Chapter V: Conclusion

We have now come to a point where we can survey the whole ground and draw reasonable conclusions from the facts set down. The irresistible main decision is against the rest of the philosophers and against all their philosophy. This is as it should be; for what would be the profit of a new philosophy if it failed to destroy the old? The philosophers may, of course, rise to counter-attack; but what do we reck of that? For we have the public with us, since we have come to a conclusion which justifies what they always have done, what they dearly love doing, and what they are at heart convinced is right--though they did not know it, any more than the perfect athlete knows how he balances when he walks.

The conclusion is, then, that like religion, truth is neither good nor bad. There are good religions and bad religions, good truths and bad.

Generally, though, or at least more often than not, truth is, in practice, bad--especially in the fields of æsthetics, ethics, morals, character-building, and business (which last we have not stopped to argue since it is so self-evident).

We pointed out in the first section of this book the necessary imperfection of all the sciences except mathematics. Since nothing is true there by observation or by any evidence, but merely by agreement, it is obvious that truth in mathematics need never be bad--since we are not obliged to agree on it if we do not like it, and nothing is bad unless it is something we do not like.

Though we have not covered the field exhaustively, we may agree that truth is good, usually, in engineering, chemistry, physics, and the allied sciences. It is good in astronomy and geology whenever it does not conflict with religion. It is good about as often as bad in sociology, psychology, physiology, biology, and several of the related sciences, for in these about half the time it appears to support present-day manners, current morals and the prevalent religion. In history, civics and many such fields it is always open to the gravest suspicion. In the training of very young children as a general thing it should be rather carefully avoided.

THE NECESSARY REFORMS

Having arrived at this conclusion, we must profit by it. At first sight it will seem that, since we have found the truth bad as often as not, the thing to do would be to proclaim our emancipation from its tyranny. But that would be forgetting the more important part of our findings--the benevolent nature and salutary effects of at least a good half of all the deception there is. How could you carry on a Santa Claus campaign, or remain happily married, if you said openly that you were going to deceive whenever you thought it best? It is only in prestidigitation, where “the quickness of the hand deceives the eye,” that you can safely tell people that you are going to fool them. In spiritualist seances, in praying for rain, or in forecasting a year without a summer, what effect do you suppose you would produce if you said to everybody that you were doing everything for its mere psychological effect on them?

We can well take our pointer as to what to do from a famous general who has announced publicly that he is going to explain in a book just how he himself and his associates invented and circulated some of the most effective (or outrageous) lies of the Great War. In connection with this announcement he has had two things to explain, and he has made an explanation that is not only satisfactory in his case but admirably suited to broader uses.

Asked how he could, without shame, admit such lies as he proposed to admit, he replied in substance that if you are justified in using shrapnel, poison gas, torpedoes from submarines and bombs from airships, you are justified in using any means at all. The main concern is to make the nation at home and the soldiers in the field a unit for the war, and you cannot do that unless you at least convince them that there is good reason to fight. The more convinced they are the better they will fight, and what propaganda does is to make them more convinced. This argument is so familiar that it deserves no further amplification.

The General’s second defense was against the accusation that he had said himself that he expected another war within twenty-five years from the last, and that such a war could not be won without propaganda. How, then, did he justify himself in giving away his country’s secrets of just how its citizens were fooled in the last war? His reply was that the remedy would be very simple. All you had to do was to say: “Yes, quite right; we fooled you in the last war. But times have changed and that sort of thing would not work now. Besides, we would not fool you even if it served our ends, we have become so honorable.” Having said this, you could go ahead and fool them not only with the old methods but, in some cases, with the very same tale. All you will have to do in the last case is to explain: “The story which we invented in the last war must have given the enemy the idea, for now they are actually doing what we then accused them of.”

We may well adapt the General’s ideas to a wider field. The leaders of thought among us must continue to proclaim their devotion to Truth, in order that they may be able to get people to believe and act upon those things that are for the general welfare.

The conclusions and recommendations at which we have arrived will receive informal support from most thoughtful and all public-spirited persons. But will that be enough, especially in view of the solid front presented by the old-school philosophers, who still hold that the Good is the same as the True, and that the True is whatever corresponds to facts? It should be enough, for we have an initial advantage in the cogency and popular appeal of our reasoning. By considering the very same facts as the old philosophers, but merely selecting them more judiciously and approaching them from the opposite, or scientific, angle (of reasoning from facts to principles), we have discovered (what has long been instinctively felt) that many facts are bad; and have demonstrated that the Good cannot be synonymous with every kind of fact, for that would make good synonymous with bad, which is nonsense. The Good, we have thus demonstrated, has no necessary relation to facts at all, but is ultimately determined by the sound instincts of the majority.

The ancients, it seems, anticipated our findings in a measure; but that is natural, and strengthens our position, for we are only trying to go back to the first principles of Nature, and they understood Nature better than we, being closer to her and yielding a freer rein to their instincts. They expressed their conclusion in the saying that “The voice of the people is the voice of God.” The triumph of the same idea was poetically forecast by Tennyson when he spoke of an epoch in which “The common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe.”

Can we secure the triumph which Tennyson foresaw, the need of which we have shown, without a special organization to attain it? Pondering the question, it does not seem that we need any wholly new organization, but rather a federation of those existing agencies that believe in acting on our principle--the principle of the sound common sense of the majority. Consider what we have to start with: The Fundamentalists would take care of religion, the American Legion and the Liberty League would see to patriotism and would safeguard the status quo, the Anti-Saloon League, the W.C.T.U., and similar organizations would look after the prohibition of alcoholics (and other prohibitions, as needed); the Society for the Suppression of Vice, the Watch and Ward Society, and their kind, would protect our literary and other morals. And so on through the list.

Of course it will never do for the benevolent organizations to continue acting separately, each for its own end. They must unite. The Fundamentalists must agree to support the Legion and League on patriotism, and they must return the favor by a united Anti-Darwinism. All of them must get behind the next Clean Books Bill, and so on till every organization to promote the common good has the support of every other.

Such union will be strength, but there will be more power in reserve that may be called on when needed. Suppose, for instance, that the schools are threatened. The toy makers, the printers of fairy tales, and the educational movie people will see to it that Noah and his Ark remain in our religion, Jack and the Beanstalk in our folklore, and the permanently frozen Arctic in our geographies. The politicians will arrange that the histories shall continue to be reticent and the soapmakers will look out that the physiology of the skin does not get too well understood. Back of all such individuals, corporations, or groups, will be the sound morality and the good taste of the community, taking care that mere facts shall not lead us too far astray.