THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
desert. But the only way to see the situation steadily and see it whole is to
keep in mind that the entire problem is one of the development of science
and its application to life, . . . Morals, philosophy, returns to its first love;
love of the wisdom that is nurse of good. But it returns to ^the Socratic
principle equipped with a multitude of special methods of inquiry and tests;
with an organized mass of knowledge, and with control of the arrangements
by which industry, law and education may concentrate upon the problem
of the participation by all men and women, up to the capacity of absorption,
in all attained values. 76
Unlike most philosophers, Dewey accepts democracy, though he knows
its faults. The aim of political order is to help the individual to develop
himself completely; and this can come only when each shares, up to his
capacity, in determining the policy and destiny of his group. Fixed classes
of classes came at the same time
belong with fixed species; the fluidity
as the theory of the transformation of species. 77 Aristocracy and monarchy
are more efficient than democracy, but they are also more dangerous.
Dewey distrusts the state, and wishes a pluralistic order, in which as
much as possible of the work of society would be done by voluntary
associations. He sees in the multiplicity o'l organizations, parties, corpora-
tions, trade unions, etc., a reconciliation of individualism with common
action. As these
develop in importance, the state tends to become more and more a regulator
and adjuster among them; defining the limits of their actions, prevent-
ing and settling conflicts. . . . Moreover, the voluntary associations . . .
do not coincide with political boundaries. Associations of mathematicians,
chemists, astronomers, business corporations, labor organizations, churches,
are trans-national because the interests they represent arc world-wide. In
such ways as these, internationalism is not an aspiration but a fact, not a
sentimental ideal but a force. Yet these interests are cut across and thrown
out of gear by the traditional doctrine of exclusive national sovereignty. It is
the vogue of this doctrine or dogma that presents the strongest barrier to the
effective formation of an international mind which alone agrees with the
moving forces of present-day labor, commerce, science, art, and 70
religion.
But political reconstruction will come only when we apply to our social
problems the experimental methods and attitudes which have succeeded
so well in the natural sciences. We are still in the metaphysical stage of
political philosophy; we fling abstractions at one another's heads, and
when the battle is over nothing is won. We cannot cure our social ills with
wholesale ideas, magnificent generalizations like individualism or order,
democracy or monarchy or aristocracy, or what not. We must meet each
problem with a specific hypothesis, and no universal theory; theories are
tentacles, and fruitful progressive living must rely on trial and error,
7e
"Psychology and Social Science"; J. of D. on P., p. 71.
n
'"Reconstruction, p. 75.
lbid., pp. 203, 305.