The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 13, 1924, Page 6

|The New Culture -. - HE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION has turned life topsy-turvy. Haughty culture has performed sev- eral interesting gyrations, feebler and feebler as its strength was being sapped by numerous collisions , and humdrum needs. WExperimental sci- ence has gained apace. The marvels of the universe (no longer idly ad- ored as holy mystery) are being utilized for common drudge’s sake. A socio-political metamorphosis is everywhere fermenting. Socialism has leaped to the front. These rat- tling changes have necessitated a newer culture: The socio-scientific or sociologic culture. By a series of ter- ribly . wasteful conflicts, the dawning culture has» emerged partly tri- umphant, shining too often by the re- flected light of the older resistant cultures... +» Though Professor James Harvey Robinson smartly defines theology as an imaginary subject, many intelligent persons still cling lovingly to its con- soling mysteries. Mystery worship maketh ignorance at home in a hos- tile world! Metaphysics is still the exclusive delight of those merry men who are so bored by the sordid preb- lems of workaday life that they needs must romp and frisk in the green fields of -El Dorado. They “corrupt” youth by shunting its limited capabili- ties from immediate intelligible things to remote, largely meaningless ab- stractions. Still, peace be with them! Bad habits do not die in a day. The ancient linguistic culture has so demoralized the educated snobs, they actually believe science to be of secondary,—possibly tertiary,—im- portance in a well-balanced curricu- lum, Schopenhauer made the hys- terical prophecy that the world of cul- ture was committing suicide by per- mitting the supersession of Latin and Greek by “modern” languages. He forgot that before Greek and Latin had become transcendent- cultures, great civilizations had flourished and vanished, like the Minoan in Crete, the Hittite, Egyptian, Babylonian, Az- tec, et..al. What exasperating non- sense it is to claim that there is only one royal road to Salvation by Cul- ture.. A scholar may be chock full of linguistics and yet be a pathetic dul- lard in analyzing his own emotions and prepossessions. What a babbling incompetent such a scholar really is. More poetry, more drama, more knowledge, more reverence and wis- dom are to be culled from the study of embryology or geology or any oth- er of the marvelously stimulating olo- gies than the most incorrigible lin- quist could ever garner from his wor- shipful, memoriter studies. Languag- es should not only not be studied as desiderata “per se,” but solely as aids to understanding the scientific achievements of man. The whole evolution of life is our star witness to prove that language stumbled in- to the world as an aid to recording and facilitating useful inventions. Language itself is a useful invention. Excessive leizure, dwelling on a mount of security, remoté from the afflicted vulgus, prostituted scholar- ship by its too exclusive worship of culture for culture’s sake, i. e. for the sake of prestige. Our immediate inference is that the logic of culture’s evolution unmistak- ably points to the ascendency of a socio-scientific culture, (Professor Robinson called it anthropological), as the best adapted to an understanding of the age in which we live. Shortly we shall witness in high school and “college (later in university and ele- mentary school) a radical change in curriculum. There will be either no absolutely required subjects at all or more probably social sciences will be gladly accepted in lieu of linguistics. We shall all learn as of necessity to érient ourselves in our new cultural spheres. And the generations to come will be equipped to be critically active citizens in a vital social democracy. The sociologic culture consists of three interrelated branches: the phy- sical-scientific, the industrial, and the social-scientific. Ne sooner have you begun to teach “pure science” with its useful generalizations then you touch at once upon so-called “applied” science, i. e. industrialized science. (Huxley objected vigorously to the ar- tificial separation Of these aspects of science because as he ¢élearly pointed out, the laws of science are prerequi- site for any intelligent improvement in the processes of manufacture, The- ory and practice are not opposed but supplementary). When you have touched upon science in industry, you have opened the first gate that leads to social science. The interdepend- ence of the physical, industrial and social sciences is abundantly clear. Our high school and college curicula must take their clue from life’s needs and establish numerous courses in these useful knowledges. Sociological subjects should be centralized as con- taining those vital problems of our social life which the critically active citizen must understand in order to serve the collectivity, usefully. In- dustrial science courses deservedly come next as providing an intelligent appreciation of the co-relation be- tween science and productive indus- try. Thirdly comes the physical sci- 4 is the striving for perfection. (1 should like to add that the first need of any culture is a striving for per- fection in its choice of intelligible terms). “Perfection” is so imperfect a symbol of each man’s conceit that we get nowhere by employing it.. To strive for “Sweetness of Light” is not objectionable if, seduced by that idealization, you, do not blunder into asking energetic human: beings like Tolstoi, Nietzsche, Voltaire and Heine to bow down to the prejudices of their contemporaries for the sake of “Peace, brother, peace.” -No, sir. The world is desperately in need of ag- gressive radicals, muckrakers, fear- less fighters, iconoclasts, Sweetness and light must wait yet awhile, be- loved Quietists! What more noble, but more silly ideal, than Arnold’s: “Culture should seek to make reason and the will of God prevail.” Hasn’t the: bungling world of man had enough bitter fun out of the sport of trying to decipher the will and codicil of God? Even the shrewdest attor- neys at law have found the will hope- lessly confused. Let’s not bother our little heads about the will of God. | SO FAR IT’S DONE! | * By Oskar Kanehl. Who console still: the time will come? So far it’s done, The white muskets are willing to shoot, The white bayonets are willing to spit brute. The white horror cries for blood. Prolet, guard up! Who console still: the time will come? So far it’s done, The generals are commanding. The gold-larded mercenaries are obeying. The fascisti-pack goes off Prolet, and you? set-te. Who console still: the time will come’ So far it’s done. - The misery blooms on palid lips. The hunger grins through your naked ribs. If you duck, it’s too late. Riot, prolet! Who console still: the time will come? So far it’s done. The capital panders to every vice. The working bees on the pavement he drives. Behind you is barred the way, What do you delay? Who console still: the time will come? So far it’s done. Dead or slave? What like you rather? Clear stand master and servant against each other. For last assault. So far it’s done. To fire go on! Translated by Paul Acel. ence group with its study of the large assumptions and fruitful hypothesis of science. As Tyndall (in his histor- ic Belfast Address) said: “Science de- sires not isolation, but freely com bines with every effort toward the bettering of man’s estate. If the time now devoted to languages (especially ancient) and mathematics and other “cultural” odds and ends were trans- ferred to the sociological science, an amazing transformation would ensue with profit to student and to our so- cial citizenship.” A consummation de- voutly to be striven for! To under- stand one’s own passionate age is task enough for the best brains. Why saddle the younger generation with the irrelevant culture of the “dark” ages? The scholarly Bernard Shaw has autobiographed the following: “I deal with all periods; but I never study any period but the present, which I have not yet mastered and never shall.” Is there not a lament- able lack of Humor’s common sense in the minds of those haughty cultur- ists who desire our “educated” youth to understand Greek and Roman cul- tures, to boot? ‘ Matthew Arnold, in his gentimental essay on culture, swam triumpkantly in a nebulous eternity where were a superfluity. Only with lessness as our base, can we #0 vague an ideal as. that HEL He has ample time for that amuse- ment Himself. Why mar His plea- sure? We must not be too severe with the noble Arnold: He was limit- ed by his own ignorance of science. His ideal, tho vague and incoherent, was something sacred to him, He real- | ized that “the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until the raw and unkindled masses of human- ity are touched with sweetness and light.” He believed naively enough that the acquisition of culture, “the pas- sion to make the best that has been thought and known in the world cur- rent everywhere,” would do away with classes! He had never pondered the iron historic truth that né “su- perior” class has ever voluntarily yielded any of its prerogatives to other less fortunately-circumstanced groups. Enough of haughty culture! It has been a failure: An obstacle to the progress of the disinherited. Ruskin’s passion for human service lucidly discerned the inadequacy of a hothouse culture in a world like ours. He understood profoundly what Ar- nold wrote superficially and senti- mentally: “We are here as on a darkling plain, Swept by confused d@larms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by - might.” By a Teacher His own poignant confession that he‘could not endure the very light of day nor paint nor enjoy the passing hour -because of the distress of his bruised fellows is the humane coun- terpart of the sociological culture; a culture which worries its head over living proletarians and incidentally squanders a leizure hour with paeans to bygone ages, dead philosophers and their deader philosophies. Ruskin’s lectures to the workingmen on their own homely (bread and butter) prob- lems marked the turning point in cul- ture’s evolution, Soulessness of antecedent cultures broke Ruskin’s heart with the bitter knowledge of their wilful irrelevancy, their con- temptuous unconcern for the uncul- tured. The loving admiration bestow- ed by the quickened common people on Thomas Huxley was another tri- bute to the efficacy of the newer dem- ocratic culture. . . . Speaking of Savants and Amelioration, I recall with delight Monsieur Berthelot’s great view of duty. In “Sdme New Conceptions of Science,” Carl Snyder gives us a fine pen-portrait of one of our most genuine humanitarians: “He answers to the fine conception he himself drew, when, a few days later, he stood in the great hall of the Sorbonne, It is not, he said, ‘For the egotistical satisfaction of our pri- vate vanities that the world today renders homage to the savant. No! It is because the savant worthy of the name ‘consecrates a disinterested life to the grand work of our epoch: I mean the amelioration—too slow, alas, to our view—of the lot of all, from the rich and the happy to the humble, the poor and suffering. Trat was what was implied by the public nine years ago in this same hall, in honoring Pasteur. It is what my friend Chaplain has endeavored to express on the beautiful plaque which the President of the Republic is about to offer me. I do not know if I have completely filled the noble ideal which the artist has here delineated, but I have tried, at least, to make this the object and end, the directing purpose of my existence.” Superior brains had actually be- come ashamed of its quondam ineffec- tual intellectuality. It essayed the great experiment of the ages: To dis- cover what latent powers “inferior” men possessed, what development ‘they were capable of inaugurating, what ~response they could make to “higher” appeals. This experiment is now in process. Those who sympathize with the Masses are unanimous in their de- sire to experiment some more; not to cease, until every available elec- tron of superior talent has been giv- en off to polarize the minds of com- mon men. These experiments in democratic culture are the hope and inspiration of our age; the generous endeavors of a richly scientific epoch, The reader may remember the apt illustration in’ Maeterlinck’s “Wis- dom and Destiny” of what may be called the telescopic and microscopic views of life. Two men were stroll- ing peripatetically along golden fields of wheat when in the distance they espied peasants laboring. The rhyth- mic sway of hands, the lovely undu- lations of bodies, the burnt golden hair of the workers shining brilliant- ly in the sun—what poetry in that labor of love. This the long-distance view! But oh, what sadness of mien, what tragic ignorance of speech, what ignoble bent backs, as the space was foreshortened and the short distance view clarified the vi- sion. The microscope is more depend- able than the telescope! It probes mysteries more searchingly, more ac- curately, And yet our perverse hu- man minds are set in the very op- bosite bent. We love to prattle about the moon long before we have any knowledge about Mother Earth. Strange lands are more fascinating far than our own countries, The prophet is appreciated in all lands, but his own. Distance lends enchant- ment, The upshot of our perverse- Be eee aa cme fo make aith ‘ manner things and interests provided they tantalize us by remote- ness, by novelty. All the cultures pre- x (Continued on page 8)