THE GOOD SOCIETY
167
aphoristic effect extenuates this loose language and bad thinking. All
genuine problems, such as the degree of freedom a democratic com–
munity can extend to its schoolo;, the most effective methods by which
schools can impart a critical understanding of the unfinished tasks of
democracy, how teachers can accept a social philosophy from among
different alternatives without indoctrinating their charges-all dis–
appear in a string of portentous tautologies composed by arbitrary
redefinition of terms.
It would be unfair to Van Doren, however, to suggest that all of
his writing is of
this
character. Some of his asides have real point, but,
unfortunately, the author is himself impaled on them: "The sign that
the liberal arts are present in a discussion is its quality, in whatever
degree, of light and precic;ion." And in places he fixes important truths
with epigrams that will delight both the philosopher and the poet.
"Our sincerity depends on our knowledge of what we are talking
about. Morals cannot be better than thought."
Unfortunately, for all his talk about Reason, Van Doren offers
no rational defense of his educational program. But from
this
program
there radiate certain lines along which he himself has taken a few
tentative steps. Others, more capable philosophically and less unaware
politically, have already indicated where these lines lead. His denun–
ciation of modern educators as contemners of truth, leads
to
the de–
mand, forcefully made by Mortimer Adler, that American education
be purged of all naturalists and positivists "as more dangerous to
democracy than Hitler." His belief that metaphysics gives better
warranted knowledge than science is implemented in the demand of
Hutchins and M. Maritain that metaphysics and theology be recog–
nized as the supreme study in our higher institutions of learning. And
although Rev. Gannon, Monsignor Sheean and Bishop Noll do not
expect as yet to have the only
true
metaphysics and theology taught
as they would like to teach it, they are in the van of the crusade to
bring religion into the schools and end the separation of Church and
State in American life.*
It would be a gross overestimate of the role of the schools in the
community to believe that they can initiate or arrest social and poli–
tical change. But if the forces of secular democracy lose the battle on
the educational front an important center of resistance to totalitarian
trends in political life
will
be gone.
*
Cf. Noll's
Our National Enemy Number One-Education Without Religion
(Huntington, Indiana, 1942) .
