Transcribed from the 1887 Tomas Y. Crowell “What todo?” edition ,
. . . [169] The justification of all persons whohave freed themselves from toil is now founded on experimental,positive science. The scientific theory is asfollows:—
“For the study of the laws of life of human societies,there exists but one indubitable method,—the positive,experimental, critical method
“Only sociology, founded on biology, founded on all thepositive sciences, can give us the laws of humanity. Humanity, or human communities, are the organisms alreadyprepared, or still in process of formation, and which aresubservient to all the laws of the evolution of organisms.
“One of the chief of these laws is the variation ofdestination among the portions of the organs. Some peoplecommand, others obey. If some have in superabundance, andothers in want, this arises not from the will of God, not becausethe empire is a form of manifestation of personality, but becausein societies, as in organisms, division of labor becomesindispensable for life as a whole. Some people perform themuscular labor in societies; others, the mental labor.”
Upon this doctrine is founded the prevailing justification ofour time.
Not long ago, their reigned in the learned, cultivated world,a moral philosophy, according to which it appeared that everything which exists is reasonable; that there is no such thing asevil or good; and that it is unnecessary for man to war againstevil, but that it is only necessary for him to displayintelligence,—one man in the military service, another inthe judicial, another on the violin. There have been manyand varied expressions of human wisdom, and these phenomena wereknown to the men of the nineteenth century. The wisdom ofRousseau and of Lessing, and Spinoza and Bruno, and all thewisdom of antiquity; but no one man’s wisdom overrode thecrowd. It was impossible to say even this,—thatHegel’s success was the result of the symmetry of thistheory. There were other equally symmetricaltheories,—those of Descartes, Leibnitz, Fichte,Schopenhauer. There was but one reason why this doctrinewon for itself, for a season, the belief of the whole world; andthis reason was, that the deductions of that philosophy winked atpeople’s weaknesses. These deductions were summed upin this,—that every thing was reasonable, every thing good;and that no one was to blame.
When I began my career, Hegelianism was the foundation ofevery thing. It was floating in the air; it was expressedin newspaper and periodical articles, in historical and judiciallectures, in novels, in treatises, in art, in sermons, inconversation. The man who was not acquainted with Hegal hadno right to speak. Any one who desired to understand thetruth studied Hegel. Every thing rested on him. Andall at once the forties passed, and there was nothing left ofhim. There was not even a hint of him, any more than if hehad never existed. And the most amazing thing of all was,that Hegelianism did not fall because some one overthrew it ordestroyed it. No! It was the same then as now, butall at once it appeared that it was of no use whatever to thelearned and cultivated world.
There was a time when the Hegelian wise men triumphantlyinstructed the masses; and the crowd, understanding nothing,blindly believed in every thing, finding confirmation in the factthat it was on hand; and they believed that what seemed to themmuddy and contradictory there on the heights of philosophy wasall as clear as the day. But that time has gone by. That theory is worn out: a new theor