CHAPTER 11 THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENTISM
1. POSITIVISM AND BEHAVIORISM
What differentiates the realm of the natural sciences from that of the sciences of human action
is the categorical system resorted to in each in interpreting phenomena and constructing theories.
The natural sciences do not know anything about final causes.
Inquiry and theorizing are entirely guided by the category of causality.
The field of the sciences of human action is the orbit of purpose and of conscious aiming
at ends.
It is teleological.
Both categories were resorted to by primitive man and are resorted to today by everybody
in daily thinking and acting.
The most simple skills and techniques imply knowledge gathered by rudimentary research
into Causality.
Where people did not know how to seek the relation of cause and effect, they looked
for a teleological interpretation.
They invented deities and devils to whose purposeful action certain phenomena were ascribed.
A god emitted lightning and thunder.
Another god, angry about some acts of men, killed the offenders by shooting arrows.
A witch's evil eye made women barren and cows dry.
Such beliefs generated definite methods of action.
Conduct pleasing to the deity, offering of sacrifices and prayer were considered suitable
means to appease the deity's anger and to avert its revenge.
Magic rites were employed to neutralize witchcraft.
Slowly, people came to learn that meteorological events, disease, and the spread of plagues
are natural phenomena and that lightning rods and antiseptic agents provide effective protection
and, while magic writes, are useless.
It was only in the modern era that the natural sciences in all their fields substituted causal
research for finalism.
The marvelous achievements of the experimental natural sciences prompted the emergence of
a materialistic metaphysical doctrine, positivism.
Positivism flatly denies that any field of inquiry is open for teleological research.
The experimental methods of the natural sciences are the only appropriate methods for any kind
of investigation.
They alone are scientific, while the traditional methods of the sciences of human action are
metaphysical, that is, in the terminology of positivism, superstitious and spurious.
Positivism teaches that the task of science is exclusively the description and interpretation
of sensory experience.
rejects the introspection of psychology, as well as all historical disciplines.
It is especially fanatical in its condemnation of economics.
Auguste Kant, by no means the founder of positivism, but merely the inventor of its name, suggested
as a substitute for the traditional methods of dealing with human action, a new branch
of science, sociology.
The first generation of Kant's followers turned instead toward what they believed to be biological
and organic interpretation of social phenomena.
They indulged freely in metaphorical language and quite seriously discussed such problems
The Social Body should be classed as intracellular substance.
When the absurdity of this biologism or organicism became obvious, the sociologists completely
abandoned the ambitious pretensions of Kant.
There was no longer any question of discovering a posteriori laws of social change.
Various historical, ethnographical and psychological studies were put out under the label sociology.
Many of these publications were dilettantish and confused.
Some are acceptable contributions to various fields of historical research.
Without any value, on the other hand, were the writings of those who termed sociology
their arbitrary metaphysical effusions about the recondite meaning and end of the historical
process which had been previously styled philosophy of history.
Thus, Emil Durkheim and his school revived under the appellation group mind the old specter
of Romanticism and the German School of Historical Jurisprudence, the Volksgeist.
In spite of this manifest failure of a positivist program, a neopositivist movement has arisen.
It stubbornly repeats all the fallacies of Kant.
The same motive inspires these writers that inspired Kant.
They are driven by an idiosyncratic abhorrence to the market economy and its political corollary,
Representative Government, Freedom of Thought, Speech and the Press.
They long for totalitarianism, dictatorship and the ruthless oppression of all dissenters,
taking of course for granted that they themselves or their intimate friends will be vested
with the supreme office and the power to silence all opponents.
Kant, without shame, advocated suppression of all doctrines he disliked.
The most obtrusive champion of the neopositivist program concerning the sciences of human
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.
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.
The two main varieties of the neopositivistic assault on economics are pan-physicalism and
behaviorism.
Both claim to substitute a purely causal treatment of human action for the, as they declare unscientific,
teleological treatment.
Pan-physicalism teaches that the procedures of physics are the only scientific method
of all branches of science.
It denies that any essential differences exist between the natural sciences and the sciences
of human action.
This denial lies behind the pan-physicalist's slogan, Unified Science.
Sense experience, which conveys to man his information about physical events, provides
him also with all information about the behavior of his fellow men.
Study of the way his fellows react to various stimuli does not differ essentially from study
of the Way Other Objects React
The language of physics is the universal language of all branches of knowledge, without exception.
What cannot be rendered in the language of physics is metaphysical nonsense.
It is arrogant pretension in man to believe that his role in the universe is different
from that of other objects.
In the eyes of the scientist, all things are equal.
All talk about consciousness, volition, and aiming at ends is empty.
Man is just one of the elements in the universe.
The applied science of social physics, social engineering, can deal with man in the same
way technology deals with copper and hydrogen.
The pan-physicalist might admit at least one essential difference between man and the objects
of physics.
The stones and the atoms reflect neither upon their own nature, properties, and behavior
nor upon those of man.
They do not engineer either themselves or man.
Man is at least different from them insofar as he is a physicist and an engineer.
It is difficult to conceive how one could deal with the activities of an engineer without
realizing that he chooses between various possible lines of conduct and is intent upon
Attaining Definite Ends
Why does he build a bridge rather than a ferry?
Why does he build one bridge with a capacity of 10 tons and another with a capacity of
20 tons?
Why is he intent upon constructing bridges that do not collapse?
Or is it only an accident that most bridges do not collapse?
If one eliminates from the treatment of human action the notion of conscious aiming at definite
ends, one must replace it by the, really metaphysical, idea that some superhuman agency leads men,
independently of their will, toward a predestined goal, that what put the bridge builder into
motion was the preordained plan of geists or the material productive forces which mortal
men are forced to execute.
To say that man reacts to stimuli and adjusts himself to the conditions of his environment
does not provide a satisfactory answer.
To the stimulus offered by the English Channel, some people have reacted by staying at home.
Others have crossed it in rowboats, sailing ships, steamers, or, in modern times, simply
by swimming.
Some fly over it in planes.
Others design schemes for tunneling under it.
It is vain to ascribe the differences in reaction to differences in attendant circumstances
such as the state of technological knowledge and the supply of labor and capital goods.
These other conditions, too, are of human origin and can only be explained by resorting
to teleological methods.
The approach of behaviorism is in some respects different from that of pan-physicalism, but
it resembles the latter in its hopeless attempt to deal with human action without reference
to consciousness and aiming at ends.
It bases its reasoning on the slogan adjustment.
Like any other being, man adjusts himself to the conditions of his environment.
But behaviorism fails to explain why different people adjust themselves to the same conditions
in different ways.
Why do some people flee violent aggression while others resist it?
Why did the peoples of Western Europe adjust themselves to the scarcity of all things on
Behaviorism proposes to study human behavior according to the methods developed by animal
and infant psychology.
It seeks to investigate reflexes and instincts, automatisms, and unconscious reactions.
But it has told us nothing about the reflexes that have built cathedrals, railroads, and
Fortresses, the instincts that have produced philosophies, poems, and legal systems, the
automatisms that have resulted in the growth and decline of empires, the unconscious reactions
that are splitting atoms.
Behaviorism wants to observe human behavior from without and to deal with it merely as
reaction to a definite situation.
It punctiliously avoids any reference to meaning and purpose.
However, a situation cannot be described without analyzing the meaning which the man concerned
finds in it.
If one avoids dealing with this meaning, one neglects the essential factor that decisively
determines the mode of reaction.
This reaction is not automatic, but depends entirely upon the interpretation and value
judgments of the individual, who aims to bring about, if feasible, a situation which he prefers
to the State of Affairs that would prevail if he were not to interfere.
Consider a behaviorist describing the situation which an offer to sell brings about without
reference to the meaning each party attaches to it.
In fact, behaviorism would outlaw the study of human action and substitute physiology
for it.
The behaviorists never succeeded in making clear the difference between physiology and
behaviorism.
Watson declared that physiology is particularly interested in the functioning of parts of
the animal. Behaviorism, on the other hand, while it is intensely interested in all of
the functioning of these parts, is intrinsically interested in what the whole animal will do.
However, such physiological phenomena as the resistance of the body to infection or the
growth and aging of an individual can certainly not be called behavior of parts. On the other
Behaviorism asserts that it wants to
to predict human behavior, but it is impossible to predict the reaction of a man accosted
by another with the words, you rat, without referring to the meaning that the man spoken
to attaches to the epithet.
Both varieties of positivism decline to recognize the fact that men aim purposefully at definite
ends.
As they see it, all events must be interpreted in the relationship of stimulus and response,
And there is no room left for a search for final causes.
Against this rigid dogmatism, it is necessary to stress the point that the rejection of
finalism in dealing with events outside the sphere of human action is enjoined upon science
only by the insufficiency of human reason.
The natural sciences must refrain from dealing with final causes because they are unable
The reason for the natural sciences' neglect of final causes and their
limitations is that they are not able to discover any final causes, not
because they can prove that no final causes are operative.
The cognizance of the interconnectedness of all phenomena and of the
regularity in their concatenation and sequence and the fact that
The reason for the natural sciences' neglect of final causes and their exclusive preoccupation
with causality research is that this method works.
The contrivances designed according to the scientific theories run the way the theories
predicted and thus provide a pragmatic verification for their correctness.
On the other hand, the magic devices did not come up to expectations and do not bear witness
to the magic world view.
It is obvious that it is also impossible to demonstrate satisfactorily by radiocination
that the alter ego is a being that aims purposefully at ends.
But the same pragmatic proof that can be advanced in favor of the exclusive use of causal research
in the field of nature can be advanced in favor of the exclusive use of teleological
methods in the field of human action.
It works, while the idea of dealing with men as if they were stones or mice does not work.
It works not only in the search for knowledge and theories, but no less in daily practice.
The positivist arrives at his point of view surreptitiously.
He denies to his fellow men the faculty of choosing ends and the means to attain these
ends.
But at the same time, he claims for himself the ability to choose consciously between
and various methods of scientific procedure.
He shifts his ground as soon as it comes to the problems of engineering, whether technological
or social.
He designs plans and policies which cannot be interpreted as merely being automatic reactions
to stimuli.
He wants to deprive all his fellows of the right to act in order to reserve this privilege
for himself alone.
He is a virtual dictator.
As the behaviorist tells us, man can be thought of as an assembled organic machine ready
to run.
He disregards the fact that while machines run the way the engineer and the operator
make them run, men run spontaneously here and there.
At birth, human infants, regardless of their heredity, are as equal as Fords.
Starting from this manifest falsehood, the behaviorist proposes to operate the human
Carl Menheim developed a comprehensive plan to produce the best possible human types by
deliberately reorganizing the various groups of social factors.
We, that is, Carl Mannheim and his friends, will determine what the highest good of society
and the peace of mind of the individual require.
Then, we will revamp mankind, for our vocation is the planned guidance of people's lives.
The most remarkable thing about such ideas is that in the 30s and 40s they were styled
democratic, liberal, and progressive.
Joseph Goebbels was more modest than Mannheim in that he wanted only to revamp the German
people and not the whole of mankind.
But in his approach to the problem, he did not differ essentially from Mannheim.
In a letter of April 12, 1933, to Wilhelm Fortwengler, he referred to the we to whom
the responsible task has been entrusted to fashion out of the raw stuff of the masses
The Firm and Well-Shaped Structure of the Nation
Unfortunately, neither Mannheim nor Goebbels told us who had entrusted them with the task
of reconstructing and recreating men.
As long as positivism does not explain philosophies and theories and the plans and policies derived
from them in terms of its stimulus-response scheme, it defeats itself.
2. The Collectivist Dogma
Modern collectivist philosophy is a coarse offshoot of the old doctrine of conceptual
realism. It has severed itself from the general philosophical antagonism between realism and
nominalism and hardly pays any attention to the continued conflict of the two schools.
It is a political doctrine and as such employs a terminology that is seemingly different
from that used in the scholastic debates concerning universals, as well as from that of contemporary
neo-realism.
But the nucleus of its teachings does not differ from that of the medieval realists.
It ascribes to the universals objective real existence, even an existence superior to that
of individuals, sometimes even flatly denying the autonomous existence of individuals, the
only real existence.
What distinguishes collectivism from conceptual realism as taught by philosophers is not the
method of approach but the political tendencies implied.
Collectivism transforms the epistemological doctrine into an ethical claim.
It tells people what they ought to do.
It distinguishes between the true collective entity to which people owe loyalty and spurious
pseudo-entities about which they ought not to bother at all.
There is no uniform collectivist ideology, but many collectivist doctrines.
Each of them extols a different collectivist entity and requests all decent people to submit
to it.
Each sect worships its own idol and is intolerant of all rival idols.
Each ordains total subjection of the individual.
Each is totalitarian.
The particularist character of the various collectivist doctrines could easily be ignored
because they regularly start with the opposition between society in general and individuals.
In this antithesis, there appears only one collective comprehending all individuals.
There cannot therefore arise any rivalry among a multitude of collective entities.
But in the further course of the analysis, a special collective is imperceptibly substituted
for the Comprehensive Image of the Unique Great Society.
Let us first examine the concept of society in general.
Men cooperate with one another.
The totality of inter-human relations engendered by such cooperation is called society.
Society is not an entity in itself.
It is an aspect of human action.
It does not exist or live outside of the conduct of people.
is an orientation of human action. Society neither thinks nor acts. Individuals in thinking
and acting constitute a complex of relations and facts that are called social relations
and facts. The issue has been confused by an arithmetical metaphor. Is society, people
asked, merely a sum of individuals, or is it more than this and thereby an entity endowed
with Independent Reality.
The question is nonsensical.
Society is neither the sum of individuals, nor more, nor less.
Arithmetical concepts cannot be applied to the matter.
Another confusion arises from the no less empty question whether society is, in logic
and in time, anterior to individuals or not.
The evolution of society and that of civilization were not two distinct processes, but one in
the same process.
The biological passing of a species of primates beyond the level of a mere animal existence
and their transformation into primitive men implied already the development of the first
rudiments of social cooperation.
Homo sapiens appeared on the stage of earthly events neither as a solitary food seeker nor
Man is more as a member of a gregarious flock, but as a being consciously cooperating with
other beings of his own kind. Only in cooperation with his fellows could he develop language,
the indispensable tool of thinking. We cannot even imagine a reasonable being living in
perfect isolation and not cooperating at least with members of his family, clan, or tribe.
Human as man is necessarily a social animal. Some sort of cooperation is an essential characteristic
of his nature, but awareness of this fact does not justify dealing with social relations
as if they were something else than relations, or with society as if it were an independent
entity outside or above the actions of individual men.
Finally, there are the misconstructions caused by the organismic metaphor. We may compare
The Tertium Comparationis is the fact that division of labor and cooperation exists among
the various parts of a biological body as among the various members of society.
But the biological evolution that resulted in the emergence of the structure-function
systems of plant and animal bodies was a purely physiological process in which no trace of
a conscious activity on the part of the cells can be discovered.
On the other hand, human society is an intellectual and spiritual phenomenon.
In cooperating with their fellows, individuals do not divest themselves of their individuality.
They retain the power to act antisocially and often make use of it.
Its place in the structure of the body is invariably assigned to each cell, but individuals
spontaneously choose the way in which they integrate themselves into social cooperation.
Man have ideas and seek chosen ends, while the cells and organs of the body lack such
autonomy.
Gestalt psychology passionately rejects the psychological doctrine of associationism.
It ridicules the conception of a sensory mosaic which nobody has ever observed and teaches
that analysis, if it wants to reveal the universe in its completeness, has to stop at the holes,
Whatever their size, which possess functional reality.
Whatever one may think about Gestalt psychology, it is obvious that it has no reference at
all to the problems of society.
It is manifest that nobody has ever observed society as a whole.
What can be observed is always actions of individuals.
In interpreting the various aspects of the individual's actions, the theorists developed
The concept of society. There cannot be any question of understanding the properties of
parts from the properties of wholes. There are no properties of society that cannot be
discovered in the conduct of its members. In contrasting society and the individual,
and in denying to the latter any true reality, the collectivist doctrines look upon the individual
merely as a refractory rebel. This sinful wretch has the impudence to give preference
When the collectivist extols the state, what he means is not every state, but only the
The regime of which he approves, no matter whether this legitimate state exists already
or has to be created.
For the Czech irredentists in the Old Austria and the Irish irredentists in the United Kingdom,
the states whose governments resided in Vienna and in London were usurpers, their rightful
state did not yet exist.
Especially remarkable is the terminology of the Marxians.
Marx was bitterly hostile to the Prussian state of the Hohenzollern.
To make it clear that the state which he wanted to see omnipotent and totalitarian was not
that state whose rulers resided in Berlin, he called the future state of his program
not state, but society.
The innovation was merely verbal.
For what Marx aimed at was to abolish any sphere of the individual's initiative action
by Transferring the Control of All Economic Activities to the Social Apparatus of Compulsion
and Repression, which is commonly called state or government.
The hoax did not fail to beguile lots of people.
Even today, there are still dupes who think that there is a difference between state socialism
and other types of socialism.
The confusion of the concepts of society and of state originated with Hegel and Schelling.
It is customary to distinguish two schools of Hegelians, the left wing and the right
wing.
The distinction refers only to the attitudes of these authors toward the kingdom of Prussia
and the doctrines of the Prussian Union Church.
The political creed of both wings was essentially the same.
Both advocated government omnipotence.
It was a left-wing Hegelian, Ferdinand Lassalle, who most clearly expressed the fundamental
thesis of Hegelianism.
The State is God.
Hegel himself had been a little more cautious.
He only declared that it is the course of God through the world that constitutes the
state, and that in dealing with the state, one must contemplate the idea, God as actual
on earth.
The collectivist philosophers fail to realize that what constitutes the state is the actions
of individuals.
The legislators, those enforcing the laws by force of arms, and those yielding to the
dictates of the laws and the police constitute the state by their behavior.
In this sense alone is the state real.
There is no state apart from such actions of individual men.
3.
The Concept of the Social Sciences The collectivist philosophy denies that there
There are such things as individuals and actions of individuals.
The individual is merely a phantom without reality, an illusory image invented by the
pseudo-philosophy of the apologists of capitalism.
Consequently, collectivism rejects the concept of a science of human action.
As it sees it, the only legitimate treatment of those problems that are not dealt with
by the Traditional Natural Sciences is provided by what they call the social sciences.
The social sciences are supposed to deal with group activities.
In their context, the individual counts only as a member of a group.
But this definition implies that there are actions in which the individual does not act
as a member of a group and which, therefore, do not interest the social sciences.
If this is so, it is obvious that the social sciences deal only with an arbitrarily selected
fraction of the whole field of human action.
In acting, man must necessarily choose between various possible modes of acting.
Limiting their analysis to one class of actions only, the social sciences renounce in advance
any attempt to investigate the ideas that determine the individual's choice of a definite
mode of conduct.
They cannot deal with judgments of value which in any actual situation make a man prefer
acting as a group member to acting in a different manner. Neither can they deal with the judgments
of value that prompt a man to act as a member of group A rather than as a member of any
of the non-A groups. Man is not the member of one group only and does not appear on the
scene of human affairs solely in the role of a member of one definite group. In speaking
Speaking of social groups, it must be remembered that the members of one group are at the
same time members of other groups.
The conflict of groups is not a conflict between neatly integrated herds of men.
It is a conflict between various concerns in the minds of individuals.
What constitutes group membership is the way a man acts in a concrete situation.
Hence, group membership is not something rigid and unchangeable.
may change from case to case.
The same man may, in the course of a single day, perform actions each of which qualifies
him as a member of a different group.
He may contribute to the funds of his denomination and cast his ballot for a candidate who antagonizes
that denomination in essential problems.
He may act at one instant as a member of a labor union, at another as a member of a religious
Community, at another as a member of a political party, at another as a member of a linguistic
or racial group, and so on.
Or he may act as an individual working to earn more income, to get his son into college,
to purchase a home, a car, or a refrigerator.
In fact, he always acts as an individual, always seeks ends of his own.
In joining a group and acting as a member of it, he aims no less at the fulfillment
of his own wishes than in acting without any reference to a group.
He may join a religious community in order to seek the salvation of his soul or to attain
peace of mind.
He may join a labor union because he believes that this is the best means to get higher
pay or to avoid being bodily injured by the members of the union.
He may join a political party because he expects that the realization of its program will render
conditions more satisfactory for himself and his family.
It is vain to deal with the activities of the individual as a member of a group while
omitting other activities of the individual.
Group activities are essentially and necessarily activities of individuals who form groups
in order to attain their ends.
There are no social phenomena which would not originate from the activities of various
individuals.
What creates a group activity is a definite end sought by individuals, and the belief
of these individuals that cooperating in this group is a suitable means to attain the end
sought.
A group is a product of human wishes and the ideas about the means to realize these wishes.
Its roots are in the value judgments of individuals and in the opinions held by individuals about
About the Effects to be Expected from Definite Means
To deal with social groups adequately and completely, one must start from the actions
of the individuals.
No group activity can be understood without analyzing the ideology that forms the group
and makes it live and work.
The idea of dealing with group activities without dealing with all aspects of human
action is preposterous.
There is no field distinct from the field of the sciences of human action that could
be investigated by something called the social sciences. What prompted those who suggested
the substitution of the social sciences for the sciences of human action was, of course,
a definite political program. In their eyes, the social sciences were designed to obliterate
the social philosophy of individualism. The champions of the social sciences invented
and popularized the terminology that characterizes the market economy, in which every individual
is intent upon the realization of his own plan as a planless and therefore chaotic system
and reserves the term plan for the designs of an agency which, supported by or identical
with the government's police power, prevents all citizens from realizing their own plans
and designs.
One can hardly overrate the role which the association of ideas generated by this terminology
plays in shaping the political tenets of our contemporaries.
4.
The Nature of Mass Phenomena
Some people believe that the object of the social sciences is the study of mass phenomena.
While the study of individual traits is of no special interest to them, they hope study
The theory of the behavior of social aggregates will reveal information of a really scientific
character.
For these people, the chief defect of the traditional methods of historical research
is that they deal with individuals.
They esteem statistics precisely because, as they think, it observes and records the
behavior of social groups.
In fact, statistics records individual traits of the members of arbitrarily selected groups.
Whatever the principle may be that determined the scientist to set up a group, the traits
recorded refer primarily to the individuals that form the group and only indirectly to
the group.
The individual members of the group are the units of observation.
What statistics provides is information about the behavior of individuals forming a group.
Modern statistics aims at discovering invariable connections between statistically established
Magnitudes by Measuring Their Correlation.
In the field of the sciences of human action, this method is absurd.
This has been clearly demonstrated by the fact that many coefficients of correlation
of a high numerical value have been calculated, which undoubtedly do not indicate any connection
between the two groups of facts.
Social phenomena and mass phenomena are not things outside and above individual phenomena.
They are not the cause of individual phenomena.
They are produced either by the cooperation of individuals or by parallel action.
The latter may be either independent or imitative.
This is valid also with regard to antisocial actions.
The intentional killing of a man by another man is as such merely a human action and would
have no other significance in a hypothetical and irrealizable state in which there was
There is no cooperation between men. It becomes a crime, murder, in a state where social
cooperation precludes homicide except in cases strictly determined by the laws of this society.
What is commonly called a mass phenomenon is the frequent repetition and recurrence
of a definite individual phenomenon. The proposition, In the West, bread is an article of mass consumption
Education means, in the West, the immense majority of men eat bread daily.
They do not eat bread because it is an article of mass consumption.
Bread is an article of mass consumption because practically everybody eats a piece of bread
each day.
From this point of view, one may appreciate the endeavors of Gabriel Taude to describe
imitation and repetition as fundamental factors of social evolution.
The champions of the social sciences criticize the historians for concentrating their attention
upon the actions of individuals and neglecting the conduct of the many, the immense majority,
the masses.
The critique is spurious.
A historian who deals with the spread of the Christian creed and of the various churches
and denominations, with the events that resulted in the emergence of integrated linguistic groups,
with the European colonialization of the Western hemisphere, with the rise of modern
and Capitalism certainly does not overlook the behavior of the many.
However, the main task of history is to indicate the relation of the individual's actions to
the course of affairs.
Different individuals influence historical change in different ways.
There are pioneers who conceive new ideas and design new modes of thinking and acting.
There are leaders who guide people along the way these people want to walk.
And there are the anonymous masses who follow the leaders.
There can be no question of writing history without the names of the pioneers and the
leaders.
The history of Christianity cannot pass over in silence such men as St. Paul, Luther, and
Calvin, nor can the history of 17th century England fail to analyze the roles of Cromwell,
Milton, and William III.
To ascribe the ideas producing historical change to the mass psyche is a manifestation
of arbitrary metaphysical prepossession.
The intellectual innovations which Auguste Kant and Buckel rightly considered the main
theme of the study of history are not achievements of the masses.
Mass movements are not inaugurated by anonymous nobodies, but by individuals.
We do not know the names of the men who in the early days of civilization accomplished
the greatest exploits, but we are certain that also the technological and institutional
innovations of those early ages were not the result of a sudden flash of inspiration that
struck the masses, but the work of some individuals who by far surpassed their fellow men.
There is no mass psyche and no mass mind, but only ideas held and actions performed
by the many in endorsing the opinions of the pioneers and leaders and imitating their
Conduct, mobs and crowds too act only under the direction of ringleaders.
The common men who constitute the masses are characterized by lack of initiative.
They are not passive, they also act, but they act only at the instigation of abetters.
The emphasis laid by sociologists upon mass phenomena and their idolization of the common
man are an offshoot of the myth that all men are biologically equal.
Whatever differences exist between individuals are caused, it is maintained, by postnatal
circumstances.
If all people equally enjoyed the benefits of a good education, such differences would
never appear.
The supporters of this doctrine are at a loss to explain the differences among graduates
of the same school and the fact that many who are self-taught far excel the doctors,
masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.
They fail to see that education cannot convey to pupils more than the knowledge of their
teachers.
Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and
creative geniuses.
The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition
and unvarying modes of thought.
The mark of the creative mind is that it defies a part of what it has learned, or at least
One utterly misconstrues the feats of the pioneer in reducing them to the instruction
he got from his teachers.
No matter how efficient school training may be, it would only produce stagnation, orthodoxy,
and rigid pedantry if there were no uncommon men pushing forward beyond the wisdom of their
tutors.
It is hardly possible to mistake more thoroughly the meaning of history and the evolution of
of Civilization than by concentrating one's attention upon mass phenomena and neglecting
individual men and their exploits.
No mass phenomenon can be adequately treated without analyzing the ideas implied, and no
No new ideas spring from the mythical mind of the masses.