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the university to the nursery school, from the Supreme Court to the
town council. Their followers "became pragmatists in epistemology;
they tried to apply scientific method to moral and social problems; they
sent their children to progressive schools; they defended social justice
and civil liberties by citing Holmes's dissenting opinions; they voted
Socialist occasionally; they hailed Robinson's history of the western
mind; they interpreted politics economically [with Beard] and poked
fun with Veblen at conspicuous consumption and the leisure class."
What were the consequences of the revolt? There can be no doubt
that it was an immensely liberating influence, releasing a flood of in–
tellectual energy which went far toward enabling American society to
respond to the challenges of the twentieth century. Yet, did not the
revolt end by rejecting too much? "It is not exaggerating to say," writes
Mr. White, "that the revolt was speedily followed by a reign of terror
in which precision and logic and analytic methods became suspect." In
rejecting formalism in so dramatic and unconditional a way, the anti–
formalists created precedents which tended toward the rejection of
many indispensable tools of exact reasoning. Veblen's obsession with the
institutional approach in economics, for example, would have foreclosed
the use of the mathematical model which in the hands of Keynes and his
followers has been the most fruitful source of modern advance in eco–
nomic theory. And Mr. White, as a philosopher, apparently finds
it hardest of all to forgive Dewey for his refusal to see the virtues of
logical analysis in philosophy. "The task of future philosophy," Dewey
had written, "is to clarify men's ideas as to the social and moral strifes
of their own day. Its aim is to become so far as is humanly possible an
organ for dealing with these conflicts." Yet, after thus urging philosophy
to abdicate its historic function, Dewey was unwilling to convert it into
a usable substitute for politics lest the promulgation of specific reforms,
the statement of exact objectives, create new rigidities and dogmatisms.
Clarification ended up in cliche.
The reign of terror came to an end, but it was followed, as MI'.
White points out, by Thermidor and not by freedom. Today American
social thought is in confusion. Some struggle in the seas of anti-formal–
ism, loose from all moorings; others find a narcotic solution, in Mr.
White's phrase, by "measuring attitudes toward toothpaste"; and for a
season a great many others were propelled irresistibly toward the new
and terrible dogmatism of Communism.
"The fact that past formulations of ends have degenerated into
dogma," Mr. White concludes, "is no argument against formulating
ends but rather against viewing them as sacrosanct." What he would
