CULTURAL FRONT
455
philosophical programme in the following sentence: "The existence of
philosophy presupposes an appropriate
philosophical
mode of cognition
as distinct from a
scientific
one."
2
And Berdyaev, following Max Scheler,
considers science as more or less the revolt of the slaves. There is a class
struggle of the mind between religion and science, and philosophy is in
the tragic position of the centrist. None of these thinkers, Catholics and
fellow travellers, have any originality of mind. They run in pat and set·
tied grooves, and they mix up vagueness and sentimentality with appeals
for authoritarianism. Their authoritarianism is defended by all the stale
arguments for reaction. They use ·a religious glow and the historic prestige
of medieval and classic philosophers as a camouflage for this authori–
tarianism. But an authoritarian doctrine needs more than arguments bor–
rowed from Aquinas if it is to
he
implemented. It needs force. That these
new medievalists are prepared for force to uphold their superior Reason
is made clear in Maritain's
True Humanism.
At the present time, Mortimer
J.
Adler is merely a provincial Torquemada without an Inquisition.
When these men talk of the past of the Church, they idealize that past.
They find sophistries to support the persecution of heretics. They prate
about the unity of medireval society while forgetting that there was dis–
unity as well as unity in that form of society. They are still playing the
role of intellectual coroners, and issuing endless death certificates to those
poor misguided fellows-the nominalists.
The historian Gibbon wrote: "The Church of Rome defended by
violence the empire which she had acquired by fraud." Here is a side of
history that fails to interest Adler. But he does have one characteristic in
common with many of the early
Chri~tians.
They wanted their cake and
they wanted to eat it too. The Emperor Constantine, for instance, waited
until he was on his death bed to he baptized. Adler is still delaying his
baptism.
2
Solilude and Society
by Nicolas Berdyaev, New York, 1938,
p.
16.
