WEBVTT NOTE 11. The Challenge of Scientism 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 CHAPTER 11 THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENTISM 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:10.000 1. POSITIVISM AND BEHAVIORISM 3 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:15.000 What differentiates the realm of the natural sciences from that of the sciences of human action 4 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:22.000 is the categorical system resorted to in each in interpreting phenomena and constructing theories. 5 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:26.000 The natural sciences do not know anything about final causes. 6 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:32.180 Inquiry and theorizing are entirely guided by the category of causality. 7 00:00:32.180 --> 00:00:37.520 The field of the sciences of human action is the orbit of purpose and of conscious aiming 8 00:00:37.520 --> 00:00:38.820 at ends. 9 00:00:38.820 --> 00:00:41.440 It is teleological. 10 00:00:41.440 --> 00:00:46.840 Both categories were resorted to by primitive man and are resorted to today by everybody 11 00:00:46.840 --> 00:00:49.200 in daily thinking and acting. 12 00:00:49.200 --> 00:00:54.040 The most simple skills and techniques imply knowledge gathered by rudimentary research 13 00:00:54.040 --> 00:00:56.320 into Causality. 14 00:00:56.320 --> 00:01:00.380 Where people did not know how to seek the relation of cause and effect, they looked 15 00:01:00.380 --> 00:01:03.300 for a teleological interpretation. 16 00:01:03.300 --> 00:01:09.960 They invented deities and devils to whose purposeful action certain phenomena were ascribed. 17 00:01:09.960 --> 00:01:12.900 A god emitted lightning and thunder. 18 00:01:12.900 --> 00:01:19.040 Another god, angry about some acts of men, killed the offenders by shooting arrows. 19 00:01:19.040 --> 00:01:23.960 A witch's evil eye made women barren and cows dry. 20 00:01:23.960 --> 00:01:28.040 Such beliefs generated definite methods of action. 21 00:01:28.040 --> 00:01:33.000 Conduct pleasing to the deity, offering of sacrifices and prayer were considered suitable 22 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:37.640 means to appease the deity's anger and to avert its revenge. 23 00:01:37.640 --> 00:01:41.160 Magic rites were employed to neutralize witchcraft. 24 00:01:41.160 --> 00:01:47.600 Slowly, people came to learn that meteorological events, disease, and the spread of plagues 25 00:01:47.600 --> 00:01:53.560 are natural phenomena and that lightning rods and antiseptic agents provide effective protection 26 00:01:53.560 --> 00:01:57.120 and, while magic writes, are useless. 27 00:01:57.120 --> 00:02:02.800 It was only in the modern era that the natural sciences in all their fields substituted causal 28 00:02:02.800 --> 00:02:05.680 research for finalism. 29 00:02:05.680 --> 00:02:10.320 The marvelous achievements of the experimental natural sciences prompted the emergence of 30 00:02:10.320 --> 00:02:15.800 a materialistic metaphysical doctrine, positivism. 31 00:02:15.800 --> 00:02:21.420 Positivism flatly denies that any field of inquiry is open for teleological research. 32 00:02:21.420 --> 00:02:26.560 The experimental methods of the natural sciences are the only appropriate methods for any kind 33 00:02:26.560 --> 00:02:28.300 of investigation. 34 00:02:28.300 --> 00:02:33.820 They alone are scientific, while the traditional methods of the sciences of human action are 35 00:02:33.820 --> 00:02:41.500 metaphysical, that is, in the terminology of positivism, superstitious and spurious. 36 00:02:41.500 --> 00:02:46.260 Positivism teaches that the task of science is exclusively the description and interpretation 37 00:02:46.260 --> 00:02:48.680 of sensory experience. 38 00:02:48.680 --> 00:02:53.880 rejects the introspection of psychology, as well as all historical disciplines. 39 00:02:53.880 --> 00:02:58.920 It is especially fanatical in its condemnation of economics. 40 00:02:58.920 --> 00:03:06.080 Auguste Kant, by no means the founder of positivism, but merely the inventor of its name, suggested 41 00:03:06.080 --> 00:03:10.480 as a substitute for the traditional methods of dealing with human action, a new branch 42 00:03:10.480 --> 00:03:14.160 of science, sociology. 43 00:03:14.160 --> 00:03:33.560 The first generation of Kant's followers turned instead toward what they believed to be biological 44 00:03:33.560 --> 00:03:37.080 and organic interpretation of social phenomena. 45 00:03:37.080 --> 00:03:41.880 They indulged freely in metaphorical language and quite seriously discussed such problems 46 00:03:41.880 --> 00:03:47.600 The Social Body should be classed as intracellular substance. 47 00:03:47.600 --> 00:03:54.120 When the absurdity of this biologism or organicism became obvious, the sociologists completely 48 00:03:54.120 --> 00:03:57.600 abandoned the ambitious pretensions of Kant. 49 00:03:57.600 --> 00:04:04.000 There was no longer any question of discovering a posteriori laws of social change. 50 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:10.720 Various historical, ethnographical and psychological studies were put out under the label sociology. 51 00:04:10.720 --> 00:04:14.960 Many of these publications were dilettantish and confused. 52 00:04:14.960 --> 00:04:20.060 Some are acceptable contributions to various fields of historical research. 53 00:04:20.060 --> 00:04:24.160 Without any value, on the other hand, were the writings of those who termed sociology 54 00:04:24.160 --> 00:04:29.240 their arbitrary metaphysical effusions about the recondite meaning and end of the historical 55 00:04:29.240 --> 00:04:33.920 process which had been previously styled philosophy of history. 56 00:04:33.920 --> 00:04:40.080 Thus, Emil Durkheim and his school revived under the appellation group mind the old specter 57 00:04:40.080 --> 00:04:46.060 of Romanticism and the German School of Historical Jurisprudence, the Volksgeist. 58 00:04:46.060 --> 00:04:53.160 In spite of this manifest failure of a positivist program, a neopositivist movement has arisen. 59 00:04:53.160 --> 00:04:56.580 It stubbornly repeats all the fallacies of Kant. 60 00:04:56.580 --> 00:05:00.980 The same motive inspires these writers that inspired Kant. 61 00:05:00.980 --> 00:05:06.560 They are driven by an idiosyncratic abhorrence to the market economy and its political corollary, 62 00:05:06.560 --> 00:05:11.080 Representative Government, Freedom of Thought, Speech and the Press. 63 00:05:11.080 --> 00:05:16.920 They long for totalitarianism, dictatorship and the ruthless oppression of all dissenters, 64 00:05:16.920 --> 00:05:21.800 taking of course for granted that they themselves or their intimate friends will be vested 65 00:05:21.800 --> 00:05:26.000 with the supreme office and the power to silence all opponents. 66 00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:31.760 Kant, without shame, advocated suppression of all doctrines he disliked. 67 00:05:31.760 --> 00:05:36.520 The most obtrusive champion of the neopositivist program concerning the sciences of human 68 00:05:36.520 --> 00:05:49.520 was Otto Neurath, who in 1919 was one of the outstanding leaders of the short-lived Soviet regime of Munich and later cooperated briefly in Moscow with the bureaucracy of the Bolsheviks. 69 00:05:49.520 --> 00:06:01.520 Knowing they cannot advance any tenable argument against the economists' critique of their plans, these passionate communists tried to discredit economics wholesale on epistemological grounds. 70 00:06:01.520 --> 00:06:07.840 The two main varieties of the neopositivistic assault on economics are pan-physicalism and 71 00:06:07.840 --> 00:06:09.560 behaviorism. 72 00:06:09.560 --> 00:06:16.520 Both claim to substitute a purely causal treatment of human action for the, as they declare unscientific, 73 00:06:16.520 --> 00:06:20.080 teleological treatment. 74 00:06:20.080 --> 00:06:24.320 Pan-physicalism teaches that the procedures of physics are the only scientific method 75 00:06:24.320 --> 00:06:26.840 of all branches of science. 76 00:06:26.840 --> 00:06:31.800 It denies that any essential differences exist between the natural sciences and the sciences 77 00:06:31.800 --> 00:06:34.080 of human action. 78 00:06:34.080 --> 00:06:40.560 This denial lies behind the pan-physicalist's slogan, Unified Science. 79 00:06:40.560 --> 00:06:45.800 Sense experience, which conveys to man his information about physical events, provides 80 00:06:45.800 --> 00:06:50.840 him also with all information about the behavior of his fellow men. 81 00:06:50.840 --> 00:06:55.800 Study of the way his fellows react to various stimuli does not differ essentially from study 82 00:06:55.800 --> 00:06:58.840 of the Way Other Objects React 83 00:06:58.840 --> 00:07:05.340 The language of physics is the universal language of all branches of knowledge, without exception. 84 00:07:05.340 --> 00:07:10.420 What cannot be rendered in the language of physics is metaphysical nonsense. 85 00:07:10.420 --> 00:07:15.120 It is arrogant pretension in man to believe that his role in the universe is different 86 00:07:15.120 --> 00:07:17.360 from that of other objects. 87 00:07:17.360 --> 00:07:21.160 In the eyes of the scientist, all things are equal. 88 00:07:21.160 --> 00:07:27.280 All talk about consciousness, volition, and aiming at ends is empty. 89 00:07:27.280 --> 00:07:30.600 Man is just one of the elements in the universe. 90 00:07:30.600 --> 00:07:36.080 The applied science of social physics, social engineering, can deal with man in the same 91 00:07:36.080 --> 00:07:40.880 way technology deals with copper and hydrogen. 92 00:07:40.880 --> 00:07:46.160 The pan-physicalist might admit at least one essential difference between man and the objects 93 00:07:46.160 --> 00:07:47.820 of physics. 94 00:07:47.820 --> 00:07:53.860 The stones and the atoms reflect neither upon their own nature, properties, and behavior 95 00:07:53.860 --> 00:07:56.400 nor upon those of man. 96 00:07:56.400 --> 00:08:00.320 They do not engineer either themselves or man. 97 00:08:00.320 --> 00:08:05.460 Man is at least different from them insofar as he is a physicist and an engineer. 98 00:08:05.460 --> 00:08:10.140 It is difficult to conceive how one could deal with the activities of an engineer without 99 00:08:10.140 --> 00:08:15.500 realizing that he chooses between various possible lines of conduct and is intent upon 100 00:08:15.500 --> 00:08:17.780 Attaining Definite Ends 101 00:08:17.780 --> 00:08:21.100 Why does he build a bridge rather than a ferry? 102 00:08:21.100 --> 00:08:26.020 Why does he build one bridge with a capacity of 10 tons and another with a capacity of 103 00:08:26.020 --> 00:08:27.820 20 tons? 104 00:08:27.820 --> 00:08:31.820 Why is he intent upon constructing bridges that do not collapse? 105 00:08:31.820 --> 00:08:36.420 Or is it only an accident that most bridges do not collapse? 106 00:08:36.420 --> 00:08:41.040 If one eliminates from the treatment of human action the notion of conscious aiming at definite 107 00:08:41.040 --> 00:08:49.200 ends, one must replace it by the, really metaphysical, idea that some superhuman agency leads men, 108 00:08:49.200 --> 00:08:54.800 independently of their will, toward a predestined goal, that what put the bridge builder into 109 00:08:54.800 --> 00:09:00.800 motion was the preordained plan of geists or the material productive forces which mortal 110 00:09:00.800 --> 00:09:03.840 men are forced to execute. 111 00:09:03.840 --> 00:09:09.140 To say that man reacts to stimuli and adjusts himself to the conditions of his environment 112 00:09:09.140 --> 00:09:12.340 does not provide a satisfactory answer. 113 00:09:12.340 --> 00:09:18.160 To the stimulus offered by the English Channel, some people have reacted by staying at home. 114 00:09:18.160 --> 00:09:23.620 Others have crossed it in rowboats, sailing ships, steamers, or, in modern times, simply 115 00:09:23.620 --> 00:09:25.620 by swimming. 116 00:09:25.620 --> 00:09:27.660 Some fly over it in planes. 117 00:09:27.660 --> 00:09:30.540 Others design schemes for tunneling under it. 118 00:09:30.540 --> 00:09:35.800 It is vain to ascribe the differences in reaction to differences in attendant circumstances 119 00:09:35.800 --> 00:09:41.460 such as the state of technological knowledge and the supply of labor and capital goods. 120 00:09:41.460 --> 00:09:46.880 These other conditions, too, are of human origin and can only be explained by resorting 121 00:09:46.880 --> 00:09:49.820 to teleological methods. 122 00:09:49.820 --> 00:09:55.460 The approach of behaviorism is in some respects different from that of pan-physicalism, but 123 00:09:55.460 --> 00:10:00.700 it resembles the latter in its hopeless attempt to deal with human action without reference 124 00:10:00.700 --> 00:10:03.820 to consciousness and aiming at ends. 125 00:10:03.820 --> 00:10:07.840 It bases its reasoning on the slogan adjustment. 126 00:10:07.840 --> 00:10:13.200 Like any other being, man adjusts himself to the conditions of his environment. 127 00:10:13.200 --> 00:10:19.100 But behaviorism fails to explain why different people adjust themselves to the same conditions 128 00:10:19.100 --> 00:10:21.320 in different ways. 129 00:10:21.320 --> 00:10:25.960 Why do some people flee violent aggression while others resist it? 130 00:10:25.960 --> 00:10:30.520 Why did the peoples of Western Europe adjust themselves to the scarcity of all things on 131 00:10:30.520 --> 00:10:42.840 Behaviorism proposes to study human behavior according to the methods developed by animal 132 00:10:42.840 --> 00:10:45.300 and infant psychology. 133 00:10:45.300 --> 00:10:52.360 It seeks to investigate reflexes and instincts, automatisms, and unconscious reactions. 134 00:10:52.360 --> 00:10:57.120 But it has told us nothing about the reflexes that have built cathedrals, railroads, and 135 00:10:57.120 --> 00:11:03.440 Fortresses, the instincts that have produced philosophies, poems, and legal systems, the 136 00:11:03.440 --> 00:11:09.000 automatisms that have resulted in the growth and decline of empires, the unconscious reactions 137 00:11:09.000 --> 00:11:12.320 that are splitting atoms. 138 00:11:12.320 --> 00:11:17.160 Behaviorism wants to observe human behavior from without and to deal with it merely as 139 00:11:17.160 --> 00:11:20.260 reaction to a definite situation. 140 00:11:20.260 --> 00:11:24.320 It punctiliously avoids any reference to meaning and purpose. 141 00:11:24.320 --> 00:11:30.420 However, a situation cannot be described without analyzing the meaning which the man concerned 142 00:11:30.420 --> 00:11:32.360 finds in it. 143 00:11:32.360 --> 00:11:37.360 If one avoids dealing with this meaning, one neglects the essential factor that decisively 144 00:11:37.360 --> 00:11:40.380 determines the mode of reaction. 145 00:11:40.380 --> 00:11:45.960 This reaction is not automatic, but depends entirely upon the interpretation and value 146 00:11:45.960 --> 00:11:52.180 judgments of the individual, who aims to bring about, if feasible, a situation which he prefers 147 00:11:52.180 --> 00:11:57.500 to the State of Affairs that would prevail if he were not to interfere. 148 00:11:57.500 --> 00:12:02.780 Consider a behaviorist describing the situation which an offer to sell brings about without 149 00:12:02.780 --> 00:12:06.520 reference to the meaning each party attaches to it. 150 00:12:06.520 --> 00:12:11.920 In fact, behaviorism would outlaw the study of human action and substitute physiology 151 00:12:11.920 --> 00:12:13.500 for it. 152 00:12:13.500 --> 00:12:19.340 The behaviorists never succeeded in making clear the difference between physiology and 153 00:12:19.340 --> 00:12:20.620 behaviorism. 154 00:12:20.620 --> 00:12:25.780 Watson declared that physiology is particularly interested in the functioning of parts of 155 00:12:25.780 --> 00:12:31.300 the animal. Behaviorism, on the other hand, while it is intensely interested in all of 156 00:12:31.300 --> 00:12:37.460 the functioning of these parts, is intrinsically interested in what the whole animal will do. 157 00:12:37.460 --> 00:12:43.180 However, such physiological phenomena as the resistance of the body to infection or the 158 00:12:43.180 --> 00:12:49.580 growth and aging of an individual can certainly not be called behavior of parts. On the other 159 00:12:49.580 --> 00:13:19.560 Behaviorism asserts that it wants to 160 00:13:19.560 --> 00:13:25.400 to predict human behavior, but it is impossible to predict the reaction of a man accosted 161 00:13:25.400 --> 00:13:31.160 by another with the words, you rat, without referring to the meaning that the man spoken 162 00:13:31.160 --> 00:13:34.360 to attaches to the epithet. 163 00:13:34.360 --> 00:13:40.600 Both varieties of positivism decline to recognize the fact that men aim purposefully at definite 164 00:13:40.600 --> 00:13:41.600 ends. 165 00:13:41.600 --> 00:13:47.800 As they see it, all events must be interpreted in the relationship of stimulus and response, 166 00:13:47.800 --> 00:13:52.360 And there is no room left for a search for final causes. 167 00:13:52.360 --> 00:13:57.340 Against this rigid dogmatism, it is necessary to stress the point that the rejection of 168 00:13:57.340 --> 00:14:03.500 finalism in dealing with events outside the sphere of human action is enjoined upon science 169 00:14:03.500 --> 00:14:07.260 only by the insufficiency of human reason. 170 00:14:07.260 --> 00:14:12.640 The natural sciences must refrain from dealing with final causes because they are unable 171 00:14:12.640 --> 00:14:18.600 The reason for the natural sciences' neglect of final causes and their 172 00:14:18.600 --> 00:14:24.600 limitations is that they are not able to discover any final causes, not 173 00:14:24.600 --> 00:14:29.600 because they can prove that no final causes are operative. 174 00:14:29.600 --> 00:14:33.600 The cognizance of the interconnectedness of all phenomena and of the 175 00:14:33.600 --> 00:14:37.600 regularity in their concatenation and sequence and the fact that 176 00:14:37.600 --> 00:14:44.280 The reason for the natural sciences' neglect of final causes and their exclusive preoccupation 177 00:14:44.280 --> 00:14:48.840 with causality research is that this method works. 178 00:14:48.840 --> 00:14:53.580 The contrivances designed according to the scientific theories run the way the theories 179 00:14:53.580 --> 00:14:59.040 predicted and thus provide a pragmatic verification for their correctness. 180 00:14:59.040 --> 00:15:04.380 On the other hand, the magic devices did not come up to expectations and do not bear witness 181 00:15:04.380 --> 00:15:06.920 to the magic world view. 182 00:15:06.920 --> 00:15:12.540 It is obvious that it is also impossible to demonstrate satisfactorily by radiocination 183 00:15:12.540 --> 00:15:17.480 that the alter ego is a being that aims purposefully at ends. 184 00:15:17.480 --> 00:15:22.620 But the same pragmatic proof that can be advanced in favor of the exclusive use of causal research 185 00:15:22.620 --> 00:15:27.800 in the field of nature can be advanced in favor of the exclusive use of teleological 186 00:15:27.800 --> 00:15:30.800 methods in the field of human action. 187 00:15:30.800 --> 00:15:37.440 It works, while the idea of dealing with men as if they were stones or mice does not work. 188 00:15:37.440 --> 00:15:44.440 It works not only in the search for knowledge and theories, but no less in daily practice. 189 00:15:44.440 --> 00:15:48.620 The positivist arrives at his point of view surreptitiously. 190 00:15:48.620 --> 00:15:53.600 He denies to his fellow men the faculty of choosing ends and the means to attain these 191 00:15:53.600 --> 00:15:54.600 ends. 192 00:15:54.600 --> 00:15:58.880 But at the same time, he claims for himself the ability to choose consciously between 193 00:15:58.880 --> 00:16:02.200 and various methods of scientific procedure. 194 00:16:02.200 --> 00:16:07.880 He shifts his ground as soon as it comes to the problems of engineering, whether technological 195 00:16:07.880 --> 00:16:09.560 or social. 196 00:16:09.560 --> 00:16:15.120 He designs plans and policies which cannot be interpreted as merely being automatic reactions 197 00:16:15.120 --> 00:16:16.840 to stimuli. 198 00:16:16.840 --> 00:16:22.220 He wants to deprive all his fellows of the right to act in order to reserve this privilege 199 00:16:22.220 --> 00:16:24.480 for himself alone. 200 00:16:24.480 --> 00:16:27.700 He is a virtual dictator. 201 00:16:27.700 --> 00:16:33.700 As the behaviorist tells us, man can be thought of as an assembled organic machine ready 202 00:16:33.700 --> 00:16:35.500 to run. 203 00:16:35.500 --> 00:16:39.740 He disregards the fact that while machines run the way the engineer and the operator 204 00:16:39.740 --> 00:16:45.200 make them run, men run spontaneously here and there. 205 00:16:45.200 --> 00:16:51.500 At birth, human infants, regardless of their heredity, are as equal as Fords. 206 00:16:51.500 --> 00:16:56.900 Starting from this manifest falsehood, the behaviorist proposes to operate the human 207 00:16:56.900 --> 00:17:20.820 Carl Menheim developed a comprehensive plan to produce the best possible human types by 208 00:17:20.820 --> 00:17:25.060 deliberately reorganizing the various groups of social factors. 209 00:17:25.060 --> 00:17:31.740 We, that is, Carl Mannheim and his friends, will determine what the highest good of society 210 00:17:31.740 --> 00:17:35.220 and the peace of mind of the individual require. 211 00:17:35.220 --> 00:17:44.760 Then, we will revamp mankind, for our vocation is the planned guidance of people's lives. 212 00:17:44.760 --> 00:17:49.700 The most remarkable thing about such ideas is that in the 30s and 40s they were styled 213 00:17:49.700 --> 00:17:53.340 democratic, liberal, and progressive. 214 00:17:53.340 --> 00:17:58.680 Joseph Goebbels was more modest than Mannheim in that he wanted only to revamp the German 215 00:17:58.680 --> 00:18:02.320 people and not the whole of mankind. 216 00:18:02.320 --> 00:18:07.720 But in his approach to the problem, he did not differ essentially from Mannheim. 217 00:18:07.720 --> 00:18:14.920 In a letter of April 12, 1933, to Wilhelm Fortwengler, he referred to the we to whom 218 00:18:14.920 --> 00:18:20.800 the responsible task has been entrusted to fashion out of the raw stuff of the masses 219 00:18:20.800 --> 00:18:24.500 The Firm and Well-Shaped Structure of the Nation 220 00:18:24.500 --> 00:18:30.380 Unfortunately, neither Mannheim nor Goebbels told us who had entrusted them with the task 221 00:18:30.380 --> 00:18:34.200 of reconstructing and recreating men. 222 00:18:34.200 --> 00:18:40.620 As long as positivism does not explain philosophies and theories and the plans and policies derived 223 00:18:40.620 --> 00:18:47.120 from them in terms of its stimulus-response scheme, it defeats itself. 224 00:18:47.120 --> 00:18:53.820 2. The Collectivist Dogma 225 00:18:53.820 --> 00:18:58.760 Modern collectivist philosophy is a coarse offshoot of the old doctrine of conceptual 226 00:18:58.760 --> 00:19:04.860 realism. It has severed itself from the general philosophical antagonism between realism and 227 00:19:04.860 --> 00:19:10.940 nominalism and hardly pays any attention to the continued conflict of the two schools. 228 00:19:10.940 --> 00:19:16.060 It is a political doctrine and as such employs a terminology that is seemingly different 229 00:19:16.060 --> 00:19:21.380 from that used in the scholastic debates concerning universals, as well as from that of contemporary 230 00:19:21.380 --> 00:19:23.540 neo-realism. 231 00:19:23.540 --> 00:19:28.800 But the nucleus of its teachings does not differ from that of the medieval realists. 232 00:19:28.800 --> 00:19:34.740 It ascribes to the universals objective real existence, even an existence superior to that 233 00:19:34.740 --> 00:19:40.980 of individuals, sometimes even flatly denying the autonomous existence of individuals, the 234 00:19:40.980 --> 00:19:43.780 only real existence. 235 00:19:43.780 --> 00:19:49.340 What distinguishes collectivism from conceptual realism as taught by philosophers is not the 236 00:19:49.340 --> 00:19:54.440 method of approach but the political tendencies implied. 237 00:19:54.440 --> 00:19:59.600 Collectivism transforms the epistemological doctrine into an ethical claim. 238 00:19:59.600 --> 00:20:02.260 It tells people what they ought to do. 239 00:20:02.260 --> 00:20:07.420 It distinguishes between the true collective entity to which people owe loyalty and spurious 240 00:20:07.420 --> 00:20:11.560 pseudo-entities about which they ought not to bother at all. 241 00:20:11.560 --> 00:20:17.300 There is no uniform collectivist ideology, but many collectivist doctrines. 242 00:20:17.300 --> 00:20:22.560 Each of them extols a different collectivist entity and requests all decent people to submit 243 00:20:22.560 --> 00:20:24.000 to it. 244 00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:29.940 Each sect worships its own idol and is intolerant of all rival idols. 245 00:20:29.940 --> 00:20:33.340 Each ordains total subjection of the individual. 246 00:20:33.340 --> 00:20:36.480 Each is totalitarian. 247 00:20:36.480 --> 00:20:41.920 The particularist character of the various collectivist doctrines could easily be ignored 248 00:20:41.920 --> 00:20:47.920 because they regularly start with the opposition between society in general and individuals. 249 00:20:47.920 --> 00:20:54.000 In this antithesis, there appears only one collective comprehending all individuals. 250 00:20:54.000 --> 00:20:59.020 There cannot therefore arise any rivalry among a multitude of collective entities. 251 00:20:59.020 --> 00:21:03.920 But in the further course of the analysis, a special collective is imperceptibly substituted 252 00:21:03.920 --> 00:21:08.500 for the Comprehensive Image of the Unique Great Society. 253 00:21:08.500 --> 00:21:14.000 Let us first examine the concept of society in general. 254 00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:16.680 Men cooperate with one another. 255 00:21:16.680 --> 00:21:23.280 The totality of inter-human relations engendered by such cooperation is called society. 256 00:21:23.280 --> 00:21:26.160 Society is not an entity in itself. 257 00:21:26.160 --> 00:21:29.000 It is an aspect of human action. 258 00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:32.920 It does not exist or live outside of the conduct of people. 259 00:21:32.920 --> 00:21:40.860 is an orientation of human action. Society neither thinks nor acts. Individuals in thinking 260 00:21:40.860 --> 00:21:47.000 and acting constitute a complex of relations and facts that are called social relations 261 00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:54.400 and facts. The issue has been confused by an arithmetical metaphor. Is society, people 262 00:21:54.400 --> 00:22:00.040 asked, merely a sum of individuals, or is it more than this and thereby an entity endowed 263 00:22:00.040 --> 00:22:02.640 with Independent Reality. 264 00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:06.020 The question is nonsensical. 265 00:22:06.020 --> 00:22:11.680 Society is neither the sum of individuals, nor more, nor less. 266 00:22:11.680 --> 00:22:15.800 Arithmetical concepts cannot be applied to the matter. 267 00:22:15.800 --> 00:22:21.240 Another confusion arises from the no less empty question whether society is, in logic 268 00:22:21.240 --> 00:22:26.120 and in time, anterior to individuals or not. 269 00:22:26.120 --> 00:22:32.560 The evolution of society and that of civilization were not two distinct processes, but one in 270 00:22:32.560 --> 00:22:34.480 the same process. 271 00:22:34.480 --> 00:22:40.580 The biological passing of a species of primates beyond the level of a mere animal existence 272 00:22:40.580 --> 00:22:45.600 and their transformation into primitive men implied already the development of the first 273 00:22:45.600 --> 00:22:48.880 rudiments of social cooperation. 274 00:22:48.880 --> 00:22:55.200 Homo sapiens appeared on the stage of earthly events neither as a solitary food seeker nor 275 00:22:55.200 --> 00:23:00.480 Man is more as a member of a gregarious flock, but as a being consciously cooperating with 276 00:23:00.480 --> 00:23:07.800 other beings of his own kind. Only in cooperation with his fellows could he develop language, 277 00:23:07.800 --> 00:23:13.100 the indispensable tool of thinking. We cannot even imagine a reasonable being living in 278 00:23:13.100 --> 00:23:20.080 perfect isolation and not cooperating at least with members of his family, clan, or tribe. 279 00:23:20.080 --> 00:23:27.380 Human as man is necessarily a social animal. Some sort of cooperation is an essential characteristic 280 00:23:27.380 --> 00:23:33.300 of his nature, but awareness of this fact does not justify dealing with social relations 281 00:23:33.300 --> 00:23:39.500 as if they were something else than relations, or with society as if it were an independent 282 00:23:39.500 --> 00:23:43.820 entity outside or above the actions of individual men. 283 00:23:43.820 --> 00:23:49.620 Finally, there are the misconstructions caused by the organismic metaphor. We may compare 284 00:23:49.620 --> 00:23:58.900 The Tertium Comparationis is the fact that division of labor and cooperation exists among 285 00:23:58.900 --> 00:24:04.440 the various parts of a biological body as among the various members of society. 286 00:24:04.440 --> 00:24:08.580 But the biological evolution that resulted in the emergence of the structure-function 287 00:24:08.580 --> 00:24:14.440 systems of plant and animal bodies was a purely physiological process in which no trace of 288 00:24:14.440 --> 00:24:19.280 a conscious activity on the part of the cells can be discovered. 289 00:24:19.280 --> 00:24:24.980 On the other hand, human society is an intellectual and spiritual phenomenon. 290 00:24:24.980 --> 00:24:31.600 In cooperating with their fellows, individuals do not divest themselves of their individuality. 291 00:24:31.600 --> 00:24:37.060 They retain the power to act antisocially and often make use of it. 292 00:24:37.060 --> 00:24:42.920 Its place in the structure of the body is invariably assigned to each cell, but individuals 293 00:24:42.920 --> 00:24:48.720 spontaneously choose the way in which they integrate themselves into social cooperation. 294 00:24:48.720 --> 00:24:54.440 Man have ideas and seek chosen ends, while the cells and organs of the body lack such 295 00:24:54.440 --> 00:24:55.440 autonomy. 296 00:24:55.440 --> 00:25:01.960 Gestalt psychology passionately rejects the psychological doctrine of associationism. 297 00:25:01.960 --> 00:25:07.720 It ridicules the conception of a sensory mosaic which nobody has ever observed and teaches 298 00:25:07.720 --> 00:25:14.580 that analysis, if it wants to reveal the universe in its completeness, has to stop at the holes, 299 00:25:14.580 --> 00:25:19.580 Whatever their size, which possess functional reality. 300 00:25:19.580 --> 00:25:24.500 Whatever one may think about Gestalt psychology, it is obvious that it has no reference at 301 00:25:24.500 --> 00:25:27.100 all to the problems of society. 302 00:25:27.100 --> 00:25:32.620 It is manifest that nobody has ever observed society as a whole. 303 00:25:32.620 --> 00:25:36.840 What can be observed is always actions of individuals. 304 00:25:36.840 --> 00:25:42.460 In interpreting the various aspects of the individual's actions, the theorists developed 305 00:25:42.460 --> 00:25:48.300 The concept of society. There cannot be any question of understanding the properties of 306 00:25:48.300 --> 00:25:53.280 parts from the properties of wholes. There are no properties of society that cannot be 307 00:25:53.280 --> 00:25:59.480 discovered in the conduct of its members. In contrasting society and the individual, 308 00:25:59.480 --> 00:26:05.540 and in denying to the latter any true reality, the collectivist doctrines look upon the individual 309 00:26:05.540 --> 00:26:11.420 merely as a refractory rebel. This sinful wretch has the impudence to give preference 310 00:26:11.420 --> 00:26:41.180 When the collectivist extols the state, what he means is not every state, but only the 311 00:26:41.180 --> 00:26:46.820 The regime of which he approves, no matter whether this legitimate state exists already 312 00:26:46.820 --> 00:26:49.420 or has to be created. 313 00:26:49.420 --> 00:26:55.260 For the Czech irredentists in the Old Austria and the Irish irredentists in the United Kingdom, 314 00:26:55.260 --> 00:27:00.660 the states whose governments resided in Vienna and in London were usurpers, their rightful 315 00:27:00.660 --> 00:27:03.180 state did not yet exist. 316 00:27:03.180 --> 00:27:07.460 Especially remarkable is the terminology of the Marxians. 317 00:27:07.460 --> 00:27:11.960 Marx was bitterly hostile to the Prussian state of the Hohenzollern. 318 00:27:11.960 --> 00:27:17.160 To make it clear that the state which he wanted to see omnipotent and totalitarian was not 319 00:27:17.160 --> 00:27:22.580 that state whose rulers resided in Berlin, he called the future state of his program 320 00:27:22.580 --> 00:27:25.740 not state, but society. 321 00:27:25.740 --> 00:27:29.000 The innovation was merely verbal. 322 00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:34.380 For what Marx aimed at was to abolish any sphere of the individual's initiative action 323 00:27:34.380 --> 00:27:39.820 by Transferring the Control of All Economic Activities to the Social Apparatus of Compulsion 324 00:27:39.820 --> 00:27:44.300 and Repression, which is commonly called state or government. 325 00:27:44.300 --> 00:27:48.140 The hoax did not fail to beguile lots of people. 326 00:27:48.140 --> 00:27:53.580 Even today, there are still dupes who think that there is a difference between state socialism 327 00:27:53.580 --> 00:27:56.660 and other types of socialism. 328 00:27:56.660 --> 00:28:02.820 The confusion of the concepts of society and of state originated with Hegel and Schelling. 329 00:28:02.820 --> 00:28:07.920 It is customary to distinguish two schools of Hegelians, the left wing and the right 330 00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:09.520 wing. 331 00:28:09.520 --> 00:28:14.520 The distinction refers only to the attitudes of these authors toward the kingdom of Prussia 332 00:28:14.520 --> 00:28:17.560 and the doctrines of the Prussian Union Church. 333 00:28:17.560 --> 00:28:21.560 The political creed of both wings was essentially the same. 334 00:28:21.560 --> 00:28:24.360 Both advocated government omnipotence. 335 00:28:24.360 --> 00:28:30.040 It was a left-wing Hegelian, Ferdinand Lassalle, who most clearly expressed the fundamental 336 00:28:30.040 --> 00:28:32.360 thesis of Hegelianism. 337 00:28:32.360 --> 00:28:34.840 The State is God. 338 00:28:34.840 --> 00:28:37.840 Hegel himself had been a little more cautious. 339 00:28:37.840 --> 00:28:42.580 He only declared that it is the course of God through the world that constitutes the 340 00:28:42.580 --> 00:28:49.420 state, and that in dealing with the state, one must contemplate the idea, God as actual 341 00:28:49.420 --> 00:28:51.480 on earth. 342 00:28:51.480 --> 00:28:57.400 The collectivist philosophers fail to realize that what constitutes the state is the actions 343 00:28:57.400 --> 00:28:59.280 of individuals. 344 00:28:59.280 --> 00:29:04.120 The legislators, those enforcing the laws by force of arms, and those yielding to the 345 00:29:04.120 --> 00:29:09.620 dictates of the laws and the police constitute the state by their behavior. 346 00:29:09.620 --> 00:29:12.940 In this sense alone is the state real. 347 00:29:12.940 --> 00:29:18.520 There is no state apart from such actions of individual men. 348 00:29:18.520 --> 00:29:20.660 3. 349 00:29:20.660 --> 00:29:27.340 The Concept of the Social Sciences The collectivist philosophy denies that there 350 00:29:27.340 --> 00:29:31.440 There are such things as individuals and actions of individuals. 351 00:29:31.440 --> 00:29:36.840 The individual is merely a phantom without reality, an illusory image invented by the 352 00:29:36.840 --> 00:29:40.540 pseudo-philosophy of the apologists of capitalism. 353 00:29:40.540 --> 00:29:46.140 Consequently, collectivism rejects the concept of a science of human action. 354 00:29:46.140 --> 00:29:50.860 As it sees it, the only legitimate treatment of those problems that are not dealt with 355 00:29:50.860 --> 00:29:57.380 by the Traditional Natural Sciences is provided by what they call the social sciences. 356 00:29:57.380 --> 00:30:01.860 The social sciences are supposed to deal with group activities. 357 00:30:01.860 --> 00:30:07.000 In their context, the individual counts only as a member of a group. 358 00:30:07.000 --> 00:30:12.240 But this definition implies that there are actions in which the individual does not act 359 00:30:12.240 --> 00:30:18.420 as a member of a group and which, therefore, do not interest the social sciences. 360 00:30:18.420 --> 00:30:24.240 If this is so, it is obvious that the social sciences deal only with an arbitrarily selected 361 00:30:24.240 --> 00:30:27.840 fraction of the whole field of human action. 362 00:30:27.840 --> 00:30:34.600 In acting, man must necessarily choose between various possible modes of acting. 363 00:30:34.600 --> 00:30:41.000 Limiting their analysis to one class of actions only, the social sciences renounce in advance 364 00:30:41.000 --> 00:30:45.860 any attempt to investigate the ideas that determine the individual's choice of a definite 365 00:30:45.860 --> 00:30:47.640 mode of conduct. 366 00:30:47.640 --> 00:30:53.300 They cannot deal with judgments of value which in any actual situation make a man prefer 367 00:30:53.300 --> 00:30:58.960 acting as a group member to acting in a different manner. Neither can they deal with the judgments 368 00:30:58.960 --> 00:31:04.320 of value that prompt a man to act as a member of group A rather than as a member of any 369 00:31:04.320 --> 00:31:11.520 of the non-A groups. Man is not the member of one group only and does not appear on the 370 00:31:11.520 --> 00:31:17.040 scene of human affairs solely in the role of a member of one definite group. In speaking 371 00:31:17.040 --> 00:31:21.200 Speaking of social groups, it must be remembered that the members of one group are at the 372 00:31:21.200 --> 00:31:23.860 same time members of other groups. 373 00:31:23.860 --> 00:31:29.680 The conflict of groups is not a conflict between neatly integrated herds of men. 374 00:31:29.680 --> 00:31:34.880 It is a conflict between various concerns in the minds of individuals. 375 00:31:34.880 --> 00:31:40.400 What constitutes group membership is the way a man acts in a concrete situation. 376 00:31:40.400 --> 00:31:45.080 Hence, group membership is not something rigid and unchangeable. 377 00:31:45.080 --> 00:31:47.680 may change from case to case. 378 00:31:47.680 --> 00:31:53.040 The same man may, in the course of a single day, perform actions each of which qualifies 379 00:31:53.040 --> 00:31:55.720 him as a member of a different group. 380 00:31:55.720 --> 00:32:01.360 He may contribute to the funds of his denomination and cast his ballot for a candidate who antagonizes 381 00:32:01.360 --> 00:32:04.640 that denomination in essential problems. 382 00:32:04.640 --> 00:32:10.120 He may act at one instant as a member of a labor union, at another as a member of a religious 383 00:32:10.120 --> 00:32:15.980 Community, at another as a member of a political party, at another as a member of a linguistic 384 00:32:15.980 --> 00:32:19.280 or racial group, and so on. 385 00:32:19.280 --> 00:32:25.040 Or he may act as an individual working to earn more income, to get his son into college, 386 00:32:25.040 --> 00:32:28.960 to purchase a home, a car, or a refrigerator. 387 00:32:28.960 --> 00:32:35.300 In fact, he always acts as an individual, always seeks ends of his own. 388 00:32:35.300 --> 00:32:40.140 In joining a group and acting as a member of it, he aims no less at the fulfillment 389 00:32:40.140 --> 00:32:45.140 of his own wishes than in acting without any reference to a group. 390 00:32:45.140 --> 00:32:50.060 He may join a religious community in order to seek the salvation of his soul or to attain 391 00:32:50.060 --> 00:32:51.880 peace of mind. 392 00:32:51.880 --> 00:32:55.940 He may join a labor union because he believes that this is the best means to get higher 393 00:32:55.940 --> 00:33:00.500 pay or to avoid being bodily injured by the members of the union. 394 00:33:00.500 --> 00:33:05.980 He may join a political party because he expects that the realization of its program will render 395 00:33:05.980 --> 00:33:10.500 conditions more satisfactory for himself and his family. 396 00:33:10.500 --> 00:33:15.820 It is vain to deal with the activities of the individual as a member of a group while 397 00:33:15.820 --> 00:33:19.660 omitting other activities of the individual. 398 00:33:19.660 --> 00:33:25.380 Group activities are essentially and necessarily activities of individuals who form groups 399 00:33:25.380 --> 00:33:27.980 in order to attain their ends. 400 00:33:27.980 --> 00:33:33.100 There are no social phenomena which would not originate from the activities of various 401 00:33:33.100 --> 00:33:34.180 individuals. 402 00:33:34.180 --> 00:33:39.660 What creates a group activity is a definite end sought by individuals, and the belief 403 00:33:39.660 --> 00:33:44.620 of these individuals that cooperating in this group is a suitable means to attain the end 404 00:33:44.620 --> 00:33:45.620 sought. 405 00:33:45.620 --> 00:33:52.460 A group is a product of human wishes and the ideas about the means to realize these wishes. 406 00:33:52.460 --> 00:33:57.960 Its roots are in the value judgments of individuals and in the opinions held by individuals about 407 00:33:57.960 --> 00:34:02.360 About the Effects to be Expected from Definite Means 408 00:34:02.360 --> 00:34:07.280 To deal with social groups adequately and completely, one must start from the actions 409 00:34:07.280 --> 00:34:09.080 of the individuals. 410 00:34:09.080 --> 00:34:14.600 No group activity can be understood without analyzing the ideology that forms the group 411 00:34:14.600 --> 00:34:17.240 and makes it live and work. 412 00:34:17.240 --> 00:34:22.480 The idea of dealing with group activities without dealing with all aspects of human 413 00:34:22.480 --> 00:34:25.300 action is preposterous. 414 00:34:25.300 --> 00:34:30.040 There is no field distinct from the field of the sciences of human action that could 415 00:34:30.040 --> 00:34:36.440 be investigated by something called the social sciences. What prompted those who suggested 416 00:34:36.440 --> 00:34:41.620 the substitution of the social sciences for the sciences of human action was, of course, 417 00:34:41.620 --> 00:34:48.420 a definite political program. In their eyes, the social sciences were designed to obliterate 418 00:34:48.420 --> 00:34:54.540 the social philosophy of individualism. The champions of the social sciences invented 419 00:34:54.540 --> 00:35:00.500 and popularized the terminology that characterizes the market economy, in which every individual 420 00:35:00.500 --> 00:35:07.140 is intent upon the realization of his own plan as a planless and therefore chaotic system 421 00:35:07.140 --> 00:35:13.200 and reserves the term plan for the designs of an agency which, supported by or identical 422 00:35:13.200 --> 00:35:18.820 with the government's police power, prevents all citizens from realizing their own plans 423 00:35:18.820 --> 00:35:20.900 and designs. 424 00:35:20.900 --> 00:35:26.580 One can hardly overrate the role which the association of ideas generated by this terminology 425 00:35:26.580 --> 00:35:31.620 plays in shaping the political tenets of our contemporaries. 426 00:35:31.620 --> 00:35:34.260 4. 427 00:35:34.260 --> 00:35:38.900 The Nature of Mass Phenomena 428 00:35:38.900 --> 00:35:44.700 Some people believe that the object of the social sciences is the study of mass phenomena. 429 00:35:44.700 --> 00:35:49.260 While the study of individual traits is of no special interest to them, they hope study 430 00:35:49.260 --> 00:35:53.940 The theory of the behavior of social aggregates will reveal information of a really scientific 431 00:35:53.940 --> 00:35:55.540 character. 432 00:35:55.540 --> 00:36:00.480 For these people, the chief defect of the traditional methods of historical research 433 00:36:00.480 --> 00:36:02.840 is that they deal with individuals. 434 00:36:02.840 --> 00:36:08.380 They esteem statistics precisely because, as they think, it observes and records the 435 00:36:08.380 --> 00:36:11.080 behavior of social groups. 436 00:36:11.080 --> 00:36:17.820 In fact, statistics records individual traits of the members of arbitrarily selected groups. 437 00:36:17.820 --> 00:36:22.980 Whatever the principle may be that determined the scientist to set up a group, the traits 438 00:36:22.980 --> 00:36:28.900 recorded refer primarily to the individuals that form the group and only indirectly to 439 00:36:28.900 --> 00:36:30.660 the group. 440 00:36:30.660 --> 00:36:35.140 The individual members of the group are the units of observation. 441 00:36:35.140 --> 00:36:42.180 What statistics provides is information about the behavior of individuals forming a group. 442 00:36:42.180 --> 00:36:47.340 Modern statistics aims at discovering invariable connections between statistically established 443 00:36:47.340 --> 00:36:50.780 Magnitudes by Measuring Their Correlation. 444 00:36:50.780 --> 00:36:55.660 In the field of the sciences of human action, this method is absurd. 445 00:36:55.660 --> 00:37:00.140 This has been clearly demonstrated by the fact that many coefficients of correlation 446 00:37:00.140 --> 00:37:06.040 of a high numerical value have been calculated, which undoubtedly do not indicate any connection 447 00:37:06.040 --> 00:37:09.160 between the two groups of facts. 448 00:37:09.160 --> 00:37:15.900 Social phenomena and mass phenomena are not things outside and above individual phenomena. 449 00:37:15.900 --> 00:37:19.240 They are not the cause of individual phenomena. 450 00:37:19.240 --> 00:37:25.220 They are produced either by the cooperation of individuals or by parallel action. 451 00:37:25.220 --> 00:37:29.340 The latter may be either independent or imitative. 452 00:37:29.340 --> 00:37:33.120 This is valid also with regard to antisocial actions. 453 00:37:33.120 --> 00:37:38.760 The intentional killing of a man by another man is as such merely a human action and would 454 00:37:38.760 --> 00:37:44.500 have no other significance in a hypothetical and irrealizable state in which there was 455 00:37:44.500 --> 00:37:50.960 There is no cooperation between men. It becomes a crime, murder, in a state where social 456 00:37:50.960 --> 00:37:58.580 cooperation precludes homicide except in cases strictly determined by the laws of this society. 457 00:37:58.580 --> 00:38:03.500 What is commonly called a mass phenomenon is the frequent repetition and recurrence 458 00:38:03.500 --> 00:38:10.300 of a definite individual phenomenon. The proposition, In the West, bread is an article of mass consumption 459 00:38:10.300 --> 00:38:15.760 Education means, in the West, the immense majority of men eat bread daily. 460 00:38:15.760 --> 00:38:20.100 They do not eat bread because it is an article of mass consumption. 461 00:38:20.100 --> 00:38:24.800 Bread is an article of mass consumption because practically everybody eats a piece of bread 462 00:38:24.800 --> 00:38:26.720 each day. 463 00:38:26.720 --> 00:38:31.680 From this point of view, one may appreciate the endeavors of Gabriel Taude to describe 464 00:38:31.680 --> 00:38:37.540 imitation and repetition as fundamental factors of social evolution. 465 00:38:37.540 --> 00:38:42.540 The champions of the social sciences criticize the historians for concentrating their attention 466 00:38:42.540 --> 00:38:48.460 upon the actions of individuals and neglecting the conduct of the many, the immense majority, 467 00:38:48.460 --> 00:38:49.640 the masses. 468 00:38:49.640 --> 00:38:51.580 The critique is spurious. 469 00:38:51.580 --> 00:38:56.080 A historian who deals with the spread of the Christian creed and of the various churches 470 00:38:56.080 --> 00:39:02.140 and denominations, with the events that resulted in the emergence of integrated linguistic groups, 471 00:39:02.140 --> 00:39:06.580 with the European colonialization of the Western hemisphere, with the rise of modern 472 00:39:06.580 --> 00:39:10.980 and Capitalism certainly does not overlook the behavior of the many. 473 00:39:10.980 --> 00:39:17.060 However, the main task of history is to indicate the relation of the individual's actions to 474 00:39:17.060 --> 00:39:19.880 the course of affairs. 475 00:39:19.880 --> 00:39:24.720 Different individuals influence historical change in different ways. 476 00:39:24.720 --> 00:39:30.160 There are pioneers who conceive new ideas and design new modes of thinking and acting. 477 00:39:30.160 --> 00:39:34.600 There are leaders who guide people along the way these people want to walk. 478 00:39:34.600 --> 00:39:39.040 And there are the anonymous masses who follow the leaders. 479 00:39:39.040 --> 00:39:43.320 There can be no question of writing history without the names of the pioneers and the 480 00:39:43.320 --> 00:39:44.600 leaders. 481 00:39:44.600 --> 00:39:50.360 The history of Christianity cannot pass over in silence such men as St. Paul, Luther, and 482 00:39:50.360 --> 00:39:56.360 Calvin, nor can the history of 17th century England fail to analyze the roles of Cromwell, 483 00:39:56.360 --> 00:39:59.260 Milton, and William III. 484 00:39:59.260 --> 00:40:04.740 To ascribe the ideas producing historical change to the mass psyche is a manifestation 485 00:40:04.740 --> 00:40:08.360 of arbitrary metaphysical prepossession. 486 00:40:08.360 --> 00:40:13.420 The intellectual innovations which Auguste Kant and Buckel rightly considered the main 487 00:40:13.420 --> 00:40:18.220 theme of the study of history are not achievements of the masses. 488 00:40:18.220 --> 00:40:24.140 Mass movements are not inaugurated by anonymous nobodies, but by individuals. 489 00:40:24.140 --> 00:40:28.220 We do not know the names of the men who in the early days of civilization accomplished 490 00:40:28.220 --> 00:40:34.040 the greatest exploits, but we are certain that also the technological and institutional 491 00:40:34.040 --> 00:40:39.140 innovations of those early ages were not the result of a sudden flash of inspiration that 492 00:40:39.140 --> 00:40:46.220 struck the masses, but the work of some individuals who by far surpassed their fellow men. 493 00:40:46.220 --> 00:40:52.660 There is no mass psyche and no mass mind, but only ideas held and actions performed 494 00:40:52.660 --> 00:40:57.540 by the many in endorsing the opinions of the pioneers and leaders and imitating their 495 00:40:57.540 --> 00:41:03.900 Conduct, mobs and crowds too act only under the direction of ringleaders. 496 00:41:03.900 --> 00:41:09.540 The common men who constitute the masses are characterized by lack of initiative. 497 00:41:09.540 --> 00:41:16.120 They are not passive, they also act, but they act only at the instigation of abetters. 498 00:41:16.120 --> 00:41:21.420 The emphasis laid by sociologists upon mass phenomena and their idolization of the common 499 00:41:21.420 --> 00:41:27.340 man are an offshoot of the myth that all men are biologically equal. 500 00:41:27.340 --> 00:41:33.060 Whatever differences exist between individuals are caused, it is maintained, by postnatal 501 00:41:33.060 --> 00:41:34.900 circumstances. 502 00:41:34.900 --> 00:41:39.680 If all people equally enjoyed the benefits of a good education, such differences would 503 00:41:39.680 --> 00:41:41.600 never appear. 504 00:41:41.600 --> 00:41:45.780 The supporters of this doctrine are at a loss to explain the differences among graduates 505 00:41:45.780 --> 00:41:50.820 of the same school and the fact that many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, 506 00:41:50.820 --> 00:41:55.260 masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities. 507 00:41:55.260 --> 00:42:00.020 They fail to see that education cannot convey to pupils more than the knowledge of their 508 00:42:00.020 --> 00:42:02.220 teachers. 509 00:42:02.220 --> 00:42:08.300 Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and 510 00:42:08.300 --> 00:42:10.520 creative geniuses. 511 00:42:10.520 --> 00:42:16.020 The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition 512 00:42:16.020 --> 00:42:19.300 and unvarying modes of thought. 513 00:42:19.300 --> 00:42:24.980 The mark of the creative mind is that it defies a part of what it has learned, or at least 514 00:42:24.980 --> 00:42:32.680 One utterly misconstrues the feats of the pioneer in reducing them to the instruction 515 00:42:32.680 --> 00:42:34.860 he got from his teachers. 516 00:42:34.860 --> 00:42:41.620 No matter how efficient school training may be, it would only produce stagnation, orthodoxy, 517 00:42:41.620 --> 00:42:46.740 and rigid pedantry if there were no uncommon men pushing forward beyond the wisdom of their 518 00:42:46.740 --> 00:42:47.740 tutors. 519 00:42:47.740 --> 00:42:53.300 It is hardly possible to mistake more thoroughly the meaning of history and the evolution of 520 00:42:53.300 --> 00:42:58.920 of Civilization than by concentrating one's attention upon mass phenomena and neglecting 521 00:42:58.920 --> 00:43:02.100 individual men and their exploits. 522 00:43:02.100 --> 00:43:08.780 No mass phenomenon can be adequately treated without analyzing the ideas implied, and no 523 00:43:08.780 --> 00:43:13.020 No new ideas spring from the mythical mind of the masses.