19121912
People :
Author : Guy Aldred
Text :
In May, 1821, Carlile completed his Address to Men of Science, which he immediately caused to be published as yet another of his Dorchester Bastile’s contributions to proletarian literature. Classical scholarship was impeached in its pages as neither giving a polish to manners nor teaching morality. Indeed, the following excerpt reminds one of Spencer at his best in his famous essay on Education:——
"It fills the mind with a useless jargon, and enables the possessor now and then to make a tinsel and pompous declaration in half—a-dozen different languages; which, if it were to undergo a translation into one language, and that which we call native, would be found to be a mass of unintelligible and unmeaning trash—words of sound, to which it would be difficult to attach an idea and in which all correct notions are wanting. It makes a man a pedant only. Such men have been most aptly termed "spouters of froth."
He now portrays in elegant language the principles of materialism. The priestly dogma of immortality he dismisses as a ridiculous idea. He adds :—
"Away with the contemptible notion that our bones, our muscles, and Our flesh shall be gathered together after they are rotted and evaporated for a resurrection to eternal life. Away with the idea that we have a sensible soul which lives distinct from and after the dissolution of the body. It is all a bugbear, all a priestly imposture. The chemist can analyze the body of man, and send it into its primitive gaseous state in a few minutes. His crucible and fire, or his galvanic battery, will cause it to evaporate so as not to leave a particle of substance or solid matter. And this chemical process is but an anticipation, or a hastening, of the workings of nature; for the whole universe might be aptly termed a great chemical apparatus, in which a chemical analysis and a chemical composition is continually and constantly going on. The same might be said of every organized body however large or however minute; its motions produce a constant chemical analysis and composition, a continual change; so that the smallest particle of matter is guided by the same laws, and performs the same duties as the great whole."
Carlile proceeds to impeach the men of science for betraying the purpose of science in their anxiety to crouch to the established tyrannies of kingcraft and priestcraft. He accuses them of adopting the aristocratical distinctions of the day, and of supporting frauds upon mankind it should be their peculiar-duty to expose. He arraigns the servile cowardice of Bacon, and exposes the hypocrisy and stupidity of Sir Isaac Newton. The character of the latter he contrasts against that of the more honest Whiston :——
“Newton courted distinction and popularity by servilely succumbing to all the despotisms of the day. Whiston was a man of principle, and lived and died poor for the satisfaction of writing and speaking what he thought and believed. The one has been too much flattered and applauded; the other too much vilified and degraded; and the clamor by which both circumstances have been effected has been equally disgusting and disgraceful to the country."From these and other facts Carlile concludes that a “misery-begetting, splendor” must always be, in reality, opposed to “an advanced state, of science,” and declares that the ruling-class only make "partial pretensions to patronize the arts and sciences as a cloak for their enmity towards them.” Having proceeded to impeach the idle distinctions drawn by law makers, Carlile now adds : ——
"It is the duty of. the man of science-to attack those distinctions, to attack all the established follies of the day, and endeavor to restore society to its natural state; to that state which just principles will point out; the mutual support, the comfort, the happiness, and the protection of each other. At present we are but so many beasts of prey, each strengthening himself by the destruction of his weaker fellow."He now sees the part played by the Free Press in bringing about this social regeneration, and hails it as the Messiah that “will go on to unite, under the name and title of man and citizen, the whole human race, or all those animals who have the gift of speech and its consequent--reason.”
Returning to his impeachment of men of science for their cowardice, he declares that he is determined to break down all attempts to treat knowledge as contraband goods, and announces his willingness to publish the sentiments of any scientific thinker without danger to the latter, by standing between him and persecution.
This brilliant essay then goes on to propound a system not merely of secular instruction, but a free school that really anticipates all the principles of Ferrer’s Modern School. Carlile has no faith in ancient geography, since it really inculcates Imperialism. He wished to abolish from the curriculum for the young all mythology and classical literature. Homer, Heriod, Horace, etc., he would have none of. But he wants children to be taught how to read and write their native tongue and trained in all the departments of mathematics, so that their reasons might be developed and strengthened. He also expresses his contempt for the interested gossip that passes muster for history. A striking contribution to the literature of freedom was this iconoclastic brochure composed inside the Dorchester bastile.
From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.
Chronology :
November 30, 1911 : Chapter 9 -- Publication.
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