Course Reader

Cultures, Civilizations, and Ideas

Dr. Kory Sorrell, Esq.
Bilkent University
Humanities 112
ANKARA, Turkey

Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a

subject: and in the power of moulding and shaping ideas to it.
- Shelley
From The Inferno (1307-1320)
Dante Aligheri

CANTO I

In the midway of this our mortal life,

I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct: and e’en to tell
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.
Yet to discourse of what there good befell,
All else will I relate discover’d there.

From Letters of Francesco Petrarch

Letter to Boccacci (1366)

To be sure, the Latin, in both prose and poetry, is undoubtedly the nobler language, but for that
very reason it has been so thoroughly developed by earlier writers that neither we nor anyone

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else may expect to add very much to it. The vernacular, on the other hand, has but recently been
discovered, and, though it has been ravaged by many, it still remains uncultivated, in spite of a
few earnest labourers, and still shows itself capable of much improvement and enrichment.
Stimulated by this thought, and by the enterprise of youth, I began an extensive work in that
language. I laid the foundations of the structure, and got together my lime and stones and wood.
And then I began to consider a little more carefully the times in which we live, the fact that our
age is the mother of pride and indolence, and that the ability of the vainglorious fellows who
would be my judges, and their peculiar grace of delivery is such that they can hardly be said to
recite the writings of others, but rather to mangle them. Hearing their performances again and
again, and turning the matter over in my mind, I concluded at length that I was building upon
unstable earth and shifting sand, and should simply waste my labours and see the work of my
hands levelled by the common herd. Like one who finds a great serpent across his track, I
stopped and changed my route-for a higher and more direct one, I hope. Although the short
things I once wrote in the vulgar tongue are, as I have said, so scattered that they now belong to
the public rather than to me, I shall take precautions against having my more important works
torn to pieces in the same way.

And yet why should I find fault with the unenlightenment of the common people, when those
who call themselves learned afford so much more just and serious a ground for complaint?
Besides many other ridiculous peculiarities, these people add to their gross ignorance and
exaggerated and most disgusting pride. It is this that leads them to carp at the reputation of those
whose most trivial sayings they were once proud to comprehend, in even the most fragmentary
fashion. 0 inglorious age! that scorns antiquity, its mother, to whom it owes every noble art, that
dares to declare itself not only equal but superior to the glorious past. I say nothing of the vulgar,
the dregs of mankind, whose sayings and opinions may raise a laugh but hardly merit serious
censure. I will say nothing o the military class and the leaders in war, who do not blush to assert
that their time has beheld the culmination and perfection of military art, when there is no doubt
that this art has degenerated and is utterly going to ruin in their hands. They have neither skill
nor intelligence, but rely entirely upon indolence and chance. They go to war decked out as if for
a wedding, bent on meat and drink and the gratification of their lust. They think much more of
flight than they do of victory. Their skill lies not in striking the adversary, but in holding out the
hand of submission; not in terrifying the enemy, but in pleasing the eyes of their mistresses. But
even these false notions may be excused in view of the utter ignorance and want of instruction on
the part of those who hold them.

Such are the times, my friend, upon which we have fallen; such is the period in which we live
and are growing old. Such are the critics of today, as I so often have occasion to lament and
complain-men who are innocent of knowledge or virtue, and yet harbour the most exalted
opinion of themselves. Not content with losing the words of the ancients, they must attack their
genius and their ashes. They rejoice in their ignorance, as if what they did not know were not
worth knowing.

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From Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)
Giovanni Pico de la Mirandola

I once read that Abdala the Muslim, when asked what was most worthy of awe and wonder in
this theater of the world, answered, "There is nothing to see more wonderful than man!" Hermes
Trismegistus concurs with this opinion: "A great miracle, Asclepius, is man!" However, when I
began to consider the reasons for these opinions, all these reasons given for the magnificence of
human nature failed to convince me: that man is the intermediary between creatures, close to the
gods, master of all the lower creatures, with the sharpness of his senses, the acuity of his reason,
and the brilliance of his intelligence the interpreter of nature, the nodal point between eternity
and time, and, as the Persians say, the intimate bond or marriage song of the world, just a little
lower than angels as David tells us. I concede these are magnificent reasons, but they do not
seem to go to the heart of the matter, that is, those reasons which truly claim admiration. For, if
these are all the reasons we can come up with, why should we not admire angels more than we
do ourselves? After thinking a long time, I have figured out why man is the most fortunate of all
creatures and as a result worthy of the highest admiration and earning his rank on the chain of
being, a rank to be envied not merely by the beasts but by the stars themselves and by the
spiritual natures beyond and above this world. This miracle goes past faith and wonder. And why
not? It is for this reason that man is rightfully named a magnificent miracle and a wondrous
creation.

What is this rank on the chain of being? God the Father, Supreme Architect of the Universe, built
this home, this universe we see all around us, a venerable temple of his godhead, through the
sublime laws of his ineffable Mind. The expanse above the heavens he decorated with
Intelligences, the spheres of heaven with living, eternal souls. The scabrous and dirty lower
worlds he filled with animals of every kind. However, when the work was finished, the Great
Artisan desired that there be some creature to think on the plan of his great work, and love its
infinite beauty, and stand in awe at its immenseness. Therefore, when all was finished, as Moses
and Timaeus tell us, He began to think about the creation of man. But he had no Archetype from
which to fashion some new child, nor could he find in his vast treasure-houses anything which
He might give to His new son, nor did the universe contain a single place from which the whole
of creation might be surveyed. All was perfected, all created things stood in their proper place,
the highest things in the highest places, the midmost things in the midmost places, and the lowest
things in the lowest places. But God the Father would not fail, exhausted and defeated, in this
last creative act. God's wisdom would not falter for lack of counsel in this need. God's love
would not permit that he whose duty it was to praise God's creation should be forced to condemn
himself as a creation of God.

Finally, the Great Artisan mandated that this creature who would receive nothing proper to
himself shall have joint possession of whatever nature had been given to any other creature. He
made man a creature of indeterminate and indifferent nature, and, placing him in the middle of
the world, said to him "Adam, we give you no fixed place to live, no form that is peculiar to you,
nor any function that is yours alone. According to your desires and judgement, you will have and
possess whatever place to live, whatever form, and whatever functions you yourself choose. All
other things have a limited and fixed nature prescribed and bounded by Our laws. You, with no
limit or no bound, may choose for yourself the limits and bounds of your nature. We have placed

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you at the world's center so that you may survey everything else in the world. We have made you
neither of heavenly nor of earthly stuff, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with free choice and
dignity, you may fashion yourself into whatever form you choose. To you is granted the power
of degrading yourself into the lower forms of life, the beasts, and to you is granted the power,
contained in your intellect and judgement, to be reborn into the higher forms, the divine."

Imagine! The great generosity of God! The happiness of man! To man it is allowed to be
whatever he chooses to be! As soon as an animal is born, it brings out of its mother's womb all
that it will ever possess. Spiritual beings from the beginning become what they are to be for all
eternity. Man, when he entered life, the Father gave the seeds of every kind and every way of life
possible. Whatever seeds each man sows and cultivates will grow and bear him their proper fruit.
If these seeds are vegetative, he will be like a plant. If these seeds are sensitive, he will be like an
animal. If these seeds are intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of God. And if, satisfied
with no created thing, he removes himself to the center of his own unity, his spiritual soul, united
with God, alone in the darkness of God, who is above all things, he will surpass every created
thing. Who could not help but admire this great shape-shifter? In fact, how could one admire
anything else? . . .

For the mystic philosophy of the Hebrews transforms Enoch into an angel called "Mal'akh
Adonay Shebaoth," and sometimes transforms other humans into different sorts of divine beings.
The Pythagoreans abuse villainous men by having them reborn as animals and, according to
Empedocles, even plants. Muhammed also said frequently, "Those who deviate from the
heavenly law become animals." Bark does not make a plant a plant, rather its senseless and
mindless nature does. The hide does not make an animal an animal, but rather its irrational but
sensitive soul. The spherical form does not make the heavens the heavens, rather their
unchanging order. It is not a lack of body that makes an angel an angel, rather it is his spiritual
intelligence. If you see a person totally subject to his appetites, crawling miserably on the
ground, you are looking at a plant, not a man. If you see a person blinded by empty illusions and
images, and made soft by their tender beguilements, completely subject to his senses, you are
looking at an animal, not a man. If you see a philosopher judging things through his reason,
admire and follow him: he is from heaven, not the earth. If you see a person living in deep
contemplation, unaware of his body and dwelling in the inmost reaches of his mind, he is neither
from heaven or earth, he is divinity clothed in flesh.

Who would not admire man, who is called by Moses and the Gospels "all flesh" and "every
creature," because he fashions and transforms himself into any fleshly form and assumes the
character of any creature whatsoever? For this reason, Euanthes the Persian in his description of
Chaldaean theology, writes that man has no inborn, proper form, but that many things that
humans resemble are outside and foreign to them, from which arises the Chaldaean saying:
"Hanorish tharah sharinas ": "Man is multitudinous, varied, and ever changing." Why do I
emphasize this? Considering that we are born with this condition, that is, that we can become
whatever we choose to become, we need to understand that we must take earnest care about this,
so that it will never be said to our disadvantage that we were born to a privileged position but
failed to realize it and became animals and senseless beasts. Instead, the saying of Asaph the
prophet should be said of us, "You are all angels of the Most High." Above all, we should not
make that freedom of choice God gave us into something harmful, for it was intended to be to

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our advantage. Let a holy ambition enter into our souls; let us not be content with mediocrity, but
rather strive after the highest and expend all our strength in achieving it.

Let us disdain earthly things, and despise the things of heaven, and, judging little of what is in
the world, fly to the court beyond the world and next to God. In that court, as the mystic writings
tell us, are the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones in the foremost places; let us not even yield
place to them, the highest of the angelic orders, and not be content with a lower place, imitate
them in all their glory and dignity. If we choose to, we will not be second to them in anything.

From The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci

1503-4

Third Voyage of Amerigo Vespucci

As regards the people: we have found such a multitude in those countries that no one could
enumerate them, as we read in the Apocalypse. They are people gentle and tractable, and all of
both sexes go naked, not covering any part of their bodies, just as they came from their mothers'
wombs, and so they go until their deaths. They have large, square-built bodies, and well
proportioned. Their colour reddish, which I think is caused by their going naked and exposed to
the sun. Their hair is plentiful and black. They are agile in walking, and of quick sight. They are
of a free and good-looking expression of countenance, which they themselves destroy by boring
the nostrils and lips, the nose and ears; nor must you believe that the borings are small, nor that
they only have one, for I have seen those who had no less than seven borings in the face, each
one the size of a plum. They stop up these perforations with blue stones, bits of marble, of
crystal, or very fine alabaster, also with very white bones and other things artificially prepared
according to their customs; which, if you could see, it would appear a strange and monstrous
thing. One had in the nostrils and lips alone seven stones, of which some were half a palm in
length. It will astonish you to hear that I considered that the weight of seven such stones was as
much as sixteen ounces. In each ear they had three perforations bored, whence they had other
stones and rings suspended. This custom is only for the men, as the women do not perforate their
faces, but only their ears. Another custom among them is sufficiently shameful, and beyond all
human credibility. Their women, being very libidinous, make the penis of their husbands swell to
such a size as to appear deformed; and this is accomplished by a certain artifice, being the bite of
some poisonous animal, and by reason of this many lose their virile organ and remain eunuchs.

They have no cloth, either of wool, flax, or cotton, because they have no need of it; nor have they
any private property, everything being in common. They live amongst themselves without a king
or ruler, each man being his own master, and having as many wives as they please. The children
cohabit with the mothers, the brothers with the sisters, the male cousins with the female, and
each one with the first he meets. They have no temples and no laws, nor are they idolaters. What
more can I say! They live according to nature, and are more inclined to be Epicurean than Stoic.
They have no commerce among each other, and they wage war without art or order. The old men
make the youths do what they please, and incite them to fights, in which they mutually kill with
great cruelty. They slaughter those who are captured, and the victors eat the vanquished; for

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human flesh is an ordinary article of food among them. You may be the more certain of this,
because I have seen a man eat his children and wife; and I knew a man who was popularly
credited to have eaten 300 human bodies. I was once in a certain city for twenty-seven days,
where human flesh was hung up near the houses, in the same way as we expose butcher's meat. I
say further that they were surprised that we did not eat our enemies, and use their flesh as food,
for they say it is excellent. Their arms are bows and arrows, and when they go to war they cover
no part of their bodies, being in this like beasts. We did all we could to persuade them to desist
from their evil habits, and they promised us to leave off. The women, as I have said, go naked,
and are very libidinous, yet their bodies are comely; but they are as wild as can be imagined.

They live for 150 years, and are rarely sick. If they are attacked by a disease they cure
themselves with the roots of some herbs. These are the most noteworthy things I know about
them.

The air in this country is temperate and good, as we were able to learn from their accounts that
there are never any pestilences or epidemics caused by bad air. Unless they meet with violent
deaths, their lives are long. I believe this is because a southerly wind is always blowing, a south
wind to them being what a north wind is to us. They are expert fishermen, and the sea is full of
all kinds of fish. They are not hunters; I think because here there are many kinds of wild animals,
principally lions and bears, innumerable serpents, and other horrible creatures and deformed
beasts; also because there are vast forests and trees of immense size. They have not the courage
to face such dangers naked and without any defence….

Of Cannibals
Michel de Montaigne
(1580)

I long had a man in my house that lived ten or twelve years in the New World, discovered in
these latter days, and in that part of it where Villegaignon landed,—[At Brazil, in 1557.]—which
he called Antarctic France. This discovery of so vast a country seems to be of very great
consideration. I cannot be sure, that hereafter there may not be another, so many wiser men than
we having been deceived in this. I am afraid our eyes are bigger than our bellies, and that we
have more curiosity than capacity; for we grasp at all, but catch nothing but wind.

Plato brings in Solon,—[In Timaeus.]—telling a story that he had heard from the priests of Sais
in Egypt, that of old, and before the Deluge, there was a great island called Atlantis, situate
directly at the mouth of the straits of Gibraltar, which contained more countries than both Africa
and Asia put together; and that the kings of that country, who not only possessed that Isle, but
extended their dominion so far into the continent that they had a country of Africa as far as
Egypt, and extending in Europe to Tuscany, attempted to encroach even upon Asia, and to
subjugate all the nations that border upon the Mediterranean Sea, as far as the Black Sea; and to
that effect overran all Spain, the Gauls, and Italy, so far as to penetrate into Greece, where the
Athenians stopped them: but that some time after, both the Athenians, and they and their island,
were swallowed by the Flood.

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But there is no great appearance that this isle was this New World so lately discovered: for that
almost touched upon Spain, and it were an incredible effect of an inundation, to have tumbled
back so prodigious a mass, above twelve hundred leagues: besides that our modern navigators
have already almost discovered it to be no island, but terra firma, and continent with the East
Indies on the one side, and with the lands under the two poles on the other side; or, if it be
separate from them, it is by so narrow a strait and channel, that it none the more deserves the
name of an island for that.

The other testimony from antiquity, to which some would apply this discovery of the New
World, is in Aristotle; at least, if that little book of Unheard of Miracles be his—[one of the
spurious publications brought out under his name—D.W.]. He there tells us, that certain
Carthaginians, having crossed the Atlantic Sea without the Straits of Gibraltar, and sailed a very
long time, discovered at last a great and fruitful island, all covered over with wood, and watered
with several broad and deep rivers, far remote from all terra firma; and that they, and others after
them, allured by the goodness and fertility of the soil, went thither with their wives and children,
and began to plant a colony. But the senate of Carthage perceiving their people by little and little
to diminish, issued out an express prohibition, that none, upon pain of death, should transport
themselves thither; and also drove out these new inhabitants; fearing, 'tis said, lest' in process of
time they should so multiply as to supplant themselves and ruin their state. But this relation of
Aristotle no more agrees with our new-found lands than the other.

This man that I had was a plain ignorant fellow, and therefore the more likely to tell truth: for
your better-bred sort of men are much more curious in their observation, 'tis true, and discover a
great deal more; but then they gloss upon it, and to give the greater weight to what they deliver,
and allure your belief, they cannot forbear a little to alter the story; they never represent things to
you simply as they are, but rather as they appeared to them, or as they would have them appear
to you, and to gain the reputation of men of judgment, and the better to induce your faith, are
willing to help out the business with something more than is really true, of their own invention.
Now in this case, we should either have a man of irreproachable veracity, or so simple that he
has not wherewithal to contrive, and to give a colour of truth to false relations, and who can have
no ends in forging an untruth. Such a one was mine; and besides, he has at divers times brought
to me several seamen and merchants who at the same time went the same voyage. I shall
therefore content myself with his information, without inquiring what the cosmographers say to
the business. We should have topographers to trace out to us the particular places where they
have been; but for having had this advantage over us, to have seen the Holy Land, they would
have the privilege, forsooth, to tell us stories of all the other parts of the world beside. I would
have every one write what he knows, and as much as he knows, but no more; and that not in this
only but in all other subjects; for such a person may have some particular knowledge and
experience of the nature of such a river, or such a fountain, who, as to other things, knows no
more than what everybody does, and yet to give a currency to his little pittance of learning, will
undertake to write the whole body of physics: a vice from which great inconveniences derive
their original.

Now, to return to my subject, I find that there is nothing barbarous and savage in this nation, by
anything that I can gather, excepting, that every one gives the title of barbarism to everything

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that is not in use in his own country. As, indeed, we have no other level of truth and reason than
the example and idea of the opinions and customs of the place wherein we live: there is always
the perfect religion, there the perfect government, there the most exact and accomplished usage
of all things. They are savages at the same rate that we say fruits are wild, which nature produces
of herself and by her own ordinary progress; whereas, in truth, we ought rather to call those wild
whose natures we have changed by our artifice and diverted from the common order. In those,
the genuine, most useful, and natural virtues and properties are vigorous and sprightly, which we
have helped to degenerate in these, by accommodating them to the pleasure of our own corrupted
palate. And yet for all this, our taste confesses a flavour and delicacy excellent even to emulation
of the best of ours, in several fruits wherein those countries abound without art or culture.
Neither is it reasonable that art should gain the pre-eminence of our great and powerful mother
nature. We have so surcharged her with the additional ornaments and graces we have added to
the beauty and riches of her own works by our inventions, that we have almost smothered her;
yet in other places, where she shines in her own purity and proper lustre, she marvellously
baffles and disgraces all our vain and frivolous attempts:

Our utmost endeavours cannot arrive at so much as to imitate the nest of the least of birds, its
contexture, beauty, and convenience: not so much as the web of a poor spider.

All things, says Plato,—[Laws, 10.]—are produced either by nature, by fortune, or by art; the
greatest and most beautiful by the one or the other of the former, the least and the most imperfect
by the last.

These nations then seem to me to be so far barbarous, as having received but very little form and
fashion from art and human invention, and consequently to be not much remote from their
original simplicity. The laws of nature, however, govern them still, not as yet much vitiated with
any mixture of ours: but 'tis in such purity, that I am sometimes troubled we were not sooner
acquainted with these people, and that they were not discovered in those better times, when there
were men much more able to judge of them than we are. I am sorry that Lycurgus and Plato had
no knowledge of them; for to my apprehension, what we now see in those nations, does not only
surpass all the pictures with which the poets have adorned the golden age, and all their
inventions in feigning a happy state of man, but, moreover, the fancy and even the wish and
desire of philosophy itself; so native and so pure a simplicity, as we by experience see to be in
them, could never enter into their imagination, nor could they ever believe that human society
could have been maintained with so little artifice and human patchwork. I should tell Plato that it
is a nation wherein there is no manner of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no science of numbers,
no name of magistrate or political superiority; no use of service, riches or poverty, no contracts,
no successions, no dividends, no properties, no employments, but those of leisure, no respect of
kindred, but common, no clothing, no agriculture, no metal, no use of corn or wine; the very
words that signify lying, treachery, dissimulation, avarice, envy, detraction, pardon, never heard
of.

As to the rest, they live in a country very pleasant and temperate, so that, as my witnesses inform
me, 'tis rare to hear of a sick person, and they moreover assure me, that they never saw any of the
natives, either paralytic, bleareyed, toothless, or crooked with age. The situation of their country
is along the sea-shore, enclosed on the other side towards the land, with great and high

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mountains, having about a hundred leagues in breadth between. They have great store of fish and
flesh, that have no resemblance to those of ours: which they eat without any other cookery, than
plain boiling, roasting, and broiling. The first that rode a horse thither, though in several other
voyages he had contracted an acquaintance and familiarity with them, put them into so terrible a
fright, with his centaur appearance, that they killed him with their arrows before they could come
to discover who he was. Their buildings are very long, and of capacity to hold two or three
hundred people, made of the barks of tall trees, reared with one end upon the ground, and leaning
to and supporting one another at the top, like some of our barns, of which the covering hangs
down to the very ground, and serves for the side walls. They have wood so hard, that they cut
with it, and make their swords of it, and their grills of it to broil their meat. Their beds are of
cotton, hung swinging from the roof, like our seamen's hammocks, every man his own, for the
wives lie apart from their husbands. They rise with the sun, and so soon as they are up, eat for all
day, for they have no more meals but that; they do not then drink, as Suidas reports of some
other people of the East that never drank at their meals; but drink very often all day after, and
sometimes to a rousing pitch. Their drink is made of a certain root, and is of the colour of our
claret, and they never drink it but lukewarm. It will not keep above two or three days; it has a
somewhat sharp, brisk taste, is nothing heady, but very comfortable to the stomach; laxative to
strangers, but a very pleasant beverage to such as are accustomed to it. They make use, instead of
bread, of a certain white compound, like coriander seeds; I have tasted of it; the taste is sweet
and a little flat. The whole day is spent in dancing. Their young men go a-hunting after wild
beasts with bows and arrows; one part of their women are employed in preparing their drink the
while, which is their chief employment. One of their old men, in the morning before they fall to
eating, preaches to the whole family, walking from the one end of the house to the other, and
several times repeating the same sentence, till he has finished the round, for their houses are at
least a hundred yards long. Valour towards their enemies and love towards their wives, are the
two heads of his discourse, never failing in the close, to put them in mind, that 'tis their wives
who provide them their drink warm and well seasoned. The fashion of their beds, ropes, swords,
and of the wooden bracelets they tie about their wrists, when they go to fight, and of the great
canes, bored hollow at one end, by the sound of which they keep the cadence of their dances, are
to be seen in several places, and amongst others, at my house. They shave all over, and much
more neatly than we, without other razor than one of wood or stone. They believe in the
immortality of the soul, and that those who have merited well of the gods are lodged in that part
of heaven where the sun rises, and the accursed in the west.

They have I know not what kind of priests and prophets, who very rarely present themselves to
the people, having their abode in the mountains. At their arrival, there is a great feast, and
solemn assembly of many villages: each house, as I have described, makes a village, and they are
about a French league distant from one another. This prophet declaims to them in public,
exhorting them to virtue and their duty: but all their ethics are comprised in these two articles,
resolution in war, and affection to their wives. He also prophesies to them events to come, and
the issues they are to expect from their enterprises, and prompts them to or diverts them from
war: but let him look to't; for if he fail in his divination, and anything happen otherwise than he
has foretold, he is cut into a thousand pieces, if he be caught, and condemned for a false prophet:
for that reason, if any of them has been mistaken, he is no more heard of.

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They have continual war with the nations that live further within the mainland, beyond their
mountains, to which they go naked, and without other arms than their bows and wooden swords,
fashioned at one end like the head of our javelins. The obstinacy of their battles is wonderful,
and they never end without great effusion of blood: for as to running away, they know not what
it is. Every one for a trophy brings home the head of an enemy he has killed, which he fixes over
the door of his house. After having a long time treated their prisoners very well, and given them
all the regales they can think of, he to whom the prisoner belongs, invites a great assembly of his
friends. They being come, he ties a rope to one of the arms of the prisoner, of which, at a
distance, out of his reach, he holds the one end himself, and gives to the friend he loves best the
other arm to hold after the same manner; which being. done, they two, in the presence of all the
assembly, despatch him with their swords. After that, they roast him, eat him amongst them, and
send some chops to their absent friends. They do not do this, as some think, for nourishment, as
the Scythians anciently did, but as a representation of an extreme revenge; as will appear by this:
that having observed the Portuguese, who were in league with their enemies, to inflict another
sort of death upon any of them they took prisoners, which was to set them up to the girdle in the
earth, to shoot at the remaining part till it was stuck full of arrows, and then to hang them, they
thought those people of the other world (as being men who had sown the knowledge of a great
many vices amongst their neighbours, and who were much greater masters in all sorts of
mischief than they) did not exercise this sort of revenge without a meaning, and that it must
needs be more painful than theirs, they began to leave their old way, and to follow this. I am not
sorry that we should here take notice of the barbarous horror of so cruel an action, but that,
seeing so clearly into their faults, we should be so blind to our own. I conceive there is more
barbarity in eating a man alive, than when he is dead; in tearing a body limb from limb by racks
and torments, that is yet in perfect sense; in roasting it by degrees; in causing it to be bitten and
worried by dogs and swine (as we have not only read, but lately seen, not amongst inveterate and
mortal enemies, but among neighbours and fellow-citizens, and, which is worse, under colour of
piety and religion), than to roast and eat him after he is dead.

Chrysippus and Zeno, the two heads of the Stoic sect, were of opinion that there was no hurt in
making use of our dead carcasses, in what way soever for our necessity, and in feeding upon
them too;—[Diogenes Laertius, vii. 188.]—as our own ancestors, who being besieged by Caesar
in the city Alexia, resolved to sustain the famine of the siege with the bodies of their old men,
women, and other persons who were incapable of bearing arms.

And the physicians make no bones of employing it to all sorts of use, either to apply it
outwardly; or to give it inwardly for the health of the patient. But there never was any opinion so
irregular, as to excuse treachery, disloyalty, tyranny, and cruelty, which are our familiar vices.
We may then call these people barbarous, in respect to the rules of reason: but not in respect to
ourselves, who in all sorts of barbarity exceed them. Their wars are throughout noble and
generous, and carry as much excuse and fair pretence, as that human malady is capable of;
having with them no other foundation than the sole jealousy of valour. Their disputes are not for
the conquest of new lands, for these they already possess are so fruitful by nature, as to supply
them without labour or concern, with all things necessary, in such abundance that they have no
need to enlarge their borders. And they are, moreover, happy in this, that they only covet so
much as their natural necessities require: all beyond that is superfluous to them: men of the same
age call one another generally brothers, those who are younger, children; and the old men are

10
fathers to all. These leave to their heirs in common the full possession of goods, without any
manner of division, or other title than what nature bestows upon her creatures, in bringing them
into the world. If their neighbours pass over the mountains to assault them, and obtain a victory,
all the victors gain by it is glory only, and the advantage of having proved themselves the better
in valour and virtue: for they never meddle with the goods of the conquered, but presently return
into their own country, where they have no want of anything necessary, nor of this greatest of all
goods, to know happily how to enjoy their condition and to be content. And those in turn do the
same; they demand of their prisoners no other ransom, than acknowledgment that they are
overcome: but there is not one found in an age, who will not rather choose to die than make such
a confession, or either by word or look recede from the entire grandeur of an invincible courage.
There is not a man amongst them who had not rather be killed and eaten, than so much as to
open his mouth to entreat he may not. They use them with all liberality and freedom, to the end
their lives may be so much the dearer to them; but frequently entertain them with menaces of
their approaching death, of the torments they are to suffer, of the preparations making in order to
it, of the mangling their limbs, and of the feast that is to be made, where their carcass is to be the
only dish. All which they do, to no other end, but only to extort some gentle or submissive word
from them, or to frighten them so as to make them run away, to obtain this advantage that they
were terrified, and that their constancy was shaken; and indeed, if rightly taken, it is in this point
only that a true victory consists.

But to return to my story: these prisoners are so far from discovering the least weakness, for all
the terrors that can be represented to them, that, on the contrary, during the two or three months
they are kept, they always appear with a cheerful countenance; importune their masters to make
haste to bring them to the test, defy, rail at them, and reproach them with cowardice, and the
number of battles they have lost against those of their country. I have a song made by one of
these prisoners, wherein he bids them "come all, and dine upon him, and welcome, for they shall
withal eat their own fathers and grandfathers, whose flesh has served to feed and nourish him.
These muscles," says he, "this flesh and these veins, are your own: poor silly souls as you are,
you little think that the substance of your ancestors' limbs is here yet; notice what you eat, and
you will find in it the taste of your own flesh:" in which song there is to be observed an invention
that nothing relishes of the barbarian. Those that paint these people dying after this manner,
represent the prisoner spitting in the faces of his executioners and making wry mouths at them.
And 'tis most certain, that to the very last gasp, they never cease to brave and defy them both in
word and gesture. In plain truth, these men are very savage in comparison of us; of necessity,
they must either be absolutely so or else we are savages; for there is a vast difference betwixt
their manners and ours.

The men there have several wives, and so much the greater number, by how much they have the
greater reputation for valour. And it is one very remarkable feature in their marriages, that the
same jealousy our wives have to hinder and divert us from the friendship and familiarity of other
women, those employ to promote their husbands' desires, and to procure them many spouses; for
being above all things solicitous of their husbands' honour, 'tis their chiefest care to seek out, and
to bring in the most companions they can, forasmuch as it is a testimony of the husband's virtue.
Most of our ladies will cry out, that 'tis monstrous; whereas in truth it is not so, but a truly
matrimonial virtue, and of the highest form. In the Bible, Sarah, with Leah and Rachel, the two
wives of Jacob, gave the most beautiful of their handmaids to their husbands; Livia preferred the

11
passions of Augustus to her own interest; —[Suetonius, Life of Augustus, c. 71.]—and the wife
of King Deiotarus, Stratonice, did not only give up a fair young maid that served her to her
husband's embraces, but moreover carefully brought up the children he had by her, and assisted
them in the succession to their father's crown.

And that it may not be supposed, that all this is done by a simple and servile obligation to their
common practice, or by any authoritative impression of their ancient custom, without judgment
or reasoning, and from having a soul so stupid that it cannot contrive what else to do, I must here
give you some touches of their sufficiency in point of understanding. Besides what I repeated to
you before, which was one of their songs of war, I have another, a love-song, that begins thus:

"Stay, adder, stay, that by thy pattern my sister may draw the
fashion and work of a rich ribbon, that I may present to my beloved,
by which means thy beauty and the excellent order of thy scales
shall for ever be preferred before all other serpents."

Wherein the first couplet, "Stay, adder," &c., makes the burden of the song. Now I have
conversed enough with poetry to judge thus much that not only there is nothing barbarous in this
invention, but, moreover, that it is perfectly Anacreontic. To which it may be added, that their
language is soft, of a pleasing accent, and something bordering upon the Greek termination.

Three of these people, not foreseeing how dear their knowledge of the corruptions of this part of
the world will one day cost their happiness and repose, and that the effect of this commerce will
be their ruin, as I presuppose it is in a very fair way (miserable men to suffer themselves to be
deluded with desire of novelty and to have left the serenity of their own heaven to come so far to
gaze at ours!), were at Rouen at the time that the late King Charles IX. was there. The king
himself talked to them a good while, and they were made to see our fashions, our pomp, and the
form of a great city. After which, some one asked their opinion, and would know of them, what
of all the things they had seen, they found most to be admired? To which they made answer,
three things, of which I have forgotten the third, and am troubled at it, but two I yet remember.
They said, that in the first place they thought it very strange that so many tall men, wearing
beards, strong, and well armed, who were about the king ('tis like they meant the Swiss of the
guard), should submit to obey a child, and that they did not rather choose out one amongst
themselves to command. Secondly (they have a way of speaking in their language to call men the
half of one another), that they had observed that there were amongst us men full and crammed
with all manner of commodities, whilst, in the meantime, their halves were begging at their
doors, lean and half-starved with hunger and poverty; and they thought it strange that these
necessitous halves were able to suffer so great an inequality and injustice, and that they did not
take the others by the throats, or set fire to their houses.

I talked to one of them a great while together, but I had so ill an interpreter, and one who was so
perplexed by his own ignorance to apprehend my meaning, that I could get nothing out of him of
any moment: Asking him what advantage he reaped from the superiority he had amongst his own
people (for he was a captain, and our mariners called him king), he told me, to march at the head
of them to war. Demanding of him further how many men he had to follow him, he showed me a
space of ground, to signify as many as could march in such a compass, which might be four or

12
five thousand men; and putting the question to him whether or no his authority expired with the
war, he told me this remained: that when he went to visit the villages of his dependence, they
planed him paths through the thick of their woods, by which he might pass at his ease. All this
does not sound very ill, and the last was not at all amiss, for they wear no breeches.

The Judgment of a Witch (1587)

FUGGER NEWS-LETTER

The herein mentioned, malefic and miserable woman, Walpurga Hausmannin, now imprisoned
and in chains, has, upon kindly questioning and also torture, following on persistent and fully
justified accusations, confessed her witchcraft and admitted the following. When one-and-thirty
years ago she had become a widow, she cut corn for Hans Schlumperger, of this place, together
with his former servant, Bis im Pfarrhof by name. Him she enticed with lewd speeches and
gestures, and they convened that they should, on an appointed night, meet in her, Walpurga's,
dwelling, there to indulge in lustful intercourse. So when Walpurga in expectation of this sat
awaiting him at night in her chamber, meditating upon evil and fleshly thoughts, it was not the
said bondsman who appeared unto her, but the Evil One in the latter's guise and raiment and
indulged in fornication with her. Thereupon he presented her with a piece of money, in the
semblance of half a thaler, but no one could take it from her, for it was a bad coin and like lead.
For this reason she had thrown it away. After the act of fornication she saw and felt the cloven
foot of her whoremonger, and that his hand was not natural, but as if made of wood. She was
greatly affrighted thereat and called upon the name of Jesus, whereupon the Devil left her and
vanished.

On the ensuing night the Evil Spirit visited her again in the same shape and whored with her. He
made her many promises to help her in her poverty and need, wherefore she surrendered herself
to him body and soul. Thereafter the Evil One inflicted upon her a scratch below the left
shoulder, demanding that she should sell her soul to him with the blood that had flowed
therefrom. To this end he gave her a quill and, whereas she could not write, the Evil One guided
her hand. She believes that nothing offensive was written, for the Evil One only swept with her
hand across the paper. The script the Devil took with him, and when ever she piously thought of
God Almighty, or wished to go to church, the Devil reminded her of it. Further, the above-
mentioned Walpurga confesses that she oft and much rode on a pitchfork by night with her
paramour, but not far, on account of her duties. At such devilish trysts she met a big man with a
grey beard, who sat in a chair, like a great prince, and was richly attired. That was the Great
Devil to whom she had once more dedicated and promised herself body and soul. Him she
worshipped and before him she knelt, and unto him she rendered other suchlike honours. But she
pretends not to know with what words and in which fashion she prayed. She only knows that
once she heedlessly pronounced the name of Jesus. Then the above-mentioned Great Devil
struck her in the face and Walpurga had to disown (which is terrible to relate) God in
heaven, the Christian name and belief, the blessed saints and the Holy Sacraments, also to
renounce the heavenly hosts and the whole of Christendom. Thereupon the Great Devil baptized
her afresh, naming her Hofelin, but her paramour-devil, Federlin. . . .

13
Since her surrender to the Devil, she had seemingly oft received the Blessed Sacrament of the
true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, apparently by the mouth, but had not partaken of it, but
(which once more is terrible to relate) had always taken it out of her mouth again and delivered it
up to Federlin, her paramour. At their nightly gatherings she had oft with her other playfellows
trodden underfoot the Holy and Blessed Sacrament and the image of the Holy Cross. The said
Walpurga states that during such-like frightful and loathsome blasphemies she at times truly did
espy drops of blood upon the said Holy Sacrament, whereat she herself was greatly horrified. . . .

She confesses, also, that her paramour gave her a salve in a little box with which to injure people
and animals, and even the precious fruit of the field. He also compelled her to do away with and
to kill young infants at birth, even before they had been taken to Holy Baptism. This she did,
whenever possible. . . .

She rubbed with her salve and brought about the death of Lienhart Geilen's three cows, of
Bruchbauer's horse, two years ago of Max Petzel's cow, three years ago of Duri Striegel's cow,
two years ago of Hans Striegel's cow, of the cow of the governor's wife, of a cow of Frau
Schotterin, and two years ago of a cow of Michel Klingler, on the village green. In short, she
confesses that she destroyed a large number of cattle over and above this. A year ago she found
bleached linen on the common and rubbed it with her salve, so that the pigs and geese ran over it
and perished shortly thereafter. Walpurga confesses further that every year since she has sold
herself to the Devil she has on St. Leonard's Day exhumed at least one or two innocent children.
With her devil-paramour and other playfellows she has eaten these and used their hair and their
little bones for witchcraft.

She was unable to exhume the other children she had slain at birth, although she attempted it,
because they had been baptized before God. She had used the said little bones to manufacture
hail; this she was wont to do once or twice a year. Once this spring, from Siechenhausen,
downwards across the fields. She likewise manufactured hail last Whitsun, and when she and
others were accused of having held a witches' revel, she had actually held one near the upper gate
by the garden of Peter Schmidt. At that time her playfellows began to quarrel and struck one
another, because some wanted to cause it to hail over Dillingen Meadows, others below it. At
last the hail was sent over the marsh towards Weissingen, doing great damage. She admits that
she would have caused still more and greater evils and damage if the Almighty had not
graciously prevented and turned them away. After all this, the Judges and Jury of the Court of
this Town of Dillingen, by virtue of the Imperial and Royal Prerogative and Rights of his Right
Reverence, Herr Marquard, bishop of Augsburg, and provost of the Cathedral, our most gracious
prince and lord, at last unanimously gave the verdict that the aforesaid Walpurga Hausmannin be
punished and dispatched from life to death by burning at the stake as being a maleficent and
well-known witch and sorceress, convicted according to the context of Common Law and the
Criminal Code of the Emperor Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire. All her goods and
chattels and estate left after her to go to the Treasury of our most high prince and lord. The
aforesaid Walpurga to be led, seated on a cart, to which she is tied, to the place of her execution,
and her body first to be torn five times with red-hot irons. The first time outside the town hall in
the left breast and the right arm, the second time at the lower gate in the right breast, the third
time at the mill brook outside the hospital gate in the left arm, the fourth time at the place of
execution in the left hand. But since for nineteen years she was a licensed and pledged midwife

14
of the city of Dillingen yet has acted so vilely, her right hand with which she did such knavish
tricks is to be cut off at the place of execution. Neither are her ashes after the burning to remain
lying on the ground, but are there after to be carried to the nearest flowing water and thrown
thereinto. Thus a venerable jury have entrusted the executioner of this city with the actual
execution and all connected therewith.

Essays (1580)
Michel de Montaigne

OF CRIPPLES

‘Tis now two or three years ago that they made the year ten days shorter in France.—[By the
adoption of the Gregorian calendar.]—How many changes may we expect should follow this
reformation! it was really moving heaven and earth at once. Yet nothing for all that stirs from its
place my neighbours still find their seasons of sowing and reaping, the opportunities of doing
their business, the hurtful and propitious days, dust at the same time where they had, time out of
mind, assigned them; there was no more error perceived in our old use, than there is amendment
found in the alteration; so great an uncertainty there is throughout; so gross, obscure, and obtuse
is our perception. ‘Tis said that this regulation might have been carried on with less
inconvenience, by subtracting for some years, according to the example of Augustus, the
Bissextile, which is in some sort a day of impediment and trouble, till we had exactly satisfied
this debt, the which itself is not done by this correction, and we yet remain some days in arrear:
and yet, by this means, such order might be taken for the future, arranging that after the
revolution of such or such a number of years, the supernumerary day might be always thrown
out, so that we could not, henceforward, err above four-and-twenty hours in our computation.
We have no other account of time but years; the world has for many ages made use of that only;
and yet it is a measure that to this day we are not agreed upon, and one that we still doubt what
form other nations have variously given to it, and what was the true use of it. What does this
saying of some mean, that the heavens in growing old bow themselves down nearer towards us,
and put us into an uncertainty even of hours and days? and that which Plutarch says of the
months, that astrology had not in his time determined as to the motion of the moon; what a fine
condition are we in to keep records of things past.

I was just now ruminating, as I often do, what a free and roving thing human reason is. I
ordinarily see that men, in things propounded to them, more willingly study to find out reasons
than to ascertain truth: they slip over presuppositions, but are curious in examination of
consequences; they leave the things, and fly to the causes. Pleasant talkers! The knowledge of
causes only concerns him who has the conduct of things; not us, who are merely to undergo
them, and who have perfectly full and accomplished use of them, according to our need, without
penetrating into the original and essence; wine is none the more pleasant to him who knows its
first faculties. On the contrary, both the body and the soul interrupt and weaken the right they
have of the use of the world and of themselves, by mixing with it the opinion of learning; effects
concern us, but the means not at all. To determine and to distribute appertain to superiority and
command; as it does to subjection to accept. Let me reprehend our custom. They commonly
begin thus: “How is such a thing done?” Whereas they should say, “Is such a thing done?” Our

15
reason is able to create a hundred other worlds, and to find out the beginnings and contexture; it
needs neither matter nor foundation: let it but run on, it builds as well in the air as on the earth,
and with inanity as well as with matter:

“Dare pondus idonea fumo.”

[“Able to give weight to smoke.”—Persius, v. 20.]

I find that almost throughout we should say, “there is no such thing,” and should myself often
make use of this answer, but I dare not: for they cry that it is an evasion produced from ignorance
and weakness of understanding; and I am fain, for the most part, to juggle for company, and
prate of frivolous subjects and tales that I believe not a word of; besides that, in truth, ‘tis a little
rude and quarrelsome flatly to deny a stated fact; and few people but will affirm, especially in
things hard to be believed, that they have seen them, or at least will name witnesses whose
authority will stop our mouths from contradiction. In this way, we know the foundations and
means of things that never were; and the world scuffles about a thousand questions, of which
both the Pro and the Con are false.

“Ita finitima sunt falsa veris, ut in praecipitem

locum non debeat se sapiens committere.”
[“False things are so near the true, that a wise man should not
trust himself in a precipitous place”—Cicero, Acad., ii. 21.]

Truth and lies are faced alike; their port, taste, and proceedings are the same, and we look upon
them with the same eye. I find that we are not only remiss in defending ourselves from deceit,
but that we seek and offer ourselves to be gulled; we love to entangle ourselves in vanity, as a
thing conformable to our being.

I have seen the birth of many miracles in my time; which, although they were abortive, yet have
we not failed to foresee what they would have come to, had they lived their full age. ‘Tis but
finding the end of the clew, and a man may wind off as much as he will; and there is a greater
distance betwixt nothing and the least thing in the world than there is betwixt this and the
greatest. Now the first that are imbued with this beginning of novelty, when they set out with
their tale, find, by the oppositions they meet with, where the difficulty of persuasion lies, and so
caulk up that place with some false piece; besides that:

“Insita hominibus libido alendi de industria rumores,”

[“Men having a natural desire to nourish reports.”
—Livy, xxviii. 24.]

we naturally make a conscience of restoring what has been lent us, without some usury and
accession of our own. The particular error first makes the public error, and afterwards, in turn,
the public error makes the particular one; and thus all this vast fabric goes forming and piling
itself up from hand to hand, so that the remotest witness knows more about it than those who
were nearest, and the last informed is better persuaded than the first.

16
‘Tis a natural progress; for whoever believes anything, thinks it a work of charity to persuade
another into the same opinion; which the better to do, he will make no difficulty of adding as
much of his own invention as he conceives necessary to his tale to encounter the resistance or
want of conception he meets with in others. I myself, who make a great conscience of lying, and
am not very solicitous of giving credit and authority to what I say, yet find that in the arguments
I have in hand, being heated with the opposition of another, or by the proper warmth of my own
narration, I swell and puff up my subject by voice, motion, vigour, and force of words, and
moreover, by extension and amplification, not without some prejudice to the naked truth; but I
do it conditionally withal, that to the first who brings me to myself, and who asks me the plain
and bare truth, I presently surrender my passion, and deliver the matter to him without
exaggeration, without emphasis, or any painting of my own. A quick and earnest way of
speaking, as mine is, is apt to run into hyperbole. There is nothing to which men commonly are
more inclined than to make way for their own opinions; where the ordinary means fail us, we add
command, force, fire, and sword. ‘Tis a misfortune to be at such a pass, that the best test of truth
is the multitude of believers in a crowd, where the number of fools so much exceeds the wise:

“Quasi vero quidquam sit tam valde, quam nil sapere, vulgare.”
[“As if anything were so common as ignorance.”
—Cicero, De Divin., ii.]

“Sanitatis patrocinium est, insanientium turba.”

[“The multitude of fools is a protection to the wise.”
—St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, vi. 10.]

‘Tis hard to resolve a man’s judgment against the common opinions: the first persuasion, taken
from the very subject itself, possesses the simple, and from them diffuses itself to the wise, under
the authority of the number and antiquity of the witnesses. For my part, what I should not believe
from one, I should not believe from a hundred and one: and I do not judge opinions by years.

‘Tis not long since one of our princes, in whom the gout had spoiled an excellent nature and
sprightly disposition, suffered himself to be so far persuaded with the report made to him of the
marvellous operations of a certain priest who by words and gestures cured all sorts of diseases,
as to go a long journey to seek him out, and by the force of his mere imagination, for some hours
so persuaded and laid his legs asleep, as to obtain that service from them they had long time
forgotten. Had fortune heaped up five or six such-like incidents, it had been enough to have
brought this miracle into nature. There was afterwards discovered so much simplicity and so
little art in the author of these performances, that he was thought too contemptible to be
punished, as would be thought of most such things, were they well examined:

“Miramur ex intervallo fallentia.”

[“We admire after an interval (or at a distance) things that
deceive.”—Seneca, Ep., 118, 2.]

So does our sight often represent to us strange images at a distance that vanish on approaching
near:

17
 “Nunquam ad liquidum fama perducitur.”
[“Report is never fully substantiated.”
—Quintus Curtius, ix. 2.]

‘Tis wonderful from how many idle beginnings and frivolous causes such famous impressions
commonly, proceed. This it is that obstructs information; for whilst we seek out causes and solid
and weighty ends, worthy of so great a name, we lose the true ones; they escape our sight by
their littleness. And, in truth, a very prudent, diligent, and subtle inquisition is required in such
searches, indifferent, and not prepossessed. To this very hour, all these miracles and strange
events have concealed themselves from me: I have never seen greater monster or miracle in the
world than myself: one grows familiar with all strange things by time and custom, but the more I
frequent and the better I know myself, the more does my own deformity astonish me, the less I
understand myself.

The principal right of advancing and producing such accidents is reserved to fortune. Passing the
day before yesterday through a village two leagues from my house, I found the place yet warm
with a miracle that had lately failed of success there, where with first the neighbourhood had
been several months amused; then the neighbouring provinces began to take it up, and to run
thither in great companies of all sorts of people. A young fellow of the place had one night in
sport counterfeited the voice of a spirit in his own house, without any other design at present, but
only for sport; but this having succeeded with him better than he expected, to extend his farce
with more actors he associated with him a stupid silly country girl, and at last there were three of
them of the same age and understanding, who from domestic, proceeded to public, preachings,
hiding themselves under the altar of the church, never speaking but by night, and forbidding any
light to be brought. From words which tended to the conversion of the world, and threats of the
day of judgment (for these are subjects under the authority and reverence of which imposture
most securely lurks), they proceeded to visions and gesticulations so simple and ridiculous that—
nothing could hardly be so gross in the sports of little children. Yet had fortune never so little
favoured the design, who knows to what height this juggling might have at last arrived? These
poor devils are at present in prison, and are like shortly to pay for the common folly; and I know
not whether some judge will not also make them smart for his. We see clearly into this, which is
discovered; but in many things of the like nature that exceed our knowledge, I am of opinion that
we ought to suspend our judgment, whether as to rejection or as to reception.

Great abuses in the world are begotten, or, to speak more boldly, all the abuses of the world are
begotten, by our being taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to
accept all things we are not able to refute: we speak of all things by precepts and decisions. The
style at Rome was that even that which a witness deposed to having seen with his own eyes, and
what a judge determined with his most certain knowledge, was couched in this form of speaking:
“it seems to me.” They make me hate things that are likely, when they would impose them upon
me as infallible. I love these words which mollify and moderate the temerity of our propositions:
“peradventure; in some sort; some; ‘tis said, I think,” and the like: and had I been set to train up
children I had put this way of answering into their mouths, inquiring and not resolving: “What
does this mean? I understand it not; it may be: is it true?” so that they should rather have retained
the form of pupils at threescore years old than to go out doctors, as they do, at ten. Whoever will
be cured of ignorance must confess it.

18
Iris is the daughter of Thaumas;

[“That is, of Admiration. She (Iris, the rainbow) is beautiful, and

for that reason, because she has a face to be admired, she is said
to have been the daughter of Thamus.”
—Cicero, De Nat. Deor., iii. 20.]

admiration is the foundation of all philosophy, inquisition the progress, ignorance the end. But
there is a sort of ignorance, strong and generous, that yields nothing in honour and courage to
knowledge; an ignorance which to conceive requires no less knowledge than to conceive
knowledge itself. I read in my younger years a trial that Corras,

[A celebrated Calvinist lawyer, born at Toulouse; 1513, and

assassinated there, 4th October 1572.]

a councillor of Toulouse, printed, of a strange incident, of two men who presented themselves
the one for the other. I remember (and I hardly remember anything else) that he seemed to have
rendered the imposture of him whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful and so far exceeding
both our knowledge and his own, who was the judge, that I thought it a very bold sentence that
condemned him to be hanged. Let us have some form of decree that says, “The court understands
nothing of the matter” more freely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, who, finding
themselves perplexed with a cause they could not unravel, ordered the parties to appear again
after a hundred years.

The witches of my neighbourhood run the hazard of their lives upon the report of every new
author who seeks to give body to their dreams. To accommodate the examples that Holy Writ
gives us of such things, most certain and irrefragable examples, and to tie them to our modern
events, seeing that we neither see the causes nor the means, will require another sort-of wit than
ours. It, peradventure, only appertains to that sole all-potent testimony to tell us. “This is, and
that is, and not that other.” God ought to be believed; and certainly with very good reason; but
not one amongst us for all that who is astonished at his own narration (and he must of necessity
be astonished if he be not out of his wits), whether he employ it about other men’s affairs or
against himself.

I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable, avoiding those ancient reproaches:

“Majorem fidem homines adhibent iis, quae non intelligunt;

—Cupidine humani ingenii libentius obscura creduntur.”
[“Men are most apt to believe what they least understand: and from
the acquisitiveness of the human intellect, obscure things are more
easily credited.” The second sentence is from Tacitus, Hist. 1. 22.]

I see very well that men get angry, and that I am forbidden to doubt upon pain of execrable
injuries; a new way of persuading! Thank God, I am not to be cuffed into belief. Let them be
angry with those who accuse their opinion of falsity; I only accuse it of difficulty and boldness,
and condemn the opposite affirmation equally, if not so imperiously, with them. He who will

19
establish this proposition by authority and huffing discovers his reason to be very weak. For a
verbal and scholastic altercation let them have as much appearance as their contradictors;

“Videantur sane, non affirmentur modo;”

[“They may indeed appear to be; let them not be affirmed (Let them
state the probabilities, but not affirm.)”
—Cicero, Acad., n. 27.]

but in the real consequence they draw from it these have much the advantage. To kill men, a
clear and strong light is required, and our life is too real and essential to warrant these
supernatural and fantastic accidents.

As to drugs and poisons, I throw them out of my count, as being the worst sort of homicides: yet
even in this, ‘tis said, that men are not always to rely upon the personal confessions of these
people; for they have sometimes been known to accuse themselves of the murder of persons who
have afterwards been found living and well. In these other extravagant accusations, I should be
apt to say, that it is sufficient a man, what recommendation soever he may have, be believed as
to human things; but of what is beyond his conception, and of supernatural effect, he ought then
only to be believed when authorised by a supernatural approbation. The privilege it has pleased
Almighty God to give to some of our witnesses, ought not to be lightly communicated and made
cheap. I have my ears battered with a thousand such tales as these: “Three persons saw him such
a day in the east three, the next day in the west: at such an hour, in such a place, and in such
habit”; assuredly I should not believe it myself. How much more natural and likely do I find it
that two men should lie than that one man in twelve hours’ time should fly with the wind from
east to west? How much more natural that our understanding should be carried from its place by
the volubility of our disordered minds, than that one of us should be carried by a strange spirit
upon a broomstaff, flesh and bones as we are, up the shaft of a chimney? Let not us seek
illusions from without and unknown, we who are perpetually agitated with illusions domestic
and our own. Methinks one is pardonable in disbelieving a miracle, at least, at all events where
one can elude its verification as such, by means not miraculous; and I am of St. Augustine’s
opinion, that, “‘tis better to lean towards doubt than assurance, in things hard to prove and
dangerous to believe.”

‘Tis now some years ago that I travelled through the territories of a sovereign prince, who, in my
favour, and to abate my incredulity, did me the honour to let me see, in his own presence, and in
a private place, ten or twelve prisoners of this kind, and amongst others, an old woman, a real
witch in foulness and deformity, who long had been famous in that profession. I saw both proofs
and free confessions, and I know not what insensible mark upon the miserable creature: I
examined and talked with her and the rest as much and as long as I would, and gave the best and
soundest attention I could, and I am not a man to suffer my judgment to be made captive by
prepossession. In the end, and in all conscience, I should rather have prescribed them hellebore
than hemlock;

“Captisque res magis mentibus, quam consceleratis similis visa;”

[“The thing was rather to be attributed to madness, than malice.”
(“The thing seemed to resemble minds possessed rather than guilty.”)

20
 —Livy, viii, 18.]

justice has its corrections proper for such maladies. As to the oppositions and arguments that
worthy men have made to me, both there, and often in other places, I have met with none that
have convinced me, and that have not admitted a more likely solution than their conclusions. It is
true, indeed, that the proofs and reasons that are founded upon experience and fact, I do not go
about to untie, neither have they any end; I often cut them, as Alexander did the Gordian knot.
After all, ‘tis setting a man’s conjectures at a very high price upon them to cause a man to be
roasted alive.

We are told by several examples, as Praestantius of his father, that being more profoundly, asleep
than men usually are, he fancied himself to be a mare, and that he served the soldiers for a
sumpter; and what he fancied himself to be, he really proved. If sorcerers dream so materially; if
dreams can sometimes so incorporate themselves with effects, still I cannot believe that therefore
our will should be accountable to justice; which I say as one who am neither judge nor privy
councillor, and who think myself by many degrees unworthy so to be, but a man of the common
sort, born and avowed to the obedience of the public reason, both in its words and acts. He who
should record my idle talk as being to the prejudice of the pettiest law, opinion, or custom of his
parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me much more; for, in what I say, I warrant
no other certainty, but that ‘tis what I had then in my thought, a tumultuous and wavering
thought. All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice:

“Nec me pudet, ut istos fateri nescire, quod nesciam;”

[“Neither am I ashamed, as they are, to confess my ignorance of what
I do not know.”—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 25.]

I should not speak so boldly, if it were my due to be believed; and so I told a great man, who
complained of the tartness and contentiousness of my exhortations. Perceiving you to be ready
and prepared on one part, I propose to you the other, with all the diligence and care I can, to clear
your judgment, not to compel it. God has your hearts in His hands, and will furnish you with the
means of choice. I am not so presumptuous even as to desire that my opinions should bias you—
in a thing of so great importance: my fortune has not trained them up to so potent and elevated
conclusions. Truly, I have not only a great many humours, but also a great many opinions, that I
would endeavour to make my son dislike, if I had one. What, if the truest are not always the most
commodious to man, being of so wild a composition? ….

From Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)

Rene Descartes

FIRST MEDITATION
CONCERNING THOSE THINGS WHICH CAN BE CALLED IN DOUBT

It is now several years since I noticed how from the time of my early youth I had accepted many
false claims as true, how everything I had later constructed on top of those [falsehoods] was

21
doubtful, and thus how at some point in my life I needed to tear everything down completely and
begin again from the most basic foundations, if I wished to establish something firm and lasting
in the sciences. But this seemed an immense undertaking, and I kept waiting, until I would be old
enough and sufficiently mature to know that no later period of my life would come [in which I
was] better equipped to undertake this disciplined enquiry. This reason made me delay for so
long, that I would now be at fault if, by [further] deliberation, I used up the time which still
remains to carry out that project. And so today, when I have conveniently rid my mind of all
worries and have managed to find myself secure leisure in solitary withdrawal, I will at last find
the time here for an earnest and unfettered general demolition of my [former] opinions.

Now, for this task it will not be necessary to show that every opinion I hold is false, something
which I might well be incapable of ever carrying out. But since reason now convinces me that I
should withhold my assent from opinions which are not entirely certain and indubitable, no less
than from those which are plainly false, then, if I uncover any reason for doubt in each of them,
that will be enough to reject them all. For that I will not need to run through them separately, a
task that would take forever, because once the foundations are destroyed, whatever is built above
them will collapse on its own. Thus, I shall at once assault the very principles upon which all my
earlier beliefs rested.

Up to this point, what I have accepted as very true I have derived either from the senses or
through the senses. However, sometimes I have discovered that these are mistaken, and it is
prudent never to place one’s entire trust in things which have deceived us even once.

However, although from time to time the senses deceive us about miniscule things or those
further away, it could well be that there are still many others matters about which we cannot
entertain the slightest doubt, even though we derive [our knowledge] of them from sense
experience, for example, the fact that I am now here, seated by the fire, wearing a winter robe,
holding this paper in my hands, and so on. And, in fact, how could I deny that these very hands
and this whole body are mine, unless perhaps I were to compare myself with certain insane
people whose cerebellums are so troubled by the stubborn vapours of black bile that they
constantly claim that they are kings, when, in fact, they are very poor, or that they are dressed in
purple, when they are nude, or that they have earthenware heads, or are complete pumpkins, or
made of glass? But these people are mad, and I myself would appear no less demented, if I took
something from them and applied it to myself as an example.

That is outstanding reasoning—as if I were not a person who in the night habitually sleeps and
experiences in my dreams all the same things as these [mad] people do when wide awake,
sometimes even less probable ones. How often have I had an experience like this: while sleeping
at night, I am convinced that I am here, dressed in a robe and seated by the fire, when, in fact, I
am lying between the covers with my clothes off! At the moment, my eyes are certainly wide
awake and I am looking at this piece of paper, this head which I am moving is not asleep, and I
am aware of this hand as I move it consciously and purposefully. None of what happens while I
am asleep is so distinct. Yes, of course—as if I do not recall other times when I, too, have been
deceived by similar thoughts in my sleep. As I reflect on this matter carefully, it becomes
completely clear to me that there are no certain indicators which ever enable us to differentiate

22
between being awake and being asleep, so much so that I am astounded, and this confused state
itself almost convinces me that I may be sleeping.

So then, let us suppose that I am asleep and that these particular details—that my eyes are open,
that I am moving my head, that I am stretching out my hand—are not true and that perhaps I do
not even have hands like these or a whole body like this. We must, of course, still concede that
the things we see while asleep are like painted images which could only have been made as
representations of real things. And so these general things—these eyes, this head, this hand, and
this entire body—at least are not imaginary things but really do exist. For even when painters
themselves take great care to form sirens and satyrs with the most unusual shapes, they cannot, in
fact, give them natures which are entirely new. Instead, they simply mix up the limbs of various
animals or, if they happen to come up with something so new that nothing at all like it has been
seen before and thus [what they have made] is completely fictitious and false, nonetheless, at
least the colours which make up the picture certainly have to be real. For similar reasons,
although these general things—eyes, head, hand, and so on—could also be imaginary, still we
are at least forced to concede the reality of certain even simpler and more universal objects, out
of which, just as with real colours, all those images of things that are in our thoughts, whether
true or false, are formed.

To this class [of things], corporeal nature appears, in general, to belong, as well as its extension,
the shape of extended things, their quantity or their size and number, the place where they exist,
the time which measures how long they last, and things like that.

Thus, from these facts perhaps we are not reaching an erroneous conclusion [by claiming] that
physics, astronomy, medicine, and all the other disciplines which rely upon a consideration of
composite objects are indeed doubtful, but that arithmetic, geometry, and the other [sciences]
like them, which deal with only the simplest and most general matters and have little concern
whether or not they exist in the nature of things, contain something certain and indubitable. For
whether I am awake or asleep, two and three always add up to five, a square does not have more
than four sides, and it does not seem possible that such manifest truths could ever arouse the
suspicion that they are false.1

Nevertheless, a certain opinion has for a long time been fixed in my mind—that there is an all-
powerful God who created me and [made me] just as I am. But how do I know He has not
arranged things so that there is no earth at all, no sky, no extended thing, no shape, no
magnitude, no place, and yet seen to it that all these things appear to me to exist just as they do
now? Besides, given that I sometimes judge that other people make mistakes with the things
about which they believe they have the most perfect knowledge, might I not in the same way be
wrong every time I add two and three together, or count the sides of a square, or do something
simpler, if that can be imagined? Perhaps God is unwilling to deceive me in this way, for He is
said to be supremely good. But if it is contrary to the goodness of God to have created me in

1Physics, astronomy, and medicine all deal with composite objects, that is, with objects made up of parts, and we cannot
be sure such objects are real, for they may be fantastic imaginary creations, like sirens and satyrs, put together from smaller
real objects. However, mathematical concepts, like a square or an equation, do not raise such doubts, and mathematicians
are not concerned about whether or not such concepts are a part of nature.

23
such a way that I am always deceived, it would also seem foreign to His goodness to allow me to
be occasionally deceived. The latter claim, however, is not one that I can make.

Perhaps there may really be some people who prefer to deny [the existence of] such a powerful
God, rather than to believe that all other things are uncertain. But let us not seek to refute these
people, and [let us concede] that everything [I have said] here about God is a fiction. No matter
how they assume I reached where I am now, whether by fate, or chance, or a continuous series of
events, or in some other way, given that being deceived and making mistakes would seem to be
something of an imperfection, the less power they attribute to the author of my being, the greater
the probability that I will be so imperfect that I will always be deceived. To these arguments I
really do not have a reply. Instead, I am finally compelled to admit that there is nothing in the
beliefs which I formerly held to be true about which one cannot raise doubts. And this is not a
reckless or frivolous opinion, but the product of strong and well-considered reasoning. And
therefore, if I desire to discover something certain, in future I should also withhold my assent
from those former opinions of mine, no less than [I do] from opinions which are obviously false.

But it is not sufficient to have called attention to this point. I must [also] be careful to remember
it. For these habitual opinions constantly recur, and I have made use of them for so long and they
are so familiar that they have, as it were, acquired the right to seize hold of my belief and
subjugate it, even against my wishes, and I will never give up the habit of deferring to and
relying on them, so long as I continue to assume that they are what they truly are, that is,
opinions which are to some extent doubtful, as I have already pointed out, but still very probable,
so that it is much more reasonable to believe them than to deny them. For that reason, I will not
go wrong, in my view, if I deliberately turn my inclination into its complete opposite and deceive
myself, [by assuming] for a certain period that these earlier opinions are entirely false and
imaginary, until I have, as it were, finally brought the weight of both my [old and my new]
prejudices into an equal balance, so that corrupting habits will no longer twist my judgment away
from the correct perception of things. For I know that doing this will not, for the time being, lead
to danger or error and that it is impossible for me to indulge in excessive distrust, since I am not
at this point concerned with actions, but only with knowledge.2

Therefore, I will assume that it is not God, who is supremely good and the fountain of truth, but
some malicious demon, at once omnipotent and supremely cunning, who has been using all the
energy he possesses to deceive me. I will suppose that sky, air, earth, colours, shapes, sounds,
and all other external things are nothing but the illusions of my dreams with which this spirit has
set traps for my credulity. I will think of myself as if I had no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood,
nor any senses, and yet as if I still falsely believed I had all these things. I shall continue to
concentrate resolutely on this meditation, and if, in doing so, I am, in fact, unable to learn
anything true, I will at least do what is in my power and with a resolute mind take care not to
agree to what is false or to enable the deceiver to impose anything on me, no matter how

2This image of the balance means that he will balance his old prejudices (opinions which he has held for a long time and
will not abandon because they are probably true) and his new prejudices (his recently adopted view that these earlier ideas
are all false or at least subject to doubt). Descartes claims that he will not get into error or danger by doing this, because
he is engaging in a thought experiment in search of knowledge rather than acting upon an opinion which may contradict
orthodox belief. Descartes was all too aware of what had happened to Galileo, who in 1633 had been put on trial, found
guilty, and punished by the Church for his written opinions about astronomy.

24
powerful and cunning [he may be]. But this task is onerous, and a certain idleness brings me
back to my customary way of life. I am not unlike a prisoner who in his sleep may happen to
enjoy an imaginary liberty and who, when he later begins to suspect that he is asleep, fears to
wake up and willingly cooperates with the pleasing illusions [in order to prolong them]. In this
way, I unconsciously slip back into my old opinions and am afraid of waking up, in case from
now on I would have to spend the period of challenging wakefulness that follows this peaceful
relaxation not in the light, but in the inextricable darkness of the difficulties I have just raised.

SECOND MEDITATION
CONCERNING THE NATURE OF THE HUMAN MIND AND THE FACT THAT IT IS EASIER TO KNOW
THAN THE BODY

Yesterday’s meditation threw me into so many doubts that I can no longer forget them or even
see how they might be resolved. Just as if I had suddenly fallen into a deep eddying current, I am
hurled into such confusion that I am unable to set my feet on the bottom or swim to the surface.
However, I will struggle along and try once again [to follow] the same path I started on
yesterday, that is, I will reject everything which admits of the slightest doubt, just as if I had
discovered it was completely false, and I will proceed further in this way, until I find something
certain, or at least, if I do nothing else, until I know for certain that there is nothing certain. In
order to shift the entire earth from its location, Archimedes asked for nothing but a fixed and
immovable point. So I, too, ought to hope for great things if I can discover something, no matter
how small, which is certain and immovable.

Therefore, I assume that everything I see is false. I believe that none of those things my lying
memory represents has ever existed, that I have no senses at all, and that body, shape, extension,
motion, and location are chimeras.3 What, then, will be true? Perhaps this one thing: there is
nothing certain.

But how do I know there is not something different from all these things I have just listed, about
which one could not entertain the slightest momentary doubt? Is there not some God, by
whatever name I call him, who places these very thoughts inside me? But why would I think this,
since I myself could perhaps have produced them? So am I then not at least something? But I
have already denied that I have senses and a body. Still, I am puzzled, for what follows from
this? Am I so bound up with my body and my senses that I cannot exist without them? But I have
convinced myself that there is nothing at all in the universe—no sky, no earth, no minds, no
bodies. So then, is it the case that I, too, do not exist? No, not at all: if I persuaded myself of
something, then I certainly existed. But there is some kind of deceiver, supremely powerful and
supremely cunning, who is constantly and intentionally deceiving me. But then, if he is
deceiving me, there is no doubt that I, too, for that very reason exist. Let him trick me as much as
he can, he will never succeed in making me nothing, as long as I am aware that I am something.
And so, after thinking all these things through in great detail, I must finally settle on this
proposition: the statement I am, I exist is necessarily true every time I say it or conceive of it in
my mind.

3A chimera is a fabulous monster with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent. The word is often
used to mean something illusory.

25
But I do not yet understand enough about what this I is, which now necessarily exists. Thus, I
must be careful I do not perhaps unconsciously substitute something else in place of this I and in
that way make a mistake even in the conception which I assert is the most certain and most
evident of all. For that reason, I will now reconsider what I once believed myself to be, before I
fell into this [present] way of thinking. Then I will remove from that whatever could in the
slightest way be weakened by the reasoning I have [just] brought to bear, so that, in doing this,
by the end I will be left only with what is absolutely certain and immovable.

What then did I believe I was before? Naturally, I thought I was a human being. But what is a
human being? Shall I say a rational animal? No. For then I would have to ask what an animal is
and what rational means, and thus from a single question I would fall into several greater
difficulties. And at the moment I do not have so much leisure time, that I wish to squander it
with subtleties of this sort. Instead I would prefer here to attend to what used to come into my
mind quite naturally and spontaneously in earlier days every time I thought about what I was.
The first thought, of course, was that I had a face, hands, arms, and this entire mechanism of
limbs, the kind one sees on a corpse, and this I designated by the name body. Then it occurred to
me that I was nourished and that I walked, felt, and thought. These actions I assigned to the soul.
But I did not reflect on what this soul might be, or else I imagined it as some kind of attenuated
substance, like wind, or fire, or aether, spread all through my denser parts. However, I had no
doubts at all about my body—I thought I had a clear knowledge of its nature. Perhaps if I had
attempted to describe it using the mental conception I used to hold, I would have explained it as
follows: By a body I understand everything that is appropriately bound together in a certain form
and confined to a place; it fills a certain space in such a way as to exclude from that space every
other body; it can be perceived by touch, sight, hearing, taste, or smell, and can also be moved in
various ways, not, indeed, by itself, but by something else which makes contact with it. For I
judged that possessing the power of self-movement, like the ability to perceive things or to think,
did not pertain at all to the nature of body. Quite the opposite in fact, so that when I found out
that faculties rather similar to these were present in certain bodies, I was astonished.

But what [am I] now, when I assume that there is some extremely powerful and, if I may be
permitted to speak like this, malignant and deceiving being who is deliberately using all his
power to trick me? Can I affirm that I possess even the least of all those things which I have just
described as pertaining to the nature of body? I direct my attention [to this], think [about it], and
turn [the question] over in my mind. Nothing comes to me. It is tedious and useless to go over
the same things once again. What, then, of those things I used to attribute to the soul, like
nourishment or walking? But given that now I do not possess a body, these are nothing but
imaginary figments. What about sense perception? This, too, surely does not occur without the
body. And in sleep I have apparently sensed many objects which I later noticed I had not [truly]
perceived. What about thinking? Here I discover something: thinking does exist. This is the only
thing which cannot be detached from me. I am, I exist—that is certain. But for how long? Surely
for as long as I am thinking. For it could perhaps be the case that, if I were to abandon thinking
altogether, then in that moment I would completely cease to be. At this point I am not agreeing to
anything except what is necessarily true. Therefore, strictly speaking, I am merely a thinking
thing, that is, a mind or spirit, or understanding, or reason—words whose significance I did not

26
realize before. However, I am something real, and I truly exist. But what kind of thing? As I have
said, a thing that thinks.4

And what else besides? I will let my imagination roam. I am not that interconnection of limbs we
call a human body. Nor am I even some attenuated air which filters through those limbs—wind,
or fire, or vapour, or breath, or anything I picture to myself. For I have assumed those things
were nothing. Let this assumption hold. Nonetheless, I am still something. Perhaps it could be
the case that these very things which I assume are nothing, because they are unknown to me, are
truly no different from that I which I do recognize. I am not sure, and I will not dispute this point
right now. I can render judgment only on those things which are known to me: I know that I
exist. I am asking what this I is—the thing I know. It is very certain that knowledge of this I,
precisely defined like this, does not depend on things whose existence I as yet know nothing
about and therefore on any of those things I conjure up in my imagination. And this
phrase conjure up warns me of my mistake, for I would truly be conjuring something up if I
imagined myself to be something, since imagining is nothing other than contemplating the form
or the image of a physical thing. But now I know for certain that I exist and, at the same time,
that it is possible for all those images and, in general, whatever relates to the nature of body to be
nothing but dreams [or chimeras]. Having noticed this, it seems no less foolish for me to say “I
will let my imagination work, so that I may recognize more clearly what I am” than if I were to
state, “Now I am indeed awake, and I see some truth, but because I do yet not see it with
sufficient clarity, I will quite deliberately go to sleep, so that in my dreams I will get a truer and
more distinct picture of it.” Therefore, I realize that none of those things which I can understand
with the aid of my imagination is pertinent to this idea I possess about myself and that I must be
extremely careful to summon my mind back from such things, so that it may perceive its own
nature on its own with the utmost clarity.

But what then am I? A thinking thing. What is this? It is surely something that doubts,
understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and perceives.

This is certainly not an insubstantial list, if all [these] things belong to me. But why should they
not? Surely I am the same I who now doubts almost everything, yet understands some things,
who affirms that this one thing is true, denies all the rest, desires to know more, does not wish to
be deceived, imagines many things, even against its will, and also notices many things which
seem to come from the senses? Even if I am always asleep and even if the one who created me is
also doing all he can to deceive me, what is there among all these things which is not just as true
as the fact that I exist? Is there something there that I could say is separate from me? For it is so
evident that I am the one who doubts, understands, and wills, that I cannot think of anything
which might explain the matter more clearly. But obviously it is the same I that imagines, for
although it may well be case, as I have earlier assumed, that nothing I directly imagine is true,
nevertheless, the power of imagining really exists and forms part of my thinking. Finally, it is the
same I that feels, or notices corporeal things, apparently through the senses: for example, I now
see light, hear noise, and feel heat. But these are false, for I am asleep. Still, I certainly seem to

4Descartes is famously associated with quotation cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). While that sentence is a summary of
his argument here, he never uses that particular wording in the Meditations. As he points out, the famous Latin quotation
should be translated: I am thinking; therefore, I am, since I have no guarantee of existence when I am not thinking.

27
see, hear, and grow warm—and this cannot be false. Strictly speaking, this is what in me is
called sense perception and, taken in this precise meaning, it is nothing other than thinking.

From these thoughts, I begin to understand somewhat better what I am. However, it still appears
that I cannot prevent myself from thinking that corporeal things, whose images are formed by
thought and which the senses themselves investigate, are much more distinctly known than that
obscure part of me, the I, which is not something I can imagine, even though it is really strange
that I have a clearer sense of those things whose existence I know is doubtful, unknown, and
alien to me than I do of something which is true and known, in a word, of my own self. But I
realize what the matter is. My mind loves to wander and is not yet allowing itself to be confined
within the limits of the truth. All right, then, let us at this point for once give it completely free
rein, so that a little later on, when the time comes to pull back, it will consent to be controlled
more easily.

Let us consider those things we commonly believe we understand most distinctly of all, that is,
the bodies we touch and see—not, indeed, bodies in general, for those general perceptions tend
to be somewhat more confusing, but rather one body in particular. For example, let us take this
[piece of] wax. It was collected from the hive very recently and has not yet lost all the sweetness
of its honey. It [still] retains some of the scent of the flowers from which it was gathered. Its
colour, shape, and size are evident. It is hard, cold, and easy to handle. If you strike it with your
finger, it will give off a sound. In short, everything we require to be able to recognize a body as
distinctly as possible appears to be present. But watch. While I am speaking, I bring the wax over
to the fire. What is left of its taste is removed, its smell disappears, its colour changes, its shape
is destroyed, its size increases, it turns to liquid, and it gets hot. I can hardly touch it. And now, if
you strike it, it emits no sound. After [these changes], is what remains the same wax? We must
concede that it is. No one denies this; no one thinks otherwise. What then was in [this piece of
wax] that I understood so distinctly? Certainly nothing I apprehended with my senses, since all
[those things] associated with taste, odour, vision, touch, and sound have now changed. [But] the
wax remains.

Perhaps what I now think is as follows: the wax itself was not really that sweetness of honey,
that fragrance of flowers, that white colour, or that shape and sound, but a body which a little
earlier appeared perceptible to me in those forms, but which is now [perceptible] in different
ones. But what exactly is it that I am imagining in this way? Let us consider that point and, by
removing those things which do not belong to the wax, see what is left over. It is clear that
nothing [remains], other than something extended, flexible, and changeable. But what, in fact,
do flexible and changeable mean? Do these words mean that I imagine that this wax can change
from a round shape to a square one or from [something square] to something triangular? No, that
is not it at all. For I understand that the wax has the capacity for innumerable changes of this
kind, and yet I am not able to run through these innumerable changes by using my imagination.
Therefore, this conception [I have of the wax] is not produced by the faculty of imagination.
What about extension? Is not the extension of the wax also unknown? For it becomes greater
when the wax melts, greater [still] when it boils, and once again [even] greater, if the heat is
increased. And I would not be judging correctly what wax is if I did not believe that it could also
be extended in various other ways, more than I could ever grasp in my imagination. Therefore, I
am forced to admit that my imagination has no idea at all what this wax is and that I perceive it

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only with my mind. I am talking about this [piece of] wax in particular, for the point is even
clearer about wax in general.5 But what is this wax which can be perceived only by the mind? It
must be the same as the wax I see, touch, and imagine—in short, the same wax I thought it was
from the beginning. But we should note that the perception of it is not a matter of sight, or touch,
or imagination, and never was, even though that seemed to be the case earlier, but simply of
mental inspection, which could be either imperfect and confused as it was before, or clear and
distinct as it is now, depending on the lesser or greater degree of attention I bring to bear on
those things out of which the wax is composed.

However, now I am amazed at how my mind is [weak and] prone to error. For although I am
considering these things silently within myself, without speaking aloud, I still get stuck on the
words themselves and am almost deceived by the very nature of the way we speak. For if the
wax is there [in front of us], we say that we see the wax itself, not that we judge it to be there
from the colour or shape. From that I could immediately conclude that I recognized the wax
thanks to the vision in my eyes, and not simply by mental inspection, unless by chance I happen
at that moment to glance out of the window at people crossing the street, for in normal speech I
also say I see the people themselves, just as I do with the wax. But what am I really seeing other
than hats and coats, which could be concealing automatons underneath? However, I judge that
they are people. And thus what I thought I was seeing with my eyes I understand only with my
faculty of judgment, which is in my mind.

But someone who wishes [to elevate] his knowledge above the common level should be ashamed
to have looked for uncertainty in the forms of speech which ordinary people use, and so we
should move on to consider next whether my perception of what wax is was more perfect and
more evident when I first perceived it and believed I knew it by my external senses, or at least by
my so-called common sense, in other words, by the power of imagination, or whether it is more
perfect now, after I have investigated more carefully both what wax is and how it can be
known.6 To entertain doubts about this matter would certainly be silly. For in my first perception
of the wax what was distinct? What did I notice there that any animal might not be capable of
capturing? But when I distinguish the wax from its external forms and look at it as something
naked, as if I had stripped off its clothing, even though there could still be some error in my
judgment, it is certain that I could not perceive it in this way without a human mind.

But what am I to say about this mind itself, in other words, about myself? For up to this point I
am not admitting there is anything in me except mind. What, I say, is the I that seems to perceive
this wax so distinctly? Do I not know myself not only much more truly and certainly, but also
much more distinctly and clearly than I know the wax? For if I judge that the wax exists from the
fact that I see it, then from the very fact that I see the wax it certainly follows much more clearly
that I myself also exist. For it could be that what I see is not really wax. It could be the case that I
do not have eyes at all with which to see anything. But when I see or think I see (at the moment I

5This well-known example is meant to illustrate that we can have no certain knowledge of a physical object with our senses,
because these merely give us sensations of an object’s attributes, which can change. And the imagination cannot provide
us certain knowledge of the object because it cannot picture all the different changes an object might undergo. Thus,
certain knowledge can come only from the understanding.
6The term common sense refers to a faculty which, in traditional views of the mind, coordinated impressions from the various

sense organs and communicated them to the mind.

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am not differentiating between these two), it is completely impossible that I, the one doing the
thinking, am not something. For similar reasons, if I judge that the wax exists from the fact that I
am touching it, the same conclusion follows once again, namely, that I exist. The result is clearly
the same if [my judgment rests] on the fact that I imagine the wax or on any other reason at all.
But these observations I have made about the wax can be applied to all other things located
outside of me. Furthermore, if my perception of the wax seemed more distinct after it was drawn
to my attention, not merely by sight or touch, but by several [other] causes, I must concede that I
now understand myself much more distinctly, since all of those same reasons capable of assisting
my perception either of the wax or of any other body whatsoever are even better proofs of the
nature of my mind! However, over and above this, there are so many other things in the mind
itself which can provide a more distinct conception of its [nature] that it hardly seems
worthwhile to review those features of corporeal things which might contribute to it.

And behold—I have all on my own finally returned to the place where I wanted to be. For since I
am now aware that bodies themselves are not properly perceived by the senses or by the faculty
of imagination, but only by the intellect, and are not perceived because they are touched or seen,
but only because they are understood, I realize this obvious point: there is nothing I can perceive
more easily or more clearly than my own mind. But because it is impossible to rid oneself so
quickly of an opinion one has long been accustomed to hold, I would like to pause here, in order
to impress this new knowledge more deeply on my memory with a prolonged meditation.

An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (1784)

Immanuel Kant

1. Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the

inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-
imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to
use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! “Have courage to use your own
understanding!”--that is the motto of enlightenment.

2. Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature
has released them from alien guidance (natura-liter maiorennes), nonetheless gladly remain in
lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It
is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my
conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I
need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. The
guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it
that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity
as very dangerous, not to mention difficult. Having first made their domestic livestock dumb,
and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the
go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens
them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling
a few times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes men
timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts.

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3. Thus, it is difficult for any individual man to work himself out of the immaturity that has all
but become his nature. He has even become fond of this state and for the time being is actually
incapable of using his own understanding, for no one has ever allowed him to attempt it. Rules
and formulas, those mechanical aids to the rational use, or rather misuse, of his natural gifts, are
the shackles of a permanent immaturity. Whoever threw them off would still make only an
uncertain leap over the smallest ditch, since he is unaccustomed to this kind of free movement.
Consequently, only a few have succeeded, by cultivating their own minds, in freeing themselves
from immaturity and pursuing a secure course.

4. But that the public should enlighten itself is more likely; indeed, if it is only allowed freedom,
enlightenment is almost inevitable. For even among the entrenched guardians of the great masses
a few will always think for themselves, a few who, after having themselves thrown off the yoke
of immaturity, will spread the spirit of a rational appreciation for both their own worth and for
each person's calling to think for himself. But it should be particularly noted that if a public that
was first placed in this yoke by the guardians is suitably aroused by some of those who are
altogether incapable of enlightenment, it may force the guardians themselves to remain under the
yoke—so pernicious is it to instill prejudices, for they finally take revenge upon their originators,
or on their descendants. Thus a public can only attain enlightenment slowly. Perhaps a revolution
can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering or power-grabbing oppression, but it can
never truly reform a manner of thinking; instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones they
replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking mass.

5. Nothing is required for this enlightenment, however, except freedom; and the freedom in
question is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters. But
on all sides I hear: “Do not argue!” The officer says, “Do not argue, drill!” The tax man says,
“Do not argue, pay!” The pastor says, “Do not argue, believe!” (Only one ruler in the world says,
“Argue as much as you want and about what you want, but obey!”) In this we have [examples
of] pervasive restrictions on freedom. But which restriction hinders enlightenment and which
does not, but instead actually advances it? I reply: The public use of one’s reason must always be
free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among mankind; the private use of reason may,
however, often be very narrowly restricted, without otherwise hindering the progress of
enlightenment. By the public use of one's own reason I understand the use that anyone as a
scholar makes of reason before the entire literate world. I call the private use of reason that
which a person may make in a civic post or office that has been entrusted to him. Now in many
affairs conducted in the interests of a community, a certain mechanism is required by means of
which some of its members must conduct themselves in an entirely passive manner so that
through an artificial unanimity the government may guide them toward public ends, or at least
prevent them from destroying such ends. Here one certainly must not argue, instead one must
obey. However, insofar as this part of the machine also regards himself as a member of the
community as a whole, or even of the world community, and as a consequence addresses the
public in the role of a scholar, in the proper sense of that term, he can most certainly argue,
without thereby harming the affairs for which as a passive member he is partly responsible. Thus
it would be disastrous if an officer on duty who was given a command by his superior were to
question the appropriateness or utility of the order. He must obey. But as a scholar he cannot be
justly constrained from making comments about errors in military service, or from placing them

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before the public for its judgment. The citizen cannot refuse to pay the taxes imposed on him;
indeed, impertinent criticism of such levies, when they should be paid by him, can be punished
as a scandal (since it can lead to widespread insubordination). But the same person does not act
contrary to civic duty when, as a scholar, he publicly expresses his thoughts regarding the
impropriety or even injustice of such taxes. Likewise a pastor is bound to instruct his
catecumens and congregation in accordance with the symbol of the church he serves, for he was
appointed on that condition. But as a scholar he has complete freedom, indeed even the calling,
to impart to the public all of his carefully considered and well-intentioned thoughts concerning
mistaken aspects of that symbol, as well as his suggestions for the better arrangement of religious
and church matters. Nothing in this can weigh on his conscience. What he teaches in
consequence of his office as a servant of the church he sets out as something with regard to
which he has no discretion to teach in accord with his own lights; rather, he offers it under the
direction and in the name of another. He will say, “Our church teaches this or that and these are
the demonstrations it uses.” He thereby extracts for his congregation all practical uses from
precepts to which he would not himself subscribe with complete conviction, but whose
presentation he can nonetheless undertake, since it is not entirely impossible that truth lies
hidden in them, and, in any case, nothing contrary to the very nature of religion is to be found in
them. If he believed he could find anything of the latter sort in them, he could not in good
conscience serve in his position; he would have to resign. Thus an appointed teacher’s use of his
reason for the sake of his congregation is merely private, because, however large the
congregation is, this use is always only domestic; in this regard, as a priest, he is
not free and cannot be such because he is acting under instructions from someone else. By
contrast, the cleric--as a scholar who speaks through his writings to the public as such, i.e., the
world--enjoys in this public use of reason an unrestricted freedom to use his own rational
capacities and to speak his own mind. For that the (spiritual) guardians of a people should
themselves be immature is an absurdity that would insure the perpetuation of absurdities.

6. But would a society of pastors, perhaps a church assembly or venerable presbytery (as those
among the Dutch call themselves), not be justified in binding itself by oath to a certain
unalterable symbol in order to secure a constant guardianship over each of its members and
through them over the people, and this for all time: I say that this is wholly impossible. Such a
contract, whose intention is to preclude forever all further enlightenment of the human race, is
absolutely null and void, even if it should be ratified by the supreme power, by parliaments, and
by the most solemn peace treaties. One age cannot bind itself, and thus conspire, to place a
succeeding one in a condition whereby it would be impossible for the later age to expand its
knowledge (particularly where it is so very important), to rid itself of errors, and generally to
increase its enlightenment. That would be a crime against human nature, whose essential destiny
lies precisely in such progress; subsequent generations are thus completely justified in dismissing
such agreements as unauthorized and criminal. The criterion of everything that can be agreed
upon as a law by a people lies in this question: Can a people impose such a law on itself? Now it
might be possible, in anticipation of a better state of affairs, to introduce a provisional order for a
specific, short time, all the while giving all citizens, especially clergy, in their role as scholars,
the freedom to comment publicly, i.e., in writing, on the present institution's shortcomings. The
provisional order might last until insight into the nature of these matters had become so
widespread and obvious that the combined (if not unanimous) voices of the populace could
propose to the crown that it take under its protection those congregations that, in accord with

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their newly gained insight, had organized themselves under altered religious institutions, but
without interfering with those wishing to allow matters to remain as before. However, it is
absolutely forbidden that they unite into a religious organization that nobody may for the
duration of a man's lifetime publicly question, for so doing would deny, render fruitless, and
make detrimental to succeeding generations an era in man's progress toward improvement. A
man may put off enlightenment with regard to what he ought to know, though only for a short
time and for his own person; but to renounce it for himself, or, even more, for subsequent
generations, is to violate and trample man's divine rights underfoot. And what a people may not
decree for itself may still less be imposed on it by a monarch, for his lawgiving authority rests on
his unification of the people's collective will in his own. If he only sees to it that all genuine or
purported improvement is consonant with civil order, he can allow his subjects to do what they
find necessary to their spiritual well-being, which is not his affair. However, he must prevent
anyone from forcibly interfering with another's working as best he can to determine and promote
his well-being. It detracts from his own majesty when he interferes in these matters, since the
writings in which his subjects attempt to clarify their insights lend value to his conception of
governance. This holds whether he acts from his own highest insight--whereby he calls upon
himself the reproach, “Caesar non eat supra grammaticos”—as well as, indeed even more,
when he despoils his highest authority by supporting the spiritual despotism of some tyrants in
his state over his other subjects.

7. If it is now asked, “Do we presently live in an enlightened age?” the answer is, “No, but we do
live in an age of enlightenment.” As matters now stand, a great deal is still lacking in order for
men as a whole to be, or even to put themselves into a position to be able without external
guidance to apply understanding confidently to religious issues. But we do have clear indications
that the way is now being opened for men to proceed freely in this direction and that the
obstacles to general enlightenment--to their release from their self-imposed immaturity—are
gradually diminishing. In this regard, this age is the age of enlightenment, the century of
Frederick.

8. A prince who does not find it beneath him to say that he takes it to be his duty to prescribe
nothing, but rather to allow men complete freedom in religious matters—who thereby renounces
the arrogant title of tolerance—is himself enlightened and deserves to be praised by a grateful
present and by posterity as the first, at least where the government is concerned, to release the
human race from immaturity and to leave everyone free to use his own reason in all matters of
conscience. Under his rule, venerable pastors, in their role as scholars and without prejudice to
their official duties, may freely and openly set out for the world's scrutiny their judgments and
views, even where these occasionally differ from the accepted symbol. Still greater freedom is
afforded to those who are not restricted by an official post. This spirit of freedom is expanding
even where it must struggle against the external obstacles of governments that misunderstand
their own function. Such governments are illuminated by the example that the existence of
freedom need not give cause for the least concern regarding public order and harmony in the
commonwealth. If only they refrain from inventing artifices to keep themselves in it, men will
gradually raise themselves from barbarism.

9. I have focused on religious matters in setting out my main point concerning enlightenment,
i.e., man's emergence from self-imposed immaturity, first because our rulers have no interest in

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assuming the role of their subjects' guardians with respect to the arts and sciences, and secondly
because that form of immaturity is both the most pernicious and disgraceful of all. But the
manner of thinking of a head of state who favors religious enlightenment goes even further, for
he realizes that there is no danger to his legislation in allowing his subjects to use reason publicly
and to set before the world their thoughts concerning better formulations of his laws, even if this
involves frank criticism of legislation currently in effect. We have before us a shining example,
with respect to which no monarch surpasses the one whom we honor.

10. But only a ruler who is himself enlightened and has no dread of shadows, yet who likewise
has a well-disciplined, numerous army to guarantee public peace, can say what no republic may
dare, namely: “Argue as much as you want and about what you want, but obey!” Here as
elsewhere, when things are considered in broad perspective, a strange, unexpected pattern in
human affairs reveals itself, one in which almost everything is paradoxical. A greater degree of
civil freedom seems advantageous to a people's spiritual freedom; yet the former established
impassable boundaries for the latter; conversely, a lesser degree of civil freedom provides
enough room for all fully to expand their abilities. Thus, once nature has removed the hard shell
from this kernel for which she has most fondly cared, namely, the inclination to and vocation for
free thinking, the kernel gradually reacts on a people’s mentality (whereby they become
increasingly able to act freely), and it finally even influences the principles of government, which
finds that it can profit by treating men, who are now more than machines, in accord with their
dignity

From the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)

Immanuel Kant

Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good,
without qualification, except a good will. Intelligence, wit, judgement, and the other talents of
the mind, however they may be named, or courage, resolution, perseverance, as qualities of
temperament, are undoubtedly good and desirable in many respects; but these gifts of nature may
also become extremely bad and mischievous if the will which is to make use of them, and which,
therefore, constitutes what is called character, is not good. It is the same with the gifts of fortune.
Power, riches, honour, even health, and the general well-being and contentment with one's
condition which is called happiness, inspire pride, and often presumption, if there is not a good
will to correct the influence of these on the mind, and with this also to rectify the whole principle
of acting and adapt it to its end. The sight of a being who is not adorned with a single feature of a
pure and good will, enjoying unbroken prosperity, can never give pleasure to an impartial
rational spectator. Thus a good will appears to constitute the indispensable condition even of
being worthy of happiness.

There are even some qualities which are of service to this good will itself and may facilitate its
action, yet which have no intrinsic unconditional value, but always presuppose a good will, and
this qualifies the esteem that we justly have for them and does not permit us to regard them as
absolutely good. Moderation in the affections and passions, self-control, and calm deliberation
are not only good in many respects, but even seem to constitute part of the intrinsic worth of the
person; but they are far from deserving to be called good without qualification, although they

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have been so unconditionally praised by the ancients. For without the principles of a good will,
they may become extremely bad, and the coolness of a villain not only makes him far more
dangerous, but also directly makes him more abominable in our eyes than he would have been
without it.

A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the
attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition; that is, it is good in itself,
and considered by itself is to be esteemed much higher than all that can be brought about by it in
favour of any inclination, nay even of the sum total of all inclinations. Even if it should happen
that, owing to special disfavour of fortune, or the niggardly provision of a step-motherly nature,
this will should wholly lack power to accomplish its purpose, if with its greatest efforts it should
yet achieve nothing, and there should remain only the good will (not, to be sure, a mere wish, but
the summoning of all means in our power), then, like a jewel, it would still shine by its own
light, as a thing which has its whole value in itself. Its usefulness or fruitlessness can neither add
nor take away anything from this value. It would be, as it were, only the setting to enable us to
handle it the more conveniently in common commerce, or to attract to it the attention of those
who are not yet connoisseurs, but not to recommend it to true connoisseurs, or to determine its
value.

There is, however, something so strange in this idea of the absolute value of the mere will, in
which no account is taken of its utility, that notwithstanding the thorough assent of even common
reason to the idea, yet a suspicion must arise that it may perhaps really be the product of mere
high-flown fancy, and that we may have misunderstood the purpose of nature in assigning reason
as the governor of our will. Therefore we will examine this idea from this point of view.

In the physical constitution of an organized being, that is, a being adapted suitably to the
purposes of life, we assume it as a fundamental principle that no organ for any purpose will be
found but what is also the fittest and best adapted for that purpose. Now in a being which has
reason and a will, if the proper object of nature were its conservation, its welfare, in a word, its
happiness, then nature would have hit upon a very bad arrangement in selecting the reason of the
creature to carry out this purpose. For all the actions which the creature has to perform with a
view to this purpose, and the whole rule of its conduct, would be far more surely prescribed to it
by instinct, and that end would have been attained thereby much more certainly than it ever can
be by reason. Should reason have been communicated to this favoured creature over and above,
it must only have served it to contemplate the happy constitution of its nature, to admire it, to
congratulate itself thereon, and to feel thankful for it to the beneficent cause, but not that it
should subject its desires to that weak and delusive guidance and meddle bunglingly with the
purpose of nature. In a word, nature would have taken care that reason should not break forth
into practical exercise, nor have the presumption, with its weak insight, to think out for itself the
plan of happiness, and of the means of attaining it. Nature would not only have taken on herself
the choice of the ends, but also of the means, and with wise foresight would have entrusted both
to instinct.

And, in fact, we find that the more a cultivated reason applies itself with deliberate purpose to
the enjoyment of life and happiness, so much the more does the man fail of true satisfaction. And
from this circumstance there arises in many, if they are candid enough to confess it, a certain

35
degree of misology, that is, hatred of reason, especially in the case of those who are most
experienced in the use of it, because after calculating all the advantages they derive, I do not say
from the invention of all the arts of common luxury, but even from the sciences (which seem to
them to be after all only a luxury of the understanding), they find that they have, in fact, only
brought more trouble on their shoulders, rather than gained in happiness; and they end by
envying, rather than despising, the more common stamp of men who keep closer to the guidance
of mere instinct and do not allow their reason much influence on their conduct. And this we must
admit, that the judgement of those who would very much lower the lofty eulogies of the
advantages which reason gives us in regard to the happiness and satisfaction of life, or who
would even reduce them below zero, is by no means morose or ungrateful to the goodness with
which the world is governed, but that there lies at the root of these judgements the idea that our
existence has a different and far nobler end, for which, and not for happiness, reason is properly
intended, and which must, therefore, be regarded as the supreme condition to which the private
ends of man must, for the most part, be postponed.

For as reason is not competent to guide the will with certainty in regard to its objects and the
satisfaction of all our wants (which it to some extent even multiplies), this being an end to which
an implanted instinct would have led with much greater certainty; and since, nevertheless, reason
is imparted to us as a practical faculty, i.e., as one which is to have influence on the will,
therefore, admitting that nature generally in the distribution of her capacities has adapted the
means to the end, its true destination must be to produce a will, not merely good as a means to
something else, but good in itself, for which reason was absolutely necessary. This will then,
though not indeed the sole and complete good, must be the supreme good and the condition of
every other, even of the desire of happiness. Under these circumstances, there is nothing
inconsistent with the wisdom of nature in the fact that the cultivation of the reason, which is
requisite for the first and unconditional purpose, does in many ways interfere, at least in this life,
with the attainment of the second, which is always conditional, namely, happiness. Nay, it may
even reduce it to nothing, without nature thereby failing of her purpose. For reason recognizes
the establishment of a good will as its highest practical destination, and in attaining this purpose
is capable only of a satisfaction of its own proper kind, namely that from the attainment of an
end, which end again is determined by reason only, notwithstanding that this may involve many
a disappointment to the ends of inclination.

We have then to develop the notion of a will which deserves to be highly esteemed for itself and
is good without a view to anything further, a notion which exists already in the sound natural
understanding, requiring rather to be cleared up than to be taught, and which in estimating the
value of our actions always takes the first place and constitutes the condition of all the rest. In
order to do this, we will take the notion of duty, which includes that of a good will, although
implying certain subjective restrictions and hindrances. These, however, far from concealing it,
or rendering it unrecognizable, rather bring it out by contrast and make it shine forth so much the
brighter.

I omit here all actions which are already recognized as inconsistent with duty, although they may
be useful for this or that purpose, for with these the question whether they are done from duty
cannot arise at all, since they even conflict with it. I also set aside those actions which really
conform to duty, but to which men have no direct inclination, performing them because they are

36
impelled thereto by some other inclination. For in this case we can readily distinguish whether
the action which agrees with duty is done from duty, or from a selfish view. It is much harder to
make this distinction when the action accords with duty and the subject has besides a direct
inclination to it. For example, it is always a matter of duty that a dealer should not over charge an
inexperienced purchaser; and wherever there is much commerce the prudent tradesman does not
overcharge, but keeps a fixed price for everyone, so that a child buys of him as well as any other.
Men are thus honestly served; but this is not enough to make us believe that the tradesman has so
acted from duty and from principles of honesty: his own advantage required it; it is out of the
question in this case to suppose that he might besides have a direct inclination in favour of the
buyers, so that, as it were, from love he should give no advantage to one over another.
Accordingly the action was done neither from duty nor from direct inclination, but merely with a
selfish view.

On the other hand, it is a duty to maintain one's life; and, in addition, everyone has also a direct
inclination to do so. But on this account the often anxious care which most men take for it has no
intrinsic worth, and their maxim has no moral import. They preserve their life as duty requires,
no doubt, but not because duty requires. On the other hand, if adversity and hopeless sorrow
have completely taken away the relish for life; if the unfortunate one, strong in mind, indignant
at his fate rather than desponding or dejected, wishes for death, and yet preserves his life without
loving it- not from inclination or fear, but from duty- then his maxim has a moral worth….

The second proposition is: That an action done from duty derives its moral worth, not from the
purpose which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is determined, and
therefore does not depend on the realization of the object of the action, but merely on the
principle of volition by which the action has taken place, without regard to any object of desire.
It is clear from what precedes that the purposes which we may have in view in our actions, or
their effects regarded as ends and springs of the will, cannot give to actions any unconditional or
moral worth. In what, then, can their worth lie, if it is not to consist in the will and in reference to
its expected effect? It cannot lie anywhere but in the principle of the will without regard to the
ends which can be attained by the action. For the will stands between its a priori principle, which
is formal, and its a posteriori spring, which is material, as between two roads, and as it must be
determined by something, it follows that it must be determined by the formal principle of
volition when an action is done from duty, in which case every material principle has been
withdrawn from it.

The third proposition, which is a consequence of the two preceding, I would express thus: Duty
is the necessity of acting from respect for the law….

The pre-eminent good which we call moral can therefore consist in nothing else than the
conception of law in itself, which certainly is only possible in a rational being, in so far as this
conception, and not the expected effect, determines the will. This is a good which is already
present in the person who acts accordingly, and we have not to wait for it to appear first in the
result.

But what sort of law can that be, the conception of which must determine the will, even without
paying any regard to the effect expected from it, in order that this will may be called good

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absolutely and without qualification? As I have deprived the will of every impulse which could
arise to it from obedience to any law, there remains nothing but the universal conformity of its
actions to law in general, which alone is to serve the will as a principle, i.e., I am never to act
otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law….

Without being an enemy of virtue, a cool observer, one that does not mistake the wish for good,
however lively, for its reality, may sometimes doubt whether true virtue is actually found
anywhere in the world, and this especially as years increase and the judgement is partly made
wiser by experience and partly, also, more acute in observation. This being so, nothing can
secure us from falling away altogether from our ideas of duty, or maintain in the soul a well-
grounded respect for its law, but the clear conviction that although there should never have been
actions which really sprang from such pure sources, yet whether this or that takes place is not at
all the question; but that reason of itself, independent on all experience, ordains what ought to
take place, that accordingly actions of which perhaps the world has hitherto never given an
example, the feasibility even of which might be very much doubted by one who founds
everything on experience, are nevertheless inflexibly commanded by reason; that, e.g., even
though there might never yet have been a sincere friend, yet not a whit the less is pure sincerity
in friendship required of every man, because, prior to all experience, this duty is involved as duty
in the idea of a reason determining the will by a priori principles.

When we add further that, unless we deny that the notion of morality has any truth or reference
to any possible object, we must admit that its law must be valid, not merely for men but for all
rational creatures generally, not merely under certain contingent conditions or with exceptions
but with absolute necessity, then it is clear that no experience could enable us to infer even the
possibility of such apodeictic laws….

Everything in nature works according to laws. Rational beings alone have the faculty of acting
according to the conception of laws, that is according to principles, i.e., have a will. Since the
deduction of actions from principles requires reason, the will is nothing but practical reason. If
reason infallibly determines the will, then the actions of such a being which are recognised as
objectively necessary are subjectively necessary also, i.e., the will is a faculty to choose that only
which reason independent of inclination recognises as practically necessary, i.e., as good. But if
reason of itself does not sufficiently determine the will, if the latter is subject also to subjective
conditions (particular impulses) which do not always coincide with the objective conditions; in a
word, if the will does not in itself completely accord with reason (which is actually the case with
men), then the actions which objectively are recognised as necessary are subjectively contingent,
and the determination of such a will according to objective laws is obligation, that is to say, the
relation of the objective laws to a will that is not thoroughly good is conceived as the
determination of the will of a rational being by principles of reason, but which the will from its
nature does not of necessity follow.

The conception of an objective principle, in so far as it is obligatory for a will, is called a

command (of reason), and the formula of the command is called an imperative….

There is therefore but one categorical imperative, namely, this: Act only on that maxim whereby
thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law….

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1. A man reduced to despair by a series of misfortunes feels wearied of life, but is still so far in
possession of his reason that he can ask himself whether it would not be contrary to his duty to
himself to take his own life. Now he inquires whether the maxim of his action could become a
universal law of nature. His maxim is: "From self-love I adopt it as a principle to shorten my life
when its longer duration is likely to bring more evil than satisfaction." It is asked then simply
whether this principle founded on self-love can become a universal law of nature. Now we see at
once that a system of nature of which it should be a law to destroy life by means of the very
feeling whose special nature it is to impel to the improvement of life would contradict itself and,
therefore, could not exist as a system of nature; hence that maxim cannot possibly exist as a
universal law of nature and, consequently, would be wholly inconsistent with the supreme
principle of all duty.

2. Another finds himself forced by necessity to borrow money. He knows that he will not be able
to repay it, but sees also that nothing will be lent to him unless he promises stoutly to repay it in
a definite time. He desires to make this promise, but he has still so much conscience as to ask
himself: "Is it not unlawful and inconsistent with duty to get out of a difficulty in this way?"
Suppose however that he resolves to do so: then the maxim of his action would be expressed
thus: "When I think myself in want of money, I will borrow money and promise to repay it,
although I know that I never can do so." Now this principle of self-love or of one's own
advantage may perhaps be consistent with my whole future welfare; but the question now is, "Is
it right?" I change then the suggestion of self-love into a universal law, and state the question
thus: "How would it be if my maxim were a universal law?" Then I see at once that it could
never hold as a universal law of nature, but would necessarily contradict itself. For supposing it
to be a universal law that everyone when he thinks himself in a difficulty should be able to
promise whatever he pleases, with the purpose of not keeping his promise, the promise itself
would become impossible, as well as the end that one might have in view in it, since no one
would consider that anything was promised to him, but would ridicule all such statements as vain
pretenses.

3. A third finds in himself a talent which with the help of some culture might make him a useful
man in many respects. But he finds himself in comfortable circumstances and prefers to indulge
in pleasure rather than to take pains in enlarging and improving his happy natural capacities. He
asks, however, whether his maxim of neglect of his natural gifts, besides agreeing with his
inclination to indulgence, agrees also with what is called duty. He sees then that a system of
nature could indeed subsist with such a universal law although men (like the South Sea islanders)
should let their talents rest and resolve to devote their lives merely to idleness, amusement, and
propagation of their species- in a word, to enjoyment; but he cannot possibly will that this should
be a universal law of nature, or be implanted in us as such by a natural instinct. For, as a rational
being, he necessarily wills that his faculties be developed, since they serve him and have been
given him, for all sorts of possible purposes.

4. A fourth, who is in prosperity, while he sees that others have to contend with great
wretchedness and that he could help them, thinks: "What concern is it of mine? Let everyone be
as happy as Heaven pleases, or as he can make himself; I will take nothing from him nor even
envy him, only I do not wish to contribute anything to his welfare or to his assistance in
distress!" Now no doubt if such a mode of thinking were a universal law, the human race might

39
very well subsist and doubtless even better than in a state in which everyone talks of sympathy
and good-will, or even takes care occasionally to put it into practice, but, on the other side, also
cheats when he can, betrays the rights of men, or otherwise violates them. But although it is
possible that a universal law of nature might exist in accordance with that maxim, it is
impossible to will that such a principle should have the universal validity of a law of nature. For
a will which resolved this would contradict itself, inasmuch as many cases might occur in which
one would have need of the love and sympathy of others, and in which, by such a law of nature,
sprung from his own will, he would deprive himself of all hope of the aid he desires.

These are a few of the many actual duties, or at least what we regard as such, which obviously
fall into two classes on the one principle that we have laid down. We must be able to will that a
maxim of our action should be a universal law. This is the canon of the moral appreciation of the
action generally. Some actions are of such a character that their maxim cannot without
contradiction be even conceived as a universal law of nature, far from it being possible that we
should will that it should be so. In others this intrinsic impossibility is not found, but still it is
impossible to will that their maxim should be raised to the universality of a law of nature, since
such a will would contradict itself It is easily seen that the former violate strict or rigorous
(inflexible) duty; the latter only laxer (meritorious) duty. Thus it has been completely shown how
all duties depend as regards the nature of the obligation (not the object of the action) on the same
principle.

If then there is a supreme practical principle or, in respect of the human will, a categorical
imperative, it must be one which, being drawn from the conception of that which is necessarily
an end for everyone because it is an end in itself, constitutes an objective principle of will, and
can therefore serve as a universal practical law. The foundation of this principle is: rational
nature exists as an end in itself. Man necessarily conceives his own existence as being so; so far
then this is a subjective principle of human actions. But every other rational being regards its
existence similarly, just on the same rational principle that holds for me: so that it is at the same
time an objective principle, from which as a supreme practical law all laws of the will must be
capable of being deduced. Accordingly the practical imperative will be as follows: So act as to
treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end
withal, never as means only….

This principle, that humanity and generally every rational nature is an end in itself (which is the
supreme limiting condition of every man's freedom of action), is not borrowed from experience,
firstly, because it is universal, applying as it does to all rational beings whatever, and experience
is not capable of determining anything about them; secondly, because it does not present
humanity as an end to men (subjectively), that is as an object which men do of themselves
actually adopt as an end; but as an objective end, which must as a law constitute the supreme
limiting condition of all our subjective ends, let them be what we will; it must therefore spring
from pure reason. In fact the objective principle of all practical legislation lies (according to the
first principle) in the rule and its form of universality which makes it capable of being a law (say,
e. g., a law of nature); but the subjective principle is in the end; now by the second principle the
subject of all ends is each rational being, inasmuch as it is an end in itself. Hence follows the
third practical principle of the will, which is the ultimate condition of its harmony with universal
practical reason, viz.: the idea of the will of every rational being as a universally legislative will.

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On this principle all maxims are rejected which are inconsistent with the will being itself
universal legislator. Thus the will is not subject simply to the law, but so subject that it must be
regarded as itself giving the law and, on this ground only, subject to the law (of which it can
regard itself as the author).

In the previous imperatives, namely, that based on the conception of the conformity of actions to
general laws, as in a physical system of nature, and that based on the universal prerogative of
rational beings as ends in themselves- these imperatives, just because they were conceived as
categorical, excluded from any share in their authority all admixture of any interest as a spring of
action; they were, however, only assumed to be categorical, because such an assumption was
necessary to explain the conception of duty. But we could not prove independently that there are
practical propositions which command categorically, nor can it be proved in this section; one
thing, however, could be done, namely, to indicate in the imperative itself, by some determinate
expression, that in the case of volition from duty all interest is renounced, which is the specific
criterion of categorical as distinguished from hypothetical imperatives. This is done in the
present (third) formula of the principle, namely, in the idea of the will of every rational being as
a universally legislating will.

For although a will which is subject to laws may be attached to this law by means of an interest,
yet a will which is itself a supreme lawgiver so far as it is such cannot possibly depend on any
interest, since a will so dependent would itself still need another law restricting the interest of its
self-love by the condition that it should be valid as universal law.

Thus the principle that every human will is a will which in all its maxims gives universal laws,
provided it be otherwise justified, would be very well adapted to be the categorical imperative, in
this respect, namely, that just because of the idea of universal legislation it is not based on
interest, and therefore it alone among all possible imperatives can be unconditional. Or still
better, converting the proposition, if there is a categorical imperative (i.e., a law for the will of
every rational being), it can only command that everything be done from maxims of one's will
regarded as a will which could at the same time will that it should itself give universal laws, for
in that case only the practical principle and the imperative which it obeys are unconditional,
since they cannot be based on any interest.

Looking back now on all previous attempts to discover the principle of morality, we need not
wonder why they all failed. It was seen that man was bound to laws by duty, but it was not
observed that the laws to which he is subject are only those of his own giving, though at the same
time they are universal, and that he is only bound to act in conformity with his own will; a will,
however, which is designed by nature to give universal laws. For when one has conceived man
only as subject to a law (no matter what), then this law required some interest, either by way of
attraction or constraint, since it did not originate as a law from his own will, but this will was
according to a law obliged by something else to act in a certain manner. Now by this necessary
consequence all the labour spent in finding a supreme principle of duty was irrevocably lost. For
men never elicited duty, but only a necessity of acting from a certain interest. Whether this
interest was private or otherwise, in any case the imperative must be conditional and could not
by any means be capable of being a moral command. I will therefore call this the principle of
autonomy of the will, in contrast with every other which I accordingly reckon as heteronomy.

41
The conception of the will of every rational being as one which must consider itself as giving in
all the maxims of its will universal laws, so as to judge itself and its actions from this point of
view- this conception leads to another which depends on it and is very fruitful, namely that of a
kingdom of ends.

By a kingdom I understand the union of different rational beings in a system by common laws.
Now since it is by laws that ends are determined as regards their universal validity, hence, if we
abstract from the personal differences of rational beings and likewise from all the content of their
private ends, we shall be able to conceive all ends combined in a systematic whole (including
both rational beings as ends in themselves, and also the special ends which each may propose to
himself), that is to say, we can conceive a kingdom of ends, which on the preceding principles is
possible.

For all rational beings come under the law that each of them must treat itself and all others never
merely as means, but in every case at the same time as ends in themselves. Hence results a
systematic union of rational being by common objective laws, i.e., a kingdom which may be
called a kingdom of ends, since what these laws have in view is just the relation of these beings
to one another as ends and means. It is certainly only an ideal.

A rational being belongs as a member to the kingdom of ends when, although giving universal
laws in it, he is also himself subject to these laws. He belongs to it as sovereign when, while
giving laws, he is not subject to the will of any other.

A rational being must always regard himself as giving laws either as member or as sovereign in a
kingdom of ends which is rendered possible by the freedom of will. He cannot, however,
maintain the latter position merely by the maxims of his will, but only in case he is a completely
independent being without wants and with unrestricted power adequate to his will.

Morality consists then in the reference of all action to the legislation which alone can render a
kingdom of ends possible. This legislation must be capable of existing in every rational being
and of emanating from his will, so that the principle of this will is never to act on any maxim
which could not without contradiction be also a universal law and, accordingly, always so to act
that the will could at the same time regard itself as giving in its maxims universal laws. If now
the maxims of rational beings are not by their own nature coincident with this objective
principle, then the necessity of acting on it is called practical necessitation, i.e., duty. Duty does
not apply to the sovereign in the kingdom of ends, but it does to every member of it and to all in
the same degree.

The practical necessity of acting on this principle, i.e., duty, does not rest at all on feelings,
impulses, or inclinations, but solely on the relation of rational beings to one another, a relation in
which the will of a rational being must always be regarded as legislative, since otherwise it could
not be conceived as an end in itself. Reason then refers every maxim of the will, regarding it as
legislating universally, to every other will and also to every action towards oneself; and this not
on account of any other practical motive or any future advantage, but from the idea of the dignity
of a rational being, obeying no law but that which he himself also gives.

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In the kingdom of ends everything has either value or dignity. Whatever has a value can be
replaced by something else which is equivalent; whatever, on the other hand, is above all value,
and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity.

Whatever has reference to the general inclinations and wants of mankind has a market value;
whatever, without presupposing a want, corresponds to a certain taste, that is to a satisfaction in
the mere purposeless play of our faculties, has a fancy value; but that which constitutes the
condition under which alone anything can be an end in itself, this has not merely a relative
worth, i.e., value, but an intrinsic worth, that is, dignity.

Now morality is the condition under which alone a rational being can be an end in himself, since
by this alone is it possible that he should be a legislating member in the kingdom of ends.

Thus morality, and humanity as capable of it, is that which alone has dignity. Skill and diligence
in labour have a market value; wit, lively imagination, and humour, have fancy value; on the
other hand, fidelity to promises, benevolence from principle (not from instinct), have an intrinsic
worth. Neither nature nor art contains anything which in default of these it could put in their
place, for their worth consists not in the effects which spring from them, not in the use and
advantage which they secure, but in the disposition of mind, that is, the maxims of the will which
are ready to manifest themselves in such actions, even though they should not have the desired
effect. These actions also need no recommendation from any subjective taste or sentiment, that
they may be looked on with immediate favour and satisfaction: they need no immediate
propension or feeling for them; they exhibit the will that performs them as an object of an
immediate respect, and nothing but reason is required to impose them on the will; not to flatter it
into them, which, in the case of duties, would be a contradiction. This estimation therefore shows
that the worth of such a disposition is dignity, and places it infinitely above all value, with which
it cannot for a moment be brought into comparison or competition without as it were violating its
sanctity.

What then is it which justifies virtue or the morally good disposition, in making such lofty
claims? It is nothing less than the privilege it secures to the rational being of participating in the
giving of universal laws, by which it qualifies him to be a member of a possible kingdom of
ends, a privilege to which he was already destined by his own nature as being an end in himself
and, on that account, legislating in the kingdom of ends; free as regards all laws of physical
nature, and obeying those only which he himself gives, and by which his maxims can belong to a
system of universal law, to which at the same time he submits himself. For nothing has any
worth except what the law assigns it. Now the legislation itself which assigns the worth of
everything must for that very reason possess dignity, that is an unconditional incomparable
worth; and the word respect alone supplies a becoming expression for the esteem which a
rational being must have for it. Autonomy then is the basis of the dignity of human and of every
rational nature.

The three modes of presenting the principle of morality that have been adduced are at bottom
only so many formulae of the very same law, and each of itself involves the other two. There is,
however, a difference in them, but it is rather subjectively than objectively practical, intended

43
namely to bring an idea of the reason nearer to intuition (by means of a certain analogy) and
thereby nearer to feeling. All maxims, in fact, have:

1. A form, consisting in universality; and in this view the formula of the moral imperative is
expressed thus, that the maxims must be so chosen as if they were to serve as universal laws of
nature.

2. A matter, namely, an end, and here the formula says that the rational being, as it is an end by
its own nature and therefore an end in itself, must in every maxim serve as the condition limiting
all merely relative and arbitrary ends.

3. A complete characterization of all maxims by means of that formula, namely, that all maxims
ought by their own legislation to harmonize with a possible kingdom of ends as with a kingdom
of nature. * There is a progress here in the order of the categories of unity of the form of the will
(its universality), plurality of the matter (the objects, i.e., the ends), and totality of the system of
these. In forming our moral judgement of actions, it is better to proceed always on the strict
method and start from the general formula of the categorical imperative: Act according to a
maxim which can at the same time make itself a universal law. If, however, we wish to gain an
entrance for the moral law, it is very useful to bring one and the same action under the three
specified conceptions, and thereby as far as possible to bring it nearer to intuition.

From Of the Principle of Utility (1789)

Jeremy Bentham

OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY

Chapter I

I. Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters,
pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine
what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of
causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all
we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and
confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain
subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for
the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of
reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in
caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.

But enough of metaphor and declamation: it is not by such means that moral science is to be
improved.

II. The principle of utility is the foundation of the present work: it will be proper therefore at the
outset to give an explicit and determinate account of what is meant by it. By the principle
of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever,

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according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party
whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose
that happiness. I say of every action whatsoever, and therefore not only of every action of a
private individual, but of every measure of government.

III. By utility is meant that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit,
advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness, (all this in the present case comes to the same thing) or
(what comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or
unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered: if that party be the community in general,
then the happiness of the community: if a particular individual, then the happiness of that
individual.

IV. The interest of the community is one of the most general expressions that can occur in the
phraseology of morals: no wonder that the meaning of it is often lost. When it has a meaning, it
is this. The community is a fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are
considered as constituting as it were its members. The interest of the community then is, what?—
the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.

V. It is in vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest
of the individual. A thing is said to promote the interest, or to be for the interest, of an individual,
when it tends to add to the sum total of his pleasures: or, what comes to the same thing, to
diminish the sum total of his pains.

VI. An action then may be said to be conformable to the principle of utility, or, for shortness
sake, to utility, (meaning with respect to the community at large) when the tendency it has to
augment the happiness of the community is greater than any it has to diminish it.

VII. A measure of government (which is but a particular kind of action, performed by a

particular person or persons) may be said to be conformable to or dictated by the principle of
utility, when in like manner the tendency which it has to augment the happiness of the
community is greater than any which it has to diminish it.

VIII. When an action, or in particular a measure of government, is supposed by a man to be

conformable to the principle of utility, it may be convenient, for the purposes of discourse, to
imagine a kind of law or dictate, called a law or dictate of utility: and to speak of the action in
question, as being conformable to such law or dictate.

IX. A man may be said to be a partizan of the principle of utility, when the approbation or
disapprobation he annexes to any action, or to any measure, is determined by and proportioned to
the tendency which he conceives it to have to augment or to diminish the happiness of the
community: or in other words, to its conformity or unconformity to the laws or dictates of utility.

X. Of an action that is conformable to the principle of utility one may always say either that it is
one that ought to be done, or at least that it is not one that ought not to be done. One may say
also, that it is right it should be done; at least that it is not wrong it should be done: that it is a

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right action; at least that it is not a wrong action. When thus interpreted, the words ought, and
right and wrong and others of that stamp, have a meaning: when otherwise, they have none.

XI. Has the rectitude of this principle been ever formally contested? It should seem that it had,
by those who have not known what they have been meaning. Is it susceptible of any direct proof?
it should seem not: for that which is used to prove everything else, cannot itself be proved: a
chain of proofs must have their commencement somewhere. To give such proof is as impossible
as it is needless.

XII. Not that there is or ever has been that human creature at breathing, however stupid or
perverse, who has not on many, perhaps on most occasions of his life, deferred to it. By the
natural constitution of the human frame, on most occasions of their lives men in general embrace
this principle, without thinking of it: if not for the ordering of their own actions, yet for the trying
of their own actions, as well as of those of other men. There have been, at the same time, not
many perhaps, even of the most intelligent, who have been disposed to embrace it purely and
without reserve. There are even few who have not taken some occasion or other to quarrel with
it, either on account of their not understanding always how to apply it, or on account of some
prejudice or other which they were afraid to examine into, or could not bear to part with. For
such is the stuff that man is made of: in principle and in practice, in a right track and in a wrong
one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.

XIII. When a man attempts to combat the principle of utility, it is with reasons drawn, without
his being aware of it, from that very principle itself. His arguments, if they prove anything, prove
not that the principle is wrong, but that, according to the applications he supposes to be made of
it, it is misapplied. Is it possible for a man to move the earth? Yes; but he must first find out
another earth to stand upon.

XIV. To disprove the propriety of it by arguments is impossible; but, from the causes that have
been mentioned, or from some confused or partial view of it, a man may happen to be disposed
not to relish it. Where this is the case, if he thinks the settling of his opinions on such a subject
worth the trouble, let him take the following steps, and at length, perhaps, he may come to
reconcile himself to it.

1. Let him settle with himself, whether he would wish to discard this principle altogether; if so,
let him consider what it is that all his reasonings (in matters of politics especially) can amount
to?

2. If he would, let him settle with himself, whether he would judge and act without any principle,
or whether there is any other he would judge an act by?

3. If there be, let him examine and satisfy himself whether the principle he thinks he has found is
really any separate intelligible principle; or whether it be not a mere principle in words, a kind of
phrase, which at bottom expresses neither more nor less than the mere averment of his own
unfounded sentiments; that is, what in another person he might be apt to call caprice?

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4. If he is inclined to think that his own approbation or disapprobation, annexed to the idea of an
act, without any regard to its consequences, is a sufficient foundation for him to judge and act
upon, let him ask himself whether his sentiment is to be a standard of right and wrong, with
respect to every other man, or whether every man’s sentiment has the same privilege of being a
standard to itself?

5. In the first case, let him ask himself whether his principle is not despotical, and hostile to all
the rest of human race?

6. In the second case, whether it is not anarchial, and whether at this rate there are not as many
different standards of right and wrong as there are men? and whether even to the same man, the
same thing, which is right to-day, may not (without the least change in its nature) be wrong to-
morrow? and whether the same thing is not right and wrong in the same place at the same time?
and in either case, whether all argument is not at an end? and whether, when two men have said,
‘I like this’, and ‘I don’t like it’, they can (upon such a principle) have anything more to say?

7. If he should have said to himself, No: for that the sentiment which he proposes as a standard
must be grounded on reflection, let him say on what particulars the reflection is to turn? if on
particulars having relation to the utility of the act, then let him say whether this is not deserting
his own principle, and borrowing assistance from that very one in opposition to which he sets it
up: or if not on those particulars, on what other particulars?

8. If he should be for compounding the matter, and adopting his own principle in part, and the
principle of utility in part, let him say how far he will adopt it?

9. When he has settled with himself where he will stop, then let him ask himself how he justifies
to himself the adopting it so far? and why he will not adopt it any farther?

10. Admitting any other principle than the principle of utility to be a right principle, a principle
that it is right for a man to pursue; admitting (what is not true) that the word right can have a
meaning without reference to utility, let him say whether there is any such thing as a motive that
a man can have to pursue the dictates of it: if there is, let him say what that motive is, and how it
is to be distinguished from those which enforce the dictates of utility: if not, then lastly let him
say what it is this other principle can be good for?

OF PRINCIPLES ADVERSE TO THAT OF UTILITY

Chapter II

1. If the principle of utility be a right principle to be governed by, and that in all cases, it follows
from what has been just observed, that whatever principle differs from it in any case must
necessarily be a wrong one. To prove any other principle, therefore, to be a wrong one, there
needs no more than just to show it to be what it is, a principle of which the dictates are in some
point or other different from those of the principle of utility: to state it is to confute it.

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II. A principle may be different from that of utility in two ways: 1. By being constantly opposed
to it: this is the case with a principle which may be termed the principle of asceticism. 2. By
being sometimes opposed to it, and sometimes not, as it may happen: this is the case with
another, which may be termed the principle of sympathy and antipathy.

III. By the principle of asceticism I mean that principle, which, like the principle of utility,
approves or disapproves of any action, according to the tendency which it appears to have to
augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question; but in an inverse
manner: approving of actions in as far as they tend to diminish his happiness; disapproving of
them in as far as they tend to augment it.

IV. It is evident that any one who reprobates any the least particle of pleasure, as such, from
whatever source derived, is pro tanto a partizan of the principle of asceticism. It is only upon that
principle, and not from the principle of utility, that the most abominable pleasure which the vilest
of malefactors ever reaped from his crime would be to be reprobated, if it stood alone. The case
is, that it never does stand alone; but is necessarily followed by such a quantity of pain (or, what
comes to the same thing, such a chance for a certain quantity of pain) that the pleasure in
comparison of it, is as nothing: and this is the true and sole, but perfectly sufficient, reason for
making it a ground for punishment.

V. There are two classes of men of very different complexions, by whom the principle of
asceticism appears to have been embraced; the one a set of moralists, the other a set of
religionists. Different accordingly have been the motives which appear to have recommended it
to the notice of these different parties. Hope, that is the prospect of pleasure, seems to have
animated the former: hope, the aliment of philosophic pride: the hope of honour and reputation at
the hands of men. Fear, that is the prospect of pain, the latter: fear, the offspring of superstitious
fancy: the fear of future punishment at the hands of a splenetic and revengeful Deity. I say in this
case fear: for of the invisible future, fear is more powerful than hope. These circumstances
characterize the two different parties among the partisans of the principle of asceticism; the
parties and their motives different, the principle the same.

VI. The religious party, however, appear to have carried it farther than the philosophical: they
have acted more consistently and less wisely. The philosophical party have scarcely gone farther
than to reprobate pleasure: the religious party have frequently gone so far as to make it a matter
of merit and of duty to court pain. The philosophical party have hardly gone farther than the
making pain a matter of indifference. It is no evil, they have said: they have not said, it is a good.
They have not so much as reprobated all pleasure in the lump. They have discarded only what
they have called the gross; that is, such as are organical, or of which the origin is easily traced up
to such as are organical: they have even cherished and magnified the refined. Yet this, however,
not under the name of pleasure: to cleanse itself from the sordes of its impure original, it was
necessary it should change its name: the honourable, the glorious, the reputable, the becoming,
the honestum, the decorum it was to be called: in short, any thing but pleasure.

VII. From these two sources have flowed the doctrines from which the sentiments of the bulk of
mankind have all along received a tincture of this principle; some from the philosophical, some
from the religious, some from both. Men of education more frequently from the philosophical, as

48
more suited to the elevation of their sentiments: the vulgar more frequently from the
superstitious, as more suited to the narrowness of their intellect, undilated by knowledge: and to
the abjectness of their condition, continually open to the attacks of fear. The tinctures, however,
derived from the two sources, would naturally intermingle, insomuch that a man would not
always know by which of them he was most influenced: and they would often serve to
corroborate and enliven one another. It was this conformity that made a kind of alliance between
parties of a complexion otherwise so dissimilar: and disposed them to unite upon various
occasions against the common enemy, the partizan of the principle of utility, whom they joined
in branding with the odious name of Epicurean.

VIII. The principle of asceticism, however, with whatever warmth it may have been embraced by
its partizans as a rule of private conduct, seems not to have been carried to any considerable
length, when applied to the business of government. In a few instances it has been carried a little
way by the philosophical party: witness the Spartan regimen. Though then, perhaps, it maybe
considered as having been a measure of security: and an application, though a precipitate and
perverse application, of the principle of utility. Scarcely in any instances, to any considerable
length, by the religious: for the various monastic orders, and the societies of the Quakers,
Dumplers, Moravians, and other religionists, have been free societies, whose regimen no man
has been astricted to without the intervention of his own consent. Whatever merit a man may
have thought there would be in making himself miserable, no such notion seems ever to have
occurred to any of them, that it may be a merit, much less a duty, to make others miserable:
although it should seem, that if a certain quantity of misery were a thing so desirable, it would
not matter much whether it were brought by each man upon himself, or by one man upon
another. It is true, that from the same source from whence, among the religionists, the attachment
to the principle of asceticism took its rise, flowed other doctrines and practices, from which
misery in abundance was produced in one man by the instrumentality of another: witness the
holy wars, and the persecutions for religion. But the passion for producing misery in these cases
proceeded upon some special ground: the exercise of it was confined to persons of particular
descriptions: they were tormented, not as men, but as heretics and infidels. To have inflicted the
same miseries on their fellow believers and fellow-sectaries, would have been as blameable in
the eyes even of these religionists, as in those of a partizan of the principle of utility. For a man
to give himself a certain number of stripes was indeed meritorious: but to give the same number
of stripes to another man, not consenting, would have been a sin. We read of saints, who for the
good of their souls, and the mortification of their bodies, have voluntarily yielded themselves a
prey to vermin: but though many persons of this class have wielded the reins of empire, we read
of none who have set themselves to work, and made laws on purpose, with a view of stocking the
body politic with the breed of highwaymen, housebreakers, or incendiaries. If at any time they
have suffered the nation to be preyed upon by swarms of idle pensioners, or useless placemen, it
has rather been from negligence and imbecility, than from any settled plan for oppressing and
plundering of the people. If at any time they have sapped the sources of national wealth, by
cramping commerce, and driving the inhabitants into emigration, it has been with other views,
and in pursuit of other ends. If they have declaimed against the pursuit of pleasure, and the use of
wealth, they have commonly stopped at declamation: they have not, like Lycurgus, made express
ordinances for the purpose of banishing the precious metals. If they have established idleness by
a law, it has been not because idleness, the mother of vice and misery, is itself a virtue, but
because idleness (say they) is the road to holiness. If under the notion of fasting, they have joined

49
in the plan of confining their subjects to a diet, thought by some to be of the most nourishing and
prolific nature, it has been not for the sake of making them tributaries to the nations by whom
that diet was to be supplied, but for the sake of manifesting their own power, and exercising the
obedience of the people. If they have established, or suffered to be established, punishments for
the breach of celibacy, they have done no more than comply with the petitions of those deluded
rigorists, who, dupes to the ambitious and deep-laid policy of their rulers, first laid themselves
under that idle obligation by a vow.

IX. The principle of asceticism seems originally to have been the reverie of certain hasty
speculators, who having perceived, or fancied, that certain pleasures, when reaped in certain
circumstances, have, at the long run, been attended with pains more than equivalent to them,
took occasion to quarrel with every thing that offered itself under the name of pleasure. Having
then got thus far, and having forgot the point which they set out from, they pushed on, and went
so much further as to think it meritorious to fall in love with pain. Even this, we see, is at bottom
but the principle of utility misapplied.

X. The principle of utility is capable of being consistently pursued; and it is but tautology to say,
that the more consistently it is pursued, the better it must ever be for human-kind. The principle
of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one
tenth part of the inhabitants of this earth pursue it consistently, and in a day’s time they will have
turned it into a hell.

The Doctrine of Fascism (1932)

By Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile

Like all sound political conceptions, Fascism is action and it is thought; action in which doctrine
is immanent, and doctrine arising from a given system of historical forces in which it is inserted,
and working on them from within. It has therefore a form correlated to contingencies of time and
space; but it has also an ideal content which makes it an expression of truth in the higher region
of the history of thought. There is no way of exercising a spiritual influence in the world as a
human will dominating the will of others, unless one has a conception both of the transient and
the specific reality on which that action is to be exercised, and of the permanent and universal
reality in which the transient dwells and has its being. To know men one must know man; and to
know man one must be acquainted with reality and its laws. There can be no conception of the
State which is not fundamentally a conception of life: philosophy or intuition, system of ideas
evolving within the framework of logic or concentrated in a vision or a faith, but always, at least
potentially, an organic conception of the world.

Thus many of the practical expressions of Fascism such as party organization, system of
education, and discipline can only be understood when considered in relation to its general
attitude toward life. A spiritual attitude. Fascism sees in the world not only those superficial,
material aspects in which man appears as an individual, standing by himself, self-centered,
subject to natural law, which instinctively urges him toward a life of selfish momentary pleasure;
it sees not only the individual but the nation and the country; individuals and generations bound

50
together by a moral law, with common traditions and a mission which suppressing the instinct
for life closed in a brief circle of pleasure, builds up a higher life, founded on duty, a life free
from the limitations of time and space, in which the individual, by self- sacrifice, the
renunciation of self-interest, by death itself, can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which
his value as a man consists.

The conception is therefore a spiritual one, arising from the general reaction of the century
against the materialistic positivism of the XIXth century….

Fascism wants man to be active and to engage in action with all his energies; it wants him to be
manfully aware of the difficulties besetting him and ready to face them. It conceives of life as a
struggle in which it behooves a man to win for himself a really worthy place, first of all by fitting
himself (physically, morally, intellectually) to become the implement required for winning it. As
for the individual, so for the nation, and so for mankind. Hence the high value of culture in all its
forms (artistic, religious, scientific) and the outstanding importance of education. Hence also the
essential value of work, by which man subjugates nature and creates the human world
(economic, political, ethical, and intellectual).

This positive conception of life is obviously an ethical one. […] No action is exempt from moral
judgment; no activity can be despoiled of the value which a moral purpose confers on all things.
Therefore life, as conceived of by the Fascist, is serious, austere, and religious; all its
manifestations are poised in a world sustained by moral forces and subject to spiritual
responsibilities. The Fascist disdains an “easy" life.

The Fascist conception of life is a religious one, in which man is viewed in his immanent relation
to a higher law, endowed with an objective will transcending the individual and raising him to
conscious membership of a spiritual society. […]

In the Fascist conception of history, man is man only by virtue of the spiritual process to which
he contributes as a member of the family, the social group, the nation, and in function of history
to which all nations bring their contribution. Hence the great value of tradition in records, in
language, in customs, in the rules of social life. […]

Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and
accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands
for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity. It is opposed to classical
liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the
State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State
in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts:

The rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual. And if liberty is to be the
attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then
Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of
the individual within the State. The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it
no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is
totalitarian, and the Fascist State - a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values - interprets,

51
develops, and potentates the whole life of a people.

No individuals or groups (political parties, cultural associations, economic unions, social classes)
outside the State. Fascism is therefore opposed to Socialism to which unity within the State
(which amalgamates classes into a single economic and ethical reality) is unknown, and which
sees in history nothing but the class struggle. Fascism is likewise opposed to trade unionism as a
class weapon. But when brought within the orbit of the State, Fascism recognizes the real needs
which gave rise to socialism and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or
corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of
the State. […]

A nation, as expressed in the State, is a living, ethical entity only in so far as it is progressive.
Inactivity is death. Therefore, the State is not only Authority which governs and confers legal
form and spiritual value on individual wills, but it is also Power which makes its will felt and
respected beyond its own frontiers, thus affording practical proof of the universal character of the
decisions necessary to ensure its development. This implies organization and expansion,
potential if not actual. Thus, the State equates itself to the will of man, whose development
cannot he checked by obstacles and which, by achieving self-expression, demonstrates its
infinity. […]

Fascism, in short, is not only a lawgiver and a founder of institutions, but an educator and a
promoter of spiritual life. It aims at refashioning not only the forms of life but their content -
man, his character, and his faith. To achieve this purpose it enforces discipline and uses
authority, entering into the soul and ruling with undisputed sway. Therefore, it has chosen as its
emblem the Lictor’s rods, the symbol of unity, strength, and justice.

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DOCTRINE

[…]
\Fascism is now clearly defined not only as a regime but as a doctrine. This means that Fascism,
exercising its critical faculties on itself and on others, has studied from its own special standpoint
and judged by its own standards all the problems affecting the material and intellectual interests
now causing such grave anxiety to the nations of the world, and is ready to deal with them by its
own policies.

First of all, as regards the future development of mankind, and quite apart from all present
political considerations, Fascism does not, generally speaking, believe in the possibility or utility
of perpetual peace. It therefore discards pacifism as a cloak for cowardly supine renunciation in
contradistinction to self-sacrifice. War alone keys up all human energies to their maximum
tension and sets the seal of nobility on those peoples who have the courage to face it. All other
tests are substitutes which never place a man face to face with himself before the alternative of
life or death. […] The Fascist accepts and loves life; he rejects and despises suicide as cowardly.
Life as he understands it means duty, elevation, conquest; life must be lofty and full, it must be
lived for oneself but above all for others, both near bye and far off, present and future.

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The population policy of the regime is the consequence of these premises. The Fascist loves his
neighbor, but the word neighbor “does not stand for some vague and unseizable conception.
Love of one's neighbor does not exclude necessary educational severity; still less does it exclude
differentiation and rank. Fascism will have nothing to do with universal embraces; as a member
of the community of nations it looks other peoples straight in the eyes; it is vigilant and on its
guard; it follows others in all their manifestations and notes any changes in their interests; and it
does not allow itself to be deceived by mutable and fallacious appearances.

Such a conception of life makes Fascism the resolute negation of the doctrine underlying so-
called scientific and Marxian socialism, the doctrine of historic materialism which would explain
the history of mankind in terms of the class struggle and by changes in the processes and
instruments of production, to the exclusion of all else. […]

After socialism, Fascism trains its guns on the whole block of democratic ideologies, and rejects
both their premises and their practical applications and implements. […] Democratic regimes
may be described as those under which the people are, from time to time, deluded into the belief
that they exercise sovereignty, while all the time real sovereignty resides in and is exercised by
other and sometimes irresponsible and secret forces. [...]

Fascism has outgrown the dilemma: monarchy v. republic, over which democratic regimes too
long dallied, attributing all insufficiencies to the former and praising the latter as a regime of
perfection, whereas experience teaches that some republics are inherently reactionary and
absolutist while some monarchies accept the most daring political and social experiments.
[…]
In rejecting democracy Fascism rejects the absurd conventional lie of political equalitarianism,
the habit of collective irresponsibility, the myth of felicity and indefinite progress. But if
democracy be understood as meaning a regime in which the masses are not driven back to the
margin of the State, and then the writer of these pages has already defined Fascism as an
organized, centralized, authoritarian democracy.

Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political
and the economic sphere. […] The liberal XIX century, after piling up innumerable Gordian
Knots, tried to cut them with the sword of the world war. Never has any religion claimed so cruel
a sacrifice. Were the Gods of liberalism thirsting for blood? Now liberalism is preparing to close
the doors of its temples, deserted by the peoples who feel that the agnosticism it professed in the
sphere of economics and the indifferentism of which it has given proof in the sphere of politics
and morals, would lead the world to ruin in the future as they have done in the past. This
explains why all the political experiments of our day are anti-liberal, and it is supremely
ridiculous to endeavor on this account to put them outside the pale of history, as though history
were a preserve set aside for liberalism and its adepts; as though liberalism were the last word in
civilization beyond which no one can go.

A party governing a nation “totalitarianly" is a new departure in history. There are no points of
reference nor of comparison. From beneath the ruins of liberal, socialist, and democratic
doctrines, Fascism extracts those elements which are still vital. It preserves what may be
described as "the acquired facts" of history; it rejects all else. […]

53
The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions,
and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative. Individuals and
groups are admissible in so far as they come within the State. Instead of directing the game and
guiding the material and moral progress of the community, the liberal State restricts its activities
to recording results. The Fascist State is wide awake and has a will of its own. For this reason it
can be described as " ethical".

At the first quinquennial assembly of the regime, in 1929, I said “The Fascist State is not a night
watchman, solicitous only of the personal safety of the citizens; nor is it organized exclusively
for the purpose of guaranteeing a certain degree of material prosperity and relatively peaceful
conditions of life, a board of directors would do as much. Neither is it exclusively political,
divorced from practical realities and holding itself aloof from the multifarious activities of the
citizens and the nation. The State, as conceived and realized by Fascism, is a spiritual and ethical
entity for securing the political, juridical, and economic organization of the nation, an
organization which in its origin and growth is a manifestation of the spirit. The State guarantees
the internal and external safety of the country, but it also safeguards and transmits the spirit of
the people, elaborated down the ages in its language, its customs, its faith. The State is not only
the present; it is also the past and above all the future. Transcending the individual's brief spell of
life, the State stands for the immanent conscience of the nation. The forms in which it finds
expression change, but the need for it remains. The State educates the citizens to civism, makes
them aware of their mission, urges them to unity; its justice harmonizes their divergent interests;
it transmits to future generations the conquests of the mind in the fields of science, art, law,
human solidarity; it leads men up from primitive tribal life to that highest manifestation of
human power, imperial rule. The State hands down to future generations the memory of those
who laid down their lives to ensure its safety or to obey its laws; it sets up as examples and
records for future ages the names of the captains who enlarged its territory and of the men of
genius who have made it famous. Whenever respect for the State declines and the disintegrating
and centrifugal tendencies of individuals and groups prevail, nations are headed for decay".
[…]

Fascism desires the State to be strong and organic, based on broad foundations of popular
support. The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes
its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporative,
social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the
nation, organized in their respective associations, circulate within the State. A State based on
millions of individuals who recognize its authority, feel its action, and are ready to serve its ends
is not the tyrannical state of a mediaeval lordling. It has nothing in common with the despotic
States existing prior to or subsequent to 1789. Far from crushing the individual, the Fascist State
multiplies his energies, just as in a regiment a soldier is not diminished but multiplied by the
number of his fellow soldiers.

The Fascist State organizes the nation, but it leaves the individual adequate elbow room. It has
curtailed useless or harmful liberties while preserving those which are essential. In such matters
the individual cannot be the judge, but the State only.

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The Fascist State is not indifferent to religious phenomena in general nor does it maintain an
attitude of indifference to Roman Catholicism, the special, positive religion of Italians. The State
has not got a theology, but it has a moral code. The Fascist State sees in religion one of the
deepest of spiritual manifestations and for this reason it not only respects religion but defends
and protects it. The Fascist State does not attempt, as did Robespierre at the height of the
revolutionary delirium of the Convention, to set up a "god” of its own; nor does it vainly seek, as
does Bolshevism, to efface God from the soul of man. Fascism respects the God of ascetics,
saints, and heroes, and it also respects God as conceived by the ingenuous and primitive heart of
the people, the God to whom their prayers are raised.

The Fascist State expresses the will to exercise power and to command. Here the Roman
tradition is embodied in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understood by the Fascist
doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical. An
imperial nation, that is to say a nation a which directly or indirectly is a leader of others, can
exist without the need of conquering a single square mile of territory. Fascism sees in the
imperialistic spirit - i.e., in the tendency of nations to expand - a manifestation of their vitality. In
the opposite tendency, which would limit their interests to the home country, it sees a symptom
of decadence. Peoples who rise or rearise are imperialistic; renunciation is characteristic of dying
peoples. The Fascist doctrine is that best suited to the tendencies and feelings of a people which,
like the Italian, after lying fallow during centuries of foreign servitude, are now reasserting itself
in the world.

But imperialism implies discipline, the coordination of efforts, a deep sense of duty and a spirit
of self-sacrifice. This explains many aspects of the practical activity of the regime, and the
direction taken by many of the forces of the State, as also the severity which has to be exercised
towards those who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement of XXth century
Italy by agitating outgrown ideologies of the XIXth century, ideologies rejected wherever great
experiments in political and social transformations are being dared.

Never before have the peoples thirsted for authority, direction, order, as they do now. If each age
has its doctrine, then innumerable symptoms indicate that the doctrine of our age is the Fascist.
That it is vital is shown by the fact that it has aroused a faith; that this faith has conquered souls
is shown by the fact that Fascism can point to its fallen heroes and its martyrs. Fascism has now
acquired throughout the world that universally which belongs to all doctrines which by achieving
self-expression represent a moment in the history of human thought.

Heinrich Himmler speech to the SS (1943)

What we accomplish in our armaments factories ... even though it will only be at the end of the
war when we can first assess it -- prove it ... will be a remarkable and noteworthy
accomplishment. [pause]

I want to also mention a very difficult subject ... before you, with complete candor. It should be
discussed amongst us, yet nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public. Just as we did not
hesitate on June 30 to carry out our duty as ordered, and stand comrades who had failed against

55
the wall and shoot them -- about which we have never spoken, and never will speak. That was,
thank God, a kind of tact natural to us, a foregone conclusion of that tact, that we have never
conversed about it amongst ourselves, never spoken about it, everyone ... shuddered, and
everyone was clear that the next time, he would do the same thing again, if it were commanded
and necessary.

I am talking about the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of
those things that is easily said. [quickly] “The Jewish people is being exterminated,” every Party
member will tell you, “perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews,
exterminating them, a small matter”. [less quickly] And then along they all come, all the 80
million upright Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. [mockingly] They say: all the others
are swine, but here is a first-class Jew. [a few people laugh] And ... [audience cough] [carefully]
... none of them has seen it, has endured it. Most of you will know what it means when 100
bodies lie together, when 500 are there or when there are 1000. And ... to have seen this through
and -- with the exception of human weakness -- to have remained decent, has made us hard and
is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned. Because we know how difficult
things would be, if today in every city during the bomb attacks, the burdens of war and the
privations, we still had Jews as secret saboteurs, agitators and instigators. We would probably be
at the same stage as 16/17, if the Jews still resided in the body of the German people.

We have taken away the riches that they had, and ... I have given a strict order, which
Obergruppenführer Pohl has carried out, we have delivered these riches [carefully] to the Reich,
to the State. We have taken nothing from them for ourselves. A few, who have offended against
this, will be judged in accordance with an order, [loudly] that I gave at the beginning: he who
takes even one Mark of this is a dead man. [less loudly] A number of SS men have offended
against this order. They are very few, and they will be dead men [yells] WITHOUT MERCY!
We have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill[5] this people who would
kill us. We however do not have the right to enrich ourselves with even one fur, with one Mark,
with one cigarette, with one watch, with anything. That we do not have. Because we don't want,
at the end of all this, to get sick and die from the same bacillus that we have exterminated. I will
never see it happen that even one ... bit of putrefaction comes in contact with us, or takes root in
us. On the contrary, where it might try to take root, we will burn it out together. But altogether
we can say: [slowly, carefully] We have carried out this most difficult task for the love of our
people. And we have suffered no defect within us, in our soul, or in our character.

From Democracy and Education (1916)

John Dewey

Chapter Four: Education as Growth

1. The Conditions of Growth.

In directing the activities of the young, society determines its own future in determining that of
the young. Since the young at a given time will at some later date compose the society of that
period, the latter's nature will largely turn upon the direction children's activities were given at an

56
earlier period. This cumulative movement of action toward a later result is what is meant by
growth.

The primary condition of growth is immaturity. This may seem to be a mere truism—saying that
a being can develop only in some point in which he is undeveloped. But the prefix "im" of the
word immaturity means something positive, not a mere void or lack. It is noteworthy that the
terms "capacity" and "potentiality" have a double meaning, one sense being negative, the other
positive. Capacity may denote mere receptivity, like the capacity of a quart measure. We may
mean by potentiality a merely dormant or quiescent state—a capacity to become something
different under external influences. But we also mean by capacity an ability, a power; and by
potentiality potency, force. Now when we say that immaturity means the possibility of growth,
we are not referring to absence of powers which may exist at a later time; we express a force
positively present—the ability to develop.

Our tendency to take immaturity as mere lack, and growth as something which fills up the gap
between the immature and the mature is due to regarding childhood comparatively, instead of
intrinsically. We treat it simply as a privation because we are measuring it by adulthood as a
fixed standard. This fixes attention upon what the child has not, and will not have till he becomes
a man. This comparative standpoint is legitimate enough for some purposes, but if we make it
final, the question arises whether we are not guilty of an overweening presumption. Children, if
they could express themselves articulately and sincerely, would tell a different tale; and there is
excellent adult authority for the conviction that for certain moral and intellectual purposes adults
must become as little children. The seriousness of the assumption of the negative quality of the
possibilities of immaturity is apparent when we reflect that it sets up as an ideal and standard a
static end. The fulfillment of growing is taken to mean an accomplished growth: that is to say, an
Ungrowth, something which is no longer growing. The futility of the assumption is seen in the
fact that every adult resents the imputation of having no further possibilities of growth; and so far
as he finds that they are closed to him mourns the fact as evidence of loss, instead of falling back
on the achieved as adequate manifestation of power. Why an unequal measure for child and
man?

Taken absolutely, instead of comparatively, immaturity designates a positive force or ability,—

the pouter to grow. We do not have to draw out or educe positive activities from a child, as some
educational doctrines would have it. Where there is life, there are already eager and impassioned
activities. Growth is not something done to them; it is something they do. The positive and
constructive aspect of possibility gives the key to understanding the two chief traits of
immaturity, dependence and plasticity.

(1) It sounds absurd to hear dependence spoken of as something positive, still more absurd as a
power. Yet if helplessness were all there were in dependence, no development could ever take
place. A merely impotent being has to be carried, forever, by others. The fact that dependence is
accompanied by growth in ability, not by an ever increasing lapse into parasitism, suggests that it
is already something constructive. Being merely sheltered by others would not promote growth.
For

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(2) it would only build a wall around impotence. With reference to the physical world, the child
is helpless. He lacks at birth and for a long time thereafter power to make his way physically, to
make his own living. If he had to do that by himself, he would hardly survive an hour. On this
side his helplessness is almost complete. The young of the brutes are immeasurably his superiors.
He is physically weak and not able to turn the strength which he possesses to coping with the
physical environment.

1. The thoroughgoing character of this helplessness suggests, however, some compensating

power. The relative ability of the young of brute animals to adapt themselves fairly well to
physical conditions from an early period suggests the fact that their life is not intimately bound
up with the life of those about them. They are compelled, so to speak, to have physical gifts
because they are lacking in social gifts. Human infants, on the other hand, can get along with
physical incapacity just because of their social capacity. We sometimes talk and think as if they
simply happened to be physically in a social environment; as if social forces exclusively existed
in the adults who take care of them, they being passive recipients. If it were said that children are
themselves marvelously endowed with power to enlist the cooperative attention of others, this
would be thought to be a backhanded way of saying that others are marvelously attentive to the
needs of children. But observation shows that children are gifted with an equipment of the first
order for social intercourse. Few grown-up persons retain all of the flexible and sensitive ability
of children to vibrate sympathetically with the attitudes and doings of those about them.
Inattention to physical things (going with incapacity to control them) is accompanied by a
corresponding intensification of interest and attention as to the doings of people. The native
mechanism of the child and his impulses all tend to facile social responsiveness. The statement
that children, before adolescence, are egotistically self-centered, even if it were true, would not
contradict the truth of this statement. It would simply indicate that their social responsiveness is
employed on their own behalf, not that it does not exist. But the statement is not true as matter of
fact. The facts which are cited in support of the alleged pure egoism of children really show the
intensity and directness with which they go to their mark. If the ends which form the mark seem
narrow and selfish to adults, it is only because adults (by means of a similar engrossment in their
day) have mastered these ends, which have consequently ceased to interest them. Most of the
remainder of children's alleged native egoism is simply an egoism which runs counter to an
adult's egoism. To a grown-up person who is too absorbed in his own affairs to take an interest in
children's affairs, children doubtless seem unreasonably engrossed in their own affairs.

From a social standpoint, dependence denotes a power rather than a weakness; it involves
interdependence. There is always a danger that increased personal independence will decrease
the social capacity of an individual. In making him more self-reliant, it may make him more self-
sufficient; it may lead to aloofness and indifference. It often makes an individual so insensitive in
his relations to others as to develop an illusion of being really able to stand and act alone—an
unnamed form of insanity which is responsible for a large part of the remediable suffering of the
world.

2. The specific adaptability of an immature creature for growth constitutes his plasticity. This is
something quite different from the plasticity of putty or wax. It is not a capacity to take on
change of form in accord with external pressure. It lies near the pliable elasticity by which some
persons take on the color of their surroundings while retaining their own bent. But it is

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something deeper than this. It is essentially the ability to learn from experience; the power to
retain from one experience something which is of avail in coping with the difficulties of a later
situation. This means power to modify actions on the basis of the results of prior experiences, the
power to develop dispositions. Without it, the acquisition of habits is impossible.

It is a familiar fact that the young of the higher animals, and especially the human young, have to
learn to utilize their instinctive reactions. The human being is born with a greater number of
instinctive tendencies than other animals. But the instincts of the lower animals perfect
themselves for appropriate action at an early period after birth, while most of those of the human
infant are of little account just as they stand. An original specialized power of adjustment secures
immediate efficiency, but, like a railway ticket, it is good for one route only. A being who, in
order to use his eyes, ears, hands, and legs, has to experiment in making varied combinations of
their reactions, achieves a control that is flexible and varied. A chick, for example, pecks
accurately at a bit of food in a few hours after hatching. This means that definite coordinations of
activities of the eyes in seeing and of the body and head in striking are perfected in a few trials.
An infant requires about six months to be able to gauge with approximate accuracy the action in
reaching which will coordinate with his visual activities; to be able, that is, to tell whether he can
reach a seen object and just how to execute the reaching. As a result, the chick is limited by the
relative perfection of its original endowment. The infant has the advantage of the multitude of
instinctive tentative reactions and of the experiences that accompany them, even though he is at a
temporary disadvantage because they cross one another. In learning an action, instead of having
it given ready-made, one of necessity learns to vary its factors, to make varied combinations of
them, according to change of circumstances. A possibility of continuing progress is opened up by
the fact that in learning one act, methods are developed good for use in other situations. Still
more important is the fact that the human being acquires a habit of learning. He learns to learn.

The importance for human life of the two facts of dependence and variable control has been
summed up in the doctrine of the significance of prolonged infancy. 1 This prolongation is
significant from the standpoint of the adult members of the group as well as from that of the
young. The presence of dependent and learning beings is a stimulus to nurture and affection. The
need for constant continued care was probably a chief means in transforming temporary
cohabitations into permanent unions. It certainly was a chief influence in forming habits of
affectionate and sympathetic watchfulness; that constructive interest in the well-being of others
which is essential to associated life. Intellectually, this moral development meant the
introduction of many new objects of attention; it stimulated foresight and planning for the future.
Thus there is a reciprocal influence. Increasing complexity of social life requires a longer period
of infancy in which to acquire the needed powers; this prolongation of dependence means
prolongation of plasticity, or power of acquiring variable and novel modes of control. Hence it
provides a further push to social progress.

2. Habits as Expressions of Growth. We have already noted that plasticity is the capacity to
retain and carry over from prior experience factors which modify subsequent activities. This
signifies the capacity to acquire habits, or develop definite dispositions. We have now to
consider the salient features of habits. In the first place, a habit is a form of executive skill, of
efficiency in doing. A habit means an ability to use natural conditions as means to ends. It is an
active control of the environment through control of the organs of action. We are perhaps apt to

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emphasize the control of the body at the expense of control of the environment. We think of
walking, talking, playing the piano, the specialized skills characteristic of the etcher, the surgeon,
the bridge-builder, as if they were simply ease, deftness, and accuracy on the part of the
organism. They are that, of course; but the measure of the value of these qualities lies in the
economical and effective control of the environment which they secure. To be able to walk is to
have certain properties of nature at our disposal—and so with all other habits.

Education is not infrequently defined as consisting in the acquisition of those habits that effect an
adjustment of an individual and his environment. The definition expresses an essential phase of
growth. But it is essential that adjustment be understood in its active sense of control of means
for achieving ends. If we think of a habit simply as a change wrought in the organism, ignoring
the fact that this change consists in ability to effect subsequent changes in the environment, we
shall be led to think of "adjustment" as a conformity to environment as wax conforms to the seal
which impresses it. The environment is thought of as something fixed, providing in its fixity the
end and standard of changes taking place in the organism; adjustment is just fitting ourselves to
this fixity of external conditions. 2 Habit as habituation is indeed something relatively passive;
we get used to our surroundings—to our clothing, our shoes, and gloves; to the atmosphere as
long as it is fairly equable; to our daily associates, etc. Conformity to the environment, a change
wrought in the organism without reference to ability to modify surroundings, is a marked trait of
such habituations. Aside from the fact that we are not entitled to carry over the traits of such
adjustments (which might well be called accommodations, to mark them off from active
adjustments) into habits of active use of our surroundings, two features of habituations are worth
notice. In the first place, we get used to things by first using them.

Consider getting used to a strange city. At first, there is excessive stimulation and excessive and
ill-adapted response. Gradually certain stimuli are selected because of their relevancy, and others
are degraded. We can say either that we do not respond to them any longer, or more truly that we
have effected a persistent response to them—an equilibrium of adjustment. This means, in the
second place, that this enduring adjustment supplies the background upon which are made
specific adjustments, as occasion arises. We are never interested in changing the whole
environment; there is much that we take for granted and accept just as it already is. Upon this
background our activities focus at certain points in an endeavor to introduce needed changes.
Habituation is thus our adjustment to an environment which at the time we are not concerned
with modifying, and which supplies a leverage to our active habits. Adaptation, in fine, is quite
as much adaptation of the environment to our own activities as of our activities to the
environment. A savage tribe manages to live on a desert plain. It adapts itself. But its adaptation
involves a maximum of accepting, tolerating, putting up with things as they are, a maximum of
passive acquiescence, and a minimum of active control, of subjection to use. A civilized people
enters upon the scene. It also adapts itself. It introduces irrigation; it searches the world for plants
and animals that will flourish under such conditions; it improves, by careful selection, those
which are growing there. As a consequence, the wilderness blossoms as a rose. The savage is
merely habituated; the civilized man has habits which transform the environment.

The significance of habit is not exhausted, however, in its executive and motor phase. It means
formation of intellectual and emotional disposition as well as an increase in ease, economy, and
efficiency of action. Any habit marks an inclination—an active preference and choice for the

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conditions involved in its exercise. A habit does not wait, Micawber-like, for a stimulus to turn
up so that it may get busy; it actively seeks for occasions to pass into full operation. If its
expression is unduly blocked, inclination shows itself in uneasiness and intense craving. A habit
also marks an intellectual disposition. Where there is a habit, there is acquaintance with the
materials and equipment to which action is applied. There is a definite way of understanding the
situations in which the habit operates. Modes of thought, of observation and reflection, enter as
forms of skill and of desire into the habits that make a man an engineer, an architect, a physician,
or a merchant. In unskilled forms of labor, the intellectual factors are at minimum precisely
because the habits involved are not of a high grade. But there are habits of judging and reasoning
as truly as of handling a tool, painting a picture, or conducting an experiment. Such statements
are, however, understatements. The habits of mind involved in habits of the eye and hand supply
the latter with their significance. Above all, the intellectual element in a habit fixes the relation of
the habit to varied and elastic use, and hence to continued growth. We speak of fixed habits.
Well, the phrase may mean powers so well established that their possessor always has them as
resources when needed. But the phrase is also used to mean ruts, routine ways, with loss of
freshness, open-mindedness, and originality. Fixity of habit may mean that something has a fixed
hold upon us, instead of our having a free hold upon things. This fact explains two points in a
common notion about habits: their identification with mechanical and external modes of action
to the neglect of mental and moral attitudes, and the tendency to give them a bad meaning, an
identification with "bad habits." Many a person would feel surprised to have his aptitude in his
chosen profession called a habit, and would naturally think of his use of tobacco, liquor, or
profane language as typical of the meaning of habit. A habit is to him something which has a
hold on him, something not easily thrown off even though judgment condemn it.

Habits reduce themselves to routine ways of acting, or degenerate into ways of action to which
we are enslaved just in the degree in which intelligence is disconnected from them. Routine
habits are unthinking habits: "bad" habits are habits so severed from reason that they are opposed
to the conclusions of conscious deliberation and decision. As we have seen, the acquiring of
habits is due to an original plasticity of our natures: to our ability to vary responses till we find
an appropriate and efficient way of acting. Routine habits, and habits that possess us instead of
our possessing them, are habits which put an end to plasticity. They mark the close of power to
vary. There can be no doubt of the tendency of organic plasticity, of the physiological basis, to
lessen with growing years. The instinctively mobile and eagerly varying action of childhood, the
love of new stimuli and new developments, too easily passes into a "settling down," which
means aversion to change and a resting on past achievements. Only an environment which
secures the full use of intelligence in the process of forming habits can counteract this tendency.
Of course, the same hardening of the organic conditions affects the physiological structures
which are involved in thinking. But this fact only indicates the need of persistent care to see to it
that the function of intelligence is invoked to its maximum possibility. The short-sighted method
which falls back on mechanical routine and repetition to secure external efficiency of habit,
motor skill without accompanying thought, marks a deliberate closing in of surroundings upon
growth.

3. The Educational Bearings of the Conception of Development. We have had so far but little to
say in this chapter about education. We have been occupied with the conditions and implications
of growth. If our conclusions are justified, they carry with them, however, definite educational

61
consequences. When it is said that education is development, everything depends upon how
development is conceived. Our net conclusion is that life is development, and that developing,
growing, is life. Translated into its educational equivalents, that means (i) that the educational
process has no end beyond itself; it is its own end; and that (ii) the educational process is one of
continual reorganizing, reconstructing, transforming.

1. Development when it is interpreted in comparative terms, that is, with respect to the special
traits of child and adult life, means the direction of power into special channels: the formation of
habits involving executive skill, definiteness of interest, and specific objects of observation and
thought. But the comparative view is not final. The child has specific powers; to ignore that fact
is to stunt or distort the organs upon which his growth depends. The adult uses his powers to
transform his environment, thereby occasioning new stimuli which redirect his powers and keep
them developing. Ignoring this fact means arrested development, a passive accommodation.
Normal child and normal adult alike, in other words, are engaged in growing. The difference
between them is not the difference between growth and no growth, but between the modes of
growth appropriate to different conditions. With respect to the development of powers devoted to
coping with specific scientific and economic problems we may say the child should be growing
in manhood. With respect to sympathetic curiosity, unbiased responsiveness, and openness of
mind, we may say that the adult should be growing in childlikeness. One statement is as true as
the other.

Three ideas which have been criticized, namely, the merely privative nature of immaturity, static
adjustment to a fixed environment, and rigidity of habit, are all connected with a false idea of
growth or development,—that it is a movement toward a fixed goal. Growth is regarded as
having an end, instead of being an end. The educational counterparts of the three fallacious ideas
are first, failure to take account of the instinctive or native powers of the young; secondly, failure
to develop initiative in coping with novel situations; thirdly, an undue emphasis upon drill and
other devices which secure automatic skill at the expense of personal perception. In all cases, the
adult environment is accepted as a standard for the child. He is to be brought up to it.

Natural instincts are either disregarded or treated as nuisances—as obnoxious traits to be

suppressed, or at all events to be brought into conformity with external standards. Since
conformity is the aim, what is distinctively individual in a young person is brushed aside, or
regarded as a source of mischief or anarchy. Conformity is made equivalent to uniformity.
Consequently, there are induced lack of interest in the novel, aversion to progress, and dread of
the uncertain and the unknown. Since the end of growth is outside of and beyond the process of
growing, external agents have to be resorted to to induce movement toward it. Whenever a
method of education is stigmatized as mechanical, we may be sure that external pressure is
brought to bear to reach an external end.

2. Since in reality there is nothing to which growth is relative save more growth, there is nothing
to which education is subordinate save more education. It is a commonplace to say that education
should not cease when one leaves school. The point of this commonplace is that the purpose of
school education is to insure the continuance of education by organizing the powers that insure
growth. The inclination to learn from life itself and to make the conditions of life such that all
will learn in the process of living is the finest product of schooling.

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When we abandon the attempt to define immaturity by means of fixed comparison with adult
accomplishments, we are compelled to give up thinking of it as denoting lack of desired traits.
Abandoning this notion, we are also forced to surrender our habit of thinking of instruction as a
method of supplying this lack by pouring knowledge into a mental and moral hole which awaits
filling. Since life means growth, a living creature lives as truly and positively at one stage as at
another, with the same intrinsic fullness and the same absolute claims. Hence education means
the enterprise of supplying the conditions which insure growth, or adequacy of life, irrespective
of age. We first look with impatience upon immaturity, regarding it as something to be got over
as rapidly as possible. Then the adult formed by such educative methods looks back with
impatient regret upon childhood and youth as a scene of lost opportunities and wasted powers.
This ironical situation will endure till it is recognized that living has its own intrinsic quality and
that the business of education is with that quality. Realization that life is growth protects us from
that so-called idealizing of childhood which in effect is nothing but lazy indulgence. Life is not
to be identified with every superficial act and interest. Even though it is not always easy to tell
whether what appears to be mere surface fooling is a sign of some nascent as yet untrained
power, we must remember that manifestations are not to be accepted as ends in themselves. They
are signs of possible growth. They are to be turned into means of development, of carrying
power forward, not indulged or cultivated for their own sake. Excessive attention to surface
phenomena (even in the way of rebuke as well as of encouragement) may lead to their fixation
and thus to arrested development. What impulses are moving toward, not what they have been, is
the important thing for parent and teacher. The true principle of respect for immaturity cannot be
better put than in the words of Emerson: "Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass
not on his solitude. But I hear the outcry which replies to this suggestion: Would you verily
throw up the reins of public and private discipline; would you leave the young child to the mad
career of his own passions and whimsies, and call this anarchy a respect for the child's nature? I
answer,—Respect the child, respect him to the end, but also respect yourself.... The two points in
a boy's training are, to keep his naturel and train off all but that; to keep his naturel, but stop off
his uproar, fooling, and horseplay; keep his nature and arm it with knowledge in the very
direction in which it points." And as Emerson goes on to show this reverence for childhood and
youth instead of opening up an easy and easy-going path to the instructors, "involves at once,
immense claims on the time, the thought, on the life of the teacher. It requires time, use, insight,
event, all the great lessons and assistances of God; and only to think of using it implies character
and profoundness."

Summary. Power to grow depends upon need for others and plasticity.

Both of these conditions are at their height in childhood and youth. Plasticity or the power to
learn from experience means the formation of habits. Habits give control over the environment,
power to utilize it for human purposes. Habits take the form both of habituation, or a general and
persistent balance of organic activities with the surroundings, and of active capacities to readjust
activity to meet new conditions. The former furnishes the background of growth; the latter
constitute growing. Active habits involve thought, invention, and initiative in applying capacities
to new aims. They are opposed to routine which marks an arrest of growth. Since growth is the
characteristic of life, education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself. The criterion
of the value of school education is the extent in which it creates a desire for continued growth
and supplies means for making the desire effective in fact.

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1 Intimations of its significance are found in a number of writers, but John Fiske, in his
Excursions of an Evolutionist, is accredited with its first systematic exposition.

2 This conception is, of course, a logical correlate of the conceptions of the external relation of
stimulus and response, considered in the last chapter, and of the negative conceptions of
immaturity and plasticity noted in this chapter.

Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education

For the most part, save incidentally, we have hitherto been concerned with education as it may
exist in any social group. We have now to make explicit the differences in the spirit, material,
and method of education as it operates in different types of community life. To say that
education is a social function, securing direction and development in the immature through their
participation in the life of the group to which they belong, is to say in effect that education will
vary with the quality of life which prevails in a group. Particularly is it true that a society which
not only changes but-which has the ideal of such change as will improve it, will have different
standards and methods of education from one which aims simply at the perpetuation of its own
customs. To make the general ideas set forth applicable to our own educational practice, it is,
therefore, necessary to come to closer quarters with the nature of present social life.

1. The Implications of Human Association. Society is one word, but many things. Men associate
together in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of purposes. One man is concerned in a multitude
of diverse groups, in which his associates may be quite different. It often seems as if they had
nothing in common except that they are modes of associated life. Within every larger social
organization there are numerous minor groups: not only political subdivisions, but industrial,
scientific, religious, associations. There are political parties with differing aims, social sets,
cliques, gangs, corporations, partnerships, groups bound closely together by ties of blood, and so
on in endless variety. In many modern states and in some ancient, there is great diversity of
populations, of varying languages, religions, moral codes, and traditions. From this standpoint,
many a minor political unit, one of our large cities, for example, is a congeries of loosely
associated societies, rather than an inclusive and permeating community of action and thought.
(See ante, p. 20.)

The terms society, community, are thus ambiguous. They have both a eulogistic or normative
sense, and a descriptive sense; a meaning de jure and a meaning de facto. In social philosophy,
the former connotation is almost always uppermost. Society is conceived as one by its very
nature. The qualities which accompany this unity, praiseworthy community of purpose and
welfare, loyalty to public ends, mutuality of sympathy, are emphasized. But when we look at the
facts which the term denotes instead of confining our attention to its intrinsic connotation, we
find not unity, but a plurality of societies, good and bad. Men banded together in a criminal
conspiracy, business aggregations that prey upon the public while serving it, political machines
held together by the interest of plunder, are included. If it is said that such organizations are not
societies because they do not meet the ideal requirements of the notion of society, the answer, in
part, is that the conception of society is then made so "ideal" as to be of no use, having no
reference to facts; and in part, that each of these organizations, no matter how opposed to the
interests of other groups, has something of the praiseworthy qualities of "Society" which hold it

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together. There is honor among thieves, and a band of robbers has a common interest as respects
its members. Gangs are marked by fraternal feeling, and narrow cliques by intense loyalty to
their own codes. Family life may be marked by exclusiveness, suspicion, and jealousy as to those
without, and yet be a model of amity and mutual aid within. Any education given by a group
tends to socialize its members, but the quality and value of the socialization depends upon the
habits and aims of the group. Hence, once more, the need of a measure for the worth of any
given mode of social life. In seeking this measure, we have to avoid two extremes. We cannot set
up, out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society. We must base our conception upon
societies which actually exist, in order to have any assurance that our ideal is a practicable one.
But, as we have just seen, the ideal cannot simply repeat the traits which are actually found. The
problem is to extract the desirable traits of forms of community life which actually exist, and
employ them to criticize undesirable features and suggest improvement. Now in any social group
whatever, even in a gang of thieves, we find some interest held in common, and we find a certain
amount of interaction and cooperative intercourse with other groups. From these two traits we
derive our standard. How numerous and varied are the interests which are consciously shared?
How full and free is the interplay with other forms of association? If we apply these
considerations to, say, a criminal band, we find that the ties which consciously hold the members
together are few in number, reducible almost to a common interest in plunder; and that they are
of such a nature as to isolate the group from other groups with respect to give and take of the
values of life. Hence, the education such a society gives is partial and distorted. If we take, on the
other hand, the kind of family life which illustrates the standard, we find that there are material,
intellectual, aesthetic interests in which all participate and that the progress of one member has
worth for the experience of other members—it is readily communicable—and that the family is
not an isolated whole, but enters intimately into relationships with business groups, with schools,
with all the agencies of culture, as well as with other similar groups, and that it plays a due part
in the political organization and in return receives support from it. In short, there are many
interests consciously communicated and shared; and there are varied and free points of contact
with other modes of association.

I. Let us apply the first element in this criterion to a despotically governed state. It is not true
there is no common interest in such an organization between governed and governors. The
authorities in command must make some appeal to the native activities of the subjects, must call
some of their powers into play. Talleyrand said that a government could do everything with
bayonets except sit on them. This cynical declaration is at least a recognition that the bond of
union is not merely one of coercive force. It may be said, however, that the activities appealed to
are themselves unworthy and degrading—that such a government calls into functioning activity
simply capacity for fear. In a way, this statement is true. But it overlooks the fact that fear need
not be an undesirable factor in experience. Caution, circumspection, prudence, desire to foresee
future events so as to avert what is harmful, these desirable traits are as much a product of calling
the impulse of fear into play as is cowardice and abject submission. The real difficulty is that the
appeal to fear is isolated. In evoking dread and hope of specific tangible reward—say comfort
and ease—many other capacities are left untouched. Or rather, they are affected, but in such a
way as to pervert them. Instead of operating on their own account they are reduced to mere
servants of attaining pleasure and avoiding pain.

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This is equivalent to saying that there is no extensive number of common interests; there is no
free play back and forth among the members of the social group. Stimulation and response are
exceedingly one-sided. In order to have a large number of values in common, all the members of
the group must have an equable opportunity to receive and to take from others. There must be a
large variety of shared undertakings and experiences. Otherwise, the influences which educate
some into masters, educate others into slaves. And the experience of each party loses in meaning,
when the free interchange of varying modes of life-experience is arrested. A separation into a
privileged and a subject-class prevents social endosmosis. The evils thereby affecting the
superior class are less material and less perceptible, but equally real. Their culture tends to be
sterile, to be turned back to feed on itself; their art becomes a showy display and artificial; their
wealth luxurious; their knowledge overspecialized; their manners fastidious rather than humane.

Lack of the free and equitable intercourse which springs from a variety of shared interests makes
intellectual stimulation unbalanced. Diversity of stimulation means novelty, and novelty means
challenge to thought. The more activity is restricted to a few definite lines—as it is when there
are rigid class lines preventing adequate interplay of experiences—the more action tends to
become routine on the part of the class at a disadvantage, and capricious, aimless, and explosive
on the part of the class having the materially fortunate position. Plato defined a slave as one who
accepts from another the purposes which control his conduct. This condition obtains even where
there is no slavery in the legal sense. It is found wherever men are engaged in activity which is
socially serviceable, but whose service they do not understand and have no personal interest in.
Much is said about scientific management of work. It is a narrow view which restricts the
science which secures efficiency of operation to movements of the muscles. The chief
opportunity for science is the discovery of the relations of a man to his work—including his
relations to others who take part—which will enlist his intelligent interest in what he is doing.
Efficiency in production often demands division of labor. But it is reduced to a mechanical
routine unless workers see the technical, intellectual, and social relationships involved in what
they do, and engage in their work because of the motivation furnished by such perceptions. The
tendency to reduce such things as efficiency of activity and scientific management to purely
technical externals is evidence of the one-sided stimulation of thought given to those in control
of industry—those who supply its aims. Because of their lack of all-round and well-balanced
social interest, there is not sufficient stimulus for attention to the human factors and relationships
in industry. Intelligence is narrowed to the factors concerned with technical production and
marketing of goods. No doubt, a very acute and intense intelligence in these narrow lines can be
developed, but the failure to take into account the significant social factors means none the less
an absence of mind, and a corresponding distortion of emotional life. II. This illustration (whose
point is to be extended to all associations lacking reciprocity of interest) brings us to our second
point. The isolation and exclusiveness of a gang or clique brings its antisocial spirit into relief.
But this same spirit is found wherever one group has interests "of its own" which shut it out from
full interaction with other groups, so that its prevailing purpose is the protection of what it has
got, instead of reorganization and progress through wider relationships. It marks nations in their
isolation from one another; families which seclude their domestic concerns as if they had no
connection with a larger life; schools when separated from the interest of home and community;
the divisions of rich and poor; learned and unlearned. The essential point is that isolation makes
for rigidity and formal institutionalizing of life, for static and selfish ideals within the group.
That savage tribes regard aliens and enemies as synonymous is not accidental. It springs from the

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fact that they have identified their experience with rigid adherence to their past customs. On such
a basis it is wholly logical to fear intercourse with others, for such contact might dissolve
custom. It would certainly occasion reconstruction. It is a commonplace that an alert and
expanding mental life depends upon an enlarging range of contact with the physical
environment. But the principle applies even more significantly to the field where we are apt to
ignore it—the sphere of social contacts. Every expansive era in the history of mankind has
coincided with the operation of factors which have tended to eliminate distance between peoples
and classes previously hemmed off from one another. Even the alleged benefits of war, so far as
more than alleged, spring from the fact that conflict of peoples at least enforces intercourse
between them and thus accidentally enables them to learn from one another, and thereby to
expand their horizons. Travel, economic and commercial tendencies, have at present gone far to
break down external barriers; to bring peoples and classes into closer and more perceptible
connection with one another. It remains for the most part to secure the intellectual and emotional
significance of this physical annihilation of space.

2. The Democratic Ideal. The two elements in our criterion both point to democracy. The first
signifies not only more numerous and more varied points of shared common interest, but greater
reliance upon the recognition of mutual interests as a factor in social control. The second means
not only freer interaction between social groups (once isolated so far as intention could keep up a
separation) but change in social habit—its continuous readjustment through meeting the new
situations produced by varied intercourse. And these two traits are precisely what characterize
the democratically constituted society.

Upon the educational side, we note first that the realization of a form of social life in which
interests are mutually interpenetrating, and where progress, or readjustment, is an important
consideration, makes a democratic community more interested than other communities have
cause to be in deliberate and systematic education. The devotion of democracy to education is a
familiar fact. The superficial explanation is that a government resting upon popular suffrage
cannot be successful unless those who elect and who obey their governors are educated. Since a
democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a substitute in
voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created only by education. But there is a deeper
explanation. A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of
associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. The extension in space of the number of
individuals who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others,
and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to his own, is equivalent to the
breaking down of those barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from
perceiving the full import of their activity. These more numerous and more varied points of
contact denote a greater diversity of stimuli to which an individual has to respond; they
consequently put a premium on variation in his action. They secure a liberation of powers which
remain suppressed as long as the incitations to action are partial, as they must be in a group
which in its exclusiveness shuts out many interests.

The widening of the area of shared concerns, and the liberation of a greater diversity of personal
capacities which characterize a democracy, are not of course the product of deliberation and
conscious effort. On the contrary, they were caused by the development of modes of manufacture
and commerce, travel, migration, and intercommunication which flowed from the command of

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science over natural energy. But after greater individualization on one hand, and a broader
community of interest on the other have come into existence, it is a matter of deliberate effort to
sustain and extend them. Obviously a society to which stratification into separate classes would
be fatal, must see to it that intellectual opportunities are accessible to all on equable and easy
terms. A society marked off into classes need he specially attentive only to the education of its
ruling elements. A society which is mobile, which is full of channels for the distribution of a
change occurring anywhere, must see to it that its members are educated to personal initiative
and adaptability. Otherwise, they will be overwhelmed by the changes in which they are caught
and whose significance or connections they do not perceive. The result will be a confusion in
which a few will appropriate to themselves the results of the blind and externally directed
activities of others.

3. The Platonic Educational Philosophy. Subsequent chapters will be devoted to making explicit
the implications of the democratic ideas in education. In the remaining portions of this chapter,
we shall consider the educational theories which have been evolved in three epochs when the
social import of education was especially conspicuous. The first one to be considered is that of
Plato. No one could better express than did he the fact that a society is stably organized when
each individual is doing that for which he has aptitude by nature in such a way as to be useful to
others (or to contribute to the whole to which he belongs); and that it is the business of education
to discover these aptitudes and progressively to train them for social use. Much which has been
said so far is borrowed from what Plato first consciously taught the world. But conditions which
he could not intellectually control led him to restrict these ideas in their application. He never got
any conception of the indefinite plurality of activities which may characterize an individual and a
social group, and consequently limited his view to a limited number of classes of capacities and
of social arrangements. Plato's starting point is that the organization of society depends
ultimately upon knowledge of the end of existence. If we do not know its end, we shall be at the
mercy of accident and caprice. Unless we know the end, the good, we shall have no criterion for
rationally deciding what the possibilities are which should be promoted, nor how social
arrangements are to be ordered. We shall have no conception of the proper limits and distribution
of activities—what he called justice—as a trait of both individual and social organization. But
how is the knowledge of the final and permanent good to be achieved? In dealing with this
question we come upon the seemingly insuperable obstacle that such knowledge is not possible
save in a just and harmonious social order. Everywhere else the mind is distracted and misled by
false valuations and false perspectives. A disorganized and factional society sets up a number of
different models and standards. Under such conditions it is impossible for the individual to attain
consistency of mind. Only a complete whole is fully self-consistent. A society which rests upon
the supremacy of some factor over another irrespective of its rational or proportionate claims,
inevitably leads thought astray. It puts a premium on certain things and slurs over others, and
creates a mind whose seeming unity is forced and distorted. Education proceeds ultimately from
the patterns furnished by institutions, customs, and laws. Only in a just state will these be such as
to give the right education; and only those who have rightly trained minds will be able to
recognize the end, and ordering principle of things. We seem to be caught in a hopeless circle.
However, Plato suggested a way out. A few men, philosophers or lovers of wisdom—or truth—
may by study learn at least in outline the proper patterns of true existence. If a powerful ruler
should form a state after these patterns, then its regulations could be preserved. An education
could be given which would sift individuals, discovering what they were good for, and supplying

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a method of assigning each to the work in life for which his nature fits him. Each doing his own
part, and never transgressing, the order and unity of the whole would be maintained.

It would be impossible to find in any scheme of philosophic thought a more adequate recognition
on one hand of the educational significance of social arrangements and, on the other, of the
dependence of those arrangements upon the means used to educate the young. It would be
impossible to find a deeper sense of the function of education in discovering and developing
personal capacities, and training them so that they would connect with the activities of others.
Yet the society in which the theory was propounded was so undemocratic that Plato could not
work out a solution for the problem whose terms he clearly saw.

While he affirmed with emphasis that the place of the individual in society should not be
determined by birth or wealth or any conventional status, but by his own nature as discovered in
the process of education, he had no perception of the uniqueness of individuals. For him they fall
by nature into classes, and into a very small number of classes at that. Consequently the testing
and sifting function of education only shows to which one of three classes an individual belongs.
There being no recognition that each individual constitutes his own class, there could be no
recognition of the infinite diversity of active tendencies and combinations of tendencies of which
an individual is capable. There were only three types of faculties or powers in the individual's
constitution. Hence education would soon reach a static limit in each class, for only diversity
makes change and progress.

In some individuals, appetites naturally dominate; they are assigned to the laboring and trading
class, which expresses and supplies human wants. Others reveal, upon education, that over and
above appetites, they have a generous, outgoing, assertively courageous disposition. They
become the citizen-subjects of the state; its defenders in war; its internal guardians in peace. But
their limit is fixed by their lack of reason, which is a capacity to grasp the universal. Those who
possess this are capable of the highest kind of education, and become in time the legislators of
the state—for laws are the universals which control the particulars of experience. Thus it is not
true that in intent, Plato subordinated the individual to the social whole. But it is true that lacking
the perception of the uniqueness of every individual, his incommensurability with others, and
consequently not recognizing that a society might change and yet be stable, his doctrine of
limited powers and classes came in net effect to the idea of the subordination of individuality.
We cannot better Plato's conviction that an individual is happy and society well organized when
each individual engages in those activities for which he has a natural equipment, nor his
conviction that it is the primary office of education to discover this equipment to its possessor
and train him for its effective use. But progress in knowledge has made us aware of the
superficiality of Plato's lumping of individuals and their original powers into a few sharply
marked-off classes; it has taught us that original capacities are indefinitely numerous and
variable. It is but the other side of this fact to say that in the degree in which society has become
democratic, social organization means utilization of the specific and variable qualities of
individuals, not stratification by classes. Although his educational philosophy was revolutionary,
it was none the less in bondage to static ideals. He thought that change or alteration was evidence
of lawless flux; that true reality was unchangeable. Hence while he would radically change the
existing state of society, his aim was to construct a state in which change would subsequently
have no place. The final end of life is fixed; given a state framed with this end in view, not even

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minor details are to be altered. Though they might not be inherently important, yet if permitted
they would inure the minds of men to the idea of change, and hence be dissolving and anarchic.
The breakdown of his philosophy is made apparent in the fact that he could not trust to gradual
improvements in education to bring about a better society which should then improve education,
and so on indefinitely. Correct education could not come into existence until an ideal state
existed, and after that education would be devoted simply to its conservation. For the existence
of this state he was obliged to trust to some happy accident by which philosophic wisdom should
happen to coincide with possession of ruling power in the state.

4. The "Individualistic" Ideal of the Eighteenth Century. In the eighteenth-century philosophy we

find ourselves in a very different circle of ideas. "Nature" still means something antithetical to
existing social organization; Plato exercised a great influence upon Rousseau. But the voice of
nature now speaks for the diversity of individual talent and for the need of free development of
individuality in all its variety. Education in accord with nature furnishes the goal and the method
of instruction and discipline. Moreover, the native or original endowment was conceived, in
extreme cases, as nonsocial or even as antisocial. Social arrangements were thought of as mere
external expedients by which these nonsocial individuals might secure a greater amount of
private happiness for themselves. Nevertheless, these statements convey only an inadequate idea
of the true significance of the movement. In reality its chief interest was in progress and in social
progress. The seeming antisocial philosophy was a somewhat transparent mask for an impetus
toward a wider and freer society—toward cosmopolitanism. The positive ideal was humanity. In
membership in humanity, as distinct from a state, man's capacities would be liberated; while in
existing political organizations his powers were hampered and distorted to meet the requirements
and selfish interests of the rulers of the state. The doctrine of extreme individualism was but the
counterpart, the obverse, of ideals of the indefinite perfectibility of man and of a social
organization having a scope as wide as humanity. The emancipated individual was to become the
organ and agent of a comprehensive and progressive society.

The heralds of this gospel were acutely conscious of the evils of the social estate in which they
found themselves. They attributed these evils to the limitations imposed upon the free powers of
man. Such limitation was both distorting and corrupting. Their impassioned devotion to
emancipation of life from external restrictions which operated to the exclusive advantage of the
class to whom a past feudal system consigned power, found intellectual formulation in a worship
of nature. To give "nature" full swing was to replace an artificial, corrupt, and inequitable social
order by a new and better kingdom of humanity. Unrestrained faith in Nature as both a model
and a working power was strengthened by the advances of natural science. Inquiry freed from
prejudice and artificial restraints of church and state had revealed that the world is a scene of
law. The Newtonian solar system, which expressed the reign of natural law, was a scene of
wonderful harmony, where every force balanced with every other. Natural law would accomplish
the same result in human relations, if men would only get rid of the artificial man-imposed
coercive restrictions.

Education in accord with nature was thought to be the first step in insuring this more social
society. It was plainly seen that economic and political limitations were ultimately dependent
upon limitations of thought and feeling. The first step in freeing men from external chains was to
emancipate them from the internal chains of false beliefs and ideals. What was called social life,

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existing institutions, were too false and corrupt to be intrusted with this work. How could it be
expected to undertake it when the undertaking meant its own destruction? "Nature" must then be
the power to which the enterprise was to be left. Even the extreme sensationalistic theory of
knowledge which was current derived itself from this conception. To insist that mind is
originally passive and empty was one way of glorifying the possibilities of education. If the mind
was a wax tablet to be written upon by objects, there were no limits to the possibility of
education by means of the natural environment. And since the natural world of objects is a scene
of harmonious "truth," this education would infallibly produce minds filled with the truth.

5. Education as National and as Social. As soon as the first enthusiasm for freedom waned, the
weakness of the theory upon the constructive side became obvious. Merely to leave everything to
nature was, after all, but to negate the very idea of education; it was to trust to the accidents of
circumstance. Not only was some method required but also some positive organ, some
administrative agency for carrying on the process of instruction. The "complete and harmonious
development of all powers," having as its social counterpart an enlightened and progressive
humanity, required definite organization for its realization. Private individuals here and there
could proclaim the gospel; they could not execute the work. A Pestalozzi could try experiments
and exhort philanthropically inclined persons having wealth and power to follow his example.
But even Pestalozzi saw that any effective pursuit of the new educational ideal required the
support of the state. The realization of the new education destined to produce a new society was,
after all, dependent upon the activities of existing states. The movement for the democratic idea
inevitably became a movement for publicly conducted and administered schools.

So far as Europe was concerned, the historic situation identified the movement for a state-
supported education with the nationalistic movement in political life—a fact of incalculable
significance for subsequent movements. Under the influence of German thought in particular,
education became a civic function and the civic function was identified with the realization of
the ideal of the national state. The "state" was substituted for humanity; cosmopolitanism gave
way to nationalism. To form the citizen, not the "man," became the aim of education. 1 The
historic situation to which reference is made is the after-effects of the Napoleonic conquests,
especially in Germany. The German states felt (and subsequent events demonstrate the
correctness of the belief) that systematic attention to education was the best means of recovering
and maintaining their political integrity and power. Externally they were weak and divided.
Under the leadership of Prussian statesmen they made this condition a stimulus to the
development of an extensive and thoroughly grounded system of public education.

This change in practice necessarily brought about a change in theory. The individualistic theory
receded into the background. The state furnished not only the instrumentalities of public
education but also its goal. When the actual practice was such that the school system, from the
elementary grades through the university faculties, supplied the patriotic citizen and soldier and
the future state official and administrator and furnished the means for military, industrial, and
political defense and expansion, it was impossible for theory not to emphasize the aim of social
efficiency. And with the immense importance attached to the nationalistic state, surrounded by
other competing and more or less hostile states, it was equally impossible to interpret social
efficiency in terms of a vague cosmopolitan humanitarianism. Since the maintenance of a
particular national sovereignty required subordination of individuals to the superior interests of

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the state both in military defense and in struggles for international supremacy in commerce,
social efficiency was understood to imply a like subordination. The educational process was
taken to be one of disciplinary training rather than of personal development. Since, however, the
ideal of culture as complete development of personality persisted, educational philosophy
attempted a reconciliation of the two ideas. The reconciliation took the form of the conception of
the "organic" character of the state. The individual in his isolation is nothing; only in and through
an absorption of the aims and meaning of organized institutions does he attain true personality.
What appears to be his subordination to political authority and the demand for sacrifice of
himself to the commands of his superiors is in reality but making his own the objective reason
manifested in the state—the only way in which he can become truly rational. The notion of
development which we have seen to be characteristic of institutional idealism (as in the Hegelian
philosophy) was just such a deliberate effort to combine the two ideas of complete realization of
personality and thoroughgoing "disciplinary" subordination to existing institutions. The extent of
the transformation of educational philosophy which occurred in Germany in the generation
occupied by the struggle against Napoleon for national independence, may be gathered from
Kant, who well expresses the earlier individual-cosmopolitan ideal. In his treatise on Pedagogics,
consisting of lectures given in the later years of the eighteenth century, he defines education as
the process by which man becomes man. Mankind begins its history submerged in nature—not
as Man who is a creature of reason, while nature furnishes only instinct and appetite. Nature
offers simply the germs which education is to develop and perfect. The peculiarity of truly
human life is that man has to create himself by his own voluntary efforts; he has to make himself
a truly moral, rational, and free being. This creative effort is carried on by the educational
activities of slow generations. Its acceleration depends upon men consciously striving to educate
their successors not for the existing state of affairs but so as to make possible a future better
humanity. But there is the great difficulty. Each generation is inclined to educate its young so as
to get along in the present world instead of with a view to the proper end of education: the
promotion of the best possible realization of humanity as humanity. Parents educate their
children so that they may get on; princes educate their subjects as instruments of their own
purposes.

Who, then, shall conduct education so that humanity may improve? We must depend upon the
efforts of enlightened men in their private capacity. "All culture begins with private men and
spreads outward from them. Simply through the efforts of persons of enlarged inclinations, who
are capable of grasping the ideal of a future better condition, is the gradual approximation of
human nature to its end possible. Rulers are simply interested in such training as will make their
subjects better tools for their own intentions." Even the subsidy by rulers of privately conducted
schools must be carefully safeguarded. For the rulers' interest in the welfare of their own nation
instead of in what is best for humanity, will make them, if they give money for the schools, wish
to draw their plans. We have in this view an express statement of the points characteristic of the
eighteenth century individualistic cosmopolitanism. The full development of private personality
is identified with the aims of humanity as a whole and with the idea of progress. In addition we
have an explicit fear of the hampering influence of a state-conducted and state-regulated
education upon the attainment of these ideas. But in less than two decades after this time, Kant's
philosophic successors, Fichte and Hegel, elaborated the idea that the chief function of the state
is educational; that in particular the regeneration of Germany is to be accomplished by an
education carried on in the interests of the state, and that the private individual is of necessity an

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egoistic, irrational being, enslaved to his appetites and to circumstances unless he submits
voluntarily to the educative discipline of state institutions and laws. In this spirit, Germany was
the first country to undertake a public, universal, and compulsory system of education extending
from the primary school through the university, and to submit to jealous state regulation and
supervision all private educational enterprises. Two results should stand out from this brief
historical survey. The first is that such terms as the individual and the social conceptions of
education are quite meaningless taken at large, or apart from their context. Plato had the ideal of
an education which should equate individual realization and social coherency and stability. His
situation forced his ideal into the notion of a society organized in stratified classes, losing the
individual in the class. The eighteenth century educational philosophy was highly individualistic
in form, but this form was inspired by a noble and generous social ideal: that of a society
organized to include humanity, and providing for the indefinite perfectibility of mankind. The
idealistic philosophy of Germany in the early nineteenth century endeavored again to equate the
ideals of a free and complete development of cultured personality with social discipline and
political subordination. It made the national state an intermediary between the realization of
private personality on one side and of humanity on the other. Consequently, it is equally possible
to state its animating principle with equal truth either in the classic terms of "harmonious
development of all the powers of personality" or in the more recent terminology of "social
efficiency." All this reinforces the statement which opens this chapter: The conception of
education as a social process and function has no definite meaning until we define the kind of
society we have in mind. These considerations pave the way for our second conclusion. One of
the fundamental problems of education in and for a democratic society is set by the conflict of a
nationalistic and a wider social aim. The earlier cosmopolitan and "humanitarian" conception
suffered both from vagueness and from lack of definite organs of execution and agencies of
administration. In Europe, in the Continental states particularly, the new idea of the importance
of education for human welfare and progress was captured by national interests and harnessed to
do a work whose social aim was definitely narrow and exclusive. The social aim of education
and its national aim were identified, and the result was a marked obscuring of the meaning of a
social aim.

This confusion corresponds to the existing situation of human intercourse. On the one hand,
science, commerce, and art transcend national boundaries. They are largely international in
quality and method. They involve interdependencies and cooperation among the peoples
inhabiting different countries. At the same time, the idea of national sovereignty has never been
as accentuated in politics as it is at the present time. Each nation lives in a state of suppressed
hostility and incipient war with its neighbors. Each is supposed to be the supreme judge of its
own interests, and it is assumed as matter of course that each has interests which are exclusively
its own. To question this is to question the very idea of national sovereignty which is assumed to
be basic to political practice and political science. This contradiction (for it is nothing less)
between the wider sphere of associated and mutually helpful social life and the narrower sphere
of exclusive and hence potentially hostile pursuits and purposes, exacts of educational theory a
clearer conception of the meaning of "social" as a function and test of education than has yet
been attained. Is it possible for an educational system to be conducted by a national state and yet
the full social ends of the educative process not be restricted, constrained, and corrupted?
Internally, the question has to face the tendencies, due to present economic conditions, which
split society into classes some of which are made merely tools for the higher culture of others.

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Externally, the question is concerned with the reconciliation of national loyalty, of patriotism,
with superior devotion to the things which unite men in common ends, irrespective of national
political boundaries. Neither phase of the problem can be worked out by merely negative means.
It is not enough to see to it that education is not actively used as an instrument to make easier the
exploitation of one class by another. School facilities must be secured of such amplitude and
efficiency as will in fact and not simply in name discount the effects of economic inequalities,
and secure to all the wards of the nation equality of equipment for their future careers.
Accomplishment of this end demands not only adequate administrative provision of school
facilities, and such supplementation of family resources as will enable youth to take advantage of
them, but also such modification of traditional ideals of culture, traditional subjects of study and
traditional methods of teaching and discipline as will retain all the youth under educational
influences until they are equipped to be masters of their own economic and social careers. The
ideal may seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal of education is a farcical yet tragic
delusion except as the ideal more and more dominates our public system of education. The same
principle has application on the side of the considerations which concern the relations of one
nation to another. It is not enough to teach the horrors of war and to avoid everything which
would stimulate international jealousy and animosity. The emphasis must be put upon whatever
binds people together in cooperative human pursuits and results, apart from geographical
limitations. The secondary and provisional character of national sovereignty in respect to the
fuller, freer, and more fruitful association and intercourse of all human beings with one another
must be instilled as a working disposition of mind. If these applications seem to be remote from a
consideration of the philosophy of education, the impression shows that the meaning of the idea
of education previously developed has not been adequately grasped. This conclusion is bound up
with the very idea of education as a freeing of individual capacity in a progressive growth
directed to social aims. Otherwise a democratic criterion of education can only be inconsistently
applied.

Summary. Since education is a social process, and there are many kinds

of societies, a criterion for educational criticism and construction implies a particular social
ideal. The two points selected by which to measure the worth of a form of social life are the
extent in which the interests of a group are shared by all its members, and the fullness and
freedom with which it interacts with other groups. An undesirable society, in other words, is one
which internally and externally sets up barriers to free intercourse and communication of
experience. A society which makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on
equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the
different forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must have a type of
education which gives individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the
habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder. Three typical historic
philosophies of education were considered from this point of view. The Platonic was found to
have an ideal formally quite similar to that stated, but which was compromised in its working out
by making a class rather than an individual the social unit. The so-called individualism of the
eighteenth-century enlightenment was found to involve the notion of a society as broad as
humanity, of whose progress the individual was to be the organ. But it lacked any agency for
securing the development of its ideal as was evidenced in its falling back upon Nature. The
institutional idealistic philosophies of the nineteenth century supplied this lack by making the

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national state the agency, but in so doing narrowed the conception of the social aim to those who
were members of the same political unit, and reintroduced the idea of the subordination of the
individual to the institution. 1 There is a much neglected strain in Rousseau tending intellectually
in this direction. He opposed the existing state of affairs on the ground that it formed neither the
citizen nor the man. Under existing conditions, he preferred to try for the latter rather than for the
former. But there are many sayings of his which point to the formation of the citizen as ideally
the higher, and which indicate that his own endeavor, as embodied in the Emile, was simply the
best makeshift the corruption of the times permitted him to sketch.

Creative Democracy – The Task Before Us (1939)

John Dewey

Under present circumstances I cannot hope to conceal the fact that I have managed to exist
eighty years. Mention of the fact may suggest to you a more important fact – namely, that events
of the utmost significance for the destiny of this country have taken place during the past four-
fifths of a century a period that covers more than half of its national life in its present form. For
obvious reasons I shall not attempt a summary of even the more important of these events. I refer
here to them because of their bearing upon the issue to which this country committed itself when
the nation took shape – the creation of democracy, an issue which is now as urgent as it was a
hundred and fifty years ago when the most experienced and wisest men of the country gathered
to take stock of conditions and to create the political structure of a self-governing society.

For the net import of the changes that have taken place in these later years is that ways of life and
institutions which were once the natural, almost the inevitable, product of fortunate conditions
have now to be won by conscious and resolute effort. Not all the country was in a pioneer state
eighty years ago. But it was still, save perhaps in a few large cities, so close to the pioneer stage
of American life that the traditions of the pioneer, indeed of the frontier, were active agencies in
forming the thoughts and shaping the beliefs of those who were born into its life. In imagination
at least the country was still having an open frontier, one of unused and unappropriated
resources. It was a country of physical opportunity and invitation. Even so, there was more than
a marvelous conjunction of physical circumstances involved in bringing to birth this new nation.
There was in existence a group of men who were capable of readapting older institutions and
ideas to meet the situations provided by new physical conditions-a group of men extraordinarily
gifted in political inventiveness.

At the present time, the frontier is moral, not physical. The period of free lands that seemed
boundless in extent has vanished. Unused resources are now human rather than material. They
are found in the waste of grown men and women who are without the chance to work, and in the
young men and young women who find doors closed where there was once opportunity. The
crisis that one hundred and fifty years ago called out social and political inventiveness is with us
in a form which puts a heavier demand on human creativeness.

At all events this is what I mean when I say that we now have to re-create by deliberate and
determined endeavor the kind of democracy which in its origin one hundred and fifty years ago
was largely the product of a fortunate combination of men and circumstances. We have lived for
a long time upon the heritage that came to us from the happy conjunction of men and events in

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an earlier day. The present state of the world is more than a reminder that we have now to put
forth every energy of our own to prove worthy of our heritage. It is a challenge to do for the
critical and complex conditions of today what the men of an earlier day did for simpler
conditions.

If I emphasize that the task can be accomplished only by inventive effort and creative activity, it
is in part because the depth of the present crisis is due in considerable part to the fact that for a
long period we acted as if our democracy were something that perpetuated itself automatically;
as if our ancestors had succeeded in setting up a machine that solved the problem of perpetual
motion in politics. We acted as if democracy were something that took place mainly at
Washington and Albany – or some other state capital – under the impetus of what happened
when men and women went to the polls once a year or so – which is a somewhat extreme way of
saying that we have had the habit of thinking of democracy as a kind of political mechanism that
will work as long as citizens were reasonably faithful in performing political duties.

Of late years we have heard more and more frequently that this is not enough; that democracy is
a way of life. This saying gets down to hardpan. But I am not sure that something of the
externality of the old idea does not cling to the new and better statement. In any case we can
escape from this external way of thinking only as we realize in thought and act that democracy is
a personal way of individual life; that it signifies the possession and continual use of certain
attitudes, forming personal character and determining desire and purpose in all the relations of
life. Instead of thinking of our own dispositions and habits as accommodated to certain
institutions we have to learn to think of the latter as expressions, projections and extensions of
habitually dominant personal attitudes.

Democracy as a personal, an individual, way of life involves nothing fundamentally new. But
when applied it puts a new practical meaning in old ideas. Put into effect it signifies that
powerful present enemies of democracy can be successfully met only by the creation of personal
attitudes in individual human beings; that we must get over our tendency to think that its defense
can be found in any external means whatever, whether military or civil, if they are separated
from individual attitudes so deep-seated as to constitute personal character.

Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature.
Belief in the Common Man is a familiar article in the democratic creed. That belief is without
basis and significance save as it means faith in the potentialities of human nature as that nature is
exhibited in every human being irrespective of race, color, sex, birth and family, of material or
cultural wealth. This faith may be enacted in statutes, but it is only on paper unless it is put in
force in the attitudes which human beings display to one another in all the incidents and relations
of daily life. To denounce Nazism for intolerance, cruelty and stimulation of hatred amounts to
fostering insincerity if, in our personal relations to other persons, if, in our daily walk and
conversation, we are moved by racial, color or other class prejudice; indeed, by anything save a
generous belief in their possibilities as human beings, a belief which brings with it the need for
providing conditions which will enable these capacities to reach fulfillment. The democratic faith
in human equality is belief that every human being, independent of the quantity or range of his
personal endowment, has the right to equal opportunity with every other person for development
of whatever gifts he has. The democratic belief in the principle of leadership is a generous one. It

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is universal. It is belief in the capacity of every person to lead his own life free from coercion and
imposition by others provided right conditions are supplied.

Democracy is a way of personal life controlled not merely by faith in human nature in general
but by faith in the capacity of human beings for intelligent judgment and action if proper
conditions are furnished. I have been accused more than once and from opposed quarters of an
undue, a utopian, faith in the possibilities of intelligence and in education as a correlate of
intelligence. At all events, I did not invent this faith. I acquired it from my surroundings as far as
those surroundings were animated by the democratic spirit. For what is the faith of democracy in
the role of consultation, of conference, of persuasion, of discussion, in formation of public
opinion, which in the long run is self-corrective, except faith in the capacity of the intelligence of
the common man to respond with commonsense to the free play of facts and ideas which are
secured by effective guarantees of free inquiry, free assembly and free communication? I am
willing to leave to upholders of totalitarian states of the right and the left the view that faith in
the capacities of intelligence is utopia. For the faith is so deeply embedded in the methods which
are intrinsic to democracy that when a professed democrat denies the faith he convicts himself of
treachery to his profession.

When I think of the conditions under which men and women are living in many foreign countries
today, fear of espionage, with danger hanging over the meeting of friends for friendly
conversation in private gatherings, I am inclined to believe that the heart and final guarantee of
democracy is in free gatherings of neighbors on the street corner to discuss back and forth what
is read in uncensored news of the day, and in gatherings of friends in the living rooms of houses
and apartments to converse freely with one another. Intolerance, abuse, calling of names because
of differences of opinion about religion or politics or business, as well as because of differences
of race, color, wealth or degree of culture are treason to the democratic way of life. For
everything which bars freedom and fullness of communication sets up barriers that divide human
beings into sets and cliques, into antagonistic sects and factions, and thereby undermines the
democratic way of life. Merely legal guarantees of the civil liberties of free belief, free
expression, free assembly are of little avail if in daily life freedom of communication, the give
and take of ideas, facts, experiences, is choked by mutual suspicion, by abuse, by fear and hatred.
These things destroy the essential condition of the democratic way of living even more
effectually than open coercion which- as the example of totalitarian states proves-is effective
only when it succeeds in breeding hate, suspicion, intolerance in the minds of individual human
beings.

Finally, given the two conditions just mentioned, democracy as a way of life is controlled by
personal faith in personal day-by-day working together with others. Democracy is the belief that
even when needs and ends or consequences are different for each individual, the habit of
amicable cooperation – which may include, as in sport, rivalry and competition – is itself a
priceless addition to life. To take as far as possible every conflict which arises-and they are
bound to arise-out of the atmosphere and medium of force, of violence as a means of settlement
into that of discussion and of intelligence is to treat those who disagree – even profoundly – with
us as those from whom we may learn, and in so far, as friends. A genuinely democratic faith in
peace is faith in the possibility of conducting disputes, controversies and conflicts as cooperative
undertakings in which both parties learn by giving the other a chance to express itself, instead of

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having one party conquer by forceful suppression of the other – a suppression which is none the
less one of violence when it takes place by psychological means of ridicule, abuse, intimidation,
instead of by overt imprisonment or in concentration camps. To cooperate by giving differences
a chance to show themselves because of the belief that the expression of difference is not only a
right of the other persons but is a means of enriching one's own life-experience, is inherent in the
democratic personal way of life.

If what has been said is charged with being a set of moral commonplaces, my only reply is that
that is just the point in saying them. For to get rid of the habit of thinking of democracy as
something institutional and external and to acquire the habit of treating it as a way of personal
life is to realize that democracy is a moral ideal and so far as it becomes a fact is a moral fact. It
is to realize that democracy is a reality only as it is indeed a commonplace of living.

Since my adult years have been given to the pursuit of philosophy, I shall ask your indulgence if
in concluding I state briefly the democratic faith in the formal terms of a philosophic position. So
stated, democracy is belief in the ability of human experience to generate the aims and methods
by which further experience will grow in ordered richness. Every other form of moral and social
faith rests upon the idea that experience must be subjected at some point or other to some form of
external control; to some "authority" alleged to exist outside the processes of experience.
Democracy is the faith that the process of experience is more important than any special result
attained, so that special results achieved are of ultimate value only as they are used to enrich and
order the ongoing process. Since the process of experience is capable of being educative, faith in
democracy is all one with faith in experience and education. All ends and values that are cut off
from the ongoing process become arrests, fixations. They strive to fixate what has been gained
instead of using it to open the road and point the way to new and better experiences.

If one asks what is meant by experience in this connection my reply is that it is that free
interaction of individual human beings with surrounding conditions, especially the human
surroundings, which develops and satisfies need and desire by increasing knowledge of things as
they are. Knowledge of conditions as they are is the only solid ground for communication and
sharing; all other communication means the subjection of some persons to the personal opinion
of other persons. Need and desire – out of which grow purpose and direction of energy – go
beyond what exists, and hence beyond knowledge, beyond science. They continually open the
way into the unexplored and unattained future. Democracy as compared with other ways of life
is the sole way of living which believes wholeheartedly in the process of experience as end and
as means; as that which is capable of generating the science which is the sole dependable
authority for the direction of further experience and which releases emotions, needs and desires
so as to call into being the things that have not existed in the past. For every way of life that fails
in its democracy limits the contacts, the exchanges, the communications, the interactions by
which experience is steadied while it is also enlarged and enriched. The task of this release and
enrichment is one that has to be carried on day by day. Since it is one that can have no end till
experience itself comes to an end, the task of democracy is forever that of creation of a freer and
more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute.

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