But Kant's and Schopenhauer's accusations are by no means isolated. A. von Feuerbach (in 

a letter of January 30th, 1799; cp. Schopenhauer's Works, vol. V, 102) expressed himself as 

strongly as Schopenhauer; Schiller arrived at a similar opinion, and so did Goethe; and 

Nicolovius called Fichte a 'sycophant and a deceiver'. (Cp. also Hegemann, op. cit., pp. 119 

ff) 

It is astonishing to see that, thanks to a conspiracy of noise, a man like Fichte succeeded in 
perverting the teaching of his 'master', m spite of Kant's protests, and in Kant's lifetime . 
This happened only a hundred years ago and can easily be checked by anybody who takes 
the trouble to read Kant's and Fichte 's letters, and Kant's public announcements; and it 
shows that my theory of Plato's perversion of the teaching of Socrates is by no means so 
fantastic as it may appear to Platonists. Socrates was dead then, and he had left no letters. 
(Were the comparison not one that does too much honour to Fichte and Hegel, one would be 
tempted to say: without Plato, there could have been no Aristotle; and without Fichte, no 
Hegel.) 

59 . Cp. Anderson, op. cit, p. 13. 

60 . Cp. Hegel's Philosophy of History, 465. See also Philosophy of Law, § 258. With Pareto's 
advice, cp. note 1 to chapter 13. 

61 . C^. Philosophy of Law, § 279; for the next quotation, sqq Selections, 256 f. {= Encycl. 
1870, p. 446). The attack upon England, further below in the paragraph, follows on p. 257 
{ = Encycl. 1870, p. 447). For Hegel's reference to the German empire, cp. Philosophy oj 
History, p. 475 (see also note 77 to this chapter). — Feelings of inferiority, especially in 
relation to England, and clever appeals to such feelings, play a considerable part in the story 
of the rise of nationalism; cp. also notes 57 and 70 to this chapter. For other passages on 
England, see the next note and note 70 to this chapter, and text. (The words 'arts and 
science' are italicized by me.) 

62 . Hegel's disparaging reference to merely 'formal' rights, to merely 'formal' freedom, to a 
merely 'formal' constitution, etc., is interesting, since it is the dubious source of the modern 



Marxist criticism of merely 'formal' democracies which offer merely 'formal' freedom. Cp. 
note 1 9 to chapter 1 7 and text. 

A few characteristic passages in which Hegel denounces merely 'formal' freedom, etc., may 
be quoted here. They are all taken from the Philosophy of History — (p. 471): 'Liberalism 
sets up, in opposition to all this' (i.e. to the Prussian 'holistic' restoration), 'the atomistic 
principle which insists upon the sway of individual wills, maintaining that all governments 
should ... have their' (the people's) 'explicit sanction. In thus asserting the formal side oj 
Freedom — this mere abstraction — the party in question makes it impossible firmly to 
establish any political organization.' — (p. 474): 'The Constitution of England is a complex 
of mere particular rights and particular privileges, ... Of institutions characterized by real 
freedom' (as opposed to merely formal freedom) 'there are nowhere fewer than in England. 
In point of private rights and the freedom of possessions they present an incredible 
deficiency: sufficient proof of which is afforded in the rights of primogeniture which make it 
necessary to provide (by purchase or otherwise) military or ecclesiastical appointments for 
the younger sons of the aristocracy.' See further the discussion of the French declaration of 
the Rights of Man and Kant's principles on pp. 462 ff. with its reference to 'nothing more 
than formal WilV and the 'principle of Freedom' that 'remained merely formal'; and contrast 
this, for example, with the remarks on p. 354, which show that the German Spirit is 'true' 
and 'absolute' freedom: 'The German Spirit is the Spirit of the new World. Its aim is the 
realization of absolute Truth as the unlimited self-determination of Freedom; of that Freedom 
which has its own absolute form itself as its purport.' If I were to use the term 'formal 
freedom' in a disparaging sense, then I should apply it to Hegel's 'subjective freedom', as 
treated by him in Philosophy of Law, § 3 17L (quoted at the end of note 43). 

63 . Cp. Anderson, Nationalism, etc., p. 279. For Hegel's reference to England (quoted in 
brackets at the end of this paragraph), cp. Selections, 263 {= Encycl. 1870, p. 452); see also 
note 70 to this chapter. 

64 . This quotation is from the Philosophy of Law, § 331. For the following two quotations, cp. 
Selections, 403 (= WW, xi, 84) and 267 f. {= Encycl. 1870, pp. 455-56). For the quotation 
further below (illustrating juridical positivism), cp. Selections, 449 (i.e. Phil, of Law, § 274). 



With the theory of world dominion, cp. also the theory of domination and submission, and 
of slavery, outlined in note 25 to chapter 11, and text. For the theory of national spirits or 
wills or geniuses asserting themselves in history, i.e. in the history of wars see text to notes 
69 and 77 

In connection with the historical theory of the nation, cp. the following remarks of Renan 
(quoted by A. Zimmern in Modern Political Doctrines, pp. 190 f ): 'To forget and — I will 
venture to say — to get one's history wrong, are essential factors in the making of a nation 
[or, as we now know, of a totalitarian state]; and thus the advance of historical studies is 
often a danger to nationality ... Now it is of the essence of a nation that all individuals 
should have much in common, and further that they should all have forgotten much.' One 
would hardly believe that Renan is a nationalist; but he is, although one of the democratic 
type; and his nationahsm is typically Hegelian; for he writes (p. 202): 'A nation is a soul, a 
spiritual principle.' 

65 . Haeckel can hardly be taken seriously as a philosopher or scientist. He called himself a free 
thinker, but his thinking was not sufficiently independent to prevent him from demanding in 
1914 'the following fruits of victory': '(1) Emancipation from England's tyranny: (2) the 
invasion of the British pirate state by the German navy and army; the capture of London; (3) 
the partitioning of Belgium'; and so forth for quite a time. (In: Das Monistische Jahrhundert, 
1914, No. 31/32, pp. 65 f , quoted in Thus Spake Germany, 270.) 

W. Schallmayer's prize essay has the title: Heredity and Selection in the Life of the Nations. 
(See also note 71 to chapter 10, above.) 

66 . For Bergson's Hegelianism, cp. note 25 to this chapter. For Shaw's characterization of the 
religion of creative evolution, cp. Back to Methuselah, the last section of the Preface ('My 
Own Part in The Matter'): '... as the conception of Creative Evolution developed, I saw that 
we were at last within reach of a faith which complied with the first condition of all the 
religions that have ever taken hold of humanity: namely that it must be, first and 
fundamentally, a science of metabiology.' 

67 . Cp. A. Zimmern's excellent Introduction to his Modern Political Doctrines, p. xviii. — 
Regarding Platonic totalitarianism, cp. text to note 8 to this chapter. For the theory of master 



and slave, and of domination and submission, cp. note 25 to chapter 11; see also note 74 to 
the present chapter. 

68 . Cp. Schopenhauer, Grundprobleme, p. xix. 

69 . For the eight quotations in this paragraph, cp. Selections, 265, 402, 403, 435, 436, 399, 
407, 267 f. {=Encycl. 1870, p. 453, WW, xi, 83, 84, 113-14, 81, 88, Encycl. pp. 455-6). 
Cp. also § 347 of the Philosophy of Law. 

70. Cp. Selections, 435 f. (= WW, xi, 114). For the problem of inferiority, cp. also notes 57 and 
61 to this chapter, and text. For the other passage on England, see notes 61-63, and text to 
this chapter. A very interesting passage {Phil, of Law, § 290L) containing a classical 
formulation of holism shows that Hegel not only thought in terms of holism or collectivism 
and power, but also that he saw the applicability of these principles towards the organization 
of the proletariat. 'The lower classes', Hegel writes, 'have been left more or less 
unorganized. And yet, it is of the utmost importance that they should be organized, for only 
in this way can they become powerful. Without organization, they are nothing but a heap, an 
aggregate of atoms.' Hegel comes pretty close to Marx in this passage. 

71 . The passage is from H. Freyer, Pallas Athene (1935), quoted by A. Kolnai, The War against 
the West (1938), p. 417. I am greatly indebted to Kolnai's book, which has made it possible 
for me to quote in the remaining part of this chapter a considerable number of authors who 
would otherwise have been inaccessible to me. (I have, however, not always followed the 
wording of Kolnai's translations.) 

For the characterization of Freyer as one of the leading sociologists of contemporary 
Germany, cp. F. A. von Hayek, Freedom and the Economic System (Public Policy Pamphlet 
No. 29, 2nd impression, 1940), p. 30. 

For the four passages in this paragraph from Hegel's Philosophy of Law, §§ 331, 340, 342L 
(cp. also 331 f) and 340, sqq Selections, 466, 467, 465, 468. For the passages from the 
Encyclopcedia, cp. Selections, 260 f. (= Encycl. 1870, pp. 449-50). (The last sentence 
quoted is a different version of the first sentence of § 546.) 
For the passage from H. von Treitschke, cp. Thus Spake Germany (1941), p. 60. 

72 . Cp. Philosophy of Law, § 257, i.Q. Selections, 443. For the next three quotations, see 



Philosophy of Law, §§ 334 and 339L, i.e. Selections, 467. For the last quotation in this 
paragraph, cp. Hegel's Philosophy of Law, §§ 330L and 333. 

73 . Cp. Selections, 365 (= WW, xi, 49); italics partly mine. For the next quotation, cp. 
Selections, 468, i.e. Philosophy of Law, § 340. 

74 . Quoted by Kolnai, op. cit, 418. — For Heraclitus, cp. text to note 10 to chapter 2. — For 
Haiser, see Kolnai, loc. cit.; cp. also Hegel's theory of slavery, mentioned in note 25 to 
chapter 11. — For the concluding quotation of this paragraph, cp. Selections, 467, i.e. 
Philosophy of Law, 334. For the 'war of defence' that turns into a 'war of conquest', see op. 
cit., § 326. 

75 . For all the passages from Hegel in this paragraph, cp. Selections, 426 f (= WW, xi, 105-6). 
(Italics mine.) For another passage expressing the postulate that world-history must overrule 
morals, see Philosophy of Law, § 345. For E. Meyer, cp. end of note 15 (2) to chapter 
10. 

76 . ^QQ Philosophy of Law, § 317 f; c^. Selections, 461; for similar passages, see § 316: 
'Public opinion as it exists is a continuous self-contradiction'; see also § 301, i.e. Selections, 
456, and § 318L. (For further views of Hegel on public opinion, cp. also text to note 84 to 
this chapter.) — For Haiser's remark, cp. Kolnai, op. cit., 234. 

77 . Cp. Selections, 464, 465, for the passages from the Philosophy of Law, §§ 324 and 324L. 
For the next passages from the Philosophy of History, cp. Selections, 436 f. (= WW, xi, 114- 
15). (The next passage quoted continues characteristically: '... naturally dead in itself, as 
e.g. the German Imperial Cities, the German Imperial Constitution.' With this, cp. note 61 to 
this chapter, and text.) 

78. Cp. Philosophy of Law, §§ 327L and 328, i.Q. Selections, 465 f. (Italics mine.) For the 
remark on gunpowder, cp. Hegel's Philosophy of History, p. 419. 

79 . For the quotations from Kaufmann, Banse, Ludendorff, Scheler, Freyer, Lenz, and Jung, cp. 
Kolnai, op. cit., 411, 411 f , 412, 411, 417, 411, and 420.— For the quotation from J. G. 
FichtQ's Addresses to the German Nation (1808), cp. the German edition of 1871 (edited by 
I. H. Fichte), pp. 49 f ; see also A. Zimmern, Modern Political Doctrines, 170 f. — For 



Spengler's repetition, see his Decline of the West, I, p. 12; for Rosenberg's repetition, cp. his 
Myth of the Twentieth Century (1935), p. 143; see also my note 50 to chapter 8, and Rader, 
No Compromise (1939), 116. 

80- Cp. Kolnai, op. cit, 412. 

81. Cp. Caird, Hegel (1883), p. 26. 

82 . Kolnai, op. cit., 438. — For the passages from Hegel, cp. Selections, 365 f , italics partly 
mine; cp. also text to note 84 to this chapter. For E. Krieck, cp. Kolnai, op. cit., 65 f , and E. 
KriQck, National-Political Education (in German, 1932, p. 1; quoted in Thus Spake 
Germany, p. 53). 

83 . Cp. Selections, 268 {= Encycl. 1870, p. 456); for Stapel, cp. Kolnai, op. cit, 292 f 

84 . For Rosenberg, cp. Kolnai, op. cit., 295. For Hegel's views on public opinion, cp. also text 
to note 76 to this chapter; for the passages quoted in the present paragraph, see Philosophy 
of Law, § 318L, \.q. Selections, pp. 461 (italics mine), 375, 377, 377, 378, 367/368, 380, 
368, 364, 388, 380 (= WW, xi, 59, 60, 60, 60-61, 51-2, 63, 52, 48, 70-1, 63). (Italics partly 
mine.) For Hegel's eulogy of emotion and passion and self-interest, cp. also text to note 82 
to this chapter. 

85. For Best, cp. Kolnai, op. cit., 414 f — For the quotations from Hegel, cp. Selections, 464 f , 
464, 465, 437 (= WW, xi, 115, a noteworthy similarity to Bergson), 372. (The passages from 
Phil, of Law are from §§ 324, 324L, 327L.) — For the remark on Aristotle, cp. Pol, VII, 15, 3 
(1334a). 

86 . For Stapel, cp. Kolnai, op. cit, 255-257. 

87 . C^). Selections, p. 100: 'If I neglect <3// the determinations of an object, ih^n nothing 
remains.' — For Heidegger's is Metaphysics! cp. Camap, Erkenntnis, 2, 229. For 
Heidegger's relation to Husserl and Scheler, cp. J. Kraft, From Husserl to Heidegger (2nd 
German edn, 1957). Heidegger recognizes that his sentences are meaningless: 'Question and 
answer concerning nothingness are in themselves equally nonsensical', Heidegger writes 
(cp. Erkenntnis, 2, 231). What could be said, from the point of view of Wittgenstein's 
Tractatus, against this kind of philosophy which admits that it talks nonsense — ^but deeply 



significant nonsense? (Cp. note 51 (1) to chapter 11.) G. Schneeberger, Nachlese zu 
Heidegger, 1962, contains a collection of documents on Heidegger's political activity. 

88 . For these quotations from Heidegger, cp. Kolnai, op. cit., 221, 313. — For Schopenhauer's 
advice to the guardian, cp. Works, vol. V, p. 25 (note). 

89. For Jaspers, cp. Kolnai, op. cit., 270 f. Kolnai (p. 282) calls Jaspers 'Heidegger's lesser 
brother'. I cannot agree with that. For, as opposed to Heidegger, Jaspers has undoubtedly 
written books which contain much of interest, even books which contain much that is based 
on experience, for instance his General Psycho-Pathology . But I may quote here a few 
passages from an early work, his Psychology of World-Views (first published in 1919; I 
quote from the third German edn, 1925), which show that Jaspers' world-views were far 
advanced, at any rate, before Heidegger took to writing. 'To visualize the life of man, one 
would have to see how he lives in the Moment. The Moment is the sole reality, it is reality in 
itself, in the life of the soul. The Moment that has been lived is the Last, the Warm-Blooded, 
the Immediate, the Living, the Bodily-Present, the Totality of the Real, the only Concrete 
Thing ... Man finds Existence and the Absolute ultimately in the Moment alone.' (p. 112.) — 
(From the chapter on Enthusiastic Attitude , p. 112): 'Wherever Enthusiasm is the 
absolute leading motive, i.e. wherever one lives in Reality and for Reality, and still dares and 
risks all, there one may well speak of Heroism: of heroic Love, heroic Strife, heroic Work, 
etc. § 5. The Enthusiastic Attitude is Love ...' — (Subsection 2, p. 128): 'Compassion is not 
Love ...' — (p. 127): 'This is why Love is cruel, ruthless; and why it is believed in, by the 
genuine Lover, only if it is so.' — (pp. 256 ff.): 'III. Single Marginal Situations ... (A) Strife. 
Strife is a fundamental form of all Existence . . . The reactions to the Marginal Situations of 
Strife are the following: ... 2. Man s lack of understanding of the fact that Strife is Ultimate: 
He skulks ...' And so on. We always find the same picture: a hysterical romanticism, 
combined with a brutal barbarism and the professorial pedantry of sub-sections and sub-sub- 
sections. 

90. Cp. Kolnai, op. cit., 208 

For my remark on the 'philosophy of the gambler', cp. O. Spengler {The Hour of Decision. 
Germany and World-Historical Evolution . — German edn, 1933, p. 230; quoted in Thus 



Spake Germany, 28): 'He whose sword compels victory here will be lord of the world. The 
dice are there, ready for this stupendous game. Who dares to throw them?' 
Of the gangster philosophy, a book by the very talented author, E. von Salomon, is perhaps 
even more characteristic. I quote a few passages from this book. The Outlaws (1930; the 
passages quoted are from pp. 105, 73, 63, 307, 73, 367): 'Satanic lust! Am I not one with 
my gun? ... The first lust of man is destruction ... They shot quite indiscriminately, just 
because it was good fun . . . We are free of the burden of plan, method or system . . . What we 
wanted we did not know, and what we knew we did not want . . . My greatest lust was always 
for destruction.' And so on. (Cp. also Hegemann, op. cit., 171.) 

91 . Cp. Kolnai, op. cit., 313. 

92 . ForZiegler, cp. Kolnai, op. cit, 398. 

93 . This quotation is from Schopenhauer, Grundprobleme (4th edn, 1 890), Introduction to the 
first edition (1840), p. xix. — Hegel's remark on 'the most lofty depth' (or 'the most elevated 
depth') is from the Jahrbuecher d. wiss. Lit, 1827, No. 7; it is quoted by Schopenhauer, op. 
cit. — The concluding quotation is from Schopenhauer, op. cit., xviii. 



Notes to Chapter Thirteen 



General Note to the Chapters on Marx. Wherever possible, I refer in 
these notes to Capital or to H.o.M. or to both. I usq Capital as 
abbreviation for the Everyman Double Volume Edition of K. Marx, 
Capital, translated by E. and C. Paul. — H.o.M. stands forv4 Handbook oj 
Marxism, edited by E. Burns, 1935, but references to complete editions of 
the texts have always been added. For quotations from Marx and Engels, I 
refer to the Moscow standard edition (Gesamtausgabe, abbreviated GA), 
published from 1927 onwards and edited by D. Ryazanow and others but 
still incomplete. For quotations from Lenin, I refer to t\\Q Little Lenin 
Library, published by Martin Lawrence, later Lawrence and Wishart, 
abbreviated L.L.L. The later volumes of Capital are quoted as Das 
Kapital (of which vol. I was first published in 1867); the references are to 
vol. II, 1885, or to vol. Ill, part 1, and vol. Ill, part 2 (quoted as III/l and 
III/2), both 1894. 1 wish to make it quite clear that although I refer where 
possible to the translations mentioned above, I do not always adopt their 
wording. 

1. Cp. V. Pareto, Treatise on General Sociology, § 1843. (English transl.: The Mind and 
Society, 1935, vol. Ill, p. 1281; cp. also text to note 65 to chapter 10.) Pareto writes (pp. 
1281 f.): 'The art of government lies in finding ways to take advantage of such sentiments, 
not wasting one's energy in futile efforts to destroy them; very frequently the sole effect of 
the latter course is to strengthen them. The person capable of freeing himself from the blind 
domination of his own sentiments will be able to utilize the sentiments of other people for 
his own ends ... This may be said in general of the relation between ruler and ruled. The 
statesman who is of greatest service to himself and to his party is the man without prejudice 
who knows how to profit by the prejudices of others.' The prejudices Pareto has in mind are 
of diverse character — nationalism, love of freedom, humanitarianism. And it may be just as 
well to remark that Pareto, though he has freed himself from many prejudices, has certainly 



not succeeded in freeing himself from all of them. This can be seen in nearly every page he 
writes, especially, of course, where he speaks of what he describes not inappropriately as 
'the humanitarian religion'. His own prejudice is the anti-humanitarian religion. Had he seen 
that his choice was not between prejudice and freedom from prejudice, but only between the 
humanitarian prejudice and the anti-humanitarian prejudice, he might perhaps have felt a 
little less confident of his superiority. (For the problem of prejudices, cp. note 8 (1) to 
chapter 24, and text.) 

Pareto's ideas concerning the 'art of government' are very old; they go back at least to 
Plato's uncle Critias, and have played their part in the Platonic school tradition (as pointed 
out in note 18 to chapter 8). 

2. (1) Fichte's and Hegel's ideas led to the principle of the national state and of national self- 
determination, a reactionary principle in which, however, a fighter for the open society such 
as Masaryk sincerely believed, and which the democrat Wilson adopted. (For Wilson, cp. for 
instance Modern Political Doctrines, ed. by A. Zimmern, 1939, pp. 223 ff.) This principle is 
obviously inapplicable on this earth, and especially in Europe, where the nations (i.e. 
linguistic groups) are so densely packed that it is quite impossible to disentangle them. The 
terrible effect of Wilson's attempt to apply this romantic principle to European politics 
should be clear by now to everybody. That the Versailles settlement was harsh, is a myth; 
that Wilson's principles were not adhered to, is another myth. The fact is that such principles 
could not be more consistently applied; and Versailles failed mainly because of the attempt 
to apply Wilson's inapplicable principles. (For all this, cp. note 7 to chapter 9, and text to 
notes 51-64 to chapter 12.) 

(2) In connection with the Hegelian character of Marxism mentioned in the text in this 
paragraph, I give here a Hst of important views which Marxism takes over from 
Hegelianism. My treatment of Marx is not based on this list, since I do not intend to treat him 
just as another Hegelian, but rather as a serious investigator who can, and must, answer for 
himself This is the list, ordered approximately according to the importance of the various 
views for Marxism. 

{a) Historicism: The method of a science of society is the study of history, and especially of 
the tendencies inherent in the historical development of mankind. 



(b) Historical relativism: What is a law in one historical period need not be a law in another 
historical period. (Hegel maintained that what is true in one period need not be true in 
another.) 

(c) There is an inherent law of progress in historical development. 

(d) The development is one towards more freedom and reason, although the instrumentality 
of bringing this about is not our reasonable planning but rather such irrational forces as our 
passions and our self-interests. (Hegel calls this 'the cunning of reason'.) 

(e) Moral positivism, or in Marx's case, moral 'futurism'. (This term is explained in chapter 
22.) 

(/) Class consciousness is one of the instruments by which the development propels itself 
(Hegel operates with the consciousness of the nation, the 'national Spirit' or 'national 
Genius'.) 

(g) Methodological essentialism. Dialectics. 

(h) The following Hegelian ideas play a part in Marx's writings but have become more 
important with later Marxists. 

(h\) The distinction between merely 'formal' freedom or merely 'formal' democracy and 
'real' or 'economic' freedom or 'economic' democracy, etc.; in connection with this, there is 
a certain 'ambivalent' attitude towards liberalism, i.e. a mixture of love and hate. 
(hi) Collectivism. 

In the following chapters, (a) is again the main theme. In connection with (a) and (b), see 
also note 13 to this chapter. For (b), cp. chapters 22-24. For (c), cp. chapters 22 and 25. For 
(d), cp. chapter 22 (and regarding Hegel's 'cunning of reason', cp. text to note 84 to chapter 
12). For (/), cp. chapters 16 and 19. For (g), cp. notes 4 to the present chapter, 6 to chapter 
17, 13 to chapter 15, 15 to chapter 19, and notes 20-24 to chapter 20, and text. For (hi), cp. 
note 19 to chapter 17. (hi) has its influence on Marx's anti-psycho log ism (cp. text to note 16 
to chapter 14); it is under the influence of the Platonic-Hegelian doctrine of the superiority of 
the state over the individual that Marx develops his theory that even the 'consciousness' of 
the individual is determined by social conditions. Yet, fundamentally, Marx was an 
individualist; his main interest was to help suffering human individuals. Thus collectivism as 
such certainly does not play an important part in Marx's own writings. (Apart from his 



emphasis upon a collective class consciousness, mentioned under (/); cp., for example, note 
4 to chapter 18.) But it plays its part in Marxist practice. 

3. In Capital (387-9), Marx makes some interesting remarks both on Plato's theory of the 
division of labour (cp. note 29 to chapter 5 and text) and on the caste character of Plato's 
state. (Marx refers, however, only to Egypt and not to Sparta; cp. note 27 to chapter 4.) In 
this connection, Marx quotes also an interesting passage from Socrates' Busiris, 15 f , 224/5, 
where Isocrates first proffers arguments for the division of labour very similar to those of 
Plato (text to note 29 to chapter 5); Isocrates then continues: 'The Egyptians ... were so 
successful that the most celebrated philosophers who discuss such topics extol the 
constitution of Egypt above all others, and that the Spartans ... govern their own city in such 
an excellent manner because they have copied the ways of the Egyptians.' I think it most 
probable that Isocrates refers here to Plato; and he may in turn be referred to by Grantor, 
when he spoke of those who accuse Plato of becoming a disciple of the Egyptians, as 
mentioned in note 27 (3) to chapter 4. 

4. Or, 'intelligence destroying'; cp. text to note 68 to chapter 12. For dialectics in general, and 
Hegelian dialectics in particular, cp. chapter 12, especially text to notes 28-33. With Marx's 
dialectics, I do not intend to deal in this book, since I have dealt with it elsewhere. (Cp. 
'What is Dialectic?', M>z<i, N.S., vol. 49, 1940, pp. 403 ff.; or, revised, in Conjectures and 
Refutations, pp. 312 ff.) I consider Marx's dialectics, like Hegel's, a rather dangerous 
muddle; but its analysis can be avoided here, especially since the criticism of his historicism 
covers all that may be taken seriously in his dialectics. 

5. Cp., for instance, the quotation in the text to note 1 1 to this chapter. 

6. Utopianism is first attacked by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, III, 3. (Cp. 
H.O.M., 55 ff. = GA, Series I, vol. 6, 553-5.) For Marx's attacks upon the 'bourgeois 
economists' who 'try to reconcile ... political economy with the claims of the proletariat', 
attacks directed especially against Mill and other members of the Comtist school, cp. 
especially Capital, 868 (against Mill; see also note 14 to this chapter), and 870 (against the 
Comiisi Revue Positiviste; see also text to note 21 to chapter 18). For the whole problem of 
social technology versus historicism, and of piecemeal social engineering versus Utopian 



social engineering, cp. especially chapter 9, above. (See also the notes 9 to chapter 3; 18 (3) 
to chapter 5; and 1 to chapter 9; with references to M. Eastman's Marxism: Is it Science?) 

7. (1) The two quotations from Lenin are taken from Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet 
Communism (2nd edn, 1937), pp. 650 f, who say, in a note, that the second of the 
quotations is from a speech made by Lenin in May, 1918. It is most interesting to see how 
quickly Lenin grasped the situation. On the eve of his party's rise to power, in August, 1917, 
when he published his book State and Revolution, he was still a pure historicist. Not only 
was he as yet unaware of the most difficult problems involved in the task of constructing a 
new society; he even believed, with most Marxists, that the problems were non-existent, or 
that they would be solved by the process of history. Cp. especially the passages from State 
and Revolution in H.o.M., pp. 757f (= Lenin, State and Revolution, L.L.L., vol. 14, 77-9), 
where Lenin emphasizes the simplicity of the problems of organization and administration in 
the various phases of the evolving Communist society. 'All that is required', he writes, 'is 
that they should work equally, should regularly do their share of work, and should receive 
equal pay. The accounting and control necessary for this have been simplified' (italics in the 
original) 'by capitalism to the utmost' They can thus be simply taken over by the workers, 
since these methods of control are 'within reach of anybody who can read and write, and 
knows the first four rules of arithmetic' These astonishingly naive statements are 
representative. (We find similar views expressed in Germany and in England; cp. this note, 
under (2).) They must be contrasted with Lenin's speeches made a few months later. They 
show how free the prophetic 'scientific socialist' was from any foreboding of the problems 
and disasters ahead. (I mean the disaster of the period of war-communism, that period which 
was the outcome of this prophetic and anti-technological Marxism.) But they show also 
Lenin's capability of finding, and of admitting to himself, the mistakes made. He abandoned 
Marxism in practice, although not in theory. Compare also Lenin's chapter V, sections 2 and 
3,H.o.M., pp. 742 ff. {= State and Revolution, 67-73), for the purely historicist, i.e. 
prophetic and anti-technological ('anti-Utopian', Lenin might have said; cp. p. 747 = State 
and Revolution 70-71), character of this 'scientific socialism' before its rise to power. 
But when Lenin confessed that he knew no book dealing with the more constructive 
problems of social engineering, then he only demonstrated that Marxists, faithful to Marx's 



commandments, did not even read the 'Utopian stuff of the 'professorial armchair 
sociaHsts' who tried to make a beginning with these very problems; I am thinking of some of 
the Fabians in England and of A. Menger (e.g. Neue Staatslehre, 2nd edn, 1904, especially 
pp. 248 ff.) and J. Popper-Lynkeus in Austria. The latter developed apart from many other 
suggestions a technology of collective farming, and especially of giant farms of the kind 
later introduced in Russia (see his AUgemeine Ndhrpflicht, 1912; cp. pp. 206 ff. and 300 ff. 
of the 2nd edn, 1923). But he was dismissed by Marxists as a 'half-socialist'. They called 
him a 'half-socialist' because he envisaged a private enterprise sector in his society; he 
confined the economic activity of the state to the care for the basic needs of everybody — for 
the 'guaranteed minimum of subsistence'. Everything beyond this was to be left to a strictly 
competitive system. 

(2) Lenin's view in State and Revolution quoted above is (as J. Viner has pointed out) very 
similar to that of John Carruthers, Socialism and Radicalism (cp. note 9 to chapter 9); see 
especially pp. 14-16. He says: 'The capitalists have invented a system of finance which, 
although complex, is sufficiently simple to be practically worked, and which fully instructs 
everyone as to the best manner of managing his factory. A very similar although greatly 
simpler finance would in the same way instruct the elected manager of a sociaHst factory 
how he should manage it, and he would have no more need for advice from a professional 
organizer than a capitalist has.' 

8. This naive naturalistic slogan is Marx's 'principle of communism' (taken over by Marx from 
Louis Blanc's article 'L' Organisation de travail', as Bryan Magee has kindly pointed out to 
me). Its origin is Platonic and early Christian (cp. note 29 to chapter 5; the Acts, 2, 44-45, 
and 4, 34-35; see also note 48 to chapter 24, and the cross-references given there). It is 
quoted by Lenin in State and Revolution; sqq H.o.M., 752 {= State and Revolution, 74). 
Marx's 'principle of socialism', which is incorporated in the New Constitution of the 
U.S.S.R. (1936), is slightly but significantly weaker; compare the Article 12: 'In the 
U.S.S.R.', we read there, 'the principle of socialism is realized: "From each according to his 
ability, to each according to his work".' The substitution of 'work' for the early Christian 
term 'needs' transforms a romantic and economically quite indefinite naturalistic phrase into 



a fairly practical but commonplace principle — and into one which even 'capitalism' may 
claim as its own. 

9. I am alluding to the title of a famous book by Engels: 'The Development of Socialism From 
a Utopia Into a Science.' (The book has been published in English under the title: Socialism: 
Utopian and Scientific.) 

10 . See my The Poverty of Historicism (Economica, 1944: now published separately). 

11 . This is the eleventh of Marx's Theses on Feuerbach (1845), cp. H.o.M., 231 (= F. Engels, 
Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der Klassischen deutschen Philosophic, J. W. Dietz, 
Nachf Berlin 1946, 56). See also notes 14-16 to this chapter, and the sections 1, 17 and 18 
of The Poverty of Historicism. 

12 . I do not intend to discuss here the metaphysical or the methodological problem of 
determinism in any detail. (A few further remarks on the problem will be found in chapter 
22, below.) But I wish to point out how little adequate it is if 'determinism' and 'scientific 
method' are taken as synonyms. This is still done, even by a writer of the excellence and 
clarity of B. Malinowski. Cp., for instance, his paper m Human Affairs (ed. by Cattell, 
Cohen, and Travers, 1937), chapter XII. I fully agree with the methodological tendencies of 
this paper, with its plea for the application of scientific method in social science as well as 
with its brilliant condemnation of romantic tendencies in anthropology (cp. especially pp. 
207 ff , 221-4.) But when Malinowski argues in favour of 'determinism in the study of 
human culture' (p. 212; cp., for instance, also p. 252), I fail to see what he means by 
'determinism' if not simply 'scientific method'. This equation is, however, not tenable, and 
has its grave dangers, as shown in the text; for it may lead to historicism. 

13 . For a criticism of historicism, see The Poverty of Historicism {Economica, 1944) 

Marx may be excused for holding the mistaken belief that there is a 'natural law of historical 
development'; for some of the best scientists of his time (e.g. T. H. Huxley; cp. his Lay 
Sermons, 1880, p. 214) believed in the possibility of discovering dilaw of evolution. But 
there can be no empirical 'law of evolution'. There is a specific evolutionary hypothesis, 
stating that life on earth has developed in certain ways. But a universal or natural law of 
evolution would have to state a hypothesis concerning the course of development of life on 



all planets (at least). In other words, wherever we are confined to the observation of one 
unique process, there we cannot hope to find, and to test, a 'law of nature'. (Of course, there 
are laws of evolution pertaining to the development of young organisms, etc.) 
There can be sociological laws, and even sociological laws pertaining to the problem of 
progress; for example, the hypothesis that, wherever the freedom of thought, and of the 
communication of thought, is effectively protected by legal institutions and institutions 
ensuring the publicity of discussion, there will be scientific progress. (Cp. chapter 23.) But 
there are reasons for holding the view that we should do better not to speak of historical 
laws at all. (Cp. note 7 to chapter 25, and text.) 

14 . Cp. Capital, 864 (Preface to the First Edition. For a similar remark of Mill's, see note 16, 
below). At the same place, Marx also says: 'It is the ultimate aim of this work to lay bare the 
economic law of motion of modem society.' (For this, cp. H.o.M., 374, and text to note 16 
to the present chapter.) The clash between Marx's pragmatism and his historicism becomes 
fairly obvious if we compare these passages with the eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach 
(quoted in text to note 11 to this chapter). In The Poverty of Historicism, section 17, I have 
tried to make this clash more obvious by characterizing Marx's historicism in a form which 
is exactly analogous to his attack on Feuerbach. For we can paraphrase Marx's passage 
quoted in the text by saying: The historicist can only interpret social development, and aid it 
in various ways; his point, however, is that nobody can change it. See also chapter 22 . 
especially text to notes 5 ff. 

15 . Cp. Capital, 469; the next three quotations are from Capital, 868 (Preface to the Second 
Edition. The translation 'shallow syncretism' is not quite in keeping with the very strong 
expression of the original); o/?. cit., 673; and (9/>. cit., 830. For the 'ample circumstantial 
evidence' mentioned in the text, see, for instance, op. cit., 105, 562, 649, 656. 

16 . Cp. Capital, 864 = H.o.M., 374; cp. note 14 to this chapter. The following three quotations 
are from J. S. Mill, ^ System of Logic (1st edn, 1843; quoted from the 8th edn). Book VI, 
Chapter X; § 2 (end); § 1 (beginning); § 1 (end). An interesting passage (which says nearly 
the same as Marx's famous remark quoted in text to note 14) can be found in the same 
chapter of Mill's Logic, § 8. Referring to the historical method, which searches for the 'laws 



of social order and of social progress', Mill writes: 'By its aid we may hereafter succeed not 
only in looking far forward into the future history of the human race, but in determining 
what artificial means may be used, and to what extent, to accelerate the natural progress in 
so far as it is beneficial; to compensate for whatever may be its inherent inconveniences or 
disadvantages, and to guard against the dangers or accidents to which our species is exposed 
from the necessary incidents of its progression.' (Italics mine.) Or as Marx puts it, to 'shorten 
and lessen its birth-pangs'. 

17 . Cp. Mill, loc. cit., § 2; the next remarks are from the first paragraph of § 3. The 'orbit' and 
the 'trajectory' are from the end of the second paragraph of § 3. When speaking of 'orbits' 
Mill thinks, probably, of such cyclical theories of historical development as formulated in 
Plato's Statesman, or perhaps in Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy. 

18 . Cp. Mill, loc. cit, the beginning of the last paragraph of § 3. — For all these passages, cp. 
also notes 6-9 to chapter 14, and The Poverty ofHistoricism, sections 22, 24, 27, 28. 

19 . Concerning psychologism (the term is due to E. Husserl), I may here quote a few sentences 
by the excellent psychologist D. Katz; the passages are taken from his article Psychological 
Needs (Chapter III of Human Affairs , ed. by Cattell, Cohen, and Travers, 1937, p. 36). 'In 
philosophy there has been for some time a tendency to make psychology "the" fundamental 
basis of all other sciences ... This tendency is usually called psychologism ... But even such 
sciences, which, like sociology and economics, are more closely related to psychology, have 
a neutral nucleus which is not psychological . . . ' Psychologism will be discussed at length in 
chapter 14. Cp. also note 44 to chapter 5. 

20 . Cp. Marx's Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), quoted in 
H.O.M., 371 (= Karl Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, edited by K. Kautsky, J. 
W. Dietz, Nachf Berlin 1930, LIV-LV, also in Capital, pp. xv f). The passage is quoted 
more fully in text to note 13 to chapter 15, and in text to note 3 to chapter 16; see also note 2 
to chapter 14. 



Notes to Chapter Fourteen 



1. Cp. note 19 to the last chapter. 

2. Cp. Marx's Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, quoted also in 
note 20 to chapter 13 and in text to notes 13 to chapter 15 and 4 to chapter 16; cp. H.o.M., 
372 = Capital, p. xvi. See also Marx and Engels, German Ideology (H.o.M., 213 = GA, 
Series I, vol. v, 16): 'It is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines 
consciousness.' 

3. Cp. M. Ginsberg, Sociology (Home University Library, 130 ff), who discusses this problem 
in a similar context, without, however, referring to Marx. 

4. Cp. for instance. Zoology Leaflet 10, published by the Field Museum of Natural History, 
Chicago, 1929. 

5. For institutionalism, cp. especially chapter 3 (text to notes 9 and 10) and chapter 9. 

6. Cp. Mill, A System of Logic, VI; IX, § 3. (Cp. also notes 16-18 to chapter 13.) 

7. Cp. Mill, op. cit., VI; VI, § 2. 

8. Cp. Mill, op. cit., VI; VII, § 1. For the opposition between 'methodological individualism' 
and 'methodological collectivism', see F. A. von Hayek's Scientism and the Study oj 
Society, Part II, section VII {Economica, 1943, pp. 41 ff.). 

9. For this and the following quotation see Mill, op. cit., VI; X, § 4. 

10 . I am using the term 'sociological laws' to denote the natural laws of social life, as opposed 
to its normative laws; cp. text to notes 8-9 to chapter 5. 

11. Cp. note 10 to chapter 3. (The passage is from p. 122 of part II of my The Poverty oj 
Historicism {Economica, N.S. xi, 1944), and p. 65 of the book. 

I owe the suggestion that it was Marx who first conceived social theory as the study of the 
unwanted social repercussions of nearly all our actions to K. Polanyi, who emphasized this 
aspect of Marxism in private discussions (1924). 



(1) It should be noted, however, that in spite of the aspect of Marxism which has been just 
mentioned and which constitutes an important point of agreement between Marx's views on 
method and mine, there is a considerable disagreement between Marx's and my views about 
the way in which these unwanted or unintended repercussions have to be analysed. For 
Marx is a methodological collectivist. He believes that it is the 'system of economic 
relations' as such which gives rise to the unwanted consequences — a system of institutions 
which, in turn, may be explicable in terms of 'means of production', but which is not 
analysable in terms of individuals, their relations, and their actions. As opposed to this, I 
hold that institutions (and traditions) must be analysed in individualistic terms — ^that is to 
say, in terms of the relations of individuals acting in certain situations, and of the unintended 
consequences of their actions. 

(2) The reference in the text to 'canvas-cleaning', and to chapter 9 is to notes 9 to 12, and 
the text, of this chapter. 

(3) Concerning the remarks in the text (in the paragraph to which this note is appended, and 
in some of those which follow) about the unintended social repercussions of our actions, I 
wish to draw attention to the fact that the situation in the physical sciences (and in the field 
of mechanical engineering and technology) is somewhat similar. The task of technology is 
here also largely to inform us about unintended consequences of what we are doing (e.g. 
that a bridge may become too heavy if we strengthen certain of its components). But the 
analogy goes even further. Our mechanical inventions do rarely turn out according to our 
original plans. The inventors of the motor car probably did not foresee the social 
repercussions of their doings, but they certainly did not foresee the purely mechanical 
repercussions — the many ways in which their cars broke down. And while their cars were 
altered in order to avoid these breakdowns, they changed beyond recognition. (And with 
them, some people's motives and aspirations changed also.) 

(4) With my criticism of the Conspiracy Theory (pp. 94-6), cp. my Prediction and Prophecy 
and their Significance for Social Theory (in Proceedings of the Xth International Congress 
of Philosophy, 1948, vol. i, pp. 82 ff., especially p. 87 f ), and 'Towards a Rational Theory 
of Tradition' {The Rationalist Annual , 1949, pp. 36 ff., especially p. 40 f.). Both papers are 

now in my Conjectures and Refutations.^ 



12 . See the passage from Mill cited in note 8 to this chapter. 

13 . Cp. note 63 to chapter 10. Important contributors to the logic of power are Plato (in Books 
VIII and IX of the Republic, and in the Laws), Aristotle, MachiavelH, Pareto, and many 
others. 

14 . Cp. Max Weber's Ges. Aufsaetze zur Wissenschaftslehre (1922), especially pp. 408 ff. A 
remark may be added here concerning the often repeated assertion that the social sciences 
operate with a method different from that of the natural sciences, in so far as we know the 
'social atoms', i.e. ourselves, by direct acquaintance, while our knowledge of physical atoms 
is only hypothetical. From this, it is often concluded (e.g. by Karl Menger) that the method 
of social science, since it makes use of our knowledge of ourselves, is psychological, or 
perhaps 'subjective', as opposed to the 'objective' methods of the natural sciences. To this, 
we may answer: There is surely no reason why we should not use any 'direct' knowledge 
we may have of ourselves. But such knowledge is useful in the social sciences only if we 
generalize, i.e. if we assume that what we know of ourselves holds good for others too. But 
this generalization is of a hypothetical character, and it must be tested and corrected by 
experience of an 'objective' kind. (Before having met anybody who does not like chocolate, 
some people may easily believe that everybody likes it.) Undoubtedly, in the case of 'social 
atoms' we are in certain ways more favourably situated than in the case of physical atoms, 
owing not only to our knowledge of ourselves, but also to the use of language. Yet from the 
point of view of scientific method, a social hypothesis suggested by self-intuition is in no 
different position from a physical hypothesis about atoms. The latter may also be suggested 
to the physicist by a kind of intuition about what atoms are like. And in both cases, this 
intuition is a private affair of the man who proposes the hypothesis. What is 'public', and 
important for science, is merely the question whether the hypotheses could be tested by 
experience, and whether they stood up to tests. 

From this point of view, social theories are no more 'subjective' than physical ones. (And it 
would be clearer, for example, to speak of 'the theory of subjective values' or of 'the theory 
of acts of choice' than of 'the subjective theory of value': see also note 9 to chapter 20.) 

15 . The present paragraph has been inserted in order to avoid the misunderstanding mentioned 



in the text. I am indebted to Prof. E. Gombrich for drawing my attention to the possibiHty of 
such a misunderstanding. 

16 . Hegel contended that his 'Idea' was something existing 'absolutely', i.e. independently of 
anybody's thought. One might contend, therefore, that he was not a psychologist. Yet Marx, 
quite reasonably, did not take seriously this 'absolute ideahsm' of Hegel; he rather 
interpreted it as a disguised psychologism, and combated it as such. Cp. Capital, 873 (italics 
mine): 'For Hegel, the thought process (which he even presents in disguise under the name 
"Idea" as an independent agent or subject) is the creator of the real.' Marx confines his 
attack to the doctrine that the thought process (or consciousness, or mind) creates the 'real'; 
and he shows that it does not even create the social reality (to say nothing about the material 
universe). 

For the Hegelian theory of the dependence of the individual upon society, see (apart from 
section iii of chapter 12) the discussion, in chapter 23, of the social, or more precisely, the 
inter-personal element in scientific method, as well as the corresponding discussion, in 
chapter 24, of the inter-personal element in rationality. 



Notes to Chapter Fifteen 



1. Cp. Cole's Preface to Capital, xvi. (But see also the next note.) 

2. Lenin too sometimes used the term 'Vulgar Marxists', but in a somewhat different sense. — 
How little Vulgar Marxism has in common with the views of Marx may be seen from Cole's 
analysis, op. cit, xx, and from the text to notes 4 and 5 to chapter 16, and from note 17 to 
chapter 17. 

3. According to Adler, lust for power, of course, is really nothing but the urge towards 
compensation for one's feelings of inferiority by proving one's superiority. 

Some Vulgar Marxists even believe that the finishing touch to the philosophy of the modern 
man was added by Einstein, who, so they think, discovered 'relativity' or 'relativism', i.e. 
that 'everything is relative'. 

4. J. F. Hecker writes {Moscow Dialogues, p. 76) of Marx's so-called 'historical materiahsm': 
'I would have preferred to call it "dialectical historicism" or ... something of that sort.' — I 
again draw the reader's attention to the fact that in this book I am not dealing with Marx's 
dialectics, since I have dealt with them elsewhere. (Cp. note 4 to chapter 13.) 

5. For Heraclitus' slogan, cp. especially text to note 4 (3) to chapter 2, notes 16/17 to chapter 
4, and note 25 to chapter 6. 

6. Both the following quotations are from Capital, 873 (Epilogue to the second edn of vol. 1). 

7. C^.Das Kapital, vol. III/2 (1894), p. 355; i.e. chapter 48, section III, from where the 
following quotations are taken. 

8. Cp. Das Kapital, vol. III/2, loc. cit. 

9. For the quotations in this paragraph, cp. F. Engels, Anti-Duhring; see H.o.M., 298, 299 (= F. 
Engels, Herrn Eugen Duehring's Umwaelzung der Wissenschaft, GA special volume, 294- 
5). 

10 . I have in mind questions concerning, for example, the influence of economic conditions 
(such as the need for land surveying) upon Egyptian geometry, and upon the different 



development of early Pythagorean geometry in Greece. 

11 . Cp. especially the quotation from Capital in note 13 to chapter 14; also the full passages 
from the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, quoted only 
partially in the text to the next note. For the problem of Marx's essentialism, and the 
distinction between 'reality' and appearance, see note 13 to this chapter, and notes 6 and 16 
to chapter 17. 

12. But I feel inclined to say that it is a little better than an idealism of the Hegelian or Platonic 
brand; as I said in 'What is Dialectic?', if I were forced to choose, which, fortunately, I am 
not, I would choose materialism. (Cp. p. 422 of Mind, vol. 49, ox Conjectures and 
Refutations, p. 331, where I deal with problems very similar to those dealt with here.) 

13 . For this and the following quotations, cp. Marx's Preface to A Contribution to the Critique 
of Political Economy, H.o.M., 372 {= Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, LV). 

Some further light is thrown upon these passages (and on the text to note 3 to chapter 16) by 
the Second Observation of part II of Marx's Poverty of Philosophy (cp. H.o.M., 354 f. = GA, 
Series I, vol. vi, 179-80); for Marx here analyses society very clearly into three layers, if I 
may call them so. The first of these layers corresponds to 'reality' or 'essence', the second 
and the third to a primary and a secondary form of appearance. (This is very similar to 
Plato's distinction of Ideas, sensible things, and images of sensible things; cp. for the 
problem of Plato's essentialism chapter 3; for Marx's corresponding ideas, see also notes 8 
and 16 to chapter 17.) The first or fundamental layer (or 'reality') is the material layer, the 
machinery and other material means of production that exist in society; this layer is called by 
Marx the material 'productive forces', or 'material productivity'. The second layer he calls 
'productive relationship' or 'social relations'; they are dependent on the first layer: 'Social 
relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces 
men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, they 
change their way of earning their living — they change all their social relations.' (For the first 
two layers, cp. text to note 3 to chapter 16.) The third layer is formed by the ideologies, i.e. 
by legal, moral, religious, scientific ideas: 'The same men who estabhsh their social relations 
in conformity with material productivity, produce also principles, ideas, and categories, in 



conformity with their social relations.' In terms of this analysis, we may say that in Russia 
the first layer was transformed in conformity with the third, a striking refutation of Marx's 
theory. (See also the next note.) 

14 . It is easy to make very general prophecies; for instance, to prophesy that, within a 
reasonable time, it will rain. Thus there would not be much in the prophecy that, in some 
decades, there will be a revolution somewhere. But, as we see, Marx said just a little more 
than that, and just enough to be falsified by events. Those who try to interpret this 
falsification away remove the last bit of empirical significance from Marx's system. It then 
becomes purely 'metaphysical' (in the sense of my The Logic of Scientific Discovery). 
How Marx conceived the general mechanism of any revolution, in accordance with his 
theory, is illustrated by the following description of the social revolution of the bourgeoisie 
(also called the 'industrial revolution'), taken from the Communist Manifesto {H.o.M., 28; 
italics mine = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 530-31): 'The means of production and of exchange, on 
whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a 
certain stage in the development of the means of production and of exchange . . . the feudal 
relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive 
forces. They became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder. And they were burst 
asunder.' (Cp. also text to note 11, and note 17 to chapter 17.) 

15 . Cp. H. Heine, Religion and Philosophy in Germany. (Engl, transl., 1882); here quoted from 
the appendix to P. Carus, Kant's Prolegomena, 1912, p. 267. 

16. A testimony to this friendship can be found in Capital, at the end of footnote 2 to p. 671 
Marx, I admit, was often intolerant. Nevertheless, I feel — but I may easily be mistaken — that 
he had sufficient critical sense to see the weakness of all dogmatism, and that he would have 
disliked the way in which his theories were converted into a set of dogmas. (See note 30 to 
chapter 17, and p. 425 — ^p. 334 in Conjectures and Refutations — of 'What is Dialectic?' Cp. 
note 4 to chapter 13.) It seems, however, that Engels was prepared to tolerate the intolerance 
and orthodoxy of the Marxists. In his Preface to the first English translation of Capital, he 
writes (cp. Capital, 886) of the book that it 'is often called, on the Continent, "the Bible of 
the working class".' And instead of protesting against a description which converts 



'scientific' socialism into a religion, Engels proceeds to show, in his comments, that Capital 
is worthy of this title, since 'the conclusions arrived at in this work are daily more and more 
becoming the fundamental principles of the great working-class movement' all over the 
world. From here there was only one step to the heresy-hunting and excommunication of 
those who retain the critical, i.e. scientific, spirit, the spirit which had once inspired Engels as 
well as Marx. 



Notes to Chapter Sixteen 



1. Cp. Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto; sqq H.o.M., p. 22 (= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 
525). As pointed out in chapter 4 (see text to notes 5/6 and 11/12), Plato had very similar 
ideas. 

2. Cp. text to note 15 to chapter 14. 

3. Cp. MsLYx,The Poverty of Philosophy, H.o.M., 355 {= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 179). (The 
quotation is from the same place as that from which the passages quoted in note 13 to 
chapter 15 are taken.) 

4. Cp. the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy; cp. Capital, xvi, and 
H.o.M., 371 f {= Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, LIV-LV. See also note 20 to chapter 
13, note 1 to chapter 14, note 13 to chapter 15, and text.) The passage quoted here, and 
especially the terms 'material productive forces' and 'productive relationships' receive some 
light from those quoted in note 13 to chapter 15. 

5. Cp. Capital, 650 f. See also the parallel passage on capitalist and miser in Capital, 138 f , = 
H.o.M., 437; cp. also note 17 to chapter 17. In The Poverty of Philosophy, H.o.M., 367 (= 
GA, Series I, vol. vi, 189), Marx writes: 'Although all the members of the modem 
bourgeoisie have the same interest in so far as they form a class against another class, they 
have opposite, antagonistic interests, in so far as they stand face to face with one another. 
This opposition of interests results from the economic conditions of their bourgeois life.' 

6. Capital, 651. 

7. This is exactly analogous to Hegel's nationalist historicism, where the true interest of the 
nation gains consciousness in the subjective minds of the nationals, and especially of the 
leader. 

8. Cp. the text to note 14 to chapter 13. 

9. Cp. Capital, 651. 

10 . *I originally used the term 'laissezfaire capitaHsm'; but in view of the fact that 'laissez- 



faire' indicates the absence of trade barriers (such as customs) — something highly desirable, 
I believe — and of the fact that I consider the economic policy of non-interference of the 
early nineteenth century as undesirable, and even as paradoxical, I decided to change my 
terminology, and to use the term 'unrestrained capitalism' instead.* 



Notes to Chapter Seventeen 



1. Cp. the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy {H.o.M., 372 = Zur 
Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, LV). For the theory of the strata or layers of the 
'superstructures', see the quotations in note 13 to chapter 15. 

2. For Plato's recommendation of 'both persuassion and force', see, for instance, text to note 
35 to chapter 5, and notes 5 and 10 to chapter 8. 

3. Cp. Lenin, State and Revolution {H.o.M., 733/4 and 735 = State and Revolution, 15 and 16). 

4. The two quotations are from Marx-Engels, The Communist Manifesto (H.o.M., 46 = GA, 
Series I, vol. vi, 546). 

5. Cp. Lenin, State and Revolution {H.o.M., 725 = State and Revolution, 8-9). 

6. For the characteristic problems of a historicist essentialism, and especially for problems of 
the type 'What is the state?' or 'What is government?' cp. the text to notes 26-30 to chapter 
3,21-4 and 26 ff. to chapter 1 1 and 26 to chapter 12. 

For the language of political demands (or better, of political 'proposals ', as L. J. Russell 
puts it) which in my opinion must replace this kind of essentialism, cp. especially text 
between notes 41 and 42 to chapter 6 and note 5(3) to chapter 5. For Marx's essentialism, 
see especially text to note 11, and note 13, to chapter 15; note 16 to the present chapter; and 
notes 20-24 to chapter 20. Cp. especially the methodological remark in the third volume of 
Capital {Das Kapital, III/2, p. 352), quoted in note 20 to chapter 20. 

7. This quotation is from the Communist Manifesto {H.o.M., 25 = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 528). 
The text is from Engels' Preface to the first English translation of Capital. I quote here the 
whole concluding passage of this Preface; Engels speaks there about Marx's conclusion 'that 
at least in Europe, England is the only country where the inevitable social revolution might 
be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means. He certainly never forgot to add that he 
hardly expected the English ruling class to submit, without a "pro-slavery rebellion", to this 
peaceful and legal revolution'. (Cp. Capital, 887; see also text to note 7 to chapter 19.) This 
passage shows clearly that, according to Marxism, the violence or non-violence of the 



revolution will depend on the resistance or non-resistance of the old ruling class. Cp. also 
text to notes 3 ff. to chapter 19. 

8. Cp. EngQls, Anti-Diihring {H.o.M., 296 = GA, Special volume, 292); see also the passages 
mentioned in note 5 to this chapter. 

The resistance of the bourgeoisie has been broken for some years in Russia; but there are no 
signs of the 'withering away' of the Russian state, not even in its internal organization. 
The theory of the withering away of the state is highly unrealistic, and I think that it may 
have been adopted by Marx and Engels mainly in order to take the wind out of their rivals' 
sails. The rivals I have in mind are Bakunin and the anarchists; Marx did not like to see 
anyone else's radicalism outdoing his own. Like Marx, they aimed at the overthrow of the 
existing social order, directing their attack, however, against the politico-legal, instead of the 
economic system. To them, the state was the fiend who had to be destroyed. But for his 
anarchist competitors, Marx, from his own premises, might have easily granted the 
possibility that the institution of the state, under socialism, might have to fulfil new and 
indispensable functions; namely those functions of safeguarding justice and freedom allotted 
to it by the great theorists of democracy. 

9. Cp. Capital 799. 

10 . In the chapter, 'Primary accumulation', Marx is, as he says (p. 801), 'not concerned ... with 
the purely economic causes of the agricultural revolution. Our present interest is the forcible' 
(i.e. political) 'means that were used to bring about the change.' 

11 . For the many passages, and the superstructures, cp. note 13 to chapter 15. 

12 . Cp. the text to the notes referred to in the last note. 

13 . One of the most noteworthy and valuable parts of Capital, a truly imperishable document of 
human suffering, is Chapter VIII of the First Volume, entitled 'The Working Day', in which 
Marx sketches the early history of labour legislation. From this well-documented chapter, the 
following quotations are taken. 

It must, however, be realized that this very chapter contains the material for a complete 
refutation of Marxist 'Scientific SociaHsm', which is based upon the prophecy of ever- 



increasing exploitation of the workers. No man can read this chapter of Marx without 
realizing that this prophecy has fortunately not come true. It is not impossible, however, that 
this is due, in part, to the activities of the Marxists in organizing labour; but the main 
contribution comes from the increased productivity of labour — in its turn, according to 
Marx, a result of 'Capitalist accumulation'. 

14 . Cp. Capital, 246. (See the footnote 1 to this passage.) 

15 . Cp. Capital, 257 f. Marx's comment in his footnote 1 to this page is most interesting. He 
shows that such cases as these were used by the pro-slavery Tory reactionaries for 
propaganda for slavery. And he shows that among others, Thomas Carlyle, the oracle (a 
forerunner of fascism), participated in this pro-slavery movement. Carlyle, to quote Marx, 
reduced 'the one great event of contemporary history, the American Civil War, to this level, 
that the Peter of the North wants to break the head of the Paul of the South because the Peter 
of the North hires his workers "by the day, and the Paul of the South hires them by the 
lifetime".' Marx is here quoting Carlyle's article 'Ilias Americana in Nuce' {Macmillan's 
Magazine, August, 1863). And Marx concludes: 'Thus the bubble of the Tory sympathy for 
the urban workers (the Tories never had any sympathy for agricultural workers) has burst at 
last. Inside it we find — slavery!' 

One of my reasons for quoting this passage is that I wish to emphasize Marx's complete 
disagreement with the belief that there is not much to choose between slavery and 'wage- 
slavery'. Nobody could stress more strongly than Marx the fact that the abolition of slavery 
(and consequently the introduction of 'wage-slavery') is a most important and necessary 
step in the emancipation of the oppressed. The term 'wage-slavery' is therefore dangerous 
and misleading; for it has been interpreted, by Vulgar Marxists, as an indication that Marx 
agreed with what is in fact Carlyle's appraisal of the situation. 

16 . Marx defines the 'value' of a commodity as the average number of labour hours necessary 
for its reproduction. This definition is a good illustration of his essentialism (cp. note 8 to 
this chapter). For he introduces value in order to get at the essential reality which 
corresponds to what appears in the form of the price of a commodity. Price is a delusive 
kind of appearance. 'A thing may have a price without having value', writes Marx (Capital, 



79; see also Cole's excellent remarks in his Introduction to Capital, especially pp. xxvii, ff.). 
A sketch of Marx's 'value theory' will be found in chapter 20. (Cp. notes 9-27 to that 
chapter, and text.) 

17. For the problem of the 'wage-slaves', cp. end of note 15 to this chapter; also Capital, 155 
(especially footnote 1). For Marx's analysis the results of which are briefly sketched here, 
see especially Capital, 153 ff., also the footnote 1 to p. 153; cp. also my chapter 20, below. 
My presentation of Marx's analysis may be supported by quoting a statement made by 
Engels in his Anti-Duhring on the occasion of a summary of Capital. Engels writes (H.o.M., 
269 = GA, Special volume, 160-67): 'In other words, even if we exclude all possibility of 
robbery, violence, and fraud and even if we assume that all private property was originally 
produced by the owner's own labour; and that throughout the whole subsequent process, 
there was only exchange of equal values for equal values; even then the progressive 
development of production and exchange would necessarily bring about the present 
capitalist system of production; with its monopolization of the instruments of production as 
well as of the goods of consumption in the hands of a class weak in numbers; with its 
degradation into proletarian paupers of the other class comprising the immense majority; 
with its periodic cycle of production booms and of trade depressions; in other words, with 
the whole anarchy of our present system of production. The whole process is explained by 
purely economic causes: robbery, force, and the assumption of political interference of any 
kind are unnecessary at any point whatever.' 

Perhaps this passage may one day convince a Vulgar Marxist that Marxism does not explain 
depressions by the conspiracy of 'big business'. Marx himself said {Das Kapital, II, 406 f , 
italics mine): 'Capitalist production involves conditions which, independently of good or 
bad intentions, permit only a temporary relative prosperity of the working class, and always 
only as a forerunner of a depression.' 

18 . For the doctrine 'property is theft' or 'property is robbery', cp. also Marx's remark on John 
Watts in Capital, 601, footnote 1. 

19 . For the Hegelian character of the distinction between merely 'formal' and 'actual' or 'real' 
freedom, or democracy, cp. note 62 to chapter 12. Hegel likes to attack the British 



constitution for its cult of merely 'formal' freedom, as opposed to the Prussian state in which 
'real' freedom is 'actualized'. For the quotation at the end of this paragraph, cp. the passage 
quoted in the text to note 7 to chapter 15. See also notes 14 and 15 to chapter 20, and text. 

20 . For the paradox of freedom and the need for the protection of freedom by the state, cp. the 
four paragraphs in the text before note 42 to chapter 6, and especially notes 4 and 6 to 
chapter 7, and text; see also note 41 to chapter 12, and text, and note 7 to chapter 24. 

21 . Against this analysis, it may be said that, if we assume perfect competition between the 
entrepreneurs as producers, and especially as buyers of labour on the labour markets (and if 
we further assume that there is no 'industrial reserve army' of unemployed to exert pressure 
on this market), then there could be no talk of exploitation of the economically weak by the 
economically strong, i.e. of the workers by the entrepreneurs. But is the assumption of 
perfect competition between the buyers on the labour markets at all realistic? Is it not true 
that, for example, on many local labour markets, there is only one buyer of any 
significance? Besides, we cannot assume that perfect competition would automatically 
eliminate the problem of unemployment, if for no other reason than because labour cannot 
easily be moved. 

22 . For the problem of economic intervention by the state, and for a characterization of our 
present economic system as interventionism, see the next three chapters, especially note 9 to 
chapter 18 and text. It may be remarked ihdit interventionism as used here is the economic 
complement of what I have called in chapter 6, text to notes 24-44, political protectionism. 
(It is clear why the term 'protectionism' cannot be used instead of 'interventionism'.) See 
especially note 9 to chapter 18, and 25/26 to chapter 20, and text. 

23 . The passage is quoted more fully in the text to note 14 to chapter 13; for the contradiction 
between practical action and historicist determinism, see that note, and text to notes 5 ff. to 
chapter 22. 

24 . Cp. section II of chapter 7. 

25 . See Bertrand Russell, Power (1938); cp. especially pp. 123 ff.; Walter Lippmann, The Good 
Society (1937), cp. especially pp. 188 ff. 



26 . Russell, Power, pp. 128 f. Italics mine. 

27 . Laws to safeguard democracy are still in a rather rudimentary state of development. Very 
much could and should be done. The freedom of the press, for instance, is demanded 
because of the aim that the public should be given correct information; but viewed from this 
standpoint, it is a very insufficient institutional guarantee that this aim will be achieved. 
What good newspapers usually do at present on their own initiative, namely, giving the 
public all important information available, might be established as their duty, either by 
carefully framed laws, or by the establishment of a moral code, sanctioned by public 
opinion. Matters such as, for instance, the Zinovief letter, could be perhaps controlled by a 
law which makes it possible to nullify elections won by improper means, and which makes a 
publisher who neglects his duty to ascertain as well as possible the truth of pubHshed 
information liable for the damage done; in this case, for the expenses of a fresh election. I 
cannot go into details here, but it is my firm conviction that we could easily overcome the 
technological difficulties which may stand in the way of achieving such ends as the conduct 
of election campaigns largely by appeal to reason instead of passion. I do not see why we 
should not, for instance, standardize the size, type, etc., of the electioneering pamphlets, and 
eliminate placards. (This need not endanger freedom, just as reasonable limitations imposed 
upon those who plead before a court of justice protect freedom rather than endanger it.) The 
present methods of propaganda are an insult to the public as well as to the candidate. 
Propaganda of the kind which may be good enough for selling soap should not be used in 
matters of such consequence. 

28 . *Cp. the British 'Control of Engagement Order', 1947. The fact that this order is hardly 
used (it is clearly not abused) shows that legislation of even the most dangerous character is 
enacted without compelling need — obviously because the fundamental difference between 
the two types of legislation, viz. the one that estabhshes general rules of conduct, and the 
one that gives the government discretionary powers, is not sufficiently understood.* 

29 *For this distinction, and for the use of the term 'legal framework', see F. A. Hayek, The 
Road to Serfdom (I am quoting from the 1st English edition, London, 1944). See, for 
example, p. 54, where Hayek speaks of 'the distinction ... between the creation of a 



permanent framework of laws within which productive activity is guided by individual 
decision, and the direction of economic activity by a central authority.' (Italics mine.) Hayek 
emphasizes the significance of the predictability of the legal framework; see, for example, p. 
56.* 

30 . The review, published in the European Messenger of St. Petersburg, is quoted by Marx in 
the Preface to the 2nd edition of Capital. (See Capital, 871.) 

In fairness to Marx, we must say that he did not always take his own system too seriously, 
and that he was quite prepared to deviate a little from his fundamental scheme; he 
considered it as a point of view (and as such it was certainly most important) rather than as a 
system of dogmas. 

Thus we read, on two consecutive pages of Capital (832 f ), a statement which emphasizes 
the usual Marxist theory of the secondary character of the legal system (or of its character as 
a cloak, an 'appearance'), and another statement which ascribes a very important role to the 
political might of the state and raises it explicitly to the rank of a full-grown economic force. 
The first of these statements, 'The author would have done well to remember that 
revolutions are not made by laws', refers to the industrial revolution, and to an author who 
asked for the enactments by which it was effected. The second statement is a comment (and 
one most unorthodox from the Marxist point of view) upon the methods of accumulating 
capital; all these methods, Marx says, 'make use of the power of the state, which is the 
centralized political might of society. Might is the midwife of every old society pregnant 
with a new one. It is itself an economic force.' Up to the last sentence, which I have put in 
italics, the passage is clearly orthodox. But the last sentence breaks through this orthodoxy. 
Engels was more dogmatic. One should compare especially one of his statements in his Anti- 
Duhring {H.o.M., 277), where he writes, 'The role played in history by political might as 
opposed to economic developments is now clear.' He contends that whenever 'political 
might works against economic developments, then, as a rule, with only few exceptions, it 
succumbs; these few exceptions are isolated cases of conquest in which barbarian 
conquerors ... have laid waste ... productive forces which they did not know how to use'. 
(Compare, however, notes 13/14 to chapter 15, and text.) 

The dogmatism and authoritarianism of most Marxists is a really astonishing phenomenon. It 



just shows that they use Marxism irrationally, as a metaphysical system. It is to be found 
among radicals and moderates alike. E. Bums, for example, makes (in H.o.M., 374) the 
surprisingly naive statement that 'refutations ... inevitably distort Marx's theories'; which 
seems to imply that Marx's theories are irrefutable, i.e. unscientific; for every scientific 
theory is refutable, and can be superseded. L. Laurat, on the other hand, in Marxism and 
Democracy, p. 226, says: 'In looking at the world in which we live, we are staggered at the 
almost mathematical precision with which the essential predictions of Karl Marx are being 
realized. ' 

Marx himself seems to have thought differently. I may be wrong in this, but I do beheve in 
the sincerity of his statement (at the end of his Preface to the first edition of Capital; see 
865): 'I welcome scientific criticism, however harsh. But in the face of the prejudices of a 
so-called public opinion, I shall stick to my maxim ...: Follow your course, and let them 
chatter! ' 



Notes to Chapter Eighteen 



1. For Marx's essentialism, and the fact that the material means of production play the part of 
essences in his theory, cp. especially note 13 to chapter 15. See also note 6 to chapter 17 
and notes 20-24 to chapter 20, and text. 

2. Cp. Capital, 864 =H.o.M., 374, and notes 14 and 16 to chapter 13. 

3. What I call the secondary aim of Capital, its anti-apologetic aim, includes a somewhat 
academic task, namely, the critique of political economy with regard to its scientific status. It 
is this latter task to which Marx alluded both in the title of the forerunner of Capital, namely 
in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and in the sub-title of Capital itself, 
which reads, in literal translation. Critique of Political Economy. For both these titles allude 
unmistakably to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. And this title, in turn, was intended to 
mean: 'Critique of pure or metaphysical philosophy in regard to its scientific status'. (This is 
more clearly indicated by the title of the paraphrase of Kant's Critique which reads in an 
almost literal translation: Prolegomena To Any Metaphysics Which In Future May Justly 
Claim Scientific Status.) By alluding to Kant, Marx apparently wished to say: 'Just as Kant 
criticized the claim of metaphysics, revealing that it was no science but largely apologetic 
theology, so I criticize here the corresponding claims of bourgeois economics.' That the 
main tendency of Kant's Critique was, in Marx's circles, considered to be directed against 
apologetic theology can be seen from its representation in Religion and Philosophy in 
Germany by Marx's friend, H. Heine (cp. notes 15 and 16 to chapter 15). It is not quite 
without interest that, in spite of Engels' supervision, the first English translators of Capital 
translated its sub-title as A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production , thus substituting an 
emphasis upon what I have described in the text as Marx's first aim for an allusion to his 
second aim. 

Burke is quoted by Marx in Capital, 843, note 1. The quotation is from E. Burke, Thoughts 
and Details on Scarcity, 1800, pp. 31 f. 

4. Cp. my remarks on class consciousness towards the end of section I, in chapter 16. 
Concerning the continued existence of class-unity after the class struggle against the class 



enemy has ceased, it is, I think, hardly in keeping with Marx's assumptions, and especially 
with his dialectics, to assume that class consciousness is a thing that can be accumulated and 
afterwards stored, that it can survive the forces that produced it. But the further assumption 
that it must necessarily outlive these forces contradicts Marx's theory which looks upon 
consciousness as a mirror or as a product of hard social realities. And yet, this further 
assumption must be made by anybody who holds with Marx that the dialectic of history 
must lead to sociahsm. 

The following passage from the Communist Manifesto {H.o.M., 46 f. = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 
46) is particularly interesting in this context; it contains a clear statement that the class 
consciousness of the workers is a mere consequence of the 'force of circumstances', i.e. the 
pressure of the class situation; but it contains, at the same time, the doctrine criticized in the 
text, namely, the prophecy of the classless society. This is the passage: 'In spite of the fact 
that the proletariat is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class 
during its struggle with the bourgeoisie; in spite of the fact that, by means of revolution, it 
makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of 
production; in spite of these facts, it will sweep away, along with these conditions, also the 
conditions for the existence of any class antagonism and of any classes, and will thereby 
aboHsh its own supremacy as a class. — In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes 
and class antagonism, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is 
the warrant for the free development of all.' (Cp. also text to note 8 to this chapter.) It is a 
beautiful belief, but it is an aesthetic and romantic belief; it is a wishful 'Utopianism', to use 
Marxist terminology, not a 'scientific socialism'. 

Marx fought against what he called 'Utopianism', and rightly so. (Cp. chapter 9.) But since 
he was himself a romantic, he failed to discern the most dangerous element in Utopianism, 
its romantic hysteria, its aestheticist irrationalism; instead, he fought against its (admittedly 
most immature) attempts at rational planning, opposing to them his historicism. (Cp. note 21 
to the present chapter.) 

For all his acute reasoning and for all his attempts to use scientific method, Marx permitted 
irrational and aesthetic sentiments to usurp, in places, complete control of his thoughts. 
Nowadays one calls this wishful thinking. It was romantic, irrational, and even mystical 



wishful thinking that led Marx to assume that the collective class unity and class solidarity of 
the workers would last after a change in the class situation. It is thus wishfiil thinking, a 
mystical collectivism, and an irrational reaction to the strain of civilization which leads Marx 
to prophesy the necessary advent of socialism. 

This kind of romanticism is one of the elements of Marxism which appeals most strongly to 
many of its followers. It is expressed, for example, most touchingly in the dedication of 
Hecker's Moscow Dialogues. Hecker speaks here of socialism as of 'a social order where the 
strife of class and race shall be no more, and where truth, goodness and beauty shall be the 
share of all'. Who would not like to have heaven on earth! And yet, it must be one of the 
first principles of rational politics that we cannot make heaven on earth. We are not going to 
become Free Spirits or angels at least not for the next couple of centuries or so. We are 
bound to this earth by our metabohsm, as Marx once wisely declared; or as Christianity puts 
it, we are spirit and flesh. Thus we must be more modest. In politics and in medicine, he 
who promises too much is likely to be a quack. We must try to improve things, but we must 
get rid of the idea of a philosopher's stone, of a formula which will convert our corrupt 
human society into pure, lasting gold. 

At the back of all this is the hope of casting out the devil from our world. Plato thought he 
could do it by banishing him to the lower classes, and ruling over him. The anarchists 
dreamt that once the state, the Political System, was destroyed, everything must turn out 
well. And Marx dreamt a similar dream of banishing the devil by destroying the economic 
system. 

These remarks are not intended to imply that it is impossible to make even rapid advances, 
perhaps even through the introduction of comparatively small reforms, such as, for example, 
a reform of taxation, or a reduction of the rate of interest. I only wish to insist that we must 
expect every elimination of an evil to create, as its unwanted repercussion, a host of new 
though possibly very much lesser evils, which may be on an altogether different plane of 
urgency. Thus the second principle of sane politics would be: all politics consists in 
choosing the lesser evil (as the Viennese poet and critic K. Kraus put it). And politicians 
should be zealous in the search for the evils their actions must necessarily produce instead of 
concealing them, since a proper evaluation of competing evils must otherwise become 



impossible. 

5. Although I do not intend to deal with Marx's dialectics (cp. note 4 to chapter 13), I may 
show that it would be possible to 'strengthen' Marx's logically inconclusive argument by so- 
called 'dialectical reasoning'. In accordance with this reasoning, all we need is to describe 
the antagonistic trends within capitalism in such a manner that socialism (for instance in the 
form of a totalitarian state-capitalism) appears as the necessary synthesis. The two 
antagonistic tendencies of capitalism can then perhaps be described thus. Thesis: The 
tendency towards the accumulation of capital in a few hands; towards industrialization and 
bureaucratic control of industry; towards economic and psychological levelling of the 
workers through the standardization of needs and desires. Antithesis: The increasing misery 
of the great masses; their increasing class consciousness in consequence of {a) class war, 
and {b) their increasing realization of their paramount significance within an economic 
system like that of an industrial society in which the working class is the only productive 
class, and accordingly the only essential class. (Cp. also note 15 to chapter 19, and text.) 

It is hardly necessary to show how the desired Marxist synthesis emerges; but it may be 
necessary to insist that a slightly changed emphasis in the description of the antagonistic 
tendency may lead to very different 'syntheses'; in fact, to any other synthesis one wishes to 
defend. For instance, one could easily present fascism as a necessary synthesis; or perhaps 
'technocracy'; or else, a system of democratic interventionism. 

6. *Bryan Magee writes about this passage: 'This is what The New Class by Djilas is all about: 
a fully worked out theory of the realities of the Communist revolution, written by an 
unrepentant Communist.'* 

7. The history of the working-class movement is full of contrasts. It shows that the workers 
have been ready for the greatest sacrifices in their fight for the liberation of their own class, 
and beyond this, of mankind. But there are also many chapters telling a sorry tale of quite 
ordinary selfishness and of the pursuit of sectional interest to the detriment of all. 

It is certainly understandable that a trade union which obtains a great advantage for its 
members through solidarity and collective bargaining should try to exclude those from these 
benefits who are not prepared to join the union; for instance, by incorporating in their 



collective contracts the condition that only members of the union are to be employed. But it 
is a very different matter, and indeed indefensible, if a union which in this way has obtained 
a monopoly closes its membership list, thus keeping out fellow workers who want to join, 
without even establishing a just method (such as the strict adherence to a waiting list) of 
admitting new members. That such things can occur shows that the fact that a man is a 
worker does not always prevent him from forgetting all about the solidarity of the oppressed 
and from making full use of the economic prerogatives he may possess, i.e. from exploiting 
his fellow workers. 

8. Cp. The Communist Manifesto {H.o.M., 47 = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 546); the passage is 
quoted more fully in note 4 to this chapter, where Marx's romanticism is dealt with. 

9. The term 'capitalism' is much too vague to be used as a name of a definite historical period. 
The term 'capitalism' was originally used in a disparaging sense, and it has retained this 
sense ('system favouring big profits made by people who do not work') in popular usage. 
But at the same time it has also been used in a neutral scientific sense, but with many 
different meanings. In so far as, according to Marx, all accumulations of means of 
production may be termed 'capital', we may even say that 'capitalism' is in a certain sense 
synonymous with 'industrialism'. We could in this sense quite correctly describe a 
communist society, in which the state owns all capital, as 'state-capitalism'. For these 
reasons, I suggest using the name 'unrestrained capitalism' for that period which Marx 
analysed and christened 'capitalism', and the name interventionism for our own period. The 
name 'interventionism' could indeed cover the three main types of social engineering in our 
time: the collectivist interventionism of Russia; the democratic interventionism of Sweden 
and the 'Smaller Democracies' and the New Deal in America; and even the fascist methods 
of regimented economy. What Marx called 'capitalism' — i.e. unrestrained capitalism — has 
completely 'withered away' in the twentieth century. 

10 . The Swedish 'social democrats', the party which inaugurated the Swedish experiment, had 
once been Marxist; but it gave up its Marxist theories shortly after its decision to accept 
governmental responsibilities and to embark upon a great programme of social reform. One 
of the aspects in which the Swedish experiment deviates from Marxism is its emphasis upon 



the consumer, and the role played by the consumer co-operatives, as opposed to the 
dogmatic Marxist emphasis upon production. The technological economic theory of the 
Swedes is strongly influenced by what Marxists would call 'bourgeois economies', while the 
orthodox Marxist theory of value plays no role in it whatever. 

11 . For this programme, see H.o.M., 46 (= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 545). — With point (1), cp. text 
to note 15 to chapter 19. 

It may be remarked that even in one of the most radical statements ever made by Marx, the 
Address to the Communist League (1850), he considered a progressive income tax a most 
revolutionary measure. In the fmal description of revolutionary tactics towards the end of 
this address which culminates in the battle cry 'Revolution in permanence!' Marx says: 'If 
the democrats propose proportional taxation, the workers must demand progressive taxation. 
And should the democrats themselves declare for a moderate progressive tax, the workers 
must insist upon a steeply graduated tax; so steeply graduated as to cause the collapse of 
large capital.' (Cp. H.o.M., 70, and especially note 44 to chapter 20.) 

12 . For my conception of piecemeal social engineering, cp. especially chapter 9. For political 
intervention in economic matters, and a more precise explanation of the term 
interventionism, see note 9 to this chapter and text. 

13 . I consider this criticism of Marxism very important. It is mentioned in sections 17/18 of my 
The Poverty of Historicism; and as stated there, it can be parried by proffering a historicist 
moral theory. But I believe that only if such a theory (cp. chapter 22, especially notes 5 ff. 
and text) is accepted can Marxism escape the charge that it teaches 'the belief in political 
miracles'. (This term is due to Julius Kraft.) See also notes 4 and 21 to the present chapter. 

14 . For the problem of compromise, cp. a remark at the end of the paragraph to which note 3 to 
chapter 9 is appended. For a justification of the remark in the text, 'For they do not plan for 
the whole of society', see chapter 9 . and my The Poverty of Historicism, II (especially the 
criticism of holism). 

15. F. A. von Hayek (cp., for example, his Freedom and the Economic System, Chicago, 1939) 
insists that a centralized 'planned economy' must involve the gravest dangers to individual 
freedom. But he also emphasizes that planning for freedom is necessary. ('Planning for 



freedom' is also advocated by Mannheim, in his Man and Society in an Age oj 
Reconstruction, 1941. But since his idea of 'planning' is emphatically collectivistic and 
holistic, I am convinced that it must lead to tyranny, and not to freedom; and, indeed, 
Mannheim's 'freedom' is the offspring of Hegel's. Cp. the end of chapter 23, and my paper 
quoted at the end of the preceding note.) 

16 . This contradiction between the Marxist historical theory and the Russian historical reality is 
discussed in chapter 15, notes 13/14, and text. 

17 . This is another contradiction between Marxist theory and historical practice; as opposed to 
that mentioned in the last note, this second contradiction has given rise to many discussions 
and attempts to explain the matter by the introduction of auxihary hypotheses. The most 
important of these is the theory of imperialism and colonial exploitation. This theory asserts 
that the revolutionary development is frustrated in countries in which the proletarian in 
common with the capitalist reaps where not he but the oppressed natives of the colonies 
have sown. This hypothesis which is undoubtedly refuted by developments like those in the 
non-imperialistic Smaller Democracies will be discussed more fully in chapter 20 (text to 
notes 37-40). 

Many social democrats interpreted the Russian revolution, in accordance with Marx's 
scheme, as a belated 'bourgeois revolution', insisting that this revolution was bound up with 
an economic development parallel to the 'industrial revolution' in the more advanced 
countries. But this interpretation assumes, of course, that history must conform with the 
Marxist scheme. In fact, such an essentialist problem as whether the Russian revolution is a 
belated industrial revolution or a premature 'social revolution' is of a purely verbal 
character; and if it leads to difficulties within Marxism, then this shows only that Marxism 
has verbal difficulties in describing events which have not been foreseen by its founders. 

18 . The leaders were able to inspire in their followers an enthusiastic faith in their mission — to 
liberate mankind. But the leaders also were responsible for the ultimate failure of their 
politics, and the breakdown of the movement. This failure was due, very largely, to 
intellectual irresponsibility. The leaders had assured the workers that Marxism was a science, 
and that the intellectual side of the movement was in the best hands. But they never adopted 



a scientific, i.e. a critical, attitude towards Marxism. As long as they could apply it (and what 
is easier than this?), as long as they could interpret history in articles and speeches, they 
were intellectually satisfied. (Cp. also notes 19 and 22 to this chapter.) 

19 . For a number of years prior to the rise of fascism in Central Europe a very marked 
defeatism within the ranks of the social democratic leaders was noticeable. They began to 
believe that fascism was an unavoidable stage in social development. That is to say, they 
began to make some amendments to Marx's scheme, but they never doubted the soundness 
of the historicist approach; they never saw that such a question as 'Is fascism an unavoidable 
stage in the development of civilization?' may be totally misleading. 

20 . The Marxist movement in Central Europe had few precedents in history. It was a movement 
which, in spite of the fact that it professed atheism, can truly be called a great religious 
movement. (Perhaps this may impress some of those intellectuals who do not take Marxism 
seriously.) Of course, it was a collectivist and even a tribahst movement, in many ways. But 
it was a movement of the workers to educate themselves for their great task; to emancipate 
themselves, to raise the standard of their interests and of their pastimes; to substitute 
mountaineering for alcohol, classical music for swing, serious books for thrillers. 'The 
emancipation of the working class can only be achieved by the workers themselves' was 
their belief (For the deep impression made by this movement on some observers, see, for 
example, G. E. R. Gedye's Fallen Bastions, 1939.) 

21 . The quotation is from Marx's Preface to the second edition of Capital (cp. Capital, 870; cp. 
also note 6 to chapter 13). It shows how fortunate Marx was in his reviewers (cp. also note 
30 to chapter 17, and text). 

Another most interesting passage in which Marx expresses his anti-Utopianism and 
historicism can be found mThe Civil War in France {H.o.M., 150, K. Marx, Z)er 
Buergerkrieg in Frankreich, A. Willaschek, Hamburg 1920, 65-66), where Marx says 
approvingly of the Paris Commune of 1871: 'The working class did not expect miracles from 
the Commune. They have no ready-made Utopias, to be introduced by the decree of the 
people. They know that in order to achieve their own emancipation, and with it, those higher 
forms to which our present society is irresistibly tending, . . . they will have to pass through 



long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men. 
They have no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which the 
old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant.' There are few passages in Marx which 
exhibit the historicist lack of plan more strikingly. 'They have to pass through long struggles 
Marx says. But if they have no plan to realize, 'no ideals to realize', as Marx says, what 
are they struggling for? They 'did not expect miracles', Marx says; but he himself expected 
miracles in believing that the historical struggle irresistibly tends to 'higher forms' of social 
life. (Cp. notes 4 and 13 to the present chapter.) Marx was to a certain extent justified in his 
refusal to embark upon social engineering. To organize the workers was undoubtedly the 
most important practical task of his day. If such a suspect excuse as 'the time was not ripe 
for it' can ever be justly applied, it must be applied to Marx's refusal to dabble in the 
problems of rational institutional social engineering. (This point is illustrated by the childish 
character of the Utopian proposals down to and including, say, Bellamy.) But it was 
unfortunate that he supported this sound political intuition by a theoretical attack upon social 
technology. This became an excuse for his dogmatic followers to continue in the same 
attitude at a time when things had changed, and technology had become politically more 
important even than organizing the workers. 

22 . The Marxist leaders interpreted the events as the dialectical ups and downs of history. They 
thus functioned as cicerones, as guides through the hills (and valleys) of history rather than 
as political leaders of action. This dubious art of interpreting the terrible events of history 
instead of fighting them was forcefully denounced by the poet K. Kraus (mentioned in note 
4 to this chapter). 



Notes to Chapter Nineteen 



1. Cp. Capital, 846 =H.o.M., 403. 

2. The passage is from Marx-Engels, The Communist Manifesto . (Cp. H.o.M., 31 = GA, Series 
I, vol. vi, 533.) 

3. Cp. Capital, 547 = H.o.M., 560 (where it is quoted by Lenin). 

A remark may be made concerning the term 'concentration of capital' (which I have 
translated in the text 'concentration of capital in a few hands'). 

In the third edition of Capital (cp. Capital, 689 ff.) Marx introduced the following 
distinctions: (a) by accumulation of capital he means merely the growth in the total amount 
of capital goods, for example, within a certain region; (b) by concentration of capital he 
means (cp. 689/690) the normal growth of the capital in the hands of the various individual 
capitalists, a growth which arises from the general tendency towards accumulation and 
which gives them command over an increasing number of workers; (c) by centralization he 
means (cp. 691) that kind of growth of capital which is due to the expropriation of some 
capitalists by other capitalists ('one capitalist lays many of his fellows low'). 
In the second edition, Marx had not yet distinguished between concentration and 
centralization; he used the term 'concentration' in both senses {b) and (c). To show the 
difference, we read in the third edition {Capital, 691): 'Here we have genuine centralization, 
in contradistinction to accumulation and concentration.' In the second edition, we read at 
this place: 'Here we have genuine concentration, in contradistinction to accumulation.' The 
alteration, however, was not made throughout the book, but only in a few passages 
(especially pp. 690-3, and 846). In the passage here quoted in the text, the wording 
remained the same as in the second edition. In the passage (p. 846) quoted in the text to note 
15 to this chapter, Marx replaced 'concentration' by 'centralization'. 

4. Cp. Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire {H.o.M., 123; italics mine = Karl Marx, Der Achtzehnte 
Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte, Verlag fur Literatur und Politik. Wien-Berlin 1927, 28-29): 
'The bourgeois republic triumphed. On its side stood the aristocracy of finance, the 
industrial bourgeoisie, the middle class, the petty bourgeoisie, the army, the rabble 



proletariat, organized as the Mobile Guard, the intellectual lights, the clergy, and the rural 
population. On the side of the Paris proletariat stood none but the proletariat itself.' 
For an incredibly naive statement made by Marx concerning the 'rural producers', cp. also 
note 43 to chapter 20. 

5. Cp. text to note 1 1 to chapter 18. 

6. Cp. the quotation in note 4 to the present chapter, especially the reference to the middle 
class and to the 'intellectual lights'. 

For the 'rabble proletariat', cp. the same place and Capital, 711 f. (The term is there 
translated as 'tatterdemalion proletariat'.) 

7. For the meaning of 'class consciousness' in Marx's sense, see end of section I in chapter 16. 
Apart from the possible development of a defeatist spirit, as mentioned in the text, there are 
other things which may undermine the class consciousness of the workers, and which may 
lead to disunion among the working class. Lenin, for example, mentions that imperialism 
may split the workers by offering them a share in its spoils; he writes {H.o.M., 101 = V. I. 
Lenin, L.L.L., Imperialism, the Highest State of Capitalism, vol. xv, 96; cp. also note 40 to 
chapter 20): '... in Great Britain, the tendency of imperialism to split the workers, to 
strengthen the opportunists among them, and to cause temporary decay in the working-class 
movement, revealed itself much earlier than at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning 
of the twentieth centuries.' 

H. B. Parkes rightly mentions in his excellent analysis, Marxism — A Post Mortem (1940; also 
published under the title Marxism — An Autopsy), that it is quite possible that entrepreneurs 
and workers may together exploit the consumer; in a protected or monopolist industry, they 
may share in the spoil. This possibility shows that Marx exaggerates the antagonism between 
the interests of the workers and entrepreneurs. 

And lastly it may be mentioned that the tendency of most governments to proceed along the 
line of least resistance is liable to lead to the following result. Since workers and 
entrepreneurs are the best organized and politically most powerful groups in the community, 
a modern government may easily tend to satisfy both at the expense of the consumer. And it 
may do so without a guilty conscience; for it will persuade itself that it has done well by 



establishing peace between the most antagonistic parties in the community. 

8. Cp. text to notes 17 and 18 to this chapter. 

9. Some Marxists even dare to assert that there would be far less suffering involved in a violent 
social revolution than in the chronic evils inherent in what they call 'capitalism'. (Cp. L. 
Lamat, Marxism and Democracy, translated by E. Fitzgerald, 1940; p. 38, note 2; Laurat 
criticizes Sidney Hook, Towards an Understanding of Marx , for holding such views.) These 
Marxists do not, however, disclose the scientific basis of this estimate; or to speak more 
bluntly, of this utterly irresponsible piece of oracular pretence. 

10 . 'It should be plain without any further comment', Engels says about Marx, remembering his 
Hegel, 'that if things and their mutual relations are taken to be variable instead of fixed, then 
their mental images, their notions, will be subject to variation and transformation also; that 
one does not attempt to force them into the pigeonholes of rigid definitions; but that one 
treats them, as the case may be, according to the historical or logical character of the process 
by which they have been formed.' (Cp. Engels' Preface to Das Kapital, III/l, p. xvi.) 

11. It does not correspond precisely because the Communists sometimes profess the more 
moderate theory, especially in those countries where this theory is not represented by the 
Social Democrats. Cp., for example, text to note 26 to this chapter. 

12 . Cp. notes 4 and 5 to chapter 17, and text; as well as note 14 to the present chapter; and 
contrast with notes 17 and 18 to the present chapter, and text. 

13 . There are, of course, positions between these two; and there are also more moderate Marxist 
positions: especially A. Bernstein's so-called 'revisionism'. This latter position, in fact, gives 
up Marxism altogether; it is nothing but the advocacy of a strictly democratic and non- 
violent workers' movement. 

14 . This development of Marx's is, of course, an interpretation, and not a very convincing one; 
the fact is that Marx was not very consistent, and that he used the terms 'revolution', 'force', 
'violence', etc., with a systematic ambiguity. This position was partly forced upon him by 
the fact that history during his lifetime did not proceed according to his plan. It conformed to 
the Marxist theory in so far as it exhibited most clearly a tendency away from what Marx 



called 'capitalism', i.e. away from non-intervention. Marx frequently referred with 
satisfaction to this tendency, for example, in his Preface to the first edition of Capital. (Cp. 
the quotation in note 16 to the present chapter; see also the text.) On the other hand, this 
same tendency (towards interventionism) led to an improvement of the lot of the workers in 
opposition to Marx's theory; and it thereby reduced the likelihood of a revolution. Marx's 
wavering and ambiguous interpretations of his own teaching are probably the result of this 
situation. 

In order to illustrate the point, two passages may be quoted, one from an early and one from 
a late work of Marx. The early passage is from the Address to the Communist League (1850; 
cp.H.o.M., pp. 60 ff. = Labour Monthly, September 1922, 136 ff). The passage is 
interesting because it is practical. Marx assumes that the workers together with the bourgeois 
democrats have won the battle against feudalism and have set up a democratic regime. Marx 
insists that after having achieved this, the battle-cry of the workers must be 'Revolution in 
permanence!' What this means is explained in detail (p. 66): 'They must act in such a 
manner that the revolutionary excitement does not collapse immediately after the victory. On 
the contrary, they must maintain it as long as possible. Far from opposing so-called 
excesses, such as the sacrificing to popular revenge of hated individuals or public buildings 
to which hateful memories are attached, such deeds must not only be tolerated, but their 
direction must be taken in hand, for example's sake.' (Cp. also note 35 (1) to this chapter, 
and note 44 to chapter 20.) 

A moderate passage which contrasts with the previous one may be chosen from Marx's 
Address to the First International (Amsterdam, 1872; cp. L. Laurat, op. cit., p. 36): 'We do 
not deny that there are countries, such as the United States and Great Britain — if I knew your 
institutions better, I should perhaps add Holland — where the workers will be able to achieve 
their aims by peaceftil means. But this is not the case in all countries.' For these more 
moderate views, cp. also text to notes 16-18 to the present chapter. 

But the whole confusion can be found in a nutshell as early as in the fmal summary of the 
Manifesto where we find the following two contradictory statements, separated by one 
sentence only: (1) 'In short, the Communists support everywhere every revolutionary 
movement against the existing social and political order of things.' (This must include 



England, for example.) (2) Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of 
the democratic parties of all countries.' To make the confusion complete, the next sentences 
run: 'The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that 
their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.' 
(Democratic conditions are not excluded.) 

15 . Cp. Capital, 846 =H.o.M., 403 f. (Concerning the term 'centralization', substituted in the 
third edition for the term 'concentration' of the second edition, cp. note 3 to the present 
chapter. Concerning the translation 'their capitalist cloak becomes a straitjacket', it may be 
remarked that a more literal translation would be: 'they become incompatible with their 
capitalist wrapper' or 'cloak' or slightly more freely: 'their capitaHst cloak becomes 
intolerable'.) 

This passage is strongly influenced by Hegelian dialectics, as is shown by its continuation. 
(Hegel called the antithesis of a thesis sometimes its negation, and the synthesis the 
'negation of the negation'.) 'The capitalist method of appropriation', Marx writes, '... is the 
first negation of individual private property based upon individual labour. But with the 
inexorability of a law of nature, capitaHst production begets its own negation. It is the 
negation of the negation. This second negation . . . establishes . . . the common ownership of 
the land and of the means of production.' (For a more detailed dialectical derivation of 
socialism, cp. note 5 to chapter 18.) 

16. This was the attitude taken up by Marx in his Preface to the first edition of Capital (Capital, 
865), where he says: 'Still, progress is undeniable ... The foreign representatives of the 
British crown . . . tell us . . . that in the more advanced countries of the European continent, a 
change in the relations between capital and labour is just as obvious and as inevitable as in 
England . . . Mr. Wade, the vice-president of the United States of North America . . . declares 
at public meetings that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change in the conditions of 
capital and landed property comes next on the agenda!' (Cp. also note 14 to this chapter.) 

17 . Cp. Engels' Preface to the first English edition of Capital. (Capital, 887.) The passage is 
quoted more fully in note 9 to chapter 17. 

18 . Cp. Marx's letter to Hyndman, dated December 8th, 1880; see H. H. Hyndman, The Record 



of an Adventurous Life (1911), p. 283. Cp. also L. Laurat, op. cit., 239. The passage may be 
quoted here more fully: 'If you say that you do not share the views of my party for England 
I can only reply that that party considers an English revolution noinecessary, but — 
according to historic precedents — possible. If the unavoidable evolution turns into a 
revolution, it would not only be the fault of the ruling classes, but also of the working class.' 
(Note the ambiguity of the position.) 

19 . H. B. VdiX\.QS, Marxism — A Post Mortem, p. 101 (cp. also pp. 106 ff.), expresses a similar 
view; he insists that the Marxist 'belief that capitalism cannot be reformed but can only be 
destroyed' is one of the characteristic tenets of the Marxist theory of accumulation. 'Adopt 
some other theory', he says, and it remains possible for capitaHsm to be transformed by 
gradual methods.' 

20. Cp. the end of \hQ Manifesto (H.o.M., 59 = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 557): 'The proletarians 
have nothing to lose but their fetters. They have a world to win.' 

21 . Cp. the Manifesto (H.o.M., 45 = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 545); the passage is quoted more fully 
in text to note 35 to this chapter. — The last quotation in this paragraph is from the Manifesto, 
H.o.M., 35 (= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 536). Cp. also note 35 to this chapter. 

22 . But social reforms have rarely been carried out under the pressure of those who suffer; 
religious movements — I include the Utilitarians — and individuals (like Dickens) may 
influence public opinion greatly. And Henry Ford discovered, to the astonishment of all 
Marxists and many 'capitalists' that a rise in wages may benefit the employer. 

23 . Cp. notes 18 and 21 to chapter 18. 

24. Cp. H.o.M., 37 (= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 538). 

25 . Cp. The State and Revolution, H.o.M., 756 (= State and Revolution, 77). Here is the passage 
in full: 'Democracy is of great importance for the working class in its struggle for freedom 
against the capitalists. But democracy is by no means a limit one may not overstep; it is only 
one of the stages in the course of the development from feudalism to capitalism, and from 
capitalism, to Communism.' 

Lenin insists that democracy means only 'formal equality'. Cp. also H.o.M., 834 (= V. I. 



Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky. L.L.L., vol. xviii, 34), where 
Lenin uses this HegeHan argument of merely 'formal' equality against Kautsky: he 
accepts the formal equality, which under capitaHsm is merely a fraud and a piece of 
hypocrisy at its face value as a de facto equality . . . ' 

26 . Cp. Parkes, Marxism — A Post Mortem, p. 219. 

27 . Such a tactical move is in keeping with the Manifesto which announces that the 
Communists 'labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all 
countries', but which announces at the same time 'that their ends can be attained only by the 
forcible overthrow of existing social conditions', which include democratic conditions. 

But such a tactical move is also in keeping with the party programme of 1928; for this says 
{H.O.M., 1036; italics mine = The Programme of the Communist International, Modem 
Books Ltd., London 1932, 61): 'In determining its line of tactics each Communist Party must 
take into account the concrete internal and external situation ... The party determines 
slogans ... with a view to organizing ... the masses on the broadest possible scale.' But this 
cannot be achieved without making full use of the systematic ambiguity of the term 
revolution. 

28 . Cp. H.O.M., 59 and 1042 {= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 557, dind Programme of the Communist 
International, 65); and end of note 14 to this chapter. (See also note 37.) 

29 . This is not a quotation but a paraphrase. Cp., for example, the passage from Engels' Preface 
to the first English edition of Capital quoted in note 9 to chapter 17. See also L. Laurat, op. 
cit., p. 240. 

30 . The first of the two passages is quoted by L. Laurat, loc. cit.; for the second, cp. H.o.M., 93 
(= Karl Marx, The Class Struggle in France 1848-1850. Introduction by F. Engels. Co- 
operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., Moscow 1934, 29). Italics 
mine. 

31 . Engels was partly conscious that he had been forced to a change of front since 'History has 
proved us wrong, and all who thought like us', as he said {H.o.M., 79 = Karl Marx, 
Klassenkampfe in Frankreich, Vorwaerts, Berlin 1890, 8). But he was conscious mainly of 



one mistake: that he and Marx had overrated the speed of the development. That the 
development was, in fact, in a different direction, he never admitted, although he 
complained of it; cp. text to notes 38-9 to chapter 20, where I quote Engels' paradoxical 
complaint that the 'working class is actually becoming more and more bourgeois'. 

32 . Cp. notes 4 and 6 to chapter 7. 

33 . They may continue for other reasons also; for example, because the tyrant's power depends 
on the support of a certain section of the ruled. But this does not mean that the tyranny must 
in fact be a class rule, as the Marxists would say. For even if the tyrant is forced to bribe a 
certain section of the population, to grant them economic or other advantages, this does not 
mean that he is forced by this section, or that this section has the power to claim and to 
enforce these advantages as their right. If there are no institutions in existence enabling that 
section to enforce its influence, the tyrant may withdraw the benefits enjoyed by this section 
and seek support from another one. 

34 . Cp. H.O.M., 171 (= Karl Marx, Civil War in France, Introduction by F. Engels. Martin 
Lawrence, London 1933, 19). (See also H.o.M., 833 = The Proletarian Revolution, 33-34.) 

35 . Cp. H.O.M., 45 (= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 545). See also note 21 to this chapter. Cp. further the 
following passage from i^Q Manifesto {H.o.M., 1)1 = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 538): 'The 
immediate aim of the Communists is the ... conquest of political power by the proletariat. ' 
(1) Tactical advice that must lead to the loss of the battle of democracy is given in detail by 
Marx in Address to the Communist League . {H.o.M., 67 = Labour Monthly, September 
1922, 143; cp. also note 14 to this chapter and note 44 to chapter 20.) Marx explains there 
the attitude to be taken up, after democracy has been attained, towards the democratic party 
with whom, according to ihQ Manifesto (cp. note 14 to this chapter), the Communists have 
had to establish 'union and agreement'. Marx says: 'In short, from the first moment of 
victory, we must no longer direct our distrust against the beaten reactionary enemy, but 
against our former allies' (i.e. the democrats). 

Marx demands that 'the arming of the whole proletariat with rifles, guns, and ammunition 
should be carried out at once' and that 'the workers must try to organize themselves into an 
independent guard, with their own chiefs and general staff. The aim is 'that the bourgeois 



democratic Government not only immediately loses all backing among the workers, but 
from the commencement finds itself under the supervision and threats of authorities behind 
whom stands the entire mass of the working class'. 

It is clear that this policy is bound to wreck democracy. It is bound to make the Government 
turn against those workers who are not prepared to abide by the law, but try to rule by 
threats. Marx tries to excuse his politics by prophecy {H.o.M., 68 and 67 = Labour Monthly, 
Sept. 1922, 143): 'As soon as the new Government is established they will commence to 
fight the workers', and he says: 'In order that this party' (i.e. the democrats) 'whose betrayal 
of the workers will begin with the first hour of victory, should be frustrated in its nefarious 
work, it is necessary to organize and to arm the proletariat.' I think that his tactics would 
produce precisely the nefarious effect he prophesies. They would make his historical 
prophecy come true. Indeed, if the workers were to proceed in this way, every democrat in 
his senses would be forced (even if, and particularly if, he wished to promote the cause of 
the oppressed) to join in what Marx describes as the betrayal of the workers, and to fight 
against those who were out to wreck the democratic institutions for the protection of the 
individual from the benevolence of tyrants and Great Dictators. 

I may add that the passages quoted are comparatively early utterances of Marx and that his 
more mature opinions were probably somewhat different, and at any rate more ambiguous. 
But this does not detract from the fact that these early passages had a lasting influence, and 
that they have often been acted upon, to the detriment of all concerned. 
(2) In connection with point {b) in the text above, a passage from Lenin may be quoted 
{H.o.M. , 828 = The Proletarian Revolution, 30): '... the working class realizes perfectly well 
that the bourgeois parliaments are institutions foreign to them, that they are instruments oj 
the oppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, that they are institutions of the hostile 
class, of the exploiting minority.' It is clear that these stories did not encourage the workers 
to defend parliamentary democracy against the assault of the fascists. 

36 . Cp. Lenin, State and Revolution {H.o.M., 744 = State and Revolution, 68): 'Democracy ... 
for the rich, that is the democracy of capitaHst society ... Marx brilliantly grasped the 
essence of capitalist democracy when ... he said that the oppressed were allowed, once 
every few years, to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class should . . . 



oppress them!' See also notes 1 and 2 to chapter 17. 

37 . Lenin writes in Left-Wing Communism {H.o.M., 884 f.; italics mine = V. I. Lenin, Left-Wing 
Communism, An Infantile Disorder. L.L.L. vol. xvi, 72-73): all attention must be 
concentrated on the next step ... on seeking out the forms of transition or approach to the 
proletarian revolution. The proletarian vanguard has been ideologically won over ... But 
from this first step it is still a long way to victory ... In order that the entire class . . . may take 
up such a position, propaganda and agitation alone are not enough. The masses must have 
their own political experience. Such is the fundamental law of all great revolutions it has 
been necessary ... to realize through their own painful experience ... the absolute 
inevitability of a dictatorship of the extreme reactionaries ... as the only alternative to a 
dictatorship of the proletariat, in order to turn them resolutely towards communism.' 

38 . As is to be expected, each of the two Marxist parties tries to put the blame for their failure 
on the other; the one blames the other for its policy of catastrophe, and in its turn is blamed 
by the latter for keeping up the workers' faith in the possibility of winning the battle of 
democracy. It is somewhat ironical to find that Marx himself has given an excellent 
description which fits every detail of this method of blaming the circumstances, and 
especially the competing party, for one's failure. (The description was, of course, aimed by 
Marx against a competing leftist group of his time.) Marx writes {H.o.M., 130; last group of 
italics mine = V. I. Lenin, The Teachings of Karl Marx, L.L.L. vol. i, 55): 'They do not need 
to consider their own resources too critically. They have merely to give the signal, and the 
people, with all its inexhaustible resources, will fall upon the oppressors. If, in the actual 
event, their ... powers prove to be sheer impotence, then the fault lies either with the 
pernicious sophists' (the other party, presumably) 'who split the united people into different 
hostile camps, or ... the whole thing has been wrecked by a detail in its execution, or else an 
unforeseen accident has, for the time being, spoilt the game. In any case the democrat' (or 
the antidemocrat) 'comes out of the most disgraceful defeat immaculate, just as he went into 
it innocent, with the newly won conviction that he is destined to conquer; that neither he 
himself nor his party have to give up their old standpoint, but, on the contrary, conditions 
have to ripen, to move in his direction ...' 



39 . I say 'the radical wing', for this historicist interpretation of fascism as being an inevitable 
stage in the inexorable development was believed in, and defended, by groups far beyond 
the ranks of the Communists. Even some of the leaders of the Viennese workers who offered 
a heroic but belated and badly organized resistance to fascism believed faithfully that 
fascism was a necessary step in the historical development towards socialism. Much as they 
hated it, they felt compelled to regard even fascism as a step forward, bringing the suffering 
people nearer to the ultimate goal. 

40 . Cp. the passage quoted in note 37 to this chapter. 



Notes to Chapter Twenty 



1. The only complete English translation of the three volumes of Capital has nearly 2,500 
pages. To these have to be added the three volumes which were published in German under 
the title Theories of Surplus Value; they contain material, largely historical, which Marx 
intended to use in Capital. 

2. Cp. the opposition between an unrestrained capitalism and interventionism introduced in 
chapters 16 and 17. (See notes 10 to chapter 16, 22 to chapter 17 and 9 to chapter 18, and 
text.) 

For Lenin's statement, cp. H.o.M., 561 (= The Teachings of Karl Marx, 29, italics mine). It is 
interesting that neither Lenin nor most of the Marxists appear to realize that society has 
changed since Marx. Lenin speaks in 1914 of 'contemporary society' as if it were Marx's as 
well as his contemporary society. But the Manifesto was published in 1848. 

3. For all quotations in this paragraph, cp. Capital, 691. 

4. Cp. the remarks on these terms made in note 3 to chapter 19. 

5. It would do better because the defeatist spirit, which might endanger class consciousness (as 
mentioned in the text to note 7 to chapter 19), would be less likely to develop. 

6. Cp. Capital, 697 ff. 

7. The two quotations are from Capital, 698 and 706. The term translated by 'semi-prosperity' 
would be, in a more literal translation, 'medium prosperity'. I translate 'excessive 
production' instead of 'over-production' because Marx does not mean 'over-production' in 
the sense that more is produced than can be sold now, but in the sense that so much is 
produced that a difficulty of selling it will soon develop. 

8. As Parkes puts it; cp. note 19 to chapter 19. 

9. The labour theory of value is, of course, very old. My discussion of the value theory, it must 
be remembered, is confined to the so-called 'objective value theory'; I do not intend to 
criticize the 'subjective value theory' (which should perhaps better be described as the 



theory of subjective evaluation, or of acts of choice; cp. note 14 to chapter 14). J. Viner 
kindly pointed out to me that almost the only connection between Marx's value theory and 
Ricardo's arises out of Marx's misunderstanding of Ricardo, and that Ricardo never held 
that, unit for unit, labour had any more creating power than capital. 

10 . It appears to me certain that Marx never doubted that his 'values' in some way correspond 
to market prices. The value of a commodity, he taught, is equal to that of another one if the 
average number of labour hours needed for their production is the same. If one of the two 
commodities is gold, then its weight can be considered as the price of the other commodity, 
expressed in gold; and since money is based (by law) upon gold, we thus arrive at the 
money price of a commodity. 

The actual exchange ratios on the market, Marx teaches (see especially the important 
footnote 1 to p. 153 of Capital), will oscillate about the value ratios; and accordingly, the 
market price in money will also oscillate about the corresponding value ratio to gold of the 
commodity in question. 'If the magnitude of value is transformed into price', Marx says, a 
bit clumsily {Capital, 79; italics mine), 'then this ... relation assumes the form of an ... 
exchange ratio to that commodity which functions as money' (i.e. gold). 'In this ratio 
expresses itself, however, not only the magnitude of the value of the commodity, but also 
the ups and downs, the more or less, for which special circumstances are responsible'; in 
other words, prices may fluctuate. 'The possibility ... of a derivation of price from ... value 
is therefore inherent in the price form. This is not a defect; on the contrary, it shows that the 
price form is quite adequate to a method of production in which regularities can manifest 
themselves only as averages of irregularities It seems to me clear that the 'regularities' of 
which Marx speaks here are the values, and that he believes that values 'manifest 
themselves' (or 'assert themselves') only as averages of the actual market prices, which are 
therefore oscillating about the value. 

The reason why I emphasize this is that it has sometimes been denied. G. D. H. Cole, for 
example, writes in his 'Introduction' {Capital, xxv; italics mine): 'Marx ... speaks usually as 
if commodities had actually a tendency, subsequent to temporary market fluctuations, to 
exchange at their "values". But he says explicitly (on page 79) that he does not mean this; 
and in the third volume of Capital he ... makes the inevitable divergence of prices and 



"values" abundantly clear.' But although it is true that Marx does not consider the 
fluctuations as merely 'temporary', he does hold that commodities have a tendency, subject 
to market fluctuations, to exchange at their 'values'; for as we have seen in the passage 
quoted here, and referred to by Cole, Marx does not speak of any divergence between value 
and price, but describes fluctuations and averages. The position is somewhat different in the 
third volume of Capital, where (in Chapter IX) the place of the 'value' of a commodity is 
taken by a new category, the 'production-price', which is the sum of its production cost plus 
the average rate of surplus value. But even here it remains characteristic of Marx's thinking 
that this new category, the production-price, is related to the actual market price as a kind of 
regulator of averages only. It does not determine the market price directly, but it expresses 
itself (just as does 'value' in the first volume) as an average about which the actual prices 
oscillate or fluctuate. This may be shown with the help of the following passage {Das 
Kapital, III/2, pp. 396 f.): 'The market prices rise above or fall below these regulating 
production-prices, but these oscillations compensate one another . . . The same principle of 
regulative averages rules here that has been established by Quetelet for social phenomena in 
general.' Similarly, Marx speaks there (p. 399) of the 'regulative price i.e. the price about 
which market prices oscillate'; and on the next page, where he speaks of the influence of 
competition, he says that he is interested in the 'natural price i.e. the price ... that is not 
regulated by competition, but regulates it.' (Italics mine.) Apart from the fact that the 
'natural' price clearly indicates that Marx hopes to find the essence of which the oscillating 
market prices are the 'forms of appearance' (cp. also note 23 to this chapter), we see that 
Marx consistently clings to the view that this essence, whether value or production-price, 
manifests itself as the average of the market prices. See also Das Kapital, III/l, 171 f. 

11. Cole, op. cit, xxix, says in his otherwise excellently clear statement of Marx's theory of 
Surplus Value that it was 'his distinctive contribution to economic doctrine'. But Engels, in 
his Preface to the second volume of Capital, has shown that this theory was not Marx's, that 
Marx not only never claimed that it was, but also had dealt with its history (in his Theories oj 
Surplus Value; cp. note 1 to this chapter). Engels quotes from Marx's manuscript in order to 
show that Marx deals with Adam Smith's and Ricardo's contribution to that theory and 
quotes at length from the pamphlet. The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties, 



mentioned in Capital, 646, in order to show that the main ideas of the doctrine, apart from 
the Marxian distinction between labour and labour power, can be found there. (Cp. Das 
Kapital, II, xii-xv.) 

12 . The first part is called by Marx (cp. Capital, 213 f ) necessary labour time, the second part 
surplus labour time. 

13 . Cp. Engels' Preface to the second volume of Capital. {Das Kapital, II, xxi, f ) 

14 . Marx's derivation of the doctrine of surplus value is of course closely connected with his 
criticism of 'formal' freedom, 'formal' justice, etc. Cp. especially notes 17 and 19 to chapter 
17, and text. See also the text to the next note. 

15 . Cp. Capital, 845. See also the passages referred to in the foregoing note. 

16 . Cp. the text to note 18 (and note 10) to this chapter. 

17. See especially chapter X of the third volume of Capital. 

18 . For this quotation, cp. Capital, 706. From the words 'thus surplus population', the passage 
follows immediately after the one quoted in the text to note 7 to this chapter. (I have omitted 
the word 'relative' before 'surplus population', since it is irrelevant in the present context, 
and perhaps confusing. There seems to be a misprint in the Everyman edition: 
'overproduction' instead of 'surplus population'.) The quotation is of interest in connection 
with the problem of supply and demand, and with Marx's teaching that these must have a 
'background' (or 'essence'); cp. notes 10 and 20 to this chapter. 

19 . It may be mentioned in this connection that the phenomenon in question — misery in a 
period of rapidly expanding industrialization (or of 'early capitaHsm'; cp. note 36 below, 
and text) has recently been explained by a hypothesis which, if it can be upheld, would 
show that there was a great deal in Marx's theory of exploitation. I have in mind a theory 
based on Walter Euken's doctrine of the two pure monetary systems (the gold and the credit 
system), and his method of analysing the various historically given economic systems as 
'mixtures' of pure systems. Applying this method, Leonhard Miksch has recently pointed 
out (in a paper 'Die Geldordnung der Zukunft\ Zeitschrift fur das Gesamte Kreditwesen, 



1949) that the credit system leads to forced investments, i.e. the consumer is forced to save, 
to abstain; 'but the capital saved by way of these forced investments', Miksch writes, 'does 
not belong to those who were forced to abstain from consumption, but to the entrepreneurs'. 
If this theory proves acceptable, then Marx's analysis (but neither his 'laws' nor his 
prophecies) would be vindicated to a considerable extent. For there is only a small 
difference between Marx's 'surplus value' which, by rights, belongs to the worker but is 
'appropriated' or 'expropriated' by the 'capitalist', and Miksch's 'forced savings' which 
become the property, not of the consumer who was forced to save, but of the 'entrepreneur'. 
Miksch himself hints that these results explain much of the economic development of the 
nineteenth century (and of the rise of socialism). 

It should be noted that Miksch's analysis explains the relevant facts in terms of imperfections 
in the competitive system (he speaks of an 'economic monopoly of money creation which is 
possessed of stupendous power') while Marx attempted to explain corresponding facts with 
the help of the assumption of a free market, i.e. of competition. (Furthermore, 'consumers' 
and 'industrial workers' cannot, of course, be completely identified.) But whatever the 
explanation, the facts — described by Miksch as 'intolerably anti-social' — remain; and it is to 
Marx's credit, both that he did not accept these facts, and that he tried hard to explain them. 

20 . Cp. note 10 to this chapter, especially the passage on the 'natural' price (also note 18 and 
text); it is interesting that in the third volume of Capital, not far from the passages quoted in 
note 10 to this chapter {sqq Das Kapital, III/2, 352; italics mine), and in a similar context, 
Marx makes the following methodological remark: 'All science would be superfluous if the 
forms of appearance of things coincided with their essences.' This is, of course, pure 
essentialism. That this essentialism borders on metaphysics is shown in note 24 to this 
chapter. 

It is clear that when Marx speaks repeatedly, especially in the first volume, of the price-form, 
he has a 'form of appearance' in mind; the essence is 'value'. (Cp. also note 6 to chapter 17 
and text.) 

21. In Capital, pp. 43 ff.: 'The Mystery of the Fetishistic Character of Commodities.' 

22 . Cp. Capital, 567 (see also 328), with Marx's summary: 'If the productivity of labour is 



doubled then, if the ratio of necessary labour to surplus labour remains unaltered, ... the 
only result will be that each of them will represent twice as many use-values' (i.e. 
commodities) 'as before. These use-values are now twice as cheap as before ... Thus it is 
possible, when the productivity of labour is increasing, that the price of labour power should 
keep on falling, and yet that this fall should be accompanied by a constant growth in the 
quantity of the worker's means of subsistence.' 

23 . If productivity increases more or less generally, then the productivity of the gold companies 
may also increase; and this would mean that gold, like every other commodity, becomes 
cheaper if appraised in labour hours. Accordingly, the same would hold for gold as for other 
commodities; and when Marx says (cp. the foregoing note) that the quantity of the worker's 
real income increases, this would, in theory, also be true of his income in gold, i.e. in 
money. (Marx's analysis in Capital, p. 567, of which I have quoted only a summary in the 
foregoing note, is therefore not correct wherever he speaks of 'prices'; for 'prices' are 
'values' expressed in gold, and these may remain constant if productivity increases equally 
in all lines of production, including the production of gold.) 

24 . The strange thing about Marx's value theory (as distinct from the English classical school, 
according to J. Viner) is that it considers human labour as fundamentally different from all 
other processes in nature, for example, from the labour of animals. This shows clearly that 
the theory is based ultimately upon a moral theory, the doctrine that human suffering and a 
human lifetime spent is a thing fundamentally different from all natural processes. We can 
call this the doctrine of the holiness of human labour. Now I do not deny that this theory is 
right in the moral sense; that is to say, that we should act according to it. But I also think that 
an economic analysis should not be based upon a moral or metaphysical or religious 
doctrine of which the holder is unconscious. Marx who, as we shall see in chapter 22, did 
not consciously believe in a humanitarian morality, or who repressed such beliefs, was 
building upon a moralistic basis where he did not suspect it — in his abstract theory of value. 
This is, of course, connected with his essentialism: the essence of all social and economic 
relations is human labour. 

25 . For interventionism, cp. notes 22 to chapter 17 and 9 to chapter 18. (See also note 2 to the 



present chapter.) 

26 . For the paradox of freedom in its appHcation to economic freedom, cp. note 20 to chapter 
17, where further references are given. 

The problem of the free market, mentioned in the text only in its application to the labour 
market, is of very considerable importance. Generalizing from what has been said in the 
text, it is clear that the idea of a free market is paradoxical. If the state does not interfere, 
then other semi-political organizations such as monopolies, trusts, unions, etc., may 
interfere, reducing the freedom of the market to a fiction. On the other hand, it is most 
important to realize that without a carefully protected free market, the whole economic 
system must cease to serve its only rational purpose, that is, to satisfy the demands of the 
consumer. If the consumer cannot choose; if he must take what the producer offers; if the 
producer, whether a private producer or the state or a marketing department, is master of the 
market, instead of the consumer; then the situation must arise that the consumer serves, 
ultimately, as a kind of money-supply and rubbish-remover for the producer, instead of the 
producer serving the needs and desires of the consumer. 

Here we are clearly faced with an important problem of social engineering: the market must 
be controlled, but in such a way that the control does not impede the free choice of the 
consumer and that it does not remove the need for the producers to compete for the favour 
of the consumer. Economic 'planning' that does not plan for economic freedom in this sense 
will lead dangerously close to totalitarianism. (Cp. F. A. von Hayek's Freedom and the 
Economic System, Public Policy Pamphlets, 1939/40.) 

27 . Cp. note 2 to this chapter, and text. 

28 . This distinction between machinery serving mainly for the extension and machinery serving 
mainly for the intensification of production is introduced in the text largely with the aim of 
making the presentation of the argument more lucid. Apart from that, it is also, I hope, an 
improvement of the argument. 

I may give here a list of the more important passages of Marx, bearing on the trade cycle {t- 
c), and on its connection with unemployment {u) : Manifesto, 29 f. (t-c). — Capital, 120 
(monetary crisis = general depression), 624 (t-c and currency), 694 (u), 698 (t-c), 699 (t-c 



depending on u; automatism of the cycle), 703-705 (t-c and u in interdependence), 706 f. 
(u). See also the third volume of Capital, especially chapter XV, section on Surplus oj 
Capital and Surplus of Population, H.o.M., 516-528 {t-c and u) and chapters XXV-XXXII 
{t-c and currency; cp. especially £)<35 /to/, III/2, 22 ff.). See also the passage from the 
second volume of Capital from which a sentence is quoted in note 17 to chapter 17. 

29. Cp. the Minutes of Evidence, taken before the Secret Committee of the House of Lords 
appointed to inquire into the causes of Distress , etc., 1875, quoted m Das Kapital, III/l, pp. 
398 ff 

30 . Cp. for example the two articles on Budgetary Reform by C. G. F. Simkin in the Australian 
Economic Record, 1941 and 1942 (see also note 3 to chapter 9). These articles deal with 
counter cycle policy, and report briefly on the Swedish measures. 

31 . Cp. Parkes, Marxism — A Post Mortem, especially p. 220, note 6. 

32 . The quotations are from Das Kapital, III/2, 354 f (I translate 'useful commodities' although 
'use-value' would be more literal.) 

33 . The theory I have in mind (held, or very nearly held, by J. Mill as J. Viner informs me) is 
frequently alluded to by Marx, who struggled against it without, however, succeeding in 
making his point quite clear. It can be expressed briefly as the doctrine that all capital 
reduces ultimately to wages, since the 'immobilized' (or as Marx says, 'constant') capital has 
been produced, and paid for, in wages. Or in Marx's terminology: There is no constant but 
only variable capital. 

This doctrine has been very clearly and simply presented by Parkes {op. cit, 97): 'All capital 
is variable capital. This will be plain if we consider a hypothetical industry which controls 
the whole of its processes of production from the farm or the mine to the finished product, 
without buying any machinery or raw material from outside. The entire cost of production in 
such an industry will consist of its wage bill.' And since an economic system as a whole can 
be considered as such a hypothetical industry, within which machinery (constant capital) is 
always paid for in terms of wages (variable capital), the sum total of constant capital must 
form part of the sum total of variable capital. 

I do not think that this argument, in which I once believed myself, can invalidate the 



Marxian position. (This is perhaps the only major point in which I cannot agree with 
Parkes's excellent criticism.) The reason is this. If the hypothetical industry decides to 
increase its machinery — not only to replace it, or to make necessary improvements — then 
we can look upon this process as a typical Marxian process of accumulation of capital by the 
investment of profits. In order to measure the success of this investment, we should have to 
consider whether the profits in succeeding years had increased in proportion to it. Some of 
these new profits may be invested again. Now during the year in which they were invested 
(or profits were accumulated by conversion into constant capital), they were paid for in the 
form of variable capital. But once they have been invested, they are, in the following 
periods, considered as part of the constant capital, since they are expected to contribute 
proportionally to new profits. If they do not, the rate of profit must fall, and we say that it 
was a mal-investment. The rate of profit is thus a measure of the success of an investment, of 
the productivity of the newly added constant capital, which, though originally always paid 
for in the form of variable capital, none the less becomes constant capital in the Marxian 
sense, and exerts its influence upon the rate of profit. 

34 . Cp. chapter XIII of the third volume of Capital, for example, H.o.M., 499: 'We see then, 
that in spite of the progressive fall in the rate of profit, there may be ... an absolute increase 
in the mass of the produced profit. And this increase may be progressive. And it may not 
only be so. On the basis of capitalist production, it must be so, aside from temporary 
fluctuations.' 

35 . The quotations in this paragraph are from Capital, 708 ff. 

36 . For Parkes's summary, cp. Marxism — A Post Mortem, p. 102 

It may be mentioned here that the Marxian theory that revolutions depend on misery has 
been to some extent confirmed in the last century by the outbreak of revolutions in countries 
in which misery actually increased. But contrary to Marx's prediction, these countries were 
not those of developed capitalism. They were either peasant countries or countries where 
capitalism was at a primitive stage of development. Parkes has given a list to substantiate this 
statement. (Cp. op. cit., 48.) It appears that revolutionary tendencies decrease with the 
advance of industrialization. Accordingly, the Russian revolution should not be interpreted 



as premature (nor the advanced countries as over-ripe for revolution), but rather as a product 
of the typical misery of capitalist infancy and of peasant misery, enhanced by the misery of 
war and the opportunities of defeat. See also note 19, above. 

37. Cp. H.O.M., 507 

In a footnote to this passage (i.e. Das Kapital, III/l, 219), Marx contends that Adam Smith is 
right, against Ricardo. 

The passage from Smith to which Marx probably alludes is quoted further below in the 
paragraph: it is from the Wealth of Nations (vol. II, p. 95 of the Everyman edition). 
Marx quotes a passage from Ricardo {Works, ed. MacCulloch, p. 73 = Ricardo, Everyman 
edition, p. 78). But there is an even more characteristic passage in which Ricardo holds that 
the mechanism described by Smith 'cannot ... affect the rate of profit' {Principles, 232). 

38 . For Engels, cp. H.o.M., 708 (= quoted in Imperialism, 96). 

39 . For this change of front, cp. note 3 1 to chapter 19, and text. 

40. Cp. Lcmn, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism {1911); H.o.M., 708 (= 
Imperialism, 97). 

41 . This may be an excuse, though only a very unsatisfactory excuse, for certain most 
depressing remarks of Marx, quoted by Parkes, Marxism — A Post Mortem (213 f , note 3). — 
They are most depressing since they raise the question whether Marx and Engels were the 
genuine lovers of freedom one would like them to be; whether they were not more 
influenced by Hegel's irresponsibility and by his nationalism than one should, from their 
general teaching, expect. 

42 . Cp. H.o.M., 295 (= GA, Special Volume, 290-1): 'By more and more transforming the great 
majority of the population into proletarians, the capitalist mode of production creates the 
force which ... is compelled to carry out this revolution.' For the passage from the 
Manifesto, cp. H.o.M., 35 {= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 536). — For the following passage, cp. 
H.o.M., 156 f. {= Der Buergerkrieg in Frankreich, 84). 

43. For this amazingly naive passage, cp. H.o.M., 147 f {= Der Buergerkrieg in Frankreich, 75 
f). 



44 . For this policy, cp. Marx's Address to the Communist League , quoted in notes 14 and 35- 
37 to chapter 19. (Cp. also, for example, notes 26 f. to that chapter.) See further the 
following passage from \hQ Address {H.o.M., 70 £; italics mine = Labour Monthly, Sept. 
1922, 145-6): 'Thus, for instance, if the petty bourgeoisie purpose to purchase the railways 
and factories, the workers must demand that such railways and factories shall simply be 
confiscated by the State without compensation; for they are the property of the reactionaries. 
If the democrats propose proportional taxation, the workers must demand progressive 
taxation. If the democrats themselves declare for a moderate progressive tax, the workers 
must insist on a steeply graduated tax; so steeply graduated as to cause the collapse of large 
capital. If the democrats propose the regulation of the National Debt, the workers must 
demand State bankruptcy. The demands of the workers will depend on the proposals and 
measures of the democrats. ' These are the tactics of the Communists, of whom Marx says: 
'Their battle-cry must be: "Revolution in permanence!'" 



Notes to Chapter Twenty-One 



1. Cp. notes 22 to chapter 17 and 9 to chapter 18, and text. 

2. Engels says in the Anti-Diihring that Fourier long ago discovered the 'vicious circle' of the 
capitalist mode of production; cp. H.o.M., 287. 

3. Cp. H.O.M., 527 {= Das Kapital, III/l, 242). 

4. Cp., for example, Parkes, Marxism — A Post Mortem, pp. 102 ff. 

5. This is a question which I wish to leave open. 

6. This point has been emphasized by my colleague. Prof C. G. F. Simkin, in discussions. 

7. Cp. text to note 1 1 to chapter 14, and end of note 17 to chapter 17. 

8. Cp. H. A. L. Fisher, History of Europe (1935), Preface, vol. I, p. vii. The passage is quoted 
more fully in note 27 to chapter 25. 



Notes to Chapter Twenty-Two 



1. For Kierkegaard's fight against 'official Christianity', cp. especially his Book of the Judge. 
(German edn, by H. Gottsched, 1905.) 

2. Cp. J. Townsend, A Dissertation on the Poor Laws, by a Wellwisher of Mankind (1817); 
quoted in Capital, 715. 

On p. 711 (note 1) Marx quotes 'the spirited and witty Abbe Galiani' as holding similar 
views: 'Thus it comes to pass', Galiani says, 'that the men who practise occupations of 
primary utility breed abundantly.' See Galiani, Delia Moneta, 1803, p. 78. 
The fact that even in Western countries, Christianity is not yet entirely free from the spirit of 
defending the return to the closed society of reaction and oppression can be seen from the 
excellent polemic of H. G. Wells against Dean Inge's biased and pro-fascist attitude towards 
the Spanish civil war. Cp. H. G. Wells, The Common Sense of War and Peace (1940), pp. 
38-40. (In referring to Wells's book, I do not wish to associate myself with anything he says 
on federation, whether critical or constructive; and especially not with the idea propounded 
on pp. 56 ff., regarding fully empowered world commissions. The fascist dangers involved 
in this idea seem to me enormous.) On the other hand, there is the opposite danger, that of a 
pro-communist Church; cp. note 12 to chapter 9. 

3. Cp. Kierkegaard, op. cit., 172. 

4. But Kierkegaard said something of Luther that may be true of Marx also: 'Luther's 
corrective idea ... produces ... the most sophisticated form of ... paganism.' {Op. cit., 147.) 

5. Cp. H.O.M., 231 (= Ludwig Feuerbach, 56); cp. notes 1 1 and 14 to chapter 13. 

6. Cp. note 14 to chapter 13, and text. 

7. Cp. my The Poverty ofHistoricism, section 19. 

8. Cp. H.O.M., 247 f. (= OA, Special Volume, 97). 

9. For these quotations, cp. H.o.M., 248, and 279 (the latter passage is shortened = GA, Special 
Volume, 97 and 277). 



10 . Cp. L. Laurat, Marxism and Democracy, p. 16. (Italics mine.) 

11 . For these two quotations, cp. The Churches Survey Their Task (1937), p. 130, and A. 
Loewe, The Universities in Transformation (1940), p. 1. With the concluding remark of this 
chapter, cp. also the views expressed by Parkes in the last sentences of his criticism of 
Marxism {Marxism— A Post Mortem, 1940, p. 208). 



Notes to Chapter Twenty-Three 



1. Concerning Mannheim, see especially Ideology and Utopia (quoted here from the German 
edn, 1929). The terms 'social habitat' and 'total ideology' are both due to Mannheim; the 
terms 'sociologism' and 'historism' have been mentioned in the last chapter. The idea of a 
'social habitat' is Platonic. 

For a criticism of Mannheim's Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (1941), which 
combines historicist tendencies with a romantic and even mystical holism, see my The 
Poverty ofHistoricism, II {Economica, 1944). 

2. Cp. my interpretation in 'What is Dialectic?' (Mind, 49, especially p. 414; also Conjectures 
and Refutations, especially p. 325.) 

3. This is Mannheim's term (cp. Ideology and Utopia, 1929, p. 35). For the 'freely poised 
intelligence', see op. cit., p. 123, where this term is attributed to Alfred Weber. For the 
theory of an intelligentsia loosely anchored in tradition, sqq op. cit., pp. 121-34, and 
especially p. 122. 

4. For the latter theory, or, rather, practice, cp. notes 51 and 52 to chapter 11. 

5. Cp. 'What is Dialectic?' (p. 417; Conjectures and Refutations, p. 327). Cp. note 33 to 
chapter 12. 

6. The analogy between the psycho -analytic method and that of Wittgenstein is mentioned by 
Wisdom, 'Other Minds' (Mind, vol. 49, p. 370, note): 'A doubt such as "I can never really 
know what another person is feeling" may arise from more than one of these sources. This 
over-determination of sceptical symptoms complicates their cure. The treatment is like 
psycho -analytic treatment (to enlarge Wittgenstein's analogy) in that the treatment is the 
diagnosis and the diagnosis is the description, the very full description, of the symptoms.' 
And so on. (I may remark that, using the word 'know' in the ordinary sense, we can, of 
course, never know what another person is feeling. We can only make hypotheses about it. 
This solves the so-called problem. It is a mistake to speak here of doubt, and a still worse 
mistake to attempt to remove the doubt by a semiotico-analytic treatment.) 



7. The psycho-analysts seem to hold the same of the individual psychologists, and they are 
probably right. Cp. Freud's History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement (1916), p. 42, where 
Freud records that Adler made the following remark (which fits well within Adler's 
individual-psychological scheme, according to which feelings of inferiority are 
predominantly important): 'Do you believe that it is such a pleasure for me to stand in your 
shadow my whole life?' This suggests that Adler had not successfully applied his theories to 
himself, at that time at least. But the same seems to be true of Freud: None of the founders of 
psycho-analysis were psycho-analysed. To this objection, they usually replied that they had 
psycho-analysed themselves. But they would never have accepted such an excuse from 
anybody else; and, indeed, rightly so. 

8. For the following analysis of scientific objectivity, cp. my The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 
section 8 (pp. 44 ff.). 

9. I wish to apologize to the Kantians for mentioning them in the same breath as the Hegelians. 

10 . Cp. notes 23 to chapter 8 and 39 (second paragraph) to chapter 11. 

11 . Cp. notes 34 ff., to chapter 11. 

12 . Cp. K. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (German edn, p. 167). 

13 . For the first of these two quotations, cp. op. cit., 161 . (For simplicity's sake, I translate 
'conscious' for 'reflexive'.) For the second, cp. op. cit, 166. 

14 . Cp. Handbook of Marxism, 255 (= GA, Special Volume, 117-18): 'Hegel was the first to 
state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the 
appreciation of necessity.' For Hegel's own formulation of his pet idea, cp. Hegel Selections, 
213 (= Werke, 1832-1887, vi, 310): 'The truth of necessity, therefore, is freedom.' 361 (= 
WW, xi, 46): '... the Christian principle of self-consciousness — Freedom.' 362 (= WW, xi, 
47): 'The essential nature of freedom, which involves in it absolute necessity, is to be 
displayed as the attainment of a consciousness of itself (for it is in its very nature, self- 
consciousness) and it thereby realizes its existence.' And so on. 



Notes to Chapter Twenty-Four 



1. I am here using the terni 'rationahsm' in opposition to 'irrationahsm' and not to 
'empiricism'. Carnap writes in his Der Logische Aufbau der Welt (1928), p. 260: 'The word 
"rationalism" is now often meant ... in a modern sense: in contradistinction to 
irrationahsm.' 

In using the term 'rationalism' in this way, I do not wish to suggest that the other way of 
using this term, namely, in opposition to empiricism, is perhaps less important. On the 
contrary, I believe that this opposition characterizes one of the most interesting problems of 
philosophy. But I do not intend to deal with it here; and I feel that, in opposition to 
empiricism, we might do better to use another term — perhaps 'intellectualism' or 'intellectual 
intuitionism' — in place of 'rationalism' in the Cartesian sense. I may mention in this context 
that I do not define the terms 'reason' or 'rationalism'; I am using them as labels, taking care 
that nothing depends on the words used. Cp. chapter 11, especially note 50. (For the 
reference to Kant, see note 56 to chapter 12, and text.) 

2. *This is what I tried to do in 'Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition' ( The Rationalist 
Annual, 1949, pp. 36 ff., and now in Conjectures and Refiitations, pp. 120 ff.). 

3. Cp. Plato's Timaeus 51e. (See also the cross-references in note 33 to chapter 11.) 

4. Cp. chapter 10, especially notes 38-41, and text. 

In Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, mystical and rationalist elements are mixed. 
Plato especially, in spite of all his emphasis on 'reason', incorporated into his philosophy 
such a weighty admixture of irrationahsm that it nearly ousted the rationalism he inherited 
from Socrates. This enabled the Neo-Platonists to base their mysticism on Plato; and most 
subsequent mysticism goes back to these sources. 

It may perhaps be accidental, but it is in any case remarkable that there is still a cultural 
frontier between Western Europe and the regions of Central Europe which coincide very 
nearly with those regions that did not come under the administration of Augustus' Roman 
Empire, and that did not enjoy the blessings of the Roman peace, i.e. of the Roman 
civilization. The same 'barbarian' regions are particularly prone to be affected by mysticism. 



even though they did not invent mysticism. Bernard of Clairvaux had his greatest successes 
in Germany, where later Eckhart and his school flourished, and also Boehme. 
Much later Spinoza, who attempted to combine Cartesian intellectuahsm with mystical 
tendencies, rediscovered the theory of a mystical intellectual intuition, which, in spite of 
Kant's strong opposition, led to the post-Kantian rise of 'IdeaHsm', to Fichte, Schelling, and 
Hegel. Practically all modern irrationalism goes back to the latter, as is briefly indicated in 
chapter 12. (Cp. also notes 6, 29-32 and 58, below, and notes 32-33 to chapter 11, and the 
cross-references on mysticism there given.) 

5. With the 'mechanical activities', cp. notes 21 and 22 to this chapter. 

6. I say 'discarded' in order to cover the views (1) that such an assumption would be false, (2) 
that it would be unscientific (or impermissible), though it might perhaps be accidentally true, 
(3) that it would be 'senseless' or 'meaningless', for example in the sense of Wittgenstein's 
Tractatus; cp. note 51 to chapter 12, and note 8 (2) to the present chapter. 

In connection with the distinction between 'critical' and 'uncritical' rationalism, it may be 
mentioned that the teaching of Duns Scotus as well as of Kant could be interpreted as 
approaching 'critical' rationalism. (I have in mind their doctrines of the 'primacy of will', 
which may be interpreted as the primacy of an irrational decision.) 

7. In this and the following note a few remarks on paradoxes will be made, especially on the 
paradox of the liar. In introducing these remarks, it may be said that the so-called 'logical' 
and 'semantical' paradoxes are no longer merely playthings for the logicians. Not only have 
they proved to be important for the development of mathematics, but they are also becoming 
important in other fields of thought. There is a definite connection between these paradoxes 
and such problems as the paradox of freedom which, as we have seen (cp. note 20 to 
chapter 17 and notes 4 and 6 to chapter 7), is of considerable significance in political 
philosophy. In point (4) of this note, it will be briefly shown that the various paradoxes oj 
sovereignty (cp. note 6 to chapter 7, and text) are very similar to the paradox of the liar. On 
the modern methods of solving these paradoxes (or perhaps better: of constructing 
languages in which they do not occur), I shall not make any comments here, since it would 
take us beyond the scope of this book. 



(1) The paradox of the liar can be formulated in many ways. One of them is this. Let us 
assume that somebody says one day: 'All that I say to-day is a lie'; or more precisely: 'AH 
statements I make to-day are false'; and that he says nothing else the whole day. Now if we 
ask ourselves whether he spoke the truth, this is what we find. If we start with the 
assumption that what he said was true, then we arrive, considering what he said, at the result 
that it must have been false. And if we start with the assumption that what he said was false, 
then we must conclude, considering what he said, that it was true. 

(2) Paradoxes are sometimes called 'contradictions'. But this is perhaps slightly misleading. 
An ordinary contradiction (or a self-contradiction) is simply a logically false statement, such 
as 'Plato was happy yesterday and he was not happy yesterday'. If we assume that such a 
sentence is false, no further difficulty arises. But of a paradox, we can neither assume that it 
is true nor that it is false, without getting involved in difficulties. 

(3) There are, however, statements which are closely related to paradoxes, but which are, 
more strictly speaking, only self-contradictions. Take for example the statement: 'AH 
statements are false.' If we assume that this statement is true, then we arrive, considering 
what it says, at the result that it is false. But if we assume that it is false, then we are out of 
the difficulty; for this assumption leads only to the result that not all statements are false, or 
in other words, that there are some statements — at least one — ^that are true. And this result is 
harmless; for it does not imply that our original statement is one of the true ones. (This does 
not imply that we can, in fact, construct a language free of paradoxes in which 'AH 
statements are false' or 'All statements are true' can be formulated.) 

In spite of the fact that this statement 'AH propositions are false' is not really a paradox, it 
may be called, by courtesy, 'a form of the paradox of the liar', because of its obvious 
resemblance to the latter; and indeed, the old Greek formulation of this paradox (Epimenides 
the Cretan says: 'All Cretans always he') is, in this terminology, rather 'a form of the 
paradox of the liar' i.e. a contradiction rather than a paradox. (Cp. also next note, and note 
54 to this chapter, and text.) 

(4) I shall now show briefly the similarity between the paradox of the liar and the various 
paradoxes of sovereignty , for example, of the principle that the best or the wisest or the 
majority should rule. (Cp. note 6 to chapter 7 and text.) 



C. H. Langford has described various ways of putting the paradox of the Har, among them 
the following. We consider two statements, made by two people, A and B. 
A says: 'What B says is true.' 
B says: 'What A says is false.' 

By applying the method described above, we easily convince ourselves that each of these 
sentences is paradoxical. Now we consider the following two sentences, of which the first is 
the principle that the wisest should rule: 

(A) The principle says: What the wisest says under (B) should be law. 

(B) The wisest says: What the principle states under (A) should not be law. 

8. (1) That the principle of avoiding all presuppositions is 'a form of the paradox of the liar' in 
the sense of note 7 (3) to this chapter, and therefore self-contradictory, will be easily seen if 
we describe it like this. A philosopher starts his investigation by assuming without argument 
the principle: 'All principles assumed without argument are impermissible.' It is clear that if 
we assume that this principle is true, we must conclude, considering what it says, that it is 
impermissible. (The opposite assumption does not lead to any difficulty.) The remark 'a 
counsel of perfection' alludes to the usual criticism of this principle which was laid down, 
for example, by Husserl. J. Laird {Recent Philosophy, 1936, p. 121) writes about this 
principle that it 'is a cardinal feature of Husserl's philosophy. Its success may be more 
doubtful, for presuppositions have a way of creeping in.' So far, I fully agree; but not quite 
with the next remark: '... the avoidance of all presuppositions may well be a counsel of 
perfection, impracticable in an inadvertent world.' (See also note 5 to chapter 25.) 

(2) We may consider at this place a few further 'principles' which are, in the sense of note 7 

(3) to this chapter, 'forms of the paradox of the liar', and therefore self-contradictory. 

{a) From the point of view of social philosophy, the following 'principle of sociologism' 
(and the analogous 'principle of historism') are of interest. They can be formulated in this 
way. 'No statement is absolutely true, and all statements are inevitably relative to the social 
(or historical) habitat of their originators.' It is clear that the considerations of note 7 (3) 
apply practically without alteration. For if we assume that such a principle is true, then it 
follows that it is not true but only 'relative to the social or historical habitat of its originator'. 
See also note 53 to this chapter, and text. 



(b) Some examples of this kind can be found in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. The one is 
Wittgenstein's proposition (quoted more fully in note 46 to chapter 11): 'The totality of true 
propositions is ... the totality of natural science.' Since this proposition does not belong to 
natural science (but, rather, to a meta-science, i.e. a theory that speaks about science) it 
follows that it asserts its own untruth, and is therefore contradictory. 

Furthermore, it is clear that this proposition violates Wittgenstein's own principle {Tractatus, 
p. 57), 'No proposition can say anything about itself ...' 

* But even this last quoted principle which I shall call ' W turns out to be a form of the 
paradox of the liar, and to assert its own untruth. (It therefore can hardly be — as Wittgenstein 
beheves it to be — equivalent to, or a summary of, or a substitute for, 'the whole theory of 
types', i.e. Russell's theory, designed to avoid the paradoxes which he discovered by 
dividing expressions which look like propositions into three classes — true propositions, false 
propositions, and meaningless expressions or pseudo-propositions.) For Wittgenstein's 
principle fTmay be re-formulated as follows: 

{W^) Every expression (and especially one that looks like a proposition) which contains a 
reference to itself — either by containing its own name or an individual variable ranging over 
a class to which it itself belongs — is not a proposition (but a meaningless pseudo- 
proposition). 

Now let us assume that is true. Then, considering the fact that it is an expression, and 
that it refers to every expression, it cannot be a proposition, and is therefore a fortiori not 
true. 

The assumption that it is true is therefore untenable; W + cannot be true. But this does not 
show that it must be false; for both, the assumption that it is false and the other that it is a 
meaningless (or senseless) expression, do not involve us in immediate difficulties. 
Wittgenstein might perhaps say that he saw this himself when he wrote (p. 189; cp. note 51 
(1) to chapter 11): 'My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me 
finally recognizes them as senseless ...'; in any case, we may conjecture that he would 
incline to describing as meaningless rather than false. I believe, however, that it is not 
meaningless but simply false. Or more precisely, I believe that in every formalized language 



(e.g. in one in which Goedel's undecidable statements can be expressed) which contains 
means for speaking about its own expressions, and in which we have names of classes of 
expressions such as 'propositions' and 'non-propositions', the formalization of a statement 
which, like W^, asserts its own meaninglessness, will be self-contradictory and neither 
meaningless nor genuinely paradoxical; it will be a meaningful proposition merely because 
it asserts of every expression of a certain kind that it is not a proposition (i.e. not a well- 
formed formula); and such an assertion will be true or false, but not meaningless, simply 
because to be (or not to be) a well-formed proposition is a property of expressions. For 
example, 'AH expressions are meaningless' will be self-contradictory, but not genuinely 
paradoxical, and so will be the expression 'The expression x is meaningless', if we substitute 
for 'x' a name of this expression. Modifying an idea of J. N. Findlay's, we can write: 
The expression obtained by substituting for the variable in the following expression, 'The 
expression obtained by substituting for the variable in the following expression x the 
quotation name of this expression, is not a statement', the quotation name of this expression, 
is not a statement. 

And what we have just written turns out to be a self-contradictory statement. (If we write 
twice 'is a false statement' instead of 'is not a statement', we obtain a paradox of the liar; if 
we write 'is a non-demonstrable statement', we obtain a Goedehan statement in J. N. 
Findlay's writing.) 

To sum up. Contrary to first impressions, we find that a theory which implies its own 
meaninglessness is not meaningless but false, since the predicate 'meaningless', as opposed 
to 'false', does not give rise to paradoxes. And Wittgenstein's theory is therefore not 
meaningless, as he believes, but simply false (or, more specifically, self-contradictory). 
(3) It has been claimed by some positivists that a tripartition of the expressions of a language 
into (i) true statements, (ii) false statements, and (iii) meaningless expressions (or, better, 
expressions other than well-formed statements), is more or less 'natural' and that it provides, 
because of their meaninglessness, for the elimination of the paradoxes and, at the same time, 
of metaphysical systems. The following may show that this tripartition is not enough. 
The General's Chief Counter-Espionage Officer is provided with three boxes, labelled (i) 
'General's Box', (ii) 'Enemy's Box' (to be made accessible to the enemy's spies), and (iii) 



'Waste Paper', and is instructed to distribute all information arriving before 12 o'clock 
among these three boxes, according to whether this information is (i) true, (ii) false, or (iii) 
meaningless. 

For a time, he receives information which he can easily distribute (among it true statements 
of the theory of natural numbers, etc., and perhaps statements of logic such as L: 'From a set 
of true statements, no false statement can be validly derived'). The last message M, arriving 
with the last incoming mail just before 12 o'clock, disturbs him a little, for M reads: 'From 
the set of all statements placed, or to be placed, within the box labelled "General's Box", the 
statement "0 = 1" cannot validly be derived.' At first, the Chief Counter-Espionage Officer 
hesitates whether he should not put M into box (ii). But since he realizes that, if put into (ii), 
M would supply the enemy with valuable true information, he ultimately decides to put M 
into (i). 

But this turns out to be a big mistake. For the symbolic logicians (experts in logistic?) on the 
General's staff, after formalizing (and 'arithmetizing') the contents of the General's box, 
discover that they obtain a set of statements which contains an assertion of its own 
consistency; and this, according to Goedel's second theorem on decidability, leads to a 
contradiction, so that '0 = 1' can actually be deduced from the presumably true information 
supplied to the General. 

The solution of this difficulty consists in the recognition of the fact that the tripartition-claim 
is unwarranted, at least for ordinary languages; and we can see from Tarski's theory of truth 
that no definite number of boxes will suffice. At the same time we find that 
'meaninglessness' in the sense of 'not belonging to the well-formed formulae' is by no 
means an indication of 'nonsensical talk' in the sense of 'words which just don't mean 
anything, although they may pretend to be deeply significant'; but to have revealed that 
metaphysics was just of this character was the chief claim of the positivists.* 

9. It appears that it was the difficulty connected with the so-called 'problem of induction' 
which led Whitehead to the disregard of argument displayed in Process and Reality. (Cp. 
also notes 35-7 to this chapter.) 

10 . It is a moral decision and not merely 'a matter of taste' since it is not a private affair but 



affects other men and their lives. (For the opposition between esthetic matters of taste and 
moral problems, cp. text to note 6 to chapter 5, and chapter 9 especially text to notes 10- 
11.) The decision with which we are faced is most important from the point of view that the 
'learned', who are faced with it, act as intellectual trustees for those who are not faced with 
it. 

11 . It is, I believe, perhaps the greatest strength of Christianity that it appeals fundamentally not 
to abstract speculation but to the imagination, by describing in a very concrete manner the 
suffering of man. 

12 . Kant, the great equalitarian in regard to moral decisions, has emphasized the blessings 
involved in the fact of human inequality. He saw in the variety and individuality of human 
characters and opinions one of the main conditions of moral as well as material progress. 

13 . The allusion is to A. Huxley's Brave New World. 

14 . For the distinction between facts, and decisions or demands, cp. text to notes 5 ff. to chapter 
4. For the 'language of political demands' (or 'proposals' in the sense of L. J. Russell) cp. 
text to notes 41-43, chapter 6 and note 5(3) to chapter 5 

I should be inclined to say that the theory of the innate intellectual equality of all men is 
false; but since such men as Niels Bohr contend that the influence of environment is alone 
responsible for individual differences, and since there are no sufficient experimental data for 
deciding this question, 'probably false' is perhaps all that should be said. 

15 . See, for example, the passage from Plato's Statesman, quoted in the text to note 12 to 
chapter 9. Another such passage is Republic, 409e-410a. After having spoken (409b & c) of 
the 'good judge ... who is good because of the goodness of his souV , Plato continues (409e, 
f ), 'And are you not going to establish physicians and judges ... who are to look after those 
citizens whose physical and mental constitution is healthy and good? Those whose physical 
health is bad, they will leave to die. And those whose soul is bad-natured and incurable, they 
will actually kill.' — 'Yes,' he said, 'since you have proved that this is the best thing, both for 
those to whom it happens, and for the state.' 

16 . Cp. notes 58 to chapter 8 and 28 to chapter 10. 



17 . An example is H. G. Wells, who gave to the first chapter of his book, The Common Sense oj 
War and Peace, the excellent title: 'Grown Men Do Not Need Leaders'. (Cp. also note 2 to 
chapter 22.) 

18 . For the problem and the paradox of tolerance, cp. note 4 to chapter 7. 

19 . The 'world' is not rational, but it is the task of science to rationalize it. 'Society' is not 
rational, but it is the task of the social engineer to rationalize it. (This does not mean, of 
course, that he should 'direct' it, or that centralized or collectivist 'planning' is desirable.) 
Ordinary language is not rational, but it is our task to rationalize it, or at least to keep up its 
standards of clarity. The attitude here characterized could be described as 'pragmatic 
rationalism'. This pragmatic rationahsm is related to an uncritical rationahsm and to 
irrationalism in a similar way as critical rationalism is related to these two. For an uncritical 
rationalism may argue that the world is rational and that the task of science is to discover this 
rationality, while an irrationalist may insist that the world, being fundamentally irrational, 
should be experienced and exhausted by our emotions and passions (or by our intellectual 
intuition) rather than by scientific methods. As opposed to this, pragmatic rationalism may 
recognize that the world is not rational, but demand that we submit or subject it to reason, as 
far as possible. Using Camap's words {Der Logische Aufbau, etc., 1928, p. vi) one could 
describe what I call 'pragmatic rationalism' as 'the attitude which strives for clarity 
everywhere but recognizes the never fully understandable or never fully rational 
entanglement of the events of life'. 

20 . For the problem of the standards of clarity of our language, cp. the last note and note 30 to 
chapter 12. 

21 . Industrialization and the Division of Labour are attacked, for example, by Toynbee, A Study 
of History, vol. I, pp. 2 ff. Toynbee complains (p. 4) that 'the prestige of the Industrial 
System imposed itself upon the "intellectual workers" of the Western World and when 
they have attempted to "work" these materials "up" into "manufactured" or "semi- 
manufactured" articles, they have had recourse, once again, to the Division of Labour ...'In 
another place (p. 2) Toynbee says of physical scientific periodicals: 'Those periodicals were 
the Industrial System "in book form", with its Division of Labour and its sustained 



maximum output of articles manufactured from raw materials mechanically.' (Italics mine.) 
Toynbee emphasizes (p. 3, note 2) with the Hegelian Dilthey that the spiritual sciences at 
least should keep apart from these methods. (He quotes Dilthey, who said: 'The real 
categories . . . are nowhere the same in the sciences of the Spirit as they are in the sciences of 
Nature.') 

Toynbee's interpretation of the division of labour in the field of science seems to me just as 
mistaken as Dilthey 's attempt to open up a gulf between the methods of the natural and the 
social sciences. What Toynbee calls 'division of labour' could better be described as co- 
operation and mutual criticism. Cp. text to notes 8 f. to chapter 23, and Macmurray's 
comments upon scientific co-operation quoted in the present chapter, text to note 26. (For 
Toynbee's anti-rationalism, cp. also note 61 to chapter 11.) 

22 . Cp. Adolf Keller, Church and State on the European Continent (Beckly Social Service 
Lecture, 1936). I owe it to Mr. L. Webb that my attention has been drawn to this interesting 
passage. 

23 . For moral futurism as a kind of moral positivism, cp. chapter 22 (especially text to notes 9 
ff.). 

I may draw attention to the fact that in contradistinction to the present fashion (cp. notes 51 
f to chapter 11), I attempt to take Keller's remarks seriously and question their truth, instead 
of dismissing them, as the positivist fashion would demand, as meaningless. 

24 . Cp. note 70 to chapter 10 and text, and note 61 to chapter 11. 

25 . Cp. Matthew 7, 15 f : 'Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but 
inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.' 

26 . The two passages are from J. Macmurray, The Clue to History (1938), pp. 86 and 192. (For 
my disagreement with Macmurray cp. text to note 16 to chapter 25.) 

27 . Cp. L. S. Stebbing's book. Philosophy and the Physicists, and my own brief remark on the 
Hegelianism of Jeans in 'What is Dialectic?' {Mind, 1940, 49, p. 420; now in Conjectures 
and Refutations, p. 330). 

28. Cp., for example, notes 8-12 to chapter 7, and text. 



29 . Cp. chapter 10, especially the end of that chapter, i.e. notes 59-70, and text (see especially 
the reference to McTaggart in note 59); the note to the Introduction; notes 33 to chapter 11 
and 36 to chapter 12; notes 4, 6, and 58 to the present chapter. See also Wittgenstein's 
insistence (quoted in note 32 to the present chapter) that the contemplation of, or the feeling 
for, the world as a limited whole is the mystical feeling. 

A much-discussed recent work on mysticism and its proper role in politics is Aldous 
Huxley's Grey Eminence. It is interesting mainly because the author does not seem to realize 
that his own story of the mystic and politician. Father Joseph, flatly refutes the main thesis of 
his book. This thesis is that training in mystical practice is the only educational discipline 
known that is capable of securing to men that absolutely firm moral and religious ground 
which is so dearly needed by people who influence public policy. But his own story shows 
that Father Joseph, in spite of his training, fell into temptation — the usual temptation of those 
who wield power — and that he was unable to resist; absolute power corrupted him 
absolutely. That is to say, the only historical evidence discussed at any length by the author 
disproves his thesis completely; which, however, does not seem to worry him. 

30 . Cp. F. Kafka, The Great Wall of China (English transl. by E. Muir, 1933), p. 236. 

31 . Cp. also note 19 to this chapter. 

32. Cp. Wittgenstein's Tractatus, p. 187: 'Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is. — 
The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole. — 
The feeling of the world as a limited whole is the mystical feeling.' One sees that 
Wittgenstein's mysticism is typically holistic. — For other passages of Wittgenstein {loc. cit.) 
like: 'There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical', cp. Carnap's 
criticism in his Logical Syntax of Language (1937), pp. 314 f. Cp. also note 25 to chapter 
25, and text. See also note 29 to the present chapter and the cross-references given there. 

33 . Cp. chapter 10, for example notes 40, 41. The tribal and esoteric tendency of this kind of 
philosophy may be exemplified by a quotation from H. Blueher (cp. Kolnai, The War 
against the West, p. 74, italics mine): 'Christianity is emphatically an aristocratic creed, free 
of morals, unteachable. The Christians know one another by their exterior type; they form a 
set in human society who never fail in mutual understanding, and who are understood by 



none but themselves. They constitute a secret league. Furthermore, the kind of love that 
operates in Christianity is that which illuminates the pagan temples; it bears no relation to the 
Jewish invention of so-called love of mankind or love of one's neighbours.' Another 
example may be taken from E. von Salomon's book, The Outlaws (quoted also in note 90 to 
chapter 12; the present quotation is from p. 240; italics mine): 'We recognized one another 
in an instant, though we came from all parts of the Reich, having got wind of skirmishes and 
of danger.' 

34 . This remark is not meant in a historicist sense. I do not mean to prophesy that the conflict 
will play no part in future developments. I only mean that by now we could have learned 
that the problem does not exist, or that it is, at any rate, insignificant as compared with the 
problem of the evil religions, such as totalitarianism and racialism, with which we are faced. 

35 . I am alluding to Principia Mathematica, by A. N. Whitehead and B. Russell. (Whitehead 
says, m Process and Reality, p. 10, note 1, that the 'introductory discussions are practically 
due to Russell, and in the second edition wholly so'.) 

36 . Cp. the reference to Hegel (and many others, among them Plato and Aristotle) in A. N. 
Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 14. 

37 . Cp. Whitehead, op. cit, pp. 18 £ 

38 . Cp. Kant's Appendix to his Prolegomena. {Works, ed. by Cassirer, vol. IV, 132 f. For the 
translation 'crazy quilt', cp. Carus' English edition of Kant's Prolegomena, 1902 and 1912, 
p. iv.) 

39. Cp. Whitehead, Process and Reality, pp. 20 f. 

Concerning the attitude of take it or leave it, described in the next paragraph, cp. note 53 to 
chapter 1 1 . 

40. Cp. Whitehead, op. cit., 492. Two of the other antitheses are: 'It is as true to say that the 
World is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World ... It is as true to say that 
God creates the World, as that the World creates God.' This is very reminiscent of the 
German mystic Scheffler (Angelus Silesius), who wrote: 'I am as great as God, God is as 
small as me, I cannot without him, nor he without me, be.' 



Concerning my remark, later in the paragraph, that I just do not understand what the author 
wishes to convey, I may say that it was only with great reluctance that I wrote this. The 'I do 
not understand' criticism is a rather cheap and dangerous kind of sport. I simply wrote these 
words because, in spite of my efforts, they remained true. 

41. Cp. Kant's letter to Mendelssohn of April 8th, 1766. {Works, ed. by Cassirer, vol. IX, 56 f.) 

42 . Cp. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. VI, 536 f. 

43 . Toynbee says (op. cit, 537) of the 'traditionally orthodox minds' that they 'will see our 
investigation as an attack upon the historicity of the story of Jesus Christ as it is presented in 
the Gospels'. And he holds (p. 538) that God reveals himself through poetry as well as 
through truth; according to his theory, God has 'revealed himself in folk-lore'. 

44 . Following up this attempt to apply Toynbee 's methods to himself, one could ask whether 
his Study of History which he has planned to consist of thirteen volumes is not just as much 
what he terms a tour de force as the 'histories like the several series of volumes now in 
course of publication by the Cambridge University Press' — undertakings which he brilliantly 
compares (vol. I, p. 4) to 'stupendous tunnels and bridges and dams and liners and 
battleships and skyscrapers'. And one could ask whether Toynbee 's tour de force is not, 
more particularly, the manufacturing of what he calls a 'time machine', i.e. an escape into 
the past. (Cp. especially Toynbee's medievalism, briefly discussed in note 61 to chapter 11. 
Cp. further note 54 to the present chapter.) 

45 . I have not so far seen more than the first six volumes. Einstein is one of the few scientists 
mentioned. 

46 . Toynbee, op. cit., vol. II, 178. 

47 . Toynbee, op. cit., vol. V, 581 ff. (Italics mine. 

In connection with Toynbee's neglect, mentioned in the text, of the Marxian doctrines and 
especially of the Communist Manifesto , it may be said that on p. 179 (note 5) of this volume, 
Toynbee writes: 'The Bolshevik or Majoritarian wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Party 
renamed itself "the Russian Communist Party" (in homage to the Paris Commune of a.d. 
1871) in March, 1918 ...'A similar remark can be found in the same volume, p. 582, note 



1. 

But this is not correct. The change of name (which was submitted by Lenin to the party 
conference of April, 1917; cp. Handbook of Marxism, 783; cp. also p. 787) referred, 
obviously enough, to the fact that 'Marx and Engels called themselves Communists', as 
Lenin puts it, and to the Communist Manifesto . 

48 . Cp. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (see note 9 to chapter 13). For two historical 
roots of Marx's communism (Plato's and, perhaps, Pythagoras' — archaism, and the Acts, 
which seem to be influenced by it) see especially note 29 to chapter 5; see also notes 30 to 
chapter 4, 34-36 to chapter 6, and notes 3 and 8 to chapter 13 (and text). 

49 . Cp. Toynbee, op. cit, vol. V, 587. 

50 . Cp. chapter 22, especially text to notes 1-4, and the end of that chapter. 

51 . The passage is not isolated; Toynbee very often expresses his respect for the 'verdict of 
history'; a fact that is in keeping with his doctrine that it is 'the claim of Christianity ... that 
God has revealed Himself in history'. This 'Neo-Protestant doctrine' (as K. Barth calls it) 
will be discussed in the next chapter. (Cp. especially note 12 to that chapter.) 

In connection with Toynbee 's treatment of Marx, it may be mentioned that his whole 
approach is strongly influenced by Marxism. He says {op. cit., vol. I, p. 41, note 3): 'More 
than one of these Marxian coinages have become current even among people who reject the 
Marxian dogmas.' This statement refers especially to the use of the word 'proletariat'. But it 
covers more than the mere use of words. 

52 . Cp. Toynbee, op. cit., vol. Ill, 476. The passage refers back to vol. I, part I, A, 'The 
Relativity of Historical Thought'. (The problem of the 'relativity' of historical thought will 
be discussed in the next chapter.) For an excellent early criticism of historical relativism (and 
historicism), see H. Sidgwick's Philosophy — Its Scope and Relations (1902), Lecture IX, 
especially pp. 180 f. 

53 . For if all thought is in such a sense 'inevitably relative' to its historical habitat that it is not 
'absolutely true' (i.e. not true), then this must hold for this contention as well. Thus it cannot 
be true, and therefore not an inevitable 'Law of Human Nature'. Cp. also note 8 (2, a) to this 



chapter. 

54 . For the contention that Toynbee escapes into the past, cp. note 44 to this chapter and note 
61 to chapter 11 (on Toynbee's medievalism). Toynbee himself gives an excellent criticism 
of archaism, and I fully agree with his attack (vol. VI, 65 f ) upon nationalist attempts to 
revive ancient languages, especially in Palestine. But Toynbee's own attack upon 
industrialism (cp. note 21 to the present chapter) seems to be no less archaistic. — For an 
escape into the future, I have no other evidence than Toynbee's announced prophetic title of 
part XII of his work: The Prospects of the Western Civilization. 

55 . The 'tragic worldly success of the founder of Islam' is mentioned by Toynbee in op. cit, 
III, p. 472. For Ignatius Loyola, cp. vol. Ill, 270; 466 f. 

56 . Cp. op. cit., vol. V, 590. — The passage quoted next is from the same volume, p. 588. 

57 . Toynbee, op. cit., vol. VI, 13. 

58. Cp. Toynbee, vol. VI, 12 f (The reference is to Bergson's Two Sources of Morality and 
Religion.) 

The following historicist quotation from Toynbee (vol. V, 585; italics mine) is interesting in 
this context: 'Christians believe — and a study of History assuredly proves them right — that 
the brotherhood of Man is impossible for Man to achieve in any other way than by enrolling 
himself as a citizen of a Civitas Dei which transcends the human world and has God himself 
for its king.' How can a study of history prove such a claim? Is it not a highly responsible 
matter to assert that it can be proved? 

Concerning Bergson's Two Sources, I fully agree that there is an irrational or in tuitive 
element in every creative thought; but this element can be found in rational scientific 
thought also. Rational thought is not non-intuitive; it is, rather, intuition submitted to tests 
and checks (as opposed to intuition run wild). Applying this to the problem of the creation 
of the open society, I admit that men like Socrates were inspired by intuition; but while I 
grant this fact, I believe that it is their rationality by which the founders of the open society 
are distinguished from those who tried to arrest its development, and who were also, like 
Plato, inspired by intuition — only by an intuition unchecked by reasonableness (in the sense 
in which this term has been used in the present chapter). See also the note to the 



Introduction. 
59 . Cp. note 4 to chapter 18. 



Notes to Chapter Twenty-Five 



1. The so-called conventionalists (H. Poincare, P. Duhem, and more recently, A. Eddington); 
cp. note 17 to chapter 5. 

2. Cp. my The Logic of Scientific Discovery. 

3. The 'bucket theory of the mind' has been mentioned in chapter 23. (*For the 'searchlight 
theory of science', see also my 'Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition,' now in my 
Conjectures and Refutations , especially pp. 127 f *) The 'searchlight theory' contains, 
perhaps, just those elements of Kantianism that are tenable. We might say that Kant's 
mistake was to think the searchlight itself incapable of improvement; and that he did not see 
that some searchlights (theories) may fail to illuminate facts which others bring out clearly. 
But this is how we give up using certain searchlights, and make progress. 

4. Cp. note 23 to chapter 8. 

5. For the attempt to avoid all presuppositions, cp. the criticism (of Husserl) in note 8 (1) to 
chapter 24, and text. The naive idea that it is possible to avoid presupposition (or a point of 
view) has also been attacked on different lines by H. Gomperz. (Cp. Weltanschauungslehre, 
I, 1905, pp. 33 and 35; my translation is perhaps a little free.) Gomperz's attack is directed 
against radical empiricists. (Not against Husserl.) 'A philosophic or scientific attitude 
towards facts', Gomperz writes, 'is always an attitude of thought, and not merely an attitude 
of enjoying the facts in the manner of a cow, or of contemplating facts in the manner of a 
painter, or of being overwhelmed by the facts in the manner of a visionary. We must 
therefore assume that the philosopher is not satisfied with the facts as they are, but thinks 
about them . . . Thus it seems clear that behind that philosophical radicalism which pretends 
... to go back to immediate facts or data, there is always hidden an uncritical reception of 
traditional doctrines. For some thoughts about the facts must occur even to these radicals; 
but since they are unconscious of them to such a degree as to hold that they merely admit 
the facts, we have no choice but to assume that their thoughts are ... uncritical' (Cp. also the 
same author's remarks on Interpretation in Erkenntnis, vol. 7, pp. 225 ff.) 



6. Cp. Schopenhauer's comments on history {Parerga, etc., vol. II, ch. XIX, § 238; Works, 
second German edition, vol. VI, p. 480). 

7. (1) To my knowledge, the theory of causality sketched here in the text was first presented in 
my book, Logik der Forschung (1935) — now translated as The Logic of Scientific Discovery 
(1959). See pp. 59 f. of the translation. As here translated, the original brackets have been 
eliminated, and numbers in brackets as well as four brief passages in brackets have been 
added, partly in order to make a somewhat compressed passage more intelligible, and partly 
(in the case of the two last brackets) to make allowance for a point of view I had not clearly 
seen in 1935, the point of view of what A. Tarski has called 'semantics'. (See, e.g., his 
Grundlegung der wissenschaftlichen Semantik, in Actes du Congres International 
Philosophique, vol. Ill, Paris, 1937, pp. 1 ff., and R. CsLYnap, Introduction to Semantics, 
1942.) Owing to Tarski's development of the foundations of semantics, I no longer hesitate 
(as I did when writing the book referred to) to make full use of the terms 'cause' and 
'effect'. For these can be defined, using Tarski's concept of truth, by a semantic definition 
such as the following: Events is the cause of events, and events the effect of event ^4, if 
and only if there exists a language in which we can formulate three propositions, u, a, and b, 
such that w is a true universal law, a describes A, and b describes B, and Z) is a logical 
consequence of u and a. (Here the term 'event' or 'fact' may be defined by a semantic 
version of my definition of 'event' in my The Logic of Scientific Discovery, pp. 88 ff., say, 
by the following definition: An event E is the common designatum of a class of mutually 
translatable singular statements.) 

(2) A few historical remarks concerning the problem of cause and effect may be added here. 
The Aristotelian concept of cause (viz., his formal and material cause, and his efficient 
cause; the final cause does not interest us here, even though my remark holds good for it 
too) is typically essentiahstic; the problem is to explain change or motion, and it is explained 
by reference to the hidden structure of things. This essentialism is still to be found in 
Bacon's, Descartes', Locke's, and even Newton's views on this matter; but Descartes' 
theory opens the way to a new view. He saw the essence of all physical bodies in their 
spatial extension or geometrical shape, and concluded from this that the only way in which 
bodies can act upon one another is by pushing; one moving body necessarily pushes 



another from its place because both are extended, and therefore cannot fill the same space. 
Thus the effect follows the cause by necessity, and all truly causal explanation {of physical 
events) must be in terms of push. This view was still assumed by Newton, who accordingly 
said about his own theory of gravitation — ^which, of course, employs the idea of pull rather 
than push — ^that nobody who knows anything of philosophy could possibly consider it a 
satisfactory explanation; and it still remains influential in physics in the form of a dislike of 
any kind of 'action at a distance'. — Berkeley was the first to criticize the explanation by 
hidden essences, whether these are introduced to 'explain' Newton's attraction, or whether 
they lead to a Cartesian theory of push; he demanded that science should describe, rather 
than explain by essential or necessary connections. This doctrine, which became one of the 
main characteristics of positivism, loses its point if our theory of causal explanation is 
adopted; for explanation becomes then a kind of description; it is a description which makes 
use of universal hypotheses, initial conditions, and logical deduction. To Hume (who was 
partly anticipated by Sextus Empiricus, Al-Gazzah, and others) is due what may be called 
the most important contribution to the theory of causation; he pointed out (as against the 
Cartesian view) that we cannot know anything about a necessary connection between an 
events and another events. All we can possibly know is that events of the kind ^ (or 
events similar to A) have so far been followed by events of the kind B (or events similar to 
B). We can know that, in point of fact, such events were connected; but since we do not 
know that this connection is a necessary one, we can say only that it has held good in the 
past. Our theory fully recognizes this Humean criticism. But it differs from Hume (1) in that 
it explicitly formulates the universal hypothesis that events of the kind A are always and 
everywhere followed by events of the kind B; (2) that it asserts the truth of the statement that 
A is the cause of B, provided that the universal hypothesis is true. — Hume, in other words, 
only looked at the events A and B themselves; and he could not find any trace of a causal 
link or a necessary connection between these two. But we add a third thing, a universal law; 
and with respect to this law, we may speak of a causal link, or even of a necessary 
connection. We could, for example, define: Event B is causally linked (or necessarily 
connected) with events if and only if^ is the cause ofB (in the sense of our semantic 
definition given above). — Concerning the question of the truth of a universal law, we may 



say that there are countless universal laws whose truth we never question in daily life; and 
accordingly, there are also countless cases of causation where in daily hfe we never question 
the 'necessary causal link'. From the point of scientific method, the position is different. For 
we can never rationally estabhsh the truth of scientific laws; all we can do is to test them 
severely, and to eliminate the false ones (this is perhaps the crux of my The Logic oj 
Scientific Discovery). Accordingly, all scientific laws retain for ever a hypothetical character; 
they are assumptions. And consequently, all statements about specific causal connections 
retain the same hypothetical character. We can never be certain (in a scientific sense) that A 
is the cause ofB, precisely because we can never be certain whether the universal 
hypothesis in question is true, however well it may be tested. Yet, we shall be inclined to 
find the specific hypothesis that^ is the cause of 5 the more acceptable the better we have 
tested and confirmed the corresponding universal hypothesis. (For my theory of 
confirmation, see chapter X and also appendix *ix of The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 
especially p. 275, where the temporal coefficients or indices of confirmation sentences are 
discussed.) 

(3) Concerning my theory of historical explanation, developed here in the text (further 
below), I wish to add some critical comments to an article by Morton G. White, entitled 
'Historical Explanation' and published m Mind (vol. 52, 1943, pp. 212 ff). The author 
accepts my analysis of causal explanation, as originally developed in my Logik der 
Forschung (now translated as The Logic of Scientific Discovery). (He mistakenly attributes 
this theory to an article by C. G. Hempel, pubhshed in the Journal of Philosophy, 1942; see, 
however, Hempel's review of my book in Deutsche Liter aturzeitung, 1937, (8), pp. 310 to 
314.) Having found what in general we call an explanation. White proceeds to ask what is 
historical explanation. In order to answer this question, he points out that the characteristic 
of a biological explanation (as opposed, say, to a physical one) is the occurrence of 
specifically biological terms in the explanatory universal laws; and he concludes that an 
historical explanation would be one in which specifically historical terms would so occur. 
He further finds that all laws in which anything like specific historical terms occur are better 
characterized as sociological, since the terms in questions are of a sociological character 
rather than of an historical one; and he is thus ultimately forced to identify 'historical 



explanation' with 'sociological explanation'. 

It seems to me obvious that this view neglects what has been described here in the text as the 
distinction between historical and generalizing sciences, and their specific problems and 
methods; and I may say that discussions on the problem of the method of history have long 
ago brought out the fact that history is interested in specific events rather than in general 
laws. I have in mind, for example, Lord Acton's essays against Buckle, written in 1858 (to 
be found in his Historical Essays and Studies, 1908), and the debate between Max Weber 
and E. Meyer (see Weber's Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Wissenschaftslehre , 1922, pp. 215 
ff.). Like Meyer, Weber always rightly emphasized that history is interested in singular 
events, not in universal laws, and that, at the same time, it is interested in causal explanation. 
Unfortunately, however, these correct views led him to turn repeatedly (e.g. op. cit., p. 8) 
against the view that causality is bound up with universal laws. It appears to me that our 
theory of historical explanation, as developed in the text, removes the difficulty and at the 
same time explains how it could arise. 

8. The doctrine that crucial experiments may be made in physics has been attacked by the 
conventionalists, especially by Duhem (cp. note 1 to this chapter). But Duhem wrote before 
Einstein, and before Eddington's crucial eclipse observation; he even wrote before the 
experiments of Lummer and Pringsheim which, by falsifying the formulae of Rayleigh and 
Jeans, led to the Quantum theory. 

9. The dependence of history upon our interest has been admitted both by E. Meyer and by his 
critic M. Weber. Meyer writes (Zur Theorie und Methodik der Geschichte, 1902, p. 37): 'The 
selection of facts depends upon the historical interest taken by those living at the present 
time ...' Weber writes {Ges. Aufsaetze, 1922, p. 259): 'Our ... interest ... will determine the 
range of cultural values which determines ... history. ' Weber, following Rickert, repeatedly 
insists that our interest, in turn, depends upon ideas of value; in this he is certainly not 
wrong, but he does not add anything to the methodological analysis. None of these authors, 
however, draw the revolutionary consequence that, since all history depends upon our 
interest, there can be only histories, and never a 'history', a story of the development of 
mankind 'as it happened'. 



For two interpretations of history which are opposed to one another, cp. note 61 to chapter 
11. 

10 . For this refusal to discuss the problem of the 'meaning of meaning' (Ogden and Richards) 
or rather of the 'meanings of meaning' (H. Gomperz), cp. chapter 11, especially notes 26, 
47, 50, and 51. See also note 25 to the present chapter. 

11 . For moral futurism, cp. chapter 22. 

12 . Cp. K. Barth, Credo (1936), p. 12. For Earth's remark against 'the Neo-Protestant doctrine 
of the revelation of God in history', cp. op. cit, 142. See also the Hegelian source of this 
doctrine, quoted in text to note 49, chapter 12. Cp. also note 51 to chapter 24. For the next 
quotation cp. Barth, op. cit., 79. 

* Concerning my remark that the story of Christ was /to/ 'the story of an unsuccessful ... 
nationahst revolution', I am now inclined to believe that it may have been precisely this; see 
R. Eisler's book Jesus Basileus. But in any case, it is not a story of worldly success.* 

13 . Cp. Barth, op. cit., 76. 

14 . Cp. Kierkegaard's Journal of 1854; see the German edition (1905) of his Book of the Judge, 
p. 135. 

15 . Cp. note 57 to chapter 11, and text. 

16 . Cp. the concluding sentences of Macmurray's The Clue to History (1938; p. 237). 

17 . Cp. especially note 55 to chapter 24, and text. 

18 . Kierkegaard was educated at the University of Copenhagen in a period of intense and even 
somewhat aggressive Hegelianism. The theologian Martensen was especially influential. 
(For this aggressive attitude, cp. the judgement of the Copenhagen Academy against 
Schopenhauer's prize essay on the Foundations of Morals, of 1840. It is very likely that this 
affair was instrumental in making Kierkegaard acquainted with Schopenhauer, at a time 
when the latter was still unknown in Germany.) 

19 . Cp. Kierkegaard's Journal of 1853; see the German edition of his Book of the Judge, p. 
129, from which the passage in the text is freely translated. 



Kierkegaard is not the only Christian thinker protesting against Hegel's historicism; we have 
seen (cp. note 12 to this chapter) that Barth also protests against it. A remarkably interesting 
criticism of Hegel's teleological interpretation of history was given by the Christian 
philosopher, M. B. Foster, a great admirer (if not a follower) of Hegel, at the end of his book 
The Political Philosophies of Plato and Hegel. The main point of his criticism, if I 
understand him rightly, is this. By interpreting history teleologically, Hegel does not see, in 
its various stages, ends in themselves, but merely means for bringing about the final end. 
But Hegel is wrong in assuming that historical phenomena or periods are means to an end 
which can be conceived and stated as something distinguishable from the phenomena 
themselves, in a way in which a purpose can be distinguished from the action which seeks to 
realize it, or a moral from a play (if we wrongly assume that the sole purpose of the play was 
to convey this moral). For this assumption, Foster contends, shows a failure to recognize the 
difference between the work of a creator and that of an instrument maker, a technician or 
'Demiurge', '...a series of works of creation may be understood as a development', Foster 
writes {pp. cit, pp. 201-3), without a distinct conception of the end to which they 
progress ... the painting, say, of one era may be understood to have developed out of the era 
preceding it, without being understood as a nearer approximation to a perfection or end . . . 
Political history, similarly, ... may be understood as development, without being interpreted 
as a teleological process. — But Hegel, here and elsewhere, lacks insight in the significance 
of creation.' And later, Foster writes {pp. cit, p. 204; itahcs partly mine): 'Hegel regards it as 
a sign of inadequacy of the rehgious imagery that those who hold it, while they assert that 
there is a plan of Providence, deny that the plan is knowable ... To say that the plan of 
Providence is inscrutable is, no doubt, an inadequate expression, but the truth which it 
expresses inadequately is not that God's plan is knowable, but that, as Creator and not as a 
Demiurge, God does not work according to plan at all.' 

I think that this criticism is excellent, even though the creation of a work of art may, in a 
very different sense, proceed according to a 'plan' (although not an end or purpose); for it 
may be an attempt to realize something like the Platonic idea of that work — that perfect 
model before his mental eyes or ears which the painter or musician strives to copy. (Cp. note 
9 to chapter 9 and notes 25-26 to chapter 8.) 



20 . For Schopenhauer's attacks upon Hegel, to which Kierkegaard refers, cp. chapter 12, for 
example, text to note 13, and the concluding sentences. The partly quoted continuation of 
Kierkegaard's passage is op. cit., 130. (In a note, Kierkegaard later inserted 'pantheist' 
before 'putridity'.) 

21 . Cp. chapter 6, especially text to note 26. 

22 . For the Hegelian ethics of domination and submission, cp. note 25 to chapter 11. For the 
ethics of hero-worship, cp. chapter 12, especially text to notes 75 ff. 

23 . Cp. chapter 5 (especially text to note 5). 

24 . We can 'express ourselves' in many ways without communicating anything. For our task of 
using language for the purpose of rational communication, and for the need of keeping up 
the standards of clarity of the language, cp. notes 19 and 20 to chapter 24 and note 30 to 
chapter 12. 

25 . This view of the problem of the 'meaning of life' may be contrasted with Wittgenstein's 
view of the problems of the 'sense of life' in the Tractatus (p. 187): 'The solution of the 
problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem. — (Is not this the reason why men to 
whom after long doubting the sense of life became clear, could not then say wherein this 
sense consisted?)' For Wittgenstein's mysticism, see also note 32 to chapter 24. For the 
interpretation of history here suggested, cp. notes 61 (1) to chapter 11, and 27 to the present 
chapter. 

26 . Cp., for example, note 5 to chapter 5 and note 19 to chapter 24 

It may be remarked that the world of facts is in itself complete (since every decision can be 
interpreted as a fact). It is therefore for ever impossible to refute a monism which insists that 
there are only facts. But irrefutability is not a virtue. Idealism, for example, cannot be refuted 
either. 

27 . It appears that one of the motives of historicism is that the historicist does not see that there 
is a third alternative, besides the two which he allows: either that the world is ruled by 
superior powers, by an 'essential destiny' or Hegelian 'Reason', or that it is a mere wheel of 
chance, irrational, on the level of a gamble. there is a third possibility: that we may 



introduce reason into it (cp. note 19 to chapter 24); that although the world does not 
progress, we may progress, individually as well as in co-operation. 

This third possibility is clearly expressed by H. A. L. Fisher in his History of Europe (vol. I, 
p. vii, italics mine; partly quoted in text to note 8 to chapter 21): 'One intellectual excitement 
has ... been denied me. Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, 
a rhythm, a pre-determined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only 
one emergency following upon another as wave follows wave, only one great fact with 
respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations , only one safe rule for 
the historian: that he should recognize ... the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.' 
And immediately after this excellent attack upon historicism (with the passage in italics, cp. 
note 13 to chapter 13), Fisher continues: 'This is not a doctrine of cynicism and despair. The 
fact of progress is written plain and large on the page of history; but progress is not a law 
of nature. The ground gained by one generation may be lost by the next' 
These last three sentences represent very clearly what I have called the 'third possibility', the 
belief in our responsibility, the belief that everything rests with us. And it is interesting to see 
that Fisher's statement is interpreted by Toynbee {A Study of History, vol. V, 414) as 
representing 'the modem Western belief in the omnipotence of Chance'. Nothing could 
show more clearly the attitude of the historicist, his inability to see the third possibility. And 
it explains perhaps why he tries to escape from this alleged 'omnipotence of chance' into a 
behef in the omnipotence of the power behind the historical scene — that is, into historicism. 
(Cp. also note 61 to chapter 11.) 

I may perhaps quote more fully Toynbee's comments on Fisher's passage (which Toynbee 
quotes down to the words 'the unforeseen'): 'This brilliantly phrased passage', Toynbee 
writes, 'cannot be dismissed as a scholar's conceit; for the writer is a Liberal who is 
formulating a creed which Liberahsm has translated from theory into action . . . This modem 
Western belief in the omnipotence of Chance gave birth in the nineteenth century of the 
Christian Era, when things still seemed to be going well with Westem Man, to the pohcy of 
laissezfaire ...' (Why the belief in a progress for which we ourselves are responsible should 
imply a belief in the omnipotence of Chance, or why it should produce the policy of laissez- 
faire, Toynbee leaves unexplained.) 



28 . By the 'realism' of the choice of our ends I mean that we should choose ends which can be 
realized within a reasonable span of time, and that we should avoid distant and vague 
Utopian ideals, unless they determine more immediate aims which are worthy in themselves. 
Cp. especially the principles of piecemeal social engineering, discussed in chapter 9. 



The final manuscript of volume I of the first edition of this book was 
completed in October, 1942, and that of volume II in February, 1943. 



Index 



absolute idealism 688 
absolute monarchy 259- 60 
absolutism 267, 493, 50i, 506, 590-1 
absolutist theory 673 
abstract rationalism 271 
abstract society 166- 7 

accummulation 362, 390- 1. 398 . 692 : capital 356 . 373 . 385; Marxism 374- 6: wealth 47, 391 
activism 407, 408, 110, 416 
activist theory of knowledge 421 
ActsTM. 

Adam, J. 41, 79, 133, 520-1. 525, 533, 534, 535, 538, 578; autarky 554; awe-inspiring 593 : 
City in Heaven 598 : exile 689 : infanticide 541 : justice 94, 569 : knowledge 593 ; music 542 : 
Number 558-9; Philosophy of History 140 . 520; slavery 537 

Adeimantus 573 , 578-9 

Adler, Alfred ix. Ml, 688, 217 

Aesculapius 131 

aestheticism 154- 5. 156 . 157 . 663 

aesthetics 415 . 611 

age of Cronos 18-19. 521 

age of dishonesty 237 . 243 . 660 

age of industrialization 445 

age of irresponsibility 243 

age of Zeus 14, 19, 63 

aggression 142 . 272 . 326; see also violence 



Alcibiades 144, 181, 182, 595, 598, 600, 615, 622-3. 631 
Alcidamas 67, 91, 108, 143, 175, 550, 577, 595, 613, 641 
Alcmaeon 75, 165 

Alexander the Great 220, 262-3. 596 
altruism 96-8, 114, HI, 480, 574, 575 
ambiguity, Marxism 365- 6. 371 
ambition 40, 128, 145, 51i, 623 
anamnesis 53 1 

Anaximander 179, 515, 516, 512, 523 , 620 
Ancillon 256 

Anderson, E. N. 265-7. 668 . 671 . 674-6 
Anderson, Maxwell 205 
animal instincts 75 

Antiphon 66, 70, 91, 547, 549, 554, 571, 595, 596, 611, 615, 618 

Antisthenes 91, 123, Ml, 175, 550, 555, 600, 611, 642, 652; definitions 217, 660-1: 

monotheism 593- 6: Plato's attitude 144- 5: and Socrates 184 . 237 . 63 1 
Anytus 182-3. 584 

Apology 184, 191, 201, 200, 520, 628-31 
Aquinas, Thomas 441 . 637 
Archelaus 547 
Archidamian War 615 
Archytas of Tarentum 215 
aristocracy U, 11, 164, 348, 600-1 
Aristophanes HI, 115, 511, 511, 621, 628, 610 
Aristotle 24, 28, 29, 61, 641; and 

Antisthenes 660 : ascent theories 644 : banausic 642 : corruption 529 : doctrine of the mean 220; 
equalitarianism 92; essence 27-8. 29 . 30, 223- 4: forms 36, 223 : geometry 190- 1. 211 : 
Heraclitus' influence 9, H, 15.; individualism 91; justice 88; leisured classes 643 : logic 655 : 
love 635 . 640; Menexenus 619 : music 543 : non-being 524 : Oligarchs 615 : Plato criticism 
171 . 576- 7: protectionism 107 . 108 : religion as opium 348 . 590, 663 : roots of Hegelianism 



2 1 9- 4 1 : slavery 220- 1: sociology of knowledge 428 : Timaeus parallelism 527 
arithmetization 190 . 563 . 583 
armed auxiliaries 45 
Arndt, E. M. 674 

arrested change 20, 29, 37, 44, 83, 169, 419, 420, 536-7: development 540; society 174, 546 : 

state 45, 79; see also Forms or Ideas; ideal state 
art 154, 732 
artificial 554 
ascent theories 644- 5 
astrology 483, 521, 546, 569, 664 
astronomy 77, 142, 190, 297, 557 
Athenians 10-1 1 

Athens 45, 51, 168, 169, 170, HI, 172; defence 589; democracy ix, xxxviii . 17, 39, 53, 149 : 
education 50-2; fall of 169-75. 182 . 187 : imperialism 172. 173 . 174 : infanticide 541: 
Levinson's critique 194-212 : Melian Affair 615 : Peloponnesian war 169- 75. 182 : slavery 
42 , 46, 67 , 172, 595, 616, Ml 

Atomists 676 

atoms 606, 607, 665, 677, 687 
Augustus 238 
autarky 84, 111, 549, 554 
authoritarian intellectualism 432- 3 

authoritarianism 123 . 127 . 268, 432- 3. 695 : Christianity 293; education 124 . 126 . 129 : 
medieval 241, 245; positivism 68; religion 239, 240-1. 497 . 498, 500-1: and truth 493, 
494 . 504-5; Utopian engineering 149 

authority 70 

autochthonous warriors 589 
autonomy 301-10. 321 . 322 . 500 
auxiliary hypothesis 392, 393, 394 



Bacon, Francis 232, 451, 452, 494 



Bakunin, M. 691 
banausic 221 . 642 
Banse, E. 280 

Barker 99, 109, 579, 590, 600; contract theory 577; Cynics 237-8: militarism 574 

Barth, K. 477, 731, 762 

basic premises 227, 228 

beauty 136, 154-5. 156 

Beethoven, L. van 415 

Bentham, J. 442 

Bergson, Henri 273 , 435, 460, 512, 513, 544, 677; creative thought 668; Hegelianism 669, 677 : 

mysticism 635 
Bernstein, A. 703 

Best State 23, 29, 31, 39, 44-9, 51, 53, 77, 84, M, IM, 221, 521, 523, 534, 536, 540, 625 . 

640 . 642 : see also ideal state 
Bias 11, 211, 422, 423, 424, 465-7. 502-3: see also prejudices 
biological holism 285 

biological naturahsm 65-8. 69 . 73 . 74 . 75 . 76 . 78-9, 556 

biological theory of state 72, 166 . 167 . 251 . 613 . 614 . 666 

Bismarck, Otto von 270 

Black Death 240 

Blanc, Louis 555 

Bleak House (Dickens) 96-7 

Blueher, H. 725 

Bodin, J. 115 

Bohr, Niels 723 

bolshevism 101 

Book of the Judge (Kierkegaard) 407 
Borel, E. 567 

bourgeous economists 379 

bourgeousie 347, 349, 355-7. 366 . 367 . 371 . 372 . 409, 689-91. 702, 707, 715; overthrow 



392-3. 395 : war 368 
Bowra, C. M. 529 
Bradford, Bishop of 514 
bravery 280 

breakdown of closed societies 178 . 546 . 613 

breeding 77-8, 79, 140-2. 206 . 207, 544-5. 560 : guardians 45, 49-5i, 75; philosopher king 

140- 3: Royal Science 601 : ruling classes 45, 49, 50, 51; see also eugenics 
Broadhead, H. D. 597 
Bryson 568 

bucket theory of mind 421 . 728 
Budget 340, 603 

Burke, Edmund 2, 107, 250, 271, 346, 432, 435, 575, 666, 669, 671, 696 

Burnet, John 63, 180, 527, 549, 584, Ml, 620-1. 632 : Aristophanes 627, 628, 630; charmed 

circle 546 : Demos 632 : Greeks and Maoris 613 : Parmenides 526 : Seventh Letter 584 : 

Socratic Problem 626- 7: soul 621- 2: Xenophanes 526 . 632-3 
Burns, E. 532, 555, 680, 695 
Butler, Samuel 2, 128, 585 

Caird, E. 225 

Callicles HO, HI, 111, 175, 577, 578, 622 
Callippus 129, 585 

canvas-cleaning 155-6. 188 . 198 . 200, 205, 305, 686 

Capital 298, 299, Ml, 113, 114, 321, 324, 331-2. 341 . 345-6. 362 . 381 . 390-1. 406 : 
capitalism 373 : child exploitation 331 . 350 . 391 : competition 373- 4. 375; ethics 406 : misery 
374-5: profits 388-90. 400 : social development 405 
capital: centralization 374, 375 . 376 . 704 : concentration 702; constant and variable 389 
capitaHsm: antagonistic tendencies 698 : and Christianity 406- 7: class structure 355 : 
contradictions 373- 5. 390, 395- 6: evils 605 : fate 373- 96: laissez-faire 299 . 350 . 456 . 690 : 
Marx 298, 299, HI, HI, 114, 321, 326, HI, 114; moral condemnation 323-4. 416 : 
overthrow 345-6. 356 : rise of HO; unrestrained HO, HI, 185, 187, 190, HI, 691 



capitalist competition 448 . 375 
Carlyle, Thomas 692 

Carnap, Rudolf xviii . 547 . 650 . 654 . 678 . 718 . 728; implicit definitions 656- 6: semantics 528 
Carneades 1 12 . 579 
Carmthers, John 610 . 683 
Carthage 617 

caste state 544-5. 554 . 589 

Catlin, G. E. G. 28, 552, 553, 572, 6il, 637 

cattle breeders 140 

causal explanations 467-8, 728 

causality 299, 728, 730 

causal laws 517 

causal relations 729 

centralization 374, 375, 376 . 704 

centralized economic planning 603 

Chaerephon 183, 624, 630 

change, theory of 43, 77, 143, 520, 535; Aristotle 222-4; Hegel 250, 259-60: Heraclitus 
10-16. 515- 18: Jaspers 287; law of revolutions 38, 536 : Parmenides 26-7: philosophies of 
419-20: Plato 18-20, 23-9, 250; Plato's descriptive sociology 35-8, 53; ruling classes 47; 
theory of forms/ideas 524 : see also Forms or Ideas; Plato; social change 

chaos, myth of 523 

Charles V 336 

Charmides 18, 519, 583, 586, 590, 623, 630, 632 
Charmides 18, Ml, 182, 622 
checks and balances, theory of 115- 16. 120 
child labour 331, 350, 391 

children 26, 28, 78, 519 . 525 . 530, 538 . 557 . 558, 559 . 641 : canvas-cleaning 155- 6: common 
ownership 47-8, 98, 641 : communist revolution 94, 389 . 636 : education 124 . 350; 
exploitation 389- 91: militarist principles 52, 99 

Chion 129 



chosen people 8, 238 . 456 . 514 

Christianity 9, 63, 293 . 716 . 722 : altruism 98, 99; closed society 237- 41. 664 . 716; economics 
697; equality 476; ethics 285-6, 408-9: French Revolution 245; history 476-7; 
humanitarianism 270 : Marx 406-7, 457 : medieval conversion 270; myths 620; nationalism 
662 : Plato 134-5: rationalism/irrationalism 440-1. 446-7. 448 . 454 . 455 : rise of 226: 
science 478-9; spiritual naturalism 71-2: totalitarianism 100 : Toynbee 662-3 

Christians in the Class Struggle (Cope) 514 

city 54, 533 . 598 : as super-organism 72, 73, 75, 76 

civilization xxxv : origins 38, 304-6. 532-3. 543-4: strain 163, 168, 179, 184, 187, 188, 309, 

446 . 480. 614 
civil peace 576 . 606- 9 

civil war 17, 41, 353, 358, 368, 604-5. 692 . 701 . 706-16 

classes: antagonism 42; collectivism 8; consciousness 301 . 322 . 394, 395 . 681 . 696 : division 
47 . 83, 86, 537 : egoism 96-7. 99 : equilibrium theory 329; Happiness 161 . 168 : knowing 
one's place 87-8, 93, 94, 101-2. 103 . 131 . 221 : Marx 311, 321-6: privileges 87, 91, 93; 
rule 83, 168; structure 355, 357; struggles 39, 40, 11, 45-51, 53, 78, 165, 174, 179, 184, 
347 . 348, 349, 355, 409; war 38-9, 45 , 78, 174, 312, 321, 358, 371, 698 

class interest 170, 174, 249, 311, Ml, 321-3. 325 

classless society 9, 347- 8 

Clausewitz, Carl von 278 

Clearchus 129 

Clenias 536 

closed societies 55, 57, 165, 166, 178, 179, 180, 189; Christianity 237-41. 664 . 716 : Fall of 

Man 187 : naive monism 57-8, 65; organic character 614 : see also tribal societies 
The Clue to History (Macmurray) 478 
Codrus 18, 144, 519, 599, 600 
cogs 103 

Cohen, M. R. 653, 655, 684, 685 
Cole, G. D. H. 688, 693, 709, HO 
collective bargaining 384, 401 



collective utility 103, 130, HI, 195, 274 

collectivism 8, 76, 80, 95-101. 104 . 126 . 258 . 514 . 573-4; Hegel 246; H. G. Wells 723; 

methodological 303, 686; Plato 91, 94, 130, HI, 195, 196-7: and psychologism 303 . 

309-10: radical 246; reason 449-50; romantic 481; tribal 75-6 
collectivist economic system xxxvi 
collectivist theory, morality 452 
colonial exploitation 392 . 393, 700 
commandments 56, 57 
commerce 168- 9. 174- 5 
commodity, value 374, 692, 693, 709-10 
common meals 47, 538 . 574 . 575 

Communism 2di, xiv . 46-7. 349 . 350, 353 . 395- 6. 555 . 682 : ideal state 39; principle of 555; 
revolution 372 . 595 

Communist Manifesto ^TL, 329, 352, 356, 364-6. 369 . 394, 457, 532, 682, 689, 690, 691, 696, 

698 . 701 . 704, 705-7. 709, 213 , 111, 726 
competition 331 . 373- 4. 375 : accumulation due to 380 : and profits 388 
completely abstract society 166 
Composition of Forces, principle of 580 
compromise 149, 220, 363, 364, 395, 441, 619, 699 
Comte, A. 35, 40, 298, 354, 401, 419, 519, 533 
condescension 42, 202, 629 
Congress of Vienna ix, 263 

consciousness 282-3, 301, 116, 322, 324, 325, 329, 335, 348, 355, 356, 362, 394, 395 
conspiracy theory of society 306- 8. 3 12 . 340- 1. 687 
constant capital 389 

constitution 40, 165, 170, 172, 177, 185, 532, 533, 562, 579, 616, 618, 619, 623, 625, 654, 
655 . 656 . 663 . 671 . 672 . 675 : democratic 360; England 248, 676; Hegel 256-7. 258, 259 : 
Kant 562 : Plato 597 : Roman 663 

Constitution of Athens 177-8, 534 

consumption 399 



contract theory 72, 73, 109, 112, 539, 555, 578, 579; Barker 109, 577; Lycophron 109, 555; 

Plato 543 : see also social contract 
convention, and nature 62, 65, 66, 70, 72-3, 134 . 728 
conventional social laws 301 . 302 

conventionalism 72-3. 74 . 551 : critical see critical dualism; naive 58 
Cope, Gilbert 514-15. 611 
Corey raean Revolution 170 

Cornford, F. M. 524, 525, 536, 537, 642; grading 565; noble lie 587 

correlation, definitions 656 

correspondence theory 590 

corruption 36, 37, 129 . 529 

cosmic laws 19 

cosmos 11 

counter cycle policy 387 

creative evolution 251 . 273 . 668 . 677 

Creator of the Universe 57 

credit system 374, 398, Zli 

Credo ATL, 731 

Crete 40, 45, 53 , 536-7. 540 . 541 

crime 105, 108, HI, 111, 439, 441, 475, 576, 583, 612; Catlin 611; science 609-10 
criteria, truth 487-9 
Critias 44 

Critias 18, 44, IM, 175, 181, 182, 184, 239, 519, 520, 530, 536, 575, 613, 618, 619, 622 . 

623- 4. 630, 632 . 638, 680 : Levinson's critique 194 . 195 . 196- 7: religion as opium 663 
critical dualism 57, 58-61. 63, 65 
critical rationalism 435, 437, 442-3. 444 . 719 
critical thought 513 . 619 

criticism 176, 492, 493, 496, 504, 505, 507, 640; assumptions 495; free 424-5. 427 : scientific 

432-3 ; self-criticism 123, IM, 502-3 
Critique of All Revelation (Fichte) 266 



Critique of Pure Reason (Kant) 252 
Crito 184, 624, 625 

Cronos 43, 52i, 535; age of 18-19, 521 

Grossman, R. H. S. 124, 126, 233, 529, 561, 583-4. 587 . 624, 634, 636, 653, 654; definitions 

655; Happiness 84-5. 161 : propaganda 131 . 587 
customary life 164 . 174 

cycles 18, 19, 520-2. 530 . 531 : laws 18; Plato 40, 471, 530, 531 
Cynics 237-8. 550 

Damon 542, 543 

Darwin, Charles 273, 634, 645 

Darwinism 273 . 638 

Davie s 561 . 573 

De Anima 228 

death duties 376 

decay 53., 250, 521- 2. 53 1 . 559 : historical law of 37-8; human nature 72: Plato 35: ruling 
classes 40 

decisions 60, 61-3, 64, 482-3. 496 . 498, 499, 522, 723 
decline and fall 53 , 280, 530, 545, 546, 559, 602, 642 
Decline of the West 53. 
defence 104-5 
defined term 227 
defining formula 227 . 230 

definition 95-6, HS, 125, 358; Aristotle 226, 228-9, 230-7: essentialism 226, 227-8, 228-9. 

230-1, 233-4, 235-6, 237, 655-61: implicit 656-61: operational 490, 656, 657; and proof 

232-3 ; radicalism 154 : rationalism/irrationalism 430- 1: scientific 230- 1. 234- 6: theory of 

660; of things 29-31; wisdom 122, 123 
degeneration, breeding 49-50, 78, 133, 140-2. 222 . 250; and change 18-20, 23-5, 27, 29; 

Hesiod 10; human nature 72, 76; Plato 35., 37, 38; ruling castes 143 : states 77, 79; see also 

change; decay; Forms or Ideas 



delusive opinion 26, 27, 66, 21, 21, 523, 524, 526, 549, 557, 588 
demands see political demands 

democracy 12, 39, 53, iH, 118, 119, 149, 179, 337-8, 360, 361, 368, 370-1. 532; Aristotle 
88, 220 . 630 : Athens ix, xxxviii . 17 . 39 . 53 . 149 : criticisms of 120 : degeneration 41-3: 
economic 335 : and freedom 105 . 693 : Greeks 17; Heraclitus H; industrial revolution 331 : 
interventionism 340 . 350, 391- 2: Lenin 705 : majority rule 117 . 118 : and naval imperialism 
178 : paradox of 1 18 . 581- 2: Plato on 532, 569- 73: requirements of 368- 9: Socrates 121 . 
625-6 

Democritus U, 93, 175, 176, 241, 243, 593, 596, 613, 618, 660, 665, 666 
demonstrative knowledge 227 . 228, 229 
Demos 632 

depersonalized society 166 
derivation 655 

Descartes 267, 494, 661-2. 729 

descriptive sociology 30; nature and convention 55-80: Plato 35-54 

destiny 733; Hegel 225, 277, 282; Heraclitus 10-15, 19; Homer 10, 515; law of 12-15, 19, 

36-7: myth of 7-9, 178 : Plato 19, 20; see also fate 
determinism: biological 9; economic 342 : Marx 293-300 : science 420; sociological 315 . 413 . 

414 . 415-16. 420 
de Tocqueville 149, 604 
dialecticians 127 
dialectical reasoning 698 
dialectical studies 126 . 584, 592 
dialectical twist 254 
dialectic triad 253-4 

dialectics 243, 670, 672, 716; capitalism, end of 348; Hegel 250-1. 252 . 255 . 257 . 259 : and 

identity, philosophy of 259-62: Kant 669-70: Marx 313, 698 
Dickens, Charles 96-7 

dictatorships US, 119, 121, 129, 254, 338, 372; benevolent 149-50. 549 . 585-6: Utopian 
engineering 149 



Diels, H. 190, 192, 502, 515, 517, 525, 543, 612, 618-20. 623 
Dik 569 
Dio 129, 637 

Dionysius 18, 42, 43, 129, 600 
dishonesty, age 237, 243, 660 
Dissension 78, 133 . 163 
disunion 40, 43-7, 53, 72, 611, 702 

divine: authority 63, 68, 74, 134, 139, Ml, 145-6. 246 : city 598; progenitors 71; soul 36-7; 

state 246 : workmanship 71 
division of labour 73, 165, 445, 539, 555, 682, 723, 724 
doctrine of the chosen people 8, 238, 514 
doctrine of the mean 220 

dogmatism 176, 444, 493, 695; reinforced 254, 422, 658, 659, 670 
dogs 45, 49, 50, 83, MO, Ml, 285, 539, 540, Ml, 556, 636, Ml 
Dorians 48-9, 539, MO, 6M 

dualism 313 . 314 . 526 : Christian 3 14 : critical 57, 58, 59, 60, 63, 65, 69; facts/decisions 482-3, 

498, 522; facts/standards 498-9. 506-7: Marx 315; Plato 79-80 
Duboc, M. 667 
Duemmler, E. 594 

du Gard, Roger Martin 147, IM, 602 
Duhem, P. 728 
Durkheim, E. 167 

earthbom, myth of 49, 132, 133, 273, 521, 538, 539 

Eastman, M. 522, 602, 682 

economic abstinence 46, 50 

economic democracy 335 

economic historicism 8, 3 1 1- 20. 341 

economic interventionism 333- 6. 338, 339-40 

economic law M6, 373, 385, 405, 410, 6M 



economic man 303 

economic policy, Lenin 156 

economic power 335- 6. 336 . 337- 8. 339 

economics 303 : Christianity 697 : Euken's theory 711 : interventionism 333- 6. 338 . 339-40; 

Marx 317 . 318 . 320; natural laws 60; Plato 38, 40, 45 , 73 , 79; structure of society 323 
economism 315 . 317 . 318 . 320 
Eddington ix, 448, 466, 551 

education 84, 128- 9. 350, 480, 540- 1. 643 : authoritarianism 124 . 126, 129 : canvas-cleaning 
188 : future leaders 121 . 123 . 128 : instincts 301- 2: institutionahsm 126 . 129 : liberal 221 . 
643 : literary 51, 541, Ml; military 52, 99, 676; morals 482; Plato 50-2, iH, 126-7: ruling 
castes 143, 584; state control 106, 124, 125, 138-9 

egoism 96-7. 99 

Egyptians 537 . 544 

Eighth Letter 641 

Einstein, Albert 235-6. 426 . 427 

Eisler, Robert 515, 540, 546, 556, 569, 572, 589, 599, 731 
emergent evolution 25 1 

Empedocles 519, 520, 521, 523, 526, 529, 531, 644 
empiricism 241, 430, 504, 558 

employment, children 331 . 350 . 391 : see also unemployment 
Encyclopaedia (Hegel) 259 . 260, 268, 276 
ends 147-8. 150-1. 604-6. 733 
energy 75 

Engels, F. 311, Ml, 363, 367, 368, 371, 392-3. 408, 110, 680, 682, 684, 686, 688, 690, 691, 
693 . 695 . 696 . 701 . 703, 705, 706, 215, 726; freedom 316; production 710; theory of 
surplus value 378- 9. 710 

England 248, 268-9. 346 . 350, 363, 387, 407, 519, 528, 561, 602, 675; constitution 676 : 
interventionism 350 

England, E. G. 99, 535, 536, 575 

entelechy 224 . 646 



environment, natural/social 55-80. 547 . 664- 5: marriage laws 301 : and morality 414 : snakes, 

aversion to 302 : tribalism 164 
Ephesians 12. 
Epicureanism 241 
Epicurus 665 

equalitarianism 88, 89, 90, 91-5. 113 . 550, 595 : biological naturalism 66; dialectics 257 : Kant 
722- 3: leadership 122 : Lycophron 109 : open society 179 : Pericles 177 : Plato 143 . 187- 8. 
563 . 569-73; politics 155 : private property 534 : protectionism 109 . Ill : religion 476 : 
Socrates 93, 95, 124, 125, 179, 180 

equalitarian society 45 

equality: geometrical 578; Glaucon 636 : individual differences 723 : Marxism 412 : of 

opportunity 335; proportionate 563 : rationalism 439- 41. 445 
equilibrium, theory of 38, 44, 50, 329 
Eskimos 638 

essences 27-8, 29, 30, 70, 71, 526, 528, 533, 562, 576, 581, 591; Aristotle 645, 647-9. 662 : 

England's note 528; Hegel 250, 251, 254; hidden 729; Marx 383 
essentialism 651 . 652 . 656 . 661 . 662 . 664 . 668 . 669 : Aristotle 223- 4: biological 273 : 

definitions 528, 655- 61: fate 282; legal system 328; Marx 317 . 692- 3: methodological 29 . 

30-1: social sciences 528; versus nominalism 649- 61 
Estabrooks, G. H. 638 
ethical idea 86, 277 : war 274 
ethical individuahsm 66 
ethical naturalism 68, 552 
ethical nihilism 68, 1 12 
ethical positivism 65, 68, 69, 74, 255 

ethics: education 482; Marx 405- 16: moral judgements 169 . 551 . 572 . 656 : rationalism 
437-45, 448; relativism 408- 9: rehgion 483; responsibility 59; scientific 551 . 552 : Socrates 
27-8: see also morality 

Euclid 190, 193 

eugenics 49-50, 77, 78, 138, 139, 140-2. 187 . 206, 207, 559 



Euken, Walter 711 
Eurastus 585 

Euripides 67, 91, 175, 550, 618 
Euthyphro 186 . 635 

evil: degeneration 39, 597; Fall of Man 187; Plato's 36, 37; state 43 

evolution: creative 251 . 273 . 668 . 677; emergent 251 : law of 684 : of society 40; origin of 

species 37, 522 . 644 
evolutionary mysticism 635 
Ewing, A. C. 561 
Existence 225 . 286 . 287 
exogamy, rules of 301 
experience 228, 230, 503- 6 
expertise 124 . 129 

exploitation 330, 375, 376, 379, 380, 382, 384, 389; children 389-91: colonial 392, 393, TOO 

facts: and decisions 59-64, 20, 482-3. 493 . 496 . 498, 499, 522, 723, 728; and standards 

485-95, 498-510 
faith in reason 436, 439, 442-3, 450, 460-1 
fallibilism 490-94. 510 
fallibilistic absolutism 493 

Fall of Man 39, 54, 77, 78, 133, 143, 187, 520, 532 

false morality 278 

fame 15, 282, 480, 482 

families 17, 25, 39 

fanaticism 240 

Faraday, M. 448 

Farrington, B. 529 

fascism 245 . 272-3, 350, 371- 2: Central Europe 700 : heroic man 274 : historical philosophy 9 

fatalism 2di, xxxviii . 282 

fate 15., 225 . 282, 484 : see also destiny 



fatherhood of God 237-8. 461 
feudalism 221 . 323 . 345 : medieval 245 

Fichte, J. G. 236, 265-9. 281 . 293 . 562 . 598 . 666 . 668 . 669 . 674-5. 680 : and Kant 718 : 

national state 680 
Field, G. C. 522 . 526 : Second Letter 633 : Socratic Problem 627 
fierceness 50-1. 52 
fmal cause 222- 4 
fire 13-14, 518-19 
First World War 326 
Fisher, H. A. L. 401, 733 

flux, universal 515- 18. 520, 523 : see also change, theory of 
formal freedom 332, 335, 337, 675-6. 681 . 693 

Forms or Ideas 17-31. 39 . 83, 127 . 522 . 523; Aristotle 223 : bed 554 : descriptive sociology 
35-6. 37, 38, 53, 54; divine state 77; education 126 : Good 136 . 137 . 590- 2: natural/social 
environments 70; searching after truth 125 : wisdom 136 . 137- 8 

Foster, M. B. 673, 732 

Fourier, C. 398 

Fowler 197, 198 , 199 

fraternity 278 

Frederick William III, king 246, 247, 248, 249, 254, 256-7. 262 . 267 
free markets 333 . 400 
free will 414 

freedom: class struggles 322; education 124 : Engels 316 : formal/material 332, 337; Hegel 
257-8, 261; interventionism 338; kingdom of 331; love of 406, 116; Marx 313 , 314, 114, 
412 : paradox of HI, 333, 338, 339, 575, 581, 582, 671, 111, 219; planning 398; and 
power of the state 104- 6: and rationalism/irrationalism 443 : realm of 420, 429 : and religion 
476 : revolt against 178 : thought 256 : and violence 360 

French Revolution 16, 245, 265, 267-8. 298, 119, 514 

Freud, S. Ill, Mi, 611, 660, 717 

Freyer, H. 280, 677, 678 



friends 167, 334, 402, 441, 442, 450, 480, 555, 569, 574, 587, 599, 601, Ml, 630, 690 



futurism 521; moral 41i, 412, 413, 476, 681, 724 



Gabii 616, 611 
Galiani, Abbe 716 
gamblers 679, 733 

gangster philosophy 189, 284, 287, 336, 647 
Gauss 232 

general interpretations 471- 2 
generalizing sciences 468- 9. 470 
genus 533 

geometrical equality 578 

geometry 190-1. 211 . 563-9. 567 

German Idealism 243 . 247 

German manhood 281 

German nationalism 262- 70. 275 . 286 

German Romantic Movement 271 

Germany 249, 261, 287-8. 326 . 674 

Glaucon 94-5, 95, HO, HI, Ml, 155, 578-9, 636 

Glauconic Edict Ml, 142 

glory 282, 283 

Gobineau, Count 9, 514 

Godel, K. 490 

gods 68, 237-8, 261-2. 306 . 532; Form or Idea 25; Heraclitus 10; will of 8, 23 
Goethe, J. W. von 668, 6M 
Gogarten 285 
gold Zli, 111 

Golden Age 10, 18, 20, 23, 521, 530 
Golden Rule 443 

Gombrich, E. H. xvii-xxviii . 673 . 687 



Gomperz, T. 85, 127, 220, 222, 526, 537, 542, 550, 561, 573, 574, 594, 619, 620, 622, 647, 

619 . 640 : ascent theories 644-5: Crito 624 
good 84, 551-2. 590-2: and evil 80, 590; fmal cause 222-4: life 644 
Good Samaritan 240 

good shepherd analogy 48, 49, 52, 538- 9 
goodness 136 . 137 . 523, 53 1 . 533 

Gorgias 66, M, 111, 112; equalitarianism 90, 122 : geometry 191 : individualism/collectivism 

100 : protectionism UO, HI, 113 
Gorgias 175, 577, 593, 595 
grasshopper analogy 521 . 539 . 589 
Great Cycle 517-18 
Great Dictator 254, 283 
Great Dog 146 

Great Generation 67, 175, 177, 184, 185, 187, 188, 202, 238, 245; open/closed society, conflict 

237.241 
great lawgiver 43 

Great Man 16, 274, 278, 283 , 471, 480 

Great Men 278, 283, 421 

Great Mystery 126 

Great Myth of Sparta 40 

Great Philosopher 247 

Great Year 18, 518, 520, 521, 521 

Greeks 16-18, 25, 35, 29, 598; religion 25; slavery 122, 220-1. 630 : society 163-5. 167 . 

167-70 
Green, T. H. 288, 525 

Grote, G. 21, 85, 516, 519, 521, 539, 621, 616, 642, 661, 662; Aristotle 640, 641, 642; and 
Meyer 616; Nous 648; Plato criticism 529, 561, 521, 592, 625; Socrates 556, 584, 589, 590, 
625 

guardians 45, 49-51, 25, 82, 94, 102, 101, HI, 140, Ml, 141, 144, 206, 202 
guns 92, 116, 202 



gymnastics 51 

Haeckel, E. 273, 676 
Haiser, F. 277-8 

Happiness 136, 161, 163, 441-3. 501 . 533, 548-9. 554 . 602-3 
harmonics 142 . 144 
Harris, W. T. 646 
Hastie 562 

Hayek, F. A. von xxn, xxy, xxvii . 498, 119, 603-4. 636 . 659 . 677 . 686 . 695 . 700, 213 
heat 651 . 666 : and sound 243 
Heath, T. 564, 566, 568 
Hecker, J. F. 688, 697 

Hegel, F. ix, x, 9, 135, 244-7. 248, 249-50. 254 . 256 . 259 . 267 . 289 : absolute idealism 688 : 
Aristotelian roots 2 1 9- 4 1 : change 250, 259- 60: formal freedom 693 : freedom 257-8, 261 . 
293 : historicism 219, 226, 242, 246, 250-62. 269-70, 271, 272, 278, 285, 288; idealism 
244 . 247 . 319 . 320; Kierkegaard 479; knowledge 420, 428, 429; logic 515; Marx 313-14: 
Meyer 616 : morality 416 : new tribalism 272-89; rationalism 432, 451- 2. 460; relativism 
507- 10: Schopenhauer 732 : self-consciousness 646 . 717 : slavery 225 . 646- 7: Whitehead 
452 

Hegemann, W. 612, 624, 621 
Heidegger, M. 286, 628, 629 
Heine, H. 319, 320 
Heraclides 129 

Heraclitus 9, 10-16, 38, 53, 69, 28, 515, 521; beasts quote H, 42, 69, 25, 94, 99, 145, 189 . 

241 . 313 . 546 . 579 : cyclic laws 18; history 260- 1: leadership 117 : oppo sites 251- 2: Plato 

19, 20; strife 39, 129; universal flux 515-18. 520, 523 
Herder, J. G. 264-5. 545 . 562 . 612 . 666 . 674 
herdsmanship 49 
heredity 414, 115, 560 
heritage 440 



Hermias 585 
Hermodoms 12 
Herodotus 91, 175, 619 

heroes 25, HO, 122, 142, 180, 187, 247, 283, 284, 480 
heroic Hfe 274 
heroic man 274, 284 
heroism 164 . 284 

Hesiod 10, li, 37, 38, 53, 103, 178, 515, 542, 549, 569, 588; metals 521, 531; myth of chaos 
523 

hidden reason 260 
Hippias 66, 91, 203, 550 
Hippodamus 165 . 522 . 612 . 614 
historical decay, law of 37-8 
historical descriptions 467 

historical: materialism 311- 13. 315 . 317- 20. 321 . 688 

historical prophecy see historicism; prophecy, historical 

historical relativism 408- 9. 681 

historical sciences 469 

historical theory of the nation 269-70 

historicism x, xxxvi . 521 . 733 : and change 16; definition xxxvii . 7-8, 681 : economic 8, 
311-20. 341 . 345 : and Forms/Ideas 26, 3i; Hegel 219, 226, 242, 246, 250-62. 269-70, 
271 . 272 . 278, 285, 288; Heraclitus 10, H; Marxism 272; myth of destiny 7-9; social 
engineering clash 21-3. 334 : theory of society 40; see also Marx; Plato; prophecy 

historicist methodology 71 

historicist moral theory 405- 16. 481 

historism 413 . 421 

History of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides) 169- 75. 182 
Hobbes, T. HI, 133, 662 
Hobhouse 288 

holism 2d-2di, 2dii, 2dY, 91, 89, 303, 338, 450, 635; justice 89; Marxism 338; Plato 75, 76, 88, 



94 

Homer 10, 306, 477, 479, 515, 539, 541-2. 572, 598, Ml 
hubris 179 
human: Plato 597-8 

human cattle 45, 46, 49, 51, 52, 83, 541 
humanism 460 

humanitarianism 67, 86, 97, 113, 174, 179, 199-200. 202, 203, 579, 663; anti- 281; Athens 
176 . 177 : biological naturahsm 65-8, 69; Hegel 262, 293 ; justice 99, 100; Marx 293-4, 
330, 341, 402; Plato 85, IM, 187, 188, 200; rationalism 440, 443, 444-5. 460 : and religion 
270, 476 . 477 : and protectionism 109 . 113 : Socrates 186 : and tyranny 173 

humanity 143 : Fichte 281 

human nature 64, 69, 72, 79, 284, 302, 551, 580, 609; hidden motives 422, 423; laws 301, 401, 
458; Mill 299, 301, 303 , 304; limitations 629; rationahsm 433 , 439, 440; society 69, 305, 
310 : Toynbee 458 

Humboldt, Wilhelm von 509 

Hume, D. ix, 252, 267, 420, 451, 543-4. 577 . 655 

Husserl, E. 232, 670, 678, 685, 720, 728 

Huxley, A. 723 

Huxley, T. H. 643, 684 

hypotheses 56, 469 : science 229 : working 466- 7 
idealism 83, 129, 153 : absolute 688 : German 243 . 247 

ideal state 39, 40, 43, 44, 45, 74, 75, 77, 79, 80, 84, 148; see also Best State; Forms or Ideas; 
Plato 

Ideas, theory of 17-31, 39, 532 : Aristotle 223 : change, theory of 529 : descriptive sociology 
35-6. 37, 38, 51, 54; education 126 : Hegel 251 . 255 : natural/social environments 70; 
philosopher king 130 : Plato 83; power of 318- 19: truth 125 : Socrates 527 : space 525 : see 
also Forms or Ideas 

identity 259 : of opposites 15.; philosophy of 254 . 255 . 509, 670 

imagination 438, 444, 445-6 



immobilized capital 389 
immorality see morality 

impartiality 51, 86, 93, 170, 424, 426, 440, 441, 442, 443, 615 
imperfections 188 : see also perfection 

imperialism 393, 700, 702; Athens 169, 171-4: modern 392; naval 178; Sparta 173 
implicit definition 656- 61 
incest 301 

independent thought 139 . 592 
indeterminism 415 

individualism 80, 91, 95-101. 104, 109, 111, 111, 143, 155, 167, 177, 480, 481, 585 ; Plato on 
187- 8: and protectionism 1 11 . 113 : and psychologism 303, 309- 10: and rationalism 
449-50;; and religion 135; Socrates 122, 124, 180 

indoctrination 106 

induction 649 : problem of 722 : Socrates 192 

inductive interference 70 

inductive method 580, 581 . 655 

industrial reserve army 391 . 374 . 375- 6. 386 . 391 

industrial revolution 330, 331 

industrialization 356, 357 : age of 445 

inequality 47, 73., 76, 89, 439 : Kant 722- 3: Rousseau 674 : see also equalitarianism 

infanticide 49, 207, 541 

initial conditions 468 

innovation, fear of 84, 531 

inquisition 184 the Inquisition 189 . 239 

instincts 75, 301- 2 

institutional control, of rulers 116 . 117 . 119 . 129 
institutional intervention 340- 1 
institutional selection 128 

institutions 401 . 686 : beginnings of society 304- 6: education 126 . 129 : legal system 328; 
machine analogy 64-5: personal solutions 339-40; psychologism 302-3 



insubordination 127 
intellectual independence 139 . 592 
intellectual intuition 29, 231- 2. 651- 60 
intellectual superiority 48, 50 

intellectualism xiv-xvi. xxxix . 84 . 430; authoritarian 432-3 ; Hegel 271 : moral 121 . 123; and 

rationalism 447, 450, 455; Socrates 121, 121, 121, HA, 129 
international crime 108, 151, 460, 475, 476, 482, 576, 606 
international peace 576 . 606- 9 
international relations 102 . 225 
international trade, theory of 64 
inter-personal theory 432-3 
interpretation, historical 163 . 471- 2. 473- 4. 628 

interventionism 350, 352, 387, 391-2. 393 . 699 . 712 : economic 333-6, 338, 339-40: 

institutional 340- 1: piecemeal 397-8; state 384- 5. 398 : and rationalism 459 
intuition 285, 433, 434, 513, 635; of essences 651-3: intellectual 29, 227, 228, 231-2. 651-60 
intuitive knowledge 227 . 228, 503-6 
Ionian school 515 . 619 
irrational behaviour 309 

irrationalism 156, 157, 420, 422, 659-60, 664; geometric 190-1: and truth 496; Hegel 271 : 

Toynbee 454-60; Whitehead 451- 4: see also rationalism 
irresponsibility, age of 243 
Isocrates 129, 144, Ml, 682 
isolation 166 
isonomy 569 . 570, 612 

Jaspers, K. 286, 287, 679 
Jeans, J. 448 

Jews 10, 238, 620 : Babylonian conquest 16, 238 
Joad, C. E. M. 84, 561 
judges 93 



Julian the Apostate 239 . 663 
Jung, E. 281 

juridical positivism 65, 68, 254 . 262 . 269 . 552 . 676 

justice xxxix : absolute 84; Adam 94, 569 : Aristotle 88; definition 86-9: and individualism 97; 
Marx 416 : Plato 135 . 293; relativist interpretation 408 : Socrates 180 : totalitarian 83- 1 13 : to 
the universe 223; and war j_5; World's Court of 225 . 251 



Kafka, F. 449 

Kant, Immanuel 205- 6. 252 . 258, 669 : constitution 562 : dialectics 669- 70: equalitarianism 
722- 3: and Ewing 561 : Golden Rule 443 : and Hegel 508 . 509; individualism 98; knowledge 
421 : nationalism 265 . 266 : and Nietzsche 497-8; peace 594 : Prolegomina 451- 2: proof 236 

Kapp, W. 370 

Katz, D. 685 

Kaufmann, E. 280 

Kautsky, K. 544 

keeping one's station 87-8, 93, 94, 101- 2. 103 : Aristotle 221 : and happiness 161 . 168 : 

physician example 131 
Keller, A. 445 
Kelsen, H. 529, 601-2. 634 
Kepler, J. 242, 493 
Kierkegaard, S. 407, 479, 731 
King, C. 504 
Kingship of the Law 117 
Kleist, Heinrich von 497- 8 

knowledge: and fallibihsm 491-2; growth of 491-2. 498 : intuitive 227, 228, 503-6: know 
thyself 193 . 629 : moral 121 : and opinion 227 . 557 : receptacle theory 421 : sociology of 
419-29. 447 : sources 493-4, 503-6: theory of 420, 485, 496 

Kolnai, A. 281, 282, 287, 288, 725 

Kraus, K. 698, 701 

Krohn 573 



Kuratowski, K. 545 



labour 339, 379, 380, 384; division of 73, 165, 445, 539, 555, 682, 723, 724; manual 555, 595, 

642; productivity 388-90. 398-9: theory of value 377-83, 709-10 
Laird, J. 720 

laissezfaire 124, 299, 350, 456; capitalism 299, 350, 456, 690; liberalism 299 
Langford, C. H. 720 

language 443- 4: Carnap 725 : precision 96, 231 . 234- 5. 250; theory 264- 5. 269 : tripartition 

721. 722 
Lassalle, Ferdinand von 515 . 519 
Laurat, L. 695 

Laws 44, 66, 21, 525 : best state 523 ; betrayal of Socrates 184 : change, theory of 530 : critique of 
text, reply to 200, 201 : cyclicity 521 : degeneration 522 : descriptive sociology 38-9. 43, 44, 
46 . 48, 53.; equalitarianism 92; essence of things 528; Forms, theory of 524 : 
individualism/collectivism 98-9: indoctrination 125 : influence on Aristotle 221 : justice 88; 
origins of things 72; Plato 36, 520 : reactionary character 85; religion 134- 5: soul 524 . 529 : 
spiritual naturahsm 74 

laws 535 : accumulation 390- 1: brutal 141 : competition 375 : destiny 12-15: development 37-8, 
346 : Heraclitus 517 : increasing misery 376, 377, 385 . 392, 393-6; of increasing wealth 376; 
political revolutions 38, 53, 536 : sociology 19; sociological 36-7. 44 . 60-2, 64, 65, 684 : 
supply and demand 381- 2: see also natural laws; normative laws; universal laws 

leadership 2, 3, 99, 208, 209 . 210 . 211 . 283 . 585; and education 121 : natural leaders 69; Plato 
114-29: principle 149; selection 119, 125, 127, 128, 129 

legal system 327- 42 

leisured classes 643 

Lenin 156 . 295 . 313 . 318 . 373 : imperiahsm 393 : New Economic Policy 156 : social engineering 

683 ; Vulgar Marxists 311, Ml, 322, 422 
Lenz, F. 281 
Leptines 129 
Lessing 674 



Leucippus 517 

Levinson, Professor Ronald B. 194-212 
Lewis, Sinclair 637 

liar, paradox of 435, 436, 458, 719, 720, 721 
liberal education 221 . 643 

liberalism 117, 106, 406, 506-7. 509; laissezfaire 299 

liberty 28, 39, 41, 176, 203, 233, 406, 562, 570, 581, 636, 664, 671; Hegel 257, 258, 259 

lies 130-2. 134-5. 141 . 206 : lordly/noble 587-8; Plato 186, 195; see also paradox of liar; 

propaganda 
Lindsay, A. D. 534, 588, 593 
Lippmann, Walter 214 . 293 . 336 . 513 
liquidation 611 

literary education 51, 541 . 643 
Locke 729 

logic 655; Hegel 515; norms 547; power 308-9. 687 : situational 308-9. 324, 326, 470 
love 531; freedom 406, 116; mystic 635; and rationalism 440, 441-2. 444 . 450 
Loyola, Ignatius 459 . 727 
Ludendorff, General 280 
Lutoslawski 633 
Lybyer, A. H. 540 

Lycophron 67, 72, 91, 108, 109, UO, 175, 577 
Lysander 175 

Mabbott, J. D. xxix . 523 
Macaulay 580, 581 
Macedon 220, 221, 640-1 

machinery 64-5, 385-6: Marx 297, 318, 323, 328, 330, 334, 369, 374, 376, 379, 380, 382, 

385, 386, 389, 398, 446, 689, 713-14 
Macleod, W. C. 544 
Macmurray, J. 447, 448, 478, 731 



McTaggart, J. 244, 634, 635, 224 
Magee, Bryan xxx, 522, 604, Ml, 698 
magical monism 65 

magical thinking 63, 122 . 165 . 167- 8. 176 
magical tribalism 55, 58, 164 . 178 . 513 . 613 
majority rule ill, 118, 117, US, 581, 582 
Malinowski, B. 684 
managerialism xxxviii 
manhood 281 

Manifesto see Communist Manifesto 

mankind 406, 638; history 332, 345, 455, 474-6. 681 . 731 : unity 550, 595-8 

Mannheim, H. 606 

Mannheim, K. 420, 716, 211 

manual labour 555 . 595 . 642 

Maoris 611 

Marinelli, W. 567 

Marx, Karl 154 . 219 . 325 . 326 . 328 : autonomy of sociology 301- 10: class struggles 321- 6: 
coming of socialism 345- 54: economic historicism 3 1 1- 20: ethics 405- 16: fate of 
capitalism 373- 96: historical materialism 18; historical philosophy 9; legal/social system 
327-42; method 291-342: moral theory 405-16. 481 : prophecy, historical 397-402: 
psychologism 299-303 . 322 : rationalism 455- 7: revolution, social 355- 72: Schwarzchild's 
book 510- 11: Toynbee's assessment 455- 7: utopianism, criticism of 153- 4 

Marxism 293-300 . 522 : Capitalist evils 605 : communism 683- 4: dogmatism 695 : essentialism 
692-3: Hegel 245, 313-14: Hegelianism 681; historicism 293-8. 315-17. 353 . 362 . 364 

Masaryk, T. 261, 673-4. 680 

material things H, H, 71 

materialism 74, 241; historical 18, 311-13. 315 . 317-20. 321 . 688 : and rationalism 414, 435 . 
440. 445-6 

mathematics 318 . 451 . 563 . 563- 9. 567 , 657 . 725 : geometry 190- 1. 211 . 563- 9. 567: see also 
Platonic Number 



meals 64, 473, 575 

meanings 653-5. 657-8. 722 . 731 : definitions 230, 234-5: history 474-84: life 732-3 

means and ends 147-8. 150-1. 604-6. 733 

mechanical engineering 64, 686 

mechanization 445- 6 

medicine, lies as 131 . 141 

medieval feudalism 245 

Meletus 584 

Menexenus or the Funeral Oration 92, 177 . 186 . 92 . 570, 571 . 619 
Menger, A. 683 
Menger, K. 547, 650, 687 
Meno 121 

Mesopotamian civilization 544 
meta-biology 78, 560 

Metaphysics 221, 516, 517, 518, 523-7. 530, 549, 554, 564, 577 

metaphysics xxxvii . 252 . 273 . 286, 451, 454, 590, 696, 732; Marx 696, 711; soul 622 

methodological collectivism 303, 686 

methodological determinism 315 . 413 . 414 . 415-16. 420 

methodological essentialism 29, 30-1 

methodological individualism 303, 309, 310 

methodological nominalism 30-1. 528, 647 

Metz, R. 288 

Meyer, E. HI, 172, 278, 615-16. 617 . 618 . 620, 623, 637, 678, 730, 731 

middle classes 355-7 

midwifery 122 

Miksch, Leonhard 711 

Milford, P. 612 

militarism 574 

militarist principles 98, 208, 209, 210, 211 
military caste 45 



military discipline 98, 127 
military education 52, 99, 676 
Mill, James 580 

Mill, J. S. 298, 299, 301, 303, 304, 308, MO, 312-13. 316 . 528, 533, 560, 579-81 
mind, bucket theory of 421 . 728 
misanthropy 601 . 619 

misery 373, 375-7. 382, 384, 385, 387, 388, 391, 402, 554, 111; decreasing 391, 392, 394 : 

Euken's theory 711 : Marxism 357 . 364 : revolutions 714 : trade cycle 389 
misology 189 . 619 

mistakes, learning from 152-3. 156-7. 491-2. 498, 501, 503-5. 510 

modern imperialism 392, 393 

The Modern Nation (Ziegler) 288 

modernism, moral 412 

Mohammed 447 . 459 

Monarchy 259, 260 

money 337, 538, Ml, 573, 577, 583, 617, 618, 636-7. 642 . 709, 711-13 

monism 70, 551 : magical 65; naive 57-8, 65 

monopoly 54, 125, 362, 378, 381, 384, 393 

monotheism 237, 593, 595, 596 

Moore, G. E. 656 

moral conservatism 412 

moral degeneration 19, 76 

moral excellence 121 

moral futurism 411, 412, 111, 476, 681, 724 

moral intellectualism 121 . 123 

moral judgements 169 . 551 . 572 . 656 

moral knowledge 121 

moral modernism 412 

moral nihilism 102 

moral opinion 554 



moral positivism 225, 250-62. 411-13. 547 

moral theory: historicism 405- 16: rationalism 437- 45 

moral urgency 548 

moral valuations 47, 572 . 604 

morality 107 . 278 . 448, 483; and capitalism 323-4; closed society 103, 480; collectivist theory 
452 : equality 572; false 278; Hegel 225, 250-62. 262 : theory of 452; totalitarian 102, 103 . 
113 . 130 . 133 : value theory 709- 10: see also ethics 

Morgenthau, H. J. 576 

Morrow, G. R. 538, 562 

motion, theory of 223 . 525 

motives 422 . 423 

Mueller, A. 266, 288 

music 5i, 52, 139, 415-16. 542-3 

mystic: intuition 635 

mysticism 14, 78, 79, 139, 236, 237, 258, 396, 408, 422, 515, 634-5. 718 . 724 : closed society 
513 : evolutionary 635 : Heraclitus 517 : and rationahsm 434, 445- 50: number 78, 242 . 536 : 
religion 460 

Myth of Blood and Soil 132, 133 

myth of chaos 523 

myth of destiny 7-9, 178 

Myth of the Earthborn 132, 133, 273, 521, 538, 539 
Myth of the Metals in Man 132 
myth of revolution 445 

Nagel, E. 653, 655 
naive conventionalism 58 
naive monism 57-8, 65 
naive naturalism 58 

Napoleon 61, 244, 264, 266, 267, 269, 411, 674 
National Genius 275 



nationalism 175, 274, 460, 662, 675, 680; Christianity 662; German 262-70, 674; Hegel 275, 

279 . 676, 715; Schopenhauer 668 
national self-determination 263 . 680 
national state, principle of 263 . 264 . 606 . 607, 674 . 680 
natural environment 55-80, IM, 301, 302, 414, 547, 664-5 
natural laws 55-70. 552-4, 555-6; see also natural environment 
natural leaders 69 
natural places, theory of 223 . 225 
natural privilege 87, 91, 93 
natural rights 68, 69, 92 

naturalism 70, 72-3 , 273 . 549 . 554 : biological 65-7. 577; equality 67; ethical 68, 552 : naive 
58; Plato 83, 72-3, 92, 549, 555, 556, 561, 578, 612; psychological/spiritual 65, 69, 71-2, 
74, 134, 552-3, 554, 555-6 

naturalistic historicism 8, H, 83 

naturalistic theory of slavery 220 

nature 71-2: and convention 72-3: of the good 551- 2: and soul 71, 554 
naval imperialism 178 
« -dimensionality 650 
Nelson, L. 545, 582, 585 
Neurath, Otto 196 

New Economic Policy (NEP) 156, 295 
Newton 190, 242, 455, 471, 493 , 729 
Nicolovius 675 

Nietzsche, F. 497-8, 498, Ml, 544, 601-2 
nihilism 175, 286, 287, 497, 498 

nominaHsm 528, 649-61: definitions 230-1. 234 . 528; methodological 30-1, 528, 647 
non-intervention 106 . 333 . 384 

normative laws (norms) 56-70. 74 . 96 . 546 . 547 . 552 . 553 . 686 : logic of 547- 8: monistic 

tendency 551 
Nothingness 286, 287 



Nous 648 



objective: description 467 : Hegel 255 . 261 . 271 : knowledge 422 : methods 423- 7. 687 : value 
379. 709 

objectivity 431, 423-8. 431 . 442 . 473 . 502 
offence 278, 447, 475 

Old Oligarch 187, 188, 195, 262, 619, 622, 623 
oHgarchy 39, 40-1, 43, 519 
operational definitions 490, 656 . 657 

opinion 66; delusive 26, 27, 66, 71, 77, 523 . 524 . 526 . 549 . 557 . 588 : knowledge distinction 

227 . 527 : moral 554 : science 229 
Oppenheimer, F. 544 
opportunism 134 . 135 . 413 
opportunity, equality 335 

opposites: identity of 15., 254 : table of 523 . 524 . 560 : unity of 251- 5. 257 . 518- 19: war of 252 

oracular philosophy 226, 237, 402, 413, 438, 444, 447, 659, 660 

organic theory of state 72, 166 . 167 . 251 . 613 . 614 . 666 

organic tribalism 167 

origin of species 37, 522 . 644 

Orphic mystery 620 

Orphic sects 178 . 540 

Osborn, H. F. 645 

Paine, T. 69 

paradox of democracy 118 . 581- 2 

paradox of freedom UJ, 333, 338, 339, 575, 581, 582, 671, 111, 719 
paradox of the liar 719 . 720 

paradox of sovereignty 115 . 116 . 117 . 118 . 582, 719 
paradox of tolerance 581 . 723 

Pareto 38, 118, 239, 268, 270, 348, 482, 536, 636, 680 



Paris Commune 701 . 726 

Parkes, H. B. 366, 388, 391, 703, 709, 111, IM 

Parmenides 127 

Parmenides 26-7, 524 . 620, 633 : change il; knowledge and opinion 647 : mystic unity 718 : 

Opinion of the Mortals 526 : Way of Delusive Opinion 523 
passion 149, 283, 411, 434, 439, 440, 531 
passivist theory of knowledge 420- 1 
patriotism 170, 175, 177, 262, 266, 589, 600, 673 
pauperism 392 

peace, civil/international 576 . 606- 9 
Peloponnesian war 17, 169- 75. 182 
perception 557-8; limitations of 77-8, 79-80 
Perdiccas III 585 
perfect competition 693- 4 

perfect state 39, 40, 43, 44, 45, 74, 75, 77, 79, 80, M, 148; see also Best State; Forms or Ideas; 
Plato 

perfection 24, 25, 29, 36, 39, 72, 530 
perfectionism 147- 57 

Pericles 3, 91, 92, 93, 100, 175, 176, 237, 238, 514; funeral oration 176-7: School of Hellas 

172 . 177 : Thucydides' version 570 
Persian conquests 620 
Persian Empire 53., 530, 620 
personal decisions 165 
personal intervention 340 
personal relations, theory of 225 . 432 . 480 

personal responsibility xxxix . 164 . 165 . 188 . 189 . 239-40. 416 . 483 
personal solutions 339- 40 
personalism 120 : anti-institutional 585 
persuasion 76, 132, 327, 577, 586, 588-90. 637 
pessimism/optimism 222-3, 250- 1. 285, 401 . 535 



Phaleas 165 
Pharisaism 48 
Philebus 137 

philosopher king 130-46. 599 . 601 . 673-4: Mill 601; Plato as 144-6. 601 
philosophical method 242 
Philosophy of Existence 286 . 287 

Philosophy of History (Hegel) 261, 279, 646, 666, 673, 675, 678 

Philosophy of History (Marx, Plato) 9, 79, 140 

philosophy of identity 254, 255, 509, 670 

Philosophy of Law (Hegel) 256, 257, 259, 268, 276, 279 

Philosophy of Nature (Hegel) 243-4 

physics U, 30, H, 297, 427, 451, 467-9. 471 . 517 . 518 . 577 . 645 . 654 . 653 . 655 . 729 . 731 
piecemeal interventionism 397-8 
piecemeal scientific methods 428 
piecemeal reform 156 . 537, 610 

piecemeal social engineering xxxvi . 21, 147, 148-9. 150 . 152 . 153 . 156 . 157 . 338, 340, 341, 

352, 387, 442 , 443 , 537, 603 , 610, 699, 734 
Pindar 66, 73 , 547, 549, 555, 577 
planets 493 
Plataea 615 

Plato ix, X, xxxix . 3, 9, 147-57. 185 . 189 . 201 . 207-8, 211, 549; Aristotle's criticism 642 : 
Aristotle, influence 220-6; attack background 161- 89: betrayal of Socrates 184- 5: 
biographical details 17-18; change 13, 419, 420, 530; class struggles 39, 40-1, 43-50; 
collectivism 196- 7: conflict of 185- 7. 188- 9: cycles 530 : critique, reply to 193-212 : 
descriptive sociology 36, 38-9, 41, 43, 44, 46, 49, 51; education 127; equality 91, 92, 93; 
Fall of Man 187 geometry 190- 1: Gospels, influence 662 : Greek tribes 10; and Hegel 242 . 
245-7. 250, 251, 254, 257, 732; and Heraclitus 15, 16, 19, 20, 516-17: individualism 98, 
100 : inquisition 184 : intellectualism 124 : leadership principle 1 14- 29: Macedon 640- 1: 
philosopher king 144- 6. 601 : political programme 83- 157 : and Protagoreanism 549 : 
religion as opium 348 . 590, 663 : Seventh Letter 519 . 520; slavery 186 . 203-5, 537; theory 



of definition 660 : theory of forms/ideas 1 7-3 1 : totalitarian justice 83- 1 13 : tyranny 187 : 

violence, approval 196 : see also Republic 
Platonic Number 77, 78, 79, 142, 143, 144, 557, 558-9, 599 
pleasure maximization 501 . 548- 9: see also utilitarianism 
Plutarch 550, 557, 563 , 565, 569, 615, 642 
Poincare 55 1 
Poland 470 
Polanyi, K. 528 

political constitution: Hegel 256- 7. 258, 259 : see also constitution 

political demands 35, 38, 44, 85, 86, 91, 104, 106, 107, 120, 140, 142, 143, 263, 440, 442 . 

443 . 582, 691 . 723 : see also propositions/proposals 
political economy: Marx 682, 685, 686, 688, 689, 690, 691, 696 
political history 475-6. 480, 484 
political intervention see interventionism 
political justice 88, 563 

political power 335-8; history 475-6, 480, 484; Marx 338-9. 405 : money 709, 711-13: 

proletariat 706 : unchecked 115- 16: see also power 
political problems 496-8 
political programme, Plato's 83- 157 

political revolutions 16, 44, 167, 330, 110; law of 38, 53, 536 

political utilitarianism 102 

politics xv-xvi. 171 . 641 : state theory 327- 42 

Politicus see Statesman 

Polybius 663 

polytheism: Homer 10 

Poor Law 406, 716 

Popper-Linkeus, J. 613 . 683 

Poseidon 519 

positivism, ethical 225, 250-62, 411-13. 547 
Posterior Analytic 228 



Pound, Roscoe 522, 602, 604 
poverty, avoidance 47 

The Poverty of Historic ism (Popper) xxxvii . 522 

power ill, 124, 129, IM, 309, 370, 379, 398, 667; economic 335-6, 337-8. 339 : and 
freedom 104-6: history 475-6, 480; logic 308-9. 687 : Marxism 338-9. 405 : philosopher 
king 130- 46: unchecked 115- 16: will to 601- 2: see also political power 

power-politics 180 . 636 

pragmatic rationalism 723 

pragmatism 296 . 297 

prediction xxxvii . 576 . 604 . 687, 695 . 714 : science 352 . 401- 2: see also historicism; prophecy, 
historical 

prejudices 427 . 428, 429 : see also bias 

priest caste 592 . 663 

Primary Bodies, Theory of 564- 6 

primitive society 44, 48 

primogenitor 23-6, 29, 36, 20, 21 

privileges 87, 91, 93, 108 

Process and Reality (Whitehead) 451- 4 

production 322, 330, 324, 126, 328, 385, 696, 204, 211; Marx 316-17. 318 . 346-7 
productivity: increasing 321, 388-90. 398-9. 400, 401 
professionalism 221- 2 
profits 328, 388-90. 400 
prognosis 468, 469 

progressivists 44, 45, 85, 154, 401, 509, 535, Mi 
Prolegomina (Kant) 45 1- 2 

proletariat 329, 338, 355 . 357 . 365 . 715 : bourgeousification 392-3, 395; morality 409, 410 : 

revolution 353 . 364 : see also workers 
proof 229-31. 232-3. 647 : doctrine of 236 
propaganda 131- 2. 206, 233- 4. 274 . 278- 9: see also lies 

property 15, 42, 46, 82, 98, 112, 156, 252, 269, 332-4. 336 . 339 . 350-1. 356 . 362 . 689 . 693 . 



704 . 705 . 711 . 715 . 721 

prophecy xxxvii . xxxix . 20 . 689 : evaluation 397-402 : law of increasing misery 394- 5: Marx 

345- 93: see also historicism 
proportionate equality 563 . 565 

propositions/proposals 498-9. 499-501. 507 . 548 . 657 . 659 

prosperity 47, 176 : dangers of 279 

Protagoras 55, 58, 63 , 64, 72, 73 , 134, 175, 203 , 550 

Protagoreanism 549 

protection by the state 334 . 335 

protectionism 106-13. 175 . 577-9. 582, 694 

Proudhon, P. 332 

Providence 260, 262, 278, 280 

Prussia 244, 246, 249, 250, 254, 256, 259, 261, 268; monarchism 260; nationalism 263, 265-6 
Prussianism 246 . 250 
pseudo-rationalism 433 . 434 . 483 
psycho-analysis 422-3. 446-7. 634, 111 

psychological naturalism 65, 69, 71-2. 74, 134 . 552- 3. 554 . 555- 6 

psychologism 299-300, 301, 302-3. 304-6. 308 . 309-10. 316 . 322, 547, 560, 609, 685 

public opinion 279 

Pure Being 286 

Pure Nothingness 286, 287 

Pythagoras 14, 78, 139 . 180 : geometry 563- 9. 567 : table of opposites 523, 524 . 560 : theorem 
122 

Pythagorean creed 185 
Pythagorean number mysticism 78, 242 . 536 
Pythagorean programme 190 . 191 . 564 
Pythagorean taboos 514 . 619 
Pythagorean theory, soul 644 

Pythagoreanism 185, 191, 526, 527, 564, 569, 583 , 620, 628, 631, 632 



quasi-theories 472 
Quine, W. V. 492, 545 



rabble proletariat 357 

race: Kolnai 282 : and nature 71 

The Race as the Principle of Value (Lenz) 281 

racial degeneration 19, 76, 78, 142, 143, 250, 599 

racial superiority 9, 47-50 

racialism 9, 132 . 133 . 143 . 201 . 273 . 282 . 545 : Plato 206 : see also eugenics 
Rader, M. M. 619 
radical collectivism 246 

radicalism 156 : and aestheticism 154- 7: irrationalism 156 : Marx 362; skepticism 421 . 424 . 427 

Ramsey, R. P. 226 

rate of profit 388-90. 400 

rational behaviour 309 

rationalism 165, 166, 178, 271, 284, 119, 420, 430-52. 459-61. 512-13. 524 . 671-2. 718 : 
abstract 271 : comprehensive/critical/uncritical 435, 437, 442- 4. 719 : pragmatic 723; see 
also irrationalism 

rationality 78, 79, 165, 166, 178, 284, 419 

Rats, Lice, and History (Zinsser) 240- 1 

reality 317, 383 

reason 27, 75, 125, 149, 176, 179-80. 189 . 252-3. 283-4: faith in 436, 439, 442-3. 450, 
460-1; Hegel 255, 261, 271, 432, 451-2. 460, 733; Heraclitus' theory 14; international 
affairs 460, 576 : Marx 455- 7: Parmenides 27; revolt against 430- 61: Schopenhauer 669 

reasonableness 431- 2. 667 

receptacle theory 421 . 728 

The Red Prussian (Schwarzchild) 510 

Reformation 245 . 261 

reinforced dogmatism 254 . 422 

relativism 15, 271, 467; criticism 427, 485, 486, 487, 490-1. 497 . 502-3. 508 : Hegel 507-10: 



historicist 408 : values 15. 

religion 9, 62-4, 134, 267, 273, 283, 134-5. 401-2. 442 . 513 . 620; authoritarian 497, 498, 
500- 1: ethics 483; Greek beliefs 25; historicism 476 . 477- 9: mysticism 455 . 460 : as opium 
348 . 590, 663 : Protagoras 549 : standards 506 : state -worship 107 : see also Christianity; Jews 

Renan 676 

Republic (Plato) 26, 73, 75, Hi, 132, 134, 520, 522, 526, 532, 537; authoritarianism 124 : 
betrayal of Socrates 184 : critique, reply to 200, 203- 4. 206, 207 : debased states 43; divine 
state 246 : Earth-born 521 : equalitarianism 91, 92, 93 ; Forms or Ideas 524 : justice 86, 89, 90 . 
100 : myth 72, 132 . 133 : Pericles caricature 177 : primitive society 44; protectionism 110 . 
111 . 113 : strong, rule by the 66; translation 85; tribal collectivism 98, 100 

rest: Plato's descriptive sociology 35-53 

revolution 38, 229, 395, 689, 704, 708; bourgeousie TOO; industrial 330, 331; law of 536: 
misery 714 : myth of 445 : social 347 . 355- 72: violence 707; see also French Revolution; 
Russian revolution 

revolutionaries, Plato as 85 

Revue Positiviste 354 

Ricardo, David 377, 378, 709, 210, ZM, 215 

Robespierre, Maximilian 319 

Robinson, Richard xxix . 202, 208, 211 

Rodman, H. N. 508 

Rogers, A. K. 522, 627 

romantic collectivism 481 

romantic medievalism 240 

Romanticism 157, 236-7. 271 . 284, 285, 442, 446-7. 481 . 482, 561, 572, 697 

Rome 111, 238, 550, Ml, 616, 611, 663 

Rosenberg 281, 283 

Ross, W. D. 641, 647, 648, 653 

Rousseau, Jean- Jacques 40, 251, 254, 264, 265, 261, 284, 293, 303, 119, 516, 666, 674 : 

inequality 572 : paradox of freedom 258, 671 : Plato's influence 115 . 533 . 561 . 612 
Royal Science 629 



rule of the strong 66, 73, UA, Ul, 254, Ml 
rules of exogamy 301 

ruling classes 44-51, 53, 73, 78, 83, 84, 208, 697, 705; breeding 143; degeneration 40, 76, 

143 : education 47, 52, 143, 584; origins 48-9; revolution 38, 691 
Russell, Bertrand 124, 267, 336, 419, 451, Ml, 591, 653, 658, 665, 694, 720, 725 
Russell, L. J. 498, 547, 548, 691, 723 

Russia 156, 249, 294-5. 397, 402, 470, 683, 689, 691; interventionism 699; social engineering 
295 

Russian Communists 350, 353., 371 

Russian Revolution 318, 319-20. 371 . 613 . 700, 214 



Sachs, Eva 192 

St. Vitus' dance 240 

Salomon, E. von 679 . 725 

Samos 172 

Sanazzaro 533 . 561 

Schallmeyer, W. 273 

Scheler, Max 280, 286, 420, 678 

Schelling, F. 236, 243-4. 265 

Schiller, F. 203, 509, 666, 667, 675 

schism 78, 214, 238, Ml 

Schlick, M. 654, 659 

scholasticism 226, 236, 237, 428, 434, 444 

Schopenhauer, A. xxi, 242, 247, 249, 252, 255, 259, 288-9. 467 . 479 . 497 . 508, 666, 667, 
669 . 675 . 766, 680, 728, 731, 732; age of dishonesty 237, 243, 660; on Fichte 266, 281; 
and Hegel 242, 243 , 247, 248, 266, 287, 288, 289, 294, 731, 732; historical description 
467; metaphysics 660 : nationalism 274 . 668 : and Nietzsche 497 

Schwarzchild, Leopold 510 

Schwegler, A. 249, 667 

scientific description 30, 467 

scientific determinism 420, 684 

scientific method xxxvii . 28, 176, 229, 234-6. 244 . 245 . 253 . 255 . 465-7. 469 . 492 . 504 : 
causality 730 : knowledge 655 : and morality 409- 10. 438, 448 : politics 153 : and prophecy, 
historical 352, 401- 2: nationahsm 434, 435 . 448; social engineering 294- 9: theories 
467-70; and truth 229-31. 490-1 

scientific objectivity 423- 7 

Scientific Socialism 323, 349, 353, 396 

scientism 604 

sea-communications 168- 9 
searchlight theory of science 466, 728 
Second Letter 633 



security 168, 398 
self-analysis 429 
self-assertion 225 . 646 
self-conscious 325 

self-consciousness 275 . 286 . 646 . 717 

self-control 50, 66 

self-criticism 123, IM, 503 

self-evidence 236, 255, 498, 651-2 

self-protection 109- 10 

self-sufficiency (autarky) 84, 173 . 549 . 554 

selfishness 96-8, 1 14 . 121 . 480, 574 . 575; see also individualism 

semantics 528, 547, 590, 591, 651, 654, 670, 728 

Seventh Letter 18, 519, 520, 584, 592, 600, 629, 633 

Shaw, G. B. 273, 438, 560, Ml, 677 

Sherrington, C. 547 

Shorey 198, 203 , 204, 205, 207 

shorthand labels/symbols 230- 1. 234 

Simkhovitch, V. G. 611 

Simkin, C. G. F. 521 

SimpHcius 633 . 660 

simultaneity 235- 6 

situational logic 308-9. 324 . 326 . 470 

slavery 42, 46, 66, 67, 175, 534, 537-8. 541 . 562 . 630 . 662 . 676 : Aristotle 220 social 
technology 1; Athens 42, 46, 67, 112, 595, 616, 641; Hegel 221, 646-7. 677 : Marx 405, 
691 . 692 . 705; naturalistic theory 220; Plato 186, 203-5. 537 

Slavery: Its Biological Foundation and Moral Justification 277- 8 

Smith, Adam 377, 391, HO, 214 

social change 16, 18, 29, 35, 40, 53, 102, 163, 168, 174, 189, 221, 410, 419, 137, 631 
social contracts 72, 73, 109 . 1 10 : see also contract theory 
social decay 40 



Social Democrats 353, 367, 371-2. 394 . 699 . 700 . 703 
social development 39-40 
social dynamics 15., 39 

social engineering 29, 147 . 148- 9. 294 . 338 . 522 . 604 . 683 ; attitude of 21; historicism clash 

334; Russia 295; see also piecemeal social engineering; Utopian social engineering 
social environment 55-80, IM, 301, 302, 414, 547, 664-5 
social habitat 72, 420-1. 423, 455, 458, 502, 555, 716 
social institutions 21-3 
social laws 576 
social problems 496-8 
social psychology 299 
social reconstruction xxxi . xxxvi 
social revolution 347, 354, 355-72 
social system 327-42 

social technology 21, 151, 294-5. 298-9. 306, 323-4. 352, 398, 402, 428, 522, 603, MO, 682, 
701 

sociaHsm 293-300, 318 . 345- 54. 397, 407, 611 . 612 : origins 457; see also Communism; Marx; 
Marxism 

society 513 : breakdown of closed 178 . 546 . 613 : primitive beginnings 38, 304- 6. 532-3, 
543-4 

Society of the Friends of Laconia 177 
socio-analysis 422 . 423 . 447 

sociological determinism 293-300, 315, 413, 414, 415-16. 420 
sociological laws 36-7, 44, 60-2, 64, 65, 684 

sociologism 413 . 414 . 415- 16. 720; see also sociological determinism 
sociology: autonomy 301-10. 321 . 322 : of knowledge 419-29. 447 
socio-therapy 422, 423, 447 

Socrates 17, 27, 28, 31, 63, 64, 69, HI, 125, 132, 176; and Alcibiades 631; and Antisthenes 
184 . 237 . 631 : betrayal 184- 5: comparison with Plato 202; condescension 42, 629 : critique 
of closed societies 179 . 180- 1: Crito 624 . 625 : democracy 121 . 625- 6: dialectics 255- 6: 



education 127 : equalitarianism 93, 95, 124 . 125 . 179 . 180 : ethics 27-8: execution/death 
124 . 181- 4. 193 . 239 . 629 : and Glaucon 636 : humanitarianism 186 : 
individualism/collectivism 100 . 104 . 180 : integrity 188 : intellectualism 121 . 122, 123 . 179 : 
justice 101 . 180 : mistrust 441 : Myth of Blood and Soil 132 . 133 : philosopher king 130 : 
protectionism 111 : religion 134 . 135 : reply to Callicles 577 . 578, rule of the strong 66; 
Second Letter 633 : self-criticism 180 : ship-yard criticism 622 : soul 180 . 184- 5. 621- 2: 
teaching 179- 80. 181 . 185 : temperance 94-5: theory of Forms or Ideas 527 : Thirty Tyrants 
626 : trial 624, 628; truth 180, 629 

Socratic Problem 202, 203, 512, 522, 626, 627, 631 

soldiers 99, 138, 139, 210 

Solon 18, 58 

Sophistic Refutations 219 
Sophists 55, 524-5. 527 . 628 
Sophocles 175, 618 
sophocracy 136 

soul 69, 180, 201, 204, 524, 525, 533; Aristotle 224; divine 36-7; divisions of 75, 78; doctrine 
of 69: immortality 628 : Laws 529 : and nature 554 : origins of things 74; perfect 72: Plato 
176 . 186 . 224 . 528; political theory 556; power of 71; Socrates 180, 184-5. 621-2: split 634 

sound 243-4 

sovereignty: paradox of 115 . 116 . 117 . 118 . 582, 719 : philosopher king 142 : theory of 115 . 

116 . 117 . 118 . 120 . 121 . 125 . 136 . 142 . 146 
space 25, 523- 4. 525 

Sparta 17, 40, 45, 46-7, 51, 52, 53, 168, 169, 170, HI, 173, 174, 187, 541; arrested change 
536- 7. 540; common meals 47; human cattle 45, 46, 49, 51, 52, 83., 541 : infanticide 49; 
Levinson's critique 195 . 196 : Peloponnesian war 17; ruling classes 40 

Spearman, Diana 212 

species origin 37, 522 . 644 

specific interpretations 472 

Spencer 35. 

Spengler, O. 53, 281, 285, 401, 545, 678, 679 



Speusippus 222, 223, 529, 549, 644, 645 
Spinoza 267, 575, 666, 667, 669, 718 

Spirit 25i, 261, 673, 285, 313-15. 440 : Great Men 283; of the Nation 251, 258, 269, 274-5. 

279-80 
spiritual historicism 8 

spiritual naturalism 65, 69, 71-2. 74 . 134 . 552-3, 554 . 555- 6 
square roots 523 . 564 . 565 . 566 . 568, 583 
standards 485-95. 498-510 
Stapel 282, 285 

state 115- 16. 124 . 339; degeneration 77, 79; divine 246; foundation of 136- 8: Hegel 276 . 277 . 
279 : interventionism 384-5. 398 : Marx 327-8, 330, 338, 338-9. 405 : morality 123; national 
263 . 264 . 606, 607, 674, 680; organic theory of 72, 166, 167, 251, Ml, 614, 666; power of 
104-6. 115 . 124 . 146 . 339, 370, 398, 667; preservation of 138-9: protection 334, 334, 335 : 
social development 39-40; as super-organism 72, 73, 75, 76; theory of 104- 1 1. 559 : 
totalitarianism 274 : war 543- 4: worship 246 : see also ideal state 

statements 651 . 653 

Statesman 19, 20, 38-9, 42, 43, 48, 198-9. 200, 205, 232, 520, 521, 523, 527, 530, 535 

Stirling, J. H. 242, 244, 248, 667-8 

Stoicism 617 

Story of the Number 54 

Strabo 663 

strain of civilization 163, 168, 179, 184, 187, 188, 309, 446, 480, Mi 

strong, rule of the 66, 73, HI, HI, 254, 662 

A Study of History (Toynbee) 454-60. 540 . 544 

Subjective, Hegel 255 

subjective freedom 672 . 676 

subjective methods 687 

subjective value 687 . 709 

Sumer 614 

superstition 79, 483 . 663 : see also magical thinking 



supply and demand 381- 2. 400 . 711 

surplus population 382 . 383- 5. 391 . 401 . 711 : see also trade cycle; unemployment 
surplus value 710 : theory of 378- 9. 710 
Sweden 350, 387 
syllogism, dialectical 261 

tabooism, tribal H, 58, 63, 164- 5. 166 

taboos ii, 11, 55, 58, 63, 107, 139, 164-6. 173 . 175 . 189 . 517 . 559 : Pythagorean 514, 619 
Tarn, W. W. 550, 595 

Tarski, A.: semantics 528, 547, 590, 591, 654, 728; truth 485, 486-7. 489, 490, 492, 650, 722, 
728 

taxation 152; Athens 172; Marx 376, 697, 699, 715 

Taylor, A. E. 144, 516, 537, 559, 578, 599-600. 602 . 624 . 625-7. 628, 642; Aristophanes 628; 

Socrates 200, 522, 527, 622, 624, 627, 632; Thirty Tyrants 623 
technological unemployment 385-6 
technology, Utopian 405 
temperance 94, 573 . 592 
Thales 515 

Theaetetus 527 : dating 192 
theism: chosen people doctrine 8 
theistic historicism 8 
Themis 569 
Theopompus 660 
theoretical sciences 467-70 
theory: distrust 176 : quasi 472 
Theses on Feuerbach (Marx) 407 
third man 532 

Thirty Tyrants 17, M, IM, 175, 181, 182, 1%, 239, 583, 615, 618, 623, 626, 629, 637, 638 : 

and Socrates 121 . 583, 623- 5. 630 
thought, freedom of 256 



Thrasybulus 182 

Thrasymachus 66, 101, HO, HI, 111, 115, 578, 579, 622 

Thucydides 91, 178 . 541, 614-15. 617 . 618 . 619 : History of the Peloponnesian War 169-75. 
182 

Timaeus 24-5, 26, 28, 37, 44, 191, 242, 522, 523, 524, 525, 527, 532 
timarchy/timocracy 39, 40, 46 
time 525 

tolerance 443 , 459; paradox of 723 

total ideology 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 428, 447, 716 

totalitarian justice 83- 1 13 

totalitarian morality 103 . 130 . 133 . 278, 592 

totalitarianism x, 2di, xviii- xix. xxxv . xxxvi . xxxviii . xxxix . 124 . 125 . 130 . 132 . 135 . 162- 3. 
239, 372, 647; critique 179, 206, 210; ethical idea 274; Hegel 245-6: interventionism 350 : 
law of political revolutions 38; modern 272 . 273- 4. 277 : and nationalism 262 . 264 . 275 : 
state 274 

Townsend, J. 406, 716 

Toynbee, A. J. 584, 723 . 726- 7. 733 : Christian persecution 662- 3: division of labour 724 : and 
Fisher 733 : historicism 546 . 727 : rationalism 723 ; A Study of History 454- 60. 540, 544 : 
schism 613 : strain of civilization 614 

trade cycle 385-8. 389, 390, 400, 401; theory of 385-8: and unemployment 398, 111 

trade unions 384 

tradition 174, 178, 432, 494 

transformation 13., 32 

Treitschke 276 

trends 576 

trial and error 153, 156, 294, 340, 427, 428, 498, 505, MO, 631 
triangles, sub-elementary 563, 565 . 566 . 568 
tribal aristocracy H, 17 
tribal collectivism 75-6 
tribal life: Greeks 163-5 



tribal morality 480 
tribal paradise 638 
tribal priest-kings 139 
tribal taboo ism 1_3 

tribalism xi, xxxv . 38, 47, 79, 139, 180, 189, 434, 450, 460, 546, 620, 725; chosen people 8; 
Christianity 446; group spirit 637; Hegel 272-89; Jewish 238; knowing one's place 1 1-12: 
magical thinking 55, 58; organic 167 : Plato's theory 44-5, 53.; schools 619 

truth 486-7: absolute 493, 501, 590-1: artificial distinction 554; criteria 487-90; 
definition/concept 650, 651, 728; dualism 498-9. 506-7; fallibilism 490-2: Hegel 247-8, 
255, 507- 10: knowledge sources 493-4, 503-6; norms 547 : relativism 502-3; science 
229-31. 490-1; searching after 125, 129, 130, 111, 135, 136, 243, 294, 491, 492-3: 
rationalism 431, 433, 435; relativism 427, 485, 486, 497; Socrates 180, 629; theory of 485, 
486-7. 489, 490, 492 , 650, 722, 728 

tyranny 42, 43, 162, 173, 549, 581, 706; Plato on 187; and violence 360, 361 

unalterable facts 60 

uncritical rationahsm 435, 437 . 442-4. 719 
undecidability theorem 490 

unemployment 374, 375-6, 399, 400 : insurance 149 . 350, 387, 388 : technological 385- 6: trade 

cycles 398; see also industrial reserve army; surplus population 
unity of opposites 251- 5. 257 . 518- 19 
universal flux 515- 18. 520, 523 
Urey, Harold C. 490 
utilitarian ethics 66 
utilitarianism 102, 103 , 548-9 
Utopian programme 44 

Utopian social engineering xxxvi . 21, 23, 44, 52, 147, 148-9. 150 . 151 . 152 . 153 . 154 . 156 . 

295 . 298, 338, Ml, 602, MO 
Utopian systems 23 
Utopian technology 405 



utopianism 2di, 2LV, 147- 57. 682 : crime prevention 108 : Marx 294, 295 . 338 . 701 

value theory 377-83. 709-10 
values 47; relativism 15 
variable capital 389 

Vaughan, C. E. 561, 573, 588, 634, 672-3 
verbalism 232-6. 237 . 294 . 662 
verification principle ix, 591 . 659 
Versailles settlement 681 
Vico, Giambattista 533 . 534 
victims 180 

Viner, Jacob xxm, 635, 683, 709, 211, 211 

violence 149, 156, 475, 703, 707; Marxism 358, 359-69. 371 : Plato 196; and rationalism 439, 

441 . 459-60, 671-2: see also war 
virtue 24-8, 37, 41, 84, 88, 93, 94, 103 , 107, 122, 174, 176 
Voltaire 411 
von Humboldt, W. 266 
vote buying 337 

Vulgar Marxism 311, Ml, 322, 422, 688 

wage capital 389 
wage-slavery 692 

wages 388, 390 : constant capital 713- 14: depression 386 : starvation 373 . 386 : subsistence 373 . 

theory of surplus value 378-9, 710 : trade cycle 385- 8: value theory 383 
Wagner, R. 543 
Waismann, F. 659 
Walkley, Mary Anne 331 
Wallas, Graham 513 

war x; causes 609 : ethical 274 : Hegel 276- 81: and justice 15.; Marxism 295 : of opposites 252 : 
religious 442 



warriors 45, 52, 75, 132, 163, 589 

water, heavy 490- 1 

Way of Delusive Opinion 523, 526 

wealth 375 . 376, 401 : accumulation 47, 391 : law of increasing wealth 376 
Weber, Max 309, 528, 652, 662, 687, HI, 730, 211 
Wells, H. G. 524, 223 
White, Morton G. 230 

Whitehead, A. N. 432, 451-4. 666 . 722 . 725 

Wiener, N. 545 

Wilde, Oscar 503 

Will 293; ofGodS, 23 

Wilson, W. 263, 680, 681 

Winckelmann, J. 674 

Winspear, A. D. 529, 584 

wisdom 22, 122-3. 125 . 129 . 136 . 137-8. 176 . 193 : rule of the wisest 66, 111, 114-15. 117 . 

122 . 125 : see also leadership 
Wittgenstein, L. 216, 642, 658, 629, 212, 218, 720-1. 725 : mysticism 224, 225, 733 : 

propositions 653 . 654 . 657- 8. 659 . 720- 1: sense of life 732 : verification principle 659 
women: common ownership/property 47-8. 98 
Wood, William HI 

workers 329, HI, 112, 118, 142, 155, 152, 165, 199, 211; age of death 191; class 

consciousness 301 . 322 : revolution 353 . 364 : see also human cattle; proletariat 
World: creation 620; history 211, 260, 261, 222, 228, 285, 662, 621 
World Historical Personality 274 . 283 
World-Historical People 275 
World-Spirit 222 
World War, First 326 
worship: hero 480 : state 475- 6 

Xenophanes 14, 129, 502, 614, 632-3 



Xenophon 63 1 

Zeller 224, 516, 517, 529, 640, Ml, 644, 645 

Zeus 14, 19, 63 

Ziegler, H. O. 288 

Zimmem, A. 273 . 677 

Zinsser, H. 240-1. 475 . 617 . 665 



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The Logic of 

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Karl Popper 



*One of Che most important documents of the twentieth century.' - 
Peter Medawar* ^fMr SefMtitt 

Described by the philosopher AJ. Ayer ss e woric 'of jreet or^^niH^ end 

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Conjectures and Refutations 




Conjectures and 
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Karl Popper 



Conjeaures and Refutations is one of Karl Popper's most wide-ranging and 
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The Poverty of 
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Karl Popper 



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On fts publication fn I The AwertyofNbnridmvm hailed by Arthur 

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