SCIENCE RELIGION AND SOCIALISM 



plenty and poverty, the desire for peace and the preparation for war, 

 exist side by side; but it does require far more knowledge to see how 

 an alternative system could be built up. And yet, unless scientists are 

 prepared to study this they must accept the present state of affairs 

 and see the results of their own work inadequately utilised to-day and 

 dangerously abused in the near future." Thus the figures of the 

 annual government grants speak for themselves. In 1933, for example, 

 the Medical Research Council received £139,000 and the Department 

 for Scientific and Industrial Research ;^443,838, while the research 

 grants for the Army, Na\y, and Air Force together were ;(^2,759,ooo, 

 i.e. five times as much as the whole total for civil research.^ 



Another of the influences working in our time against science is 

 the outcome of modern psychology.^ An argument nowadays need 

 not be answered; it is sufhcient to trace it back to the previous psy- 

 chological history, and hence the prejudices, of the person who 

 propounds it. A misunderstanding of marxism, with its insistence 

 upon the class basis of science, has exposed it to this accusation, but 

 it is perfectly legitimate to apply the class theory of history to the 

 history of science, and the results are frequently highly convincing. 

 On the other hand the fascist struggle (especially in Germany) against 

 "objective science," based on the racial theory of history, which has 

 no scientific basis of any sort, is the most dangerous form of this 

 kind of attack which exists, though it can only be seriously proclaimed 

 to the masses under conditions where all criticism is silenced by state 

 power. As for Art, it does not pay.^ No further enemy is needed. 

 And History, as eminent capitalists have assured us, is bunk.^ 



Against Religion come so many forces that it is hard to count 

 them. The general trend from religion to science which took place in 

 the Hellenistic age and the late Roman Empire repeated itself again in 

 our own western European civilisation from the Renaissance onwards. 

 Religion has had to face the great pretensions of the mediaeval 

 secular power, the mechanical philosophies of the 17th century, the 

 enlightened atheism of the i8th century, and the Victorian agnos- 

 ticism of the last age. Bourgeois agnostics and proletarian atheists 

 have attacked it from all sides. It is surprising that there is anything 

 left of it: and few people seem even to know what it is. Thus an 



^ Budget Estimates. 



- Cf. Joad, C. E. M., Guide to Modern Thought (London, 1933); and Under the Fifth 

 Rib: An Autobiography (London, 1932). 

 ^ See p. 138. 

 * The dictum is attributed to Mr. Henry Ford. 



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