On the Significance of Science and Art

On the Significance of Science and Art

Only sociology, founded on biology, founded on all the positive sciences, can give us the laws of humanity. Humanity, or human communities, are the organisms already prepared, or still in process of formation, and which are subservient to all the laws of the evolution of organisms. One of the chief of these laws is the variation of destination among the portions of the organs. Some people command, others obey. If some have in superabundance, and others in want, this arises not from the will of God, not because the empire is a form of manifestation of personality, but because in societies, as in organisms, division of labor becomes indispensable for life as a whole. Some people perform the muscular labor in societies; others, the mental labor. Not long ago, their reigned in the learned, cultivated world, a moral philosophy, according to which it appeared that every thing which exists is reasonable; that there is no such thing as evil or good; and that it is unnecessary for man to war against evil, but that it is only necessary for him to display intelligence,one man in the military service, another in the judicial, another on the violin. There have been many and varied expressions of human wisdom, and these phenomena were known to the men of the nineteenth century. The wisdom of Rousseau and of Lessing, and Spinoza and Bruno, and all the wisdom of antiquity; but no one mans wisdom overrode the crowd. It was impossible to say even this,that Hegels success was the result of the symmetry of this theory. There were other equally symmetrical theories,those of Descartes, Leibnitz, Fichte, Schopenhauer. There was but one reason why this doctrine won for itself, for a season, the belief of the whole world; and this reason was, that the deductions of that philosophy winked at peoples weaknesses. These deductions were summed up in this,that every thing was reasonable, every thing good; and that no one was to blame. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 3631
Author: Tolstoy, Leo
Release Date: Jan 1, 2003
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Hapgood, Isabel Florence, 1850-1928