THE PHILOSOPHIES OF MISERY

'There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest of men.'—Lord Acton

Imaginary cause theories. The witch theory. Cosmic theories. Secondary cause theories. Economic and psychological explanations. The cultural theory. Military exploits and monstrosities in folklore and literature. The essence of Western civilization. Past and present atrocities in the history of civilized peoples. Man's inherent love of aggressiveness. Relative splendour of monuments honouring poets and generals. Why our heraldic animals are beasts of prey. Attlee, Goethe, and Bacon on the virtue of war. The war record of Germans and Allies, of aggressors and lovers of peace.

In a period of widespread tyranny, brutality, almost perpetual warfare, and other related miseries, it seems legitimate to ask by what means a more peaceful and socially satisfactory existence might be secured.

As with every question concerning conditions of misery and their abolition, a fruitful answer depends on the discernment of their primary cause. But while modern scientific methods have shed light on the primary causes of many technical and personal complexities with the resultant improvement in our private conditions, in the realm of social problems they have contributed little more than theories involving either purely imaginary or at best secondary causes. Speaking in the middle of the twentieth century, Julian Huxley could therefore justly say that 'the human sciences today are somewhat in the position occupied by the biological sciences in the early 1800s'. They have hardly penetrated the surface.

The trouble with imaginary and secondary cause theories of social misery is that they are frequently able to furnish highly seductive momentary explanations. As a result, supplying seemingly satisfactory interpretations, they not only discourage further search; they also fail to bring forth useful proposals for solutions, the ones because time sequences are not causal, the others because secondary causes are themselves nothing but consequences of primary forces. The chance of providing the world with a socially more satisfying existence seems therefore to depend on the question whether we are able to pierce the shell of imaginary and secondary phenomena and discover the hidden primary cause disturbing the social happiness of man. But before offering a theory which presumes to penetrate to fundamentals, let us analyse the merits of the most popular imaginary and secondary cause theories of past and present, and appraise the solutions they proposed on the basis of their interpretations.

1. Imaginary Cause Theories

The Ancients, attributing the cause of most difficulties to the wrath of the gods, thought that the simplest way of improving their condition was to resort to prayer or, if this should prove insufficient, to the sacrificial slaughter of the persons who had antagonized the gods. Sometimes, the results were stunning. Hardly had the prayers been said, than rain would pour down on their thirsty fields, the lava stream of a volcano would come to a sudden stop, or news would reach them of the defeat of a fearful invader. Occasionally, nothing would happen. However, as in the case of most bad guesses, no significance was attached to this, and no reason was seen why their theory, which might be called the divine theory of social misery, should be considered invalid on this ground alone, since it had proved so satisfactory in the explanation of so many other misfortunes.

In the Middle Ages, the divine theory was supplemented by a witch theory of social misery which attributed the cause of afflictions less to the wrath of God than to the malevolence of an evil spirit. Quite logically, the principal cure was now thought to lie in the elimination of the objects which seemed possessed by the devil. So up in flames went a behexed barn, a cross-eyed hunchback, a very ugly woman, or a very beautiful one. Again, the results were considered highly satisfactory except in a few cases when, instead of suspecting their theory, people suspected they had burned the wrong witch, and so began the merry chase anew.

Later, with man's growing interest in the mechanism of the universe, a bundle of cosmic theories of misery began to enjoy wide currency. Disease and wars were now attributed to the occasional appearance of a comet, the more frequent appearance of a red corona around the moon or, when it was discovered that sunspots had an irritating effect on our nervous system, to the cyclical intensification of sunspot activities. Like all earlier theories, these too were considered eminently satisfactory, as there was rarely a misfortune that did not coincide with one or more of these celestial phenomena. Since nothing could be done about the latter, the cosmic theories had, in addition, the advantage of relieving mankind of the difficult task of seeking solutions and cures.

Passive submission to the forces of nature was, however, contrary to the spirit of the gradually rising age of reason. With the advent of modern times we find, therefore, a new string of theories of social misery. In rapid succession there developed an economic theory, attributing war and other forms of social evil to the expansive urge of profit-seeking capitalism; a psychological theory, attributing them to frustration; a personal, ideological, cultural, and a national theory, attributing them in turn to the design of evil men such as Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin; to evil ideologies such as nazism or communism; to evil cultural traditions such as Prussian militarism or British colonialism; and finally, because a majority of these features seemed occasionally to coincide in the history of a particular people, to an evil inheritance, an evil nation such as the Germans as they appeared to the eyes of the Western Allies in the past, or the Americans as they appear to the eyes of the Eastern Allies now.

Like their predecessors, these newer theories proved again highly satisfactory in the explanation of those social miseries during whose occurrence they were developed. But also like their predecessors, they turned out to be singularly incapable of explaining exceptions. Confusing secondary causes with primary causes or, to use the terms of Lucretius, the property of things with their mere accident, they could explain the brutality of the Moslems but not of the Christians. They could explain the poverty of American but not of Russian slums. And as to wars, they...