METAMORPHOSES OF SCEPTICISM 



assert that it happens actually in evolving nature itself, and that the 

 undoubted fact that it happens in our thought about nature is because 

 we and our thought are a part of nature. We cannot consider nature 

 otherwise than as a series of levels of organisation, a series of dialectical 

 syntheses. From ultimate physical particle to atom, from atom to 

 molecule, from molecule to colloidal aggregate, from aggregate to 

 living cell, from cell to organ, from organ to body, from animal body 

 to social association, the series of organisational levels is complete. 

 Nothing but energy (as we now call matter and motion) and the levels 

 of organisation (or the stabilised dialectical syntheses) at different 

 levels have been required for the building of our world. The conse- 

 quences of this point of view are boundless. Social evolution is con- 

 tinuous with biological evolution, and the higher stages of social 

 organisation, embodied in advanced ethics and in socialism, are not a 

 pious hope based on optimistic ideas about human nature, but the 

 necessary consequence of all foregoing evolution. We are in the midst 

 of the dialectical process, which is not likely to stop at the bidding of 

 those who sit, like Canute, with their feet in the water forbidding 

 the flood of the tide. 



I shall not emphasise these consequences here, since in the other 

 essays in this book they are further dealt with. I shall only point 

 out that they fundamentally affect our attitude to time. Hence the 

 title of the present book. As Auden says : — 



"And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets 

 Of the evening paper; 'Our day is our loss, O show us 



History the operator, the 

 Organiser, Time the refreshing river!" 



Sir Thomas Browne was wrong; "the great Mutations of the world" 

 are not all yet acted, and time will not be too short for the develop- 

 ment of human society that is to come. Contrary presentations, of 

 course, spring to the mind: — 



"Time, like an ever-rolling stream 

 Bears all its sons away. 

 They fly forgotten, as a dream 

 Dies at the opening day." 



translation. M. J. Adler in his Dialectic (London, 1927, p. 10) makes the interesting 

 point that dialectical thinking is essentially social thinking within the one mind, since 

 it involves a conflict ofopposites, which deduction and induction do not. See also the 

 article of A. M. Dunham on the concept of "tension" in psychology and logic 

 (Psychiatry, 1938, 1, 79). 



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15 



