The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-06-28
Teacher

SCAhPAdlCs
Leisure and Culture once secured,
the shirker class irresistibly came to
appraise their own intellectual vanity
and love of the Metaphysical as the
desiderata of the Superior Life. The
masses were held in unabashed con-
tempt. Their problems, quintessen-
TALLY physical and sordid, were re-
garded with an equal aversion. A
lack OF communal experiences, and
interentiaIly, of fraternaI sympathy,
engendered the Metaphysical attitude
toward concrete life. In his Revolt
of the Angels" Anatole France clever
ly satirizes the barren metaphysi-
clans: -. metaphysic or metaphysics.
that is to say, all that is connected
with physics and has no other name.
so impossible is it to designate by a
substantive that which has no sub
stance, and is but dream and an IL
lusion- Here you may contemplate
with admiration philosophers address
ing themselves to the solution, dis
solution, and resolution of the Abso-
lutte, to the determination of the In
determinate and to the definition of
the Infinite" The metaphysical east
ly merged into a superior attitude.
Barren distractions naturally alb
sorbed the serious energies Of the
haughty-cultured, while the masses
were groveling in filth, ignorance and
fear. Of haughty-thinkers dared to
realize the staggering costs of their
superiority" they would commit sui
eide out of sheer self-respect.) What
more natural than that the knowledge
Of most worth to the cultured should
have been the knowledge of least util-
ity to the toilers? We suffer today
from this inherited opposition: Gull
ture versus Life has split humanity
into the alien. orders of caste and
class. The student must therefore be
on his guard when he reads great
mems disquisitions on What Knowl-
edge is of Most Worth. A Howard
Taft or an Arthur Balfour, profess
sionally alienated from the aspira-
tons of the common people, will
stress subject matter and ideals as
hostile to the work-a-day welfare of
common folk as barren metaphysics is
remote from experimental science.
1t was Balfour, the cultured snob,
who advised the British association
for the Advancement of Science to
court single mindedly but one IDEAL
Theoretical Inquiry" Practical
science (for the household uses of
Mr.. Average MANI was too common
place, too unitarian. Let scientists
play with unreality provided only
they were being inspired to theorize
broadly and transcendentally. OF this
same heavily educated Balfour, Mr..
Brailsford said HE has all the in
dolence and INDIGESTION of Mr.. Asquith,
with fastidiousness and aloofness
of his own" Judge Edward Parry
furnishes an additional clue to the ma
ture of Caste Culture when he in
forms us that: "Mr. Balfour's OBJ
servation that among all the social
evils which meet us in every walk
of life, every sphere of activity, the
Creates of all evils is the evil of in
temperance is useful as a peroration
to any platform speech on the sub
iect, but only makes the judicious
grieve that with the opportunity to
do exactly as he liked and the ability
to draft useful legislation, Mr.. Balfour
did nothing whatever to improve mat
ters and diminish the evil Of which he
was so sensible" This intellectual
aloofness from current concerns is
Of piece with the heart-rending wall
of the so-called classicists beseeching
an ignorant electorate to restore
Greek and Latin to their positions of
pristine vigor. 1t is the cry OF de-
spair of an irreparably wounded
Vanity impotent to saddle a practical
world with its own antiquated ideals