The Washington herald., 1920-12-05
Bravery never goes out of
fashion.-Thaekeray.
'1dealistic Materialists. /"

" the fascinating diary OF her expert
ences in Russia which Mrs Claire
Sheridan has been writing, she dis
closes much that explains the course of
events in the former empire but present
proletarian ruled states She found her Boil
sheyist hosts, when off duty and willing to
converse on general themes, quite candid
IN their expressions of disbelief in religion
per Sc. As an opiate, temporarily useful
for mass treatment when a social sedative
was needed, they conceded that it had its
justification; but only so. Personally and
officially, they looked forward to its re-
moval as a factor in the life of the people
Their own creed, they frankly admitted,
was materialistic, thought Realistically So
The opinions of these powerful person
ages, whose influence extends far beyond
Russia, owing to their alliance with the
Third lnternationale and its propaganda,
deserve to be carefully considered, for they
have an ever-increasing vogue with the
masses OF Europe, the Americans and Asia
Men of late generations calling themselves
Liberals have been wont to denounce the
predestination doctrine of Augustine and
Calvin 1twas fatalistic," they said. So
1t was when expressed in its extreme form,
but in the rigor with which it worked and
the logical implications that grew out of it,
It was far inferior to the economic deter
minism which Marx taught and which
Lenine practices Moreover, it had the
great superiority of being centered in Cod,
and not in man; and also in having an in
tellectual and spiritual quality that the pres
ent economic determinism" does not have
Catering, for purposes of strategy, to
hostile and, as they believe, sure-to-be
defeated critics, these practitioners now
mask their real earthiness under the camou-
flsge of -idealistic materialism." Which is
as absurd as to say white night" or
-ebon snow" The terms are mutually con-
Trajectory. Men who posit ife's worth on
possession of things do not become proph-
cts Of social betterment, singers of dreams
or heralds of sacrifice of the lower for the
higher. A materialist is a grounding; an
idealist scars in hope and in love, if not in
person. A materialist may have a certain
sense of justice affecting distribution of
goods, and fight for it, and to that extent
be an ideahst; but if he goes not beyond
mere distribution of things to define what
man should do with his possessions, he is
haye to go beyond contemporary Russia,
under governmental control of avowed
materialists, to see the proof OF this con-
tention.
Unfortunately a coincidence in history
brought a materiaistic conception of SCI
ence and a materialistic conception of eco
nomics into juxtaposition in the Western
world during the last decades of the last
century. This century has seen science
ceasing to be as agnostiep and as materi-
alistic as it was in the Sos and COS But in
Europe, at least, no such recession is no
ticeable among the teachers who bring
economies to the masses. American econ
ornists, whether academic or popular,
never have taken much stock in the IA
talistic creed of Marx with its materialistic
squint. Which fact accounts in part for
national stability today. 1t also accounts
for the hatred of this country that Lenine
shows in his interviews.
Our forces of capital and of labor still
rate income as a means, and not an end;
and that end attainment purposes that are
not materialistic. 1t is our idealism that
confounds both the European critic of the
upper classes and the Bolshevik of the
proletariat. The one comes expecting to
find US vulgar and money-mad, and the
other comes expecting to find US controlled
by men who despise the masses and who
hypoeritically worship God in whom they
do not believe. They both go away dis
llusioned Materialistic> science and MAJ
terialistic economics never have made much
of dent on the thinking of the great body
of our people. And they never viii, be-
cause ethics and religion were conjoined in =
the faith of the pioneers, and still are with
their descendants. Nor have later comers
with secular views and religious indiffer-
entism substantially modified the original
type.