But history is perhaps an even better antidote to anarchic individualism as well as to a lifeless traditionalism.
It is a curious fact that the more democratic a country becomes, the less respect it has for its rulers. Aristocracies and foreign conquerors may be hated but they are not despised.
Casual experience of life is of very little use to a specialist, such as I aspire to be; good manners are absolutely useless.
The world at present is full of angry self-centred groups, each incapable of viewing human life as a whole, each willing to destroy civilization rather than yield an inch.
Because work is a duty, and a man should not receive wages in proportion to what he has produced, but in proportion to his virtue as exemplified by his industry.
The laws of social dynamics are – so I shall contend – only capable of being stated in terms of power in its various forms. In order to discover these laws, it is necessary first to classify the forms of power, and then to review various important historical examples.
If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.
The practical distinction among passions comes as regards their success: some passions lead to success in what is desired; others, to failure. If you pursue the former, you will be happy; if the latter, unhappy.
The men who cause social changes are, as a rule, men who strongly desire to do so. Love of power, therefore, is a characteristic of the men who are causally important.
But what the typical modern man desires to get with it is more money, with a view to ostentation, splendour, and the outshining of those who have hitherto been his equals. The social scale in America is indefinite and continually fluctuating. Consequently all the snobbish emotions become more restless than they are where the social order is fixed, and although money in itself may not suffice to make people grand, it is difficult to be grand without money.
The qualities required for power behind the scenes are very different from those required for all other kinds, and as a rule, though not always, they are undesirable qualities. A system which accords much power to the courtier or the wire-puller is, therefore, in general not a system likely to promote the general welfare.
Inequality in the distribution of power has always existed in human communities, as far back as our knowledge extends. This is due partly to external necessity, partly to causes which are to be found in human nature. Most collective enterprises are only possible if they are directed by some governing body.
Modern philosophy begins with Descartes, whose fundamental certainty is the existence of himself and his thoughts, from which the external world is to be inferred. This was only the first stage in a development, through Berkeley and Kant, to Fichte, for whom everything is only an emanation of the ego. This was insanity, and, from this extreme, philosophy has been attempting, ever since, to escape into the world of every-day common sense.
It seems that sin is geographical. From this conclusion, it is only a small step to the further conclusion that the notion of ‘sin’ is illusory, and that the cruelty habitually practised in punishing it is unnecessary.
Industry, sobriety, willingness to work long hours for distant advantages, even submissiveness to authority, all these reappear; moreover authority still represents the will of the Ruler of the Universe, who, however, is now called by a new name, Dialectical Materialism.
I reflected that the value of a work of art has no relation whatever to the pleasure it gives; indeed, the more I have dwelt upon the subject, the more I have come to prize austerity rather than luxuriance.
Authoritative education, we may add, produces the slave type as well as the despotic type, since it leads to the feeling that the only possible relation between two human beings who cooperate is that in which one issues orders and the other obeys them.
Men like power so long as they believe in their own competence to handle the business in question, but when they know themselves incompetent they prefer to follow a leader.
Every proposition, true or false – so the present theory contends – ascribes a predicate to a subject, and – what is a corollary from the above – there is only one subject. The consequences of this doctrine are so strange, that I cannot believe they have been realized by those who maintain it. The theory is in fact self-contradictory.
Whenever there is acute danger, the impulse of most people is to seek out Authority and submit to it; at such moments, few would dream of revolution. When war breaks out, people have similar feelings towards the Government.