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and only by, the elimination of independent sovereignty in a single world
government.
On p. 288, he notes: "The means to prolonging the truce which
will postpone the next world war do not need discussion here." He con–
tents himself, in the 13 pages remaining to his text, with the thousandth
or so repetition of the thesis of the first 287 pages.
It is true that many other word combinations appear. For example:
"Wars will continue to occur until we succeed in making peace."
"If
and
when world government exists, both external sovereignty and political
independence will become meaningless." "To understand the possibilities
of peace is to know the minimum conditions for its realization." "To
desire an end, but not its requisite means, is obviously self-defeating."
"There is always the danger of proving too little or too much." "It
[peace] is certainly impossible if the obstacles to it reside in any un–
changeable features of human nature." "Reason can prove that there is
a middle ground between tomorrow and infinity."
It is something of a triumph, I suppose, to write a 301 page book
without saying anything, but Professor Adler has long shown himself a
formidable warrior in these verbal tourneys. As master of tautology
there is probably no man alive to rank beside him.
Unfortunately, we cannot dismiss his book as a kind of academic
joke. There is, naturally, no point in discussing its supposed subject mat–
ter, since there is nothing to discuss. There is only a series of mechanical
manipulations of what is already implicit in his dozens of definitions.
Who could possibly question the demonstration I have cited in the first
paragraph, or the string of tautologies in the third? Or who could pos–
sibly learn anything from them? They cannot be questioned because they
are empty of the slightest significant content.
But Adler is also the most noted fellow-traveler of the Catholic
Church; a champion in the crusade to rid the land of the heresies of
naturalism and empiricism; and the brains of the powerful educational
movement that is fronted by Robert M. Hutchins, Mark Van Doren,
St. Johns College, and the 100 Great Books.
So, since he here undertakes to tell us how to think, in general and
about a very important question, we must at least observe what his
method for thinking amounts to, and where it will get us. We may sum
up quickly: it will get us to exactly where we started from. This it will
do, and no more, because the whole method consists merely in laying
down a variety of definitions and then grinding out various formal equi–
valences and consequences of these. Facts, dreary, pedestrian facts, are
at no point relevant.
The layman often finds, surrounding the method, that aura of pre–
cision and profundity which causes the reviewers to be so respectful.
This, however, is altogether an illusion. The precision is not even word
deep, for the words are often not merely vague but ambiguous. The
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