RELIGION AND THE INTELLECTUALS
129
JOHN DEWEY
The present loss of faith in science among intellectuals, and
the accompanying reversion to moral attitudes and beliefs which in–
tellectuals as a class had abandoned, is an outstanding event rendering
the inquiry initiated by the editors of
PARTISAN
REVIEW
as timely as
the issue is important. No one having an interest in the progressions
and retrogressions of cultural life can fail to be interested in the
question of its "cause" or conditioning source. When I say that to
me the latter appears as obvious and as outstanding as is the event
to be explained, I shall doubtless seem to be indulging in gross over–
simplification. Even so, its statement may serve to illustrate the point
of view from which the following discussion is undertaken.
In any case there is coincidence
in time
between the loss of in–
tellectual nerve, and the attendant reversion to a position not long
ago discarded, and recent developments in human affairs. Accord–
ingly, I shall indicate the grounds upon which I believe that much
more than just coincidence is involved. The period during which loss
of confidence and faith have increasingly taken place
is
also the
exact period in which the relationship between nations, races, and
groups or classes within each, have been disturbed to the point of
disorganization. The disturbance is world-wide in scope or range,
while internally it pervades every institution of life, political, econom–
ic, and cultural.
No one, I take it, can deny that the present all but universally
pervasive shock followed hard upon the totalitarian revolutions in
Italy and Germany. The two World Wars that have since occurred
render it unnecessary to argue that the belief, previously current
among all intellectuals of the liberal type, that we were entering
upon an epoch in which there would be steady, even
if
slow, ad–
vance toward a peaceful world order, has undergone a tragic shock.
Nor was belief in inevitable progress toward a happier and more
equitable human order confined to the matter of peace among
the peoples of the earth.
It
was joined with and supported by
belief in the equally assured advance of democratic political regimes
which would be marked by sure, even if gradual, advance in
personal freedom; and which would include movement in the direc-