Chapter VII: This Unbelieving World (3)

My own rather extended acquaintance of the art-galleries of the world has heretofore inclined me to believe that Italy has been more sinned against than sinning in this regard--and that in Italy, itself, such stolen masterpieces as are to be seen were largely stolen from the Church and placed in galleries belonging to an anti-clerical state. But perhaps I am mistaken--and mistaken also in thinking that since 1870 the Pope has been self-imprisoned in the Vatican when in reality he has been roaming for the (until very recently) irreligious Italian Government abroad, stealing pictures. Or was it before 1870 that the thieving from foreigners was done--during the days when Italy was overrun with foreign armies, and the term Italy was a mere “geographical expression?” Does he refer to the marble treasures of the Vatican rescued from war and neglect in Greece and elsewhere? Or were the thefts of a still earlier date, when most of Europe was comparatively barbarian? I can think of one such instance. Some of the decorations for St. Mark’s, Venice, were brought by the Venetian merchants from the Orient--as was the body of their patron saint.

But Durant continues: “So Italy remained loyal to the old faith, and contented itself with the ‘Summa’ of Aquinas for philosophy.”

When? Why, until Giambatista Vico came. He “stirred the Italian mind again; but Vico went, and philosophy seemed to die with him. Rosmini thought for a time that he would rebel; but he yielded. Throughout Italy men became more and more irreligious, and more and more loyal to the Church. Benedetto Croce (born in 1866) is an exception.”[217]

What Durant must mean is that the more irreligious one becomes the more loyal one naturally is to the Catholic Church. If that be true, the Italian _Risorgimento_ (the political movement which led to the union of Italy under an anti-clerical government) was certainly most loyal--and it expressed its loyalty by taking the Church’s temporal empire away from it! But in what respect was Croce an exception to this devotion and this irreligion?

For one thing, he was nearly killed beneath the ruins of a house at Casamicciola during the earthquake of 1883. For another, he was “given so thorough a training in Catholic theology that at last, to restore the balance, he became atheist.”

But this, apart from the training, was precisely what the _Risorgimento_ did, so there is no exception here. The exception, then, must lie in the fact that he did not remain loyal. He could not get enough of the Catholic theology out of his system to be loyal to the Catholic Church--though he could be loyal enough to imitate the _Risorgimento_ in repudiating it! This, as Durant himself says[218] of Croce’s philosophy in general, “is as clear as a starless night.”

I wish to record my entire agreement with this final verdict as to the Croce philosophy. From the most absurd premises in the world, Durant has somehow arrived at a correct and satisfactory conclusion.

But he does not stop here. He goes on to say that Croce “slides easily into logical casuistry and refutes more readily than he can conclude.” It is easy to see that Scholasticism is being held to blame here. Durant does not like Scholasticism, and he does not like Croce. Not that there is the slightest evidence that Durant ever read a single scholastic author. I am merely assuming that he has. And he would like to derive the cause of one dislike from the source of the other. So he permits himself to use the word “casuistry” as loosely as Browne would have us believe St. Paul used theological terms--that is, he uses it as an old lady sitting by the fire might use it, to denote sophistry, and sophistry to denote an unsound argument. A philosopher could never have so forgotten the original meaning of casuistry as the art of dealing with cases of conscience, especially when writing of Croce with the idea that he was a scholastic. But perhaps it was the “German” scholasticism of his subject which fogged the Durant mind at this point.

But how explain the following? He tells of Croce becoming Minister of Public Education and a Senator, and denouncing the World War. Then he adds: “But Italy has forgiven him now; and all the youth of the land look up to him as their unbiased guide, philosopher and friend.”[219]

Had Durant but said, “The anti-fascist wing of the _Intelligencia_, most of whom are far from young and cling to the atheistic French Revolutionary philosophy of the _Risorgimento_, look up to Croce,” the statement would have been true--in so far as a member of the _Intelligencia_ may be said to look up to anybody. Every unbiased person who has spent much time in Italy of late knows that most of the youth of that country today look upon Mussolini, and not Croce, as their guide, philosopher and friend. And Mussolini is a Catholic. Has Durant never heard of the Black Shirts or of the March on Rome?

But perhaps I am wrong in finding fault with Durant’s fondness for catering to popular misconceptions which no doubt he shares. He quotes his favorite Bergson as saying, “The time given to refutation in philosophy is usually time lost. Of the many attacks directed by the many thinkers against each other, what now remains? Nothing, or assuredly very little. That which counts and endures is the modicum of positive truth which each contributes.”

One wonders how this modicum is to be discovered without criticism, and is informed (still by Bergson) that “the true statement is of itself able to displace the erroneous idea, and becomes, without our having taken the trouble of refuting anyone, the best of refutations.” Is this not saying that a garden will grow more flowers if one does not criticise it by trying to pull up the weeds? Is it not sheer nonsense to talk of erroneous ideas displacing themselves without anybody taking the trouble to refute anything, when there was never a time in the history of man when ideas, true and false, did not have to meet the objections of the fault-finder? No; Durant assures us that Bergson speaks with “the voice of wisdom herself,” and that when we “‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ a philosophy we are merely offering another one.”

Merely, you understand. Then all philosophies are indifferent mixtures, one as good as another. Here is pragmatism mixed with _laissez-faire_. And like pragmatism (which at one and the same time holds that whatever you think is true is indeed true for the moment and as far as you are concerned, and that nevertheless the test of truth is the fruit it bears), it does not understand itself.

FOOTNOTES:

[146] _Op. cit._, p. 83.

[147] _Ibid._, p. 429.

[148] _Op. cit._, p. 446.

[149] _Op. cit._, page 71.

[150] _Ibid._, p. 454.

[151] _Ibid._, p. 155.

[152] _Ibid._, p. 456.

[153] _Op. cit._, p. 437.

[154] _Ibid._, p. 473.

[155] “This Believing World,” p. 298.

[156] _Ibid._, p. 296.

[157] _Ibid._, p. 297.

[158] _Op. cit._, p. 300.

[159] _Op. cit._, p. 29.

[160] _Ibid._, pp. 29-30.

[161] _Ibid._, p. 30.

[162] _Op. cit._, p. 259.

[163] _Op. cit._, pp. 259-260.

[164] _Ibid._, p. 261.

[165] _Op. cit._, p. 263.

[166] _Ibid._, p. 264.

[167] _Ibid._, p. 265.

[168] _Op. cit._, p. 266.

[169] _Op. cit._, p. 267.

[170] _Ibid._, p. 267.

[171] St. John, XIV.

[172] “This Believing World,” p. 269.

[173] _Ibid._, p. 271.

[174] _Ibid._, p. 272.

[175] _Ibid._, p. 273.

[176] _Ibid._, p. 276.

[177] “This Believing World,” p. 277.

[178] _Loc. cit._

[179] _Ibid._

[180] _Op. cit._, p. 278.

[181] _Ibid._, p. 279.

[182] _Ibid._, p. 280.

[183] _Op. cit._, p. 280.

[184] _Ibid._, p. 281.

[185] _Ibid._, p. 282.

[186] _Ibid._, p. 284.

[187] “The Psychology of Religious Mysticism,” p. 189.

[188] “This Believing World,” p. 284.

[189] “This Believing World,” p. 285.

[190] _Op. cit._, p. 218.

[191] _Ibid._, p. 285.

[192] _Op. cit._, p. 287.

[193] _Ibid._, p. 288.

[194] _Ibid._, p. 289.

[195] _Ibid._, p. 290.

[196] _Op. cit._, p. 292.

[197] _Ibid._, p. 292.

[198] _Loc. cit._

[199] _Loc. cit._

[200] _Op. cit._, pp. 292-293.

[201] _Loc. cit._

[202] _Op. cit._, p. 296.

[203] _Op. cit._, p. 64.

[204] _Ibid._, p. 70.

[205] _Ibid._, p. 279.

[206] _Ibid._, p. 274.

[207] _Ibid._, p. 277.

[208] _Ibid._, p. 298.

[209] _Ibid._, pp. 298-299.

[210] _Op. cit._, p. 299.

[211] _Op. cit._, p. 300.

[212] _Ibid._, p. 300.

[213] _Ibid._, p. 301.

[214] “The Story of Philosophy,” p. 326.

[215] _Op. cit._, p. 507.

[216] _Ibid._, p. 511.

[217] _Op. cit._, p. 509.

[218] _Ibid._, p. 316.

[219] _Op. cit._, p. 509.