SCIENCE, RELIGION AND SOCIALISM 



sophisticated person present) felt that it was rather absurd. The 

 collective farm had its usual anxieties; the cows were giving 

 only half the amount of milk expected, the ploughing was 

 backward, the fields of mangold-wurzels (or whatever it was) 

 were covered with weeds and badly hoed. In the company's 

 repertory there were Soviet plays, but the provincial actor- 

 manager wanted to strut and gesticulate in the role of the jealous 

 Moor, and nothing else would do. The play began by being 

 misunderstood, but ended with great general emotion in the 

 midst of tears and enthusiastic applause. The peasants of the 

 collective farm were especially affected by Desdemona, but after 

 the performance they amazed her, and even made her cry, 

 because, instead of congratulating her on her acting, they made 

 all kinds of unexpected promises about the augmentation of the 

 milk yield, the improved cultivation of the fields, and the attain- 

 ment of more than their scheduled production."^ 



Thus even farm labourers, at a comparatively low level of education 

 and culture, could pass over very well from the emotion generated 

 by the tragic situation of individuals, to that involved in the common 

 situation of humanity. Not a few marxist thinkers have, as a matter 

 of fact, foreseen the replacement of organised religion by the arts 

 and drama.^ This is possible not because the numinous is identical 

 with the aesthetic, but because the never-ending tale of human 

 relationships in the successive stages of social evolution and progress, 

 can itself be the bearer of the numinous. As Feuerbach would have 

 said, man will in this way realise that in the ideological structures of 

 the traditional religions, he was really looking at himself and his own 

 fate and the fate of his society. 



Enemies of Human Experience. 



There is a kind of fundamental validity attaching to the five great 

 realms of human experience, philosophy, history, science, art, and 

 religion. Each of these has its enemies — those who go about to deny 

 their validity, or their right to exist, or their right to play the part 

 which they do play in our civilisation or our individual lives. Let us 

 consider some of these factors in relation to our main theme. 



Against Philosophy come many opponents. Particularly, the 



^ From an essay by a Polish writer, Andrzej Stawar, which a Polish friend of mine 

 and I translated together (Scrutiny, 1937, 6, 21). 



^ Especially G. Plekhanov, Fundamental Problems of Marxism (London, n.d.), P- I43' 



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