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1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/International, The

INTERNATIONAL, THE (see ). After the collapse of the original “International Working Men's Association,” known as the First International, there were successive attempts to form a united International of the various socialist and labour movements, the two chief attempts being the Second International, which was formed in 1889 and broke down on the outbreak of the World War in 1914, but was afterwards revived in a mutilated form, and the Third International, which was formed in 1919 on a more exclusively revolutionary basis. In 1921 there was no single International for all the labour and socialist organizations, and the movement as a whole was in flux.

The Second International.—In the period following the collapse of the First International, the national labour and socialist movements grew up separately in each country with only a slight international connexion. For the 13 years between 1876 and 1889 there was no permanent international bond, but only occasional ad hoc international conferences of labour. These

were summoned by various convening bodies, on one occasion (1888) by the British Trades Union Congress. The list of these intervening conferences is given as follows in the official record of the International Socialist Bureau: 1876, Berne; 1877, Ghent; 1881, Coire; 1883, Paris; 1886, Paris; 1888, London.

In 1889 a new step was taken by the decision of the Paris International Congress to arrange for the periodic holding of International congresses in future. The Paris Congress really consisted of two separately convened conferences, one being Marxian and the other Possibilist or moderate. Subsequent united congresses were held at Brussels in 1891, at Zurich in 1893, and at London in 1896. The starting point of the Second or “New International” is commonly taken as the year 1889.

It was not, however, until 1900, at the Paris Congress of that year, that a definite constitution was set up for the new International. The 1900 Congress established an International Socialist Bureau of representatives from each affiliated national section, together with an executive, a paid secretary, and a central office. The bureau met once a year, or more often in the case of emergency. The central office was stationed at Brussels; and the chairman, secretary and executive, who were entrusted with the task of carrying on the continuous work of the International, were composed of members of the Belgian section.

At the same Congress of Paris in 1900 were laid down the final conditions of membership of the International. By these conditions affiliation was open to—

Subsequent congresses under the new regulations were held at Amsterdam in 1904, at Stuttgart in 1907, and at Copenhagen in 1910. A special conference was held at Basel in 1912 to protest against the danger of participation by the Great Powers in the Balkan war. The next regular congress was to have been held at Vienna in Aug. 1914, but was abandoned owing to the outbreak of war. The last full congress of the Second International was, in consequence, the Copenhagen Congress of 1910. That congress was attended by 896 delegates representing 23 nationalities. The total number of nationalities affiliated with the bureau at the outbreak of war was 28; and the membership was given as 12 millions.

The pre-war International was a larger organization than had so far been achieved; but its real strength lay in the national sections, and as a whole it lacked effective adhesion or unity. The compromise which gave it birth in the original fusion of the two Paris conferences of 1889 stamped its proceedings throughout. Two leading controversies occupied its attention in the years before the war. One was the question of socialist participation in non-socialist governments. The other was the question of the action of the International in the event of war. On neither of these questions was a clear answer given, although on both elaborate resolutions were passed, couched in revolutionary but vague phraseology. The decision regarding ministerial collaboration by socialists was reached at the Amsterdam Congress of 1904, and laid down that—

This decision would in itself appear definite; but the addition at the end introduces a covert reservation, the terms of the 1900 resolution having sanctioned the exceptional entry of a socialist into the Ministry as a “forced expedient of a temporary and extraordinary character.”

The decision on the question of war is even more important for latter-day controversies. The decision was reached at the Stuttgart Congress of 1907 and reaffirmed at the Copenhagen Congress of 1910. It made the following declaration:—

This decision would again appear definite: but a proposal at the Copenhagen Congress in favour of a general strike in the event of war was referred back by 131 votes to 51, with instructions to the International Bureau to remit it to the national sections for report. The Trade Union International had already refused discussion of the same proposal on the ground that it was a political question falling within the scope of the Socialist International. The subsequent fate of the proposal is worth observing as evidence of the pre-war position. The International Bureau, in accordance with instructions, circularized the national sections in 1910 with a request to report. By 1912 four replies had been received in all, from (1) the Armenian Revolutionary Federation; (2) the Commission of Resolutions of the Seine; (3) the Central Unions and Socialist Party of Denmark; (4) the Socialist Party of Finland. In 1912 the International secretary again circularized the national sections, pointing out the urgency of the subject, as Aug. 1914 (the Vienna Congress) was approaching. This was the position reached before the war.

The International during the War.—The collapse of the International at the outbreak of war in 1914 thus came as more of a surprise to those outside the International than to those acquainted with it. The International, despite its imposing aspirations, was in reality no more than a loose federation of political parties with no strong central authority. In the words of M. Camille Huysmans, the International secretary, describing it as he found it when he took office in 1904, it was “no more than a letter-box and a postal address, a mere medium of communication, without power and without real influence”; and he goes on to describe how efforts to improve this position met with little encouragement.

The outbreak of the war revealed that the national sections were stronger than the International. It is true that in Serbia, the country first affected by invasion, the Socialist party stood by the International and voted against the war credits; but their example was not followed. The most important national sections affected (with the exception of Russia), Britain, France, Belgium and Germany, rallied to the support of what they felt to be a war of national defence. Opposition was expressed only by minorities in each of these countries, consisting of extreme revolutionary socialists or of pacifist socialists.

The effect of the war was, accordingly, to break up the International into two sections, pro-war and anti-war. The International Secretariat was transferred to Holland; and substitute members were taken on to the Executive from the Dutch section. There followed a period of sectional conferences. In Jan. 1915, the neutral socialists met at Copenhagen and issued an appeal to the belligerent socialists to act to stop the war. In Feb. 1915, the Allied socialists met in London and passed a resolution emphasizing the necessity of continuing the war. In April 1915, the Central Powers socialists met at Vienna and passed resolutions dealing chiefly with relations after the war.

All these conferences were held with the knowledge and sanction of the International Executive, which was endeavouring by negotiation to pave the way for a full congress. But in Sept. 1915, the anti-war socialists took matters into their own hands, and held an unofficial socialist conference at Zimmerwald in Switzerland. This conference set up a permanent International Socialist Commission, which was henceforth in tacit, though not at first intended, rivalry with the official bureau. This rivalry became intensified when a second conference was held under the auspices of the commission at Kienthal in April 1916, and the revolutionary section of the anti-war socialists began to play a more dominant part.

The situation was brought to a head by the Russian Revolution of March 1917. An invitation for a full International Socialist Conference to be held at Stockholm was issued by the Petrograd Soviet in conjunction with the Dutch-Scandinavian committee which had been formed to act for the bureau. The invitation was accepted by all the principal sections, including the British Labour party, the French Socialist party, and the German and Austrian socialists. But after a protracted crisis the refusal of passports by the British and French Governments led to the failure of the project. It was at this stage that the Zimmerwaldian Commission held a separate meeting at Stockholm and finally decided on founding a new International.

In March 1918, an Inter-Allied Socialist and Labour Conference was held, which drew up a statement of war aims and communicated it to the socialist parties of the Central Powers. The replies of the latter were received during the summer of 1918, and negotiations were proceeding on these lines when the Armistice came.

The Second International after the War.—Immediately after the Armistice steps were taken for the reconstruction of the International under the auspices of a committee appointed by the Inter-Allied Socialist and Labour Conference of March 1918. This committee, consisting of Messrs. Albert Thomas, Henderson and Vandervelde, acting in conjunction with M. Camille Huysmans, the International secretary, issued invitations for a preliminary International Socialist and Labour Conference to be held at Berne concurrently with the official Peace Conference.

The Berne Conference was held in Feb. 1919, and was attended by delegates from 26 nations. Certain sections of the Left refused to participate, including the Russian Communist party (who had already issued their invitation for a separate conference to inaugurate a new International) and the official parties of Italy, Switzerland, Serbia and Rumania.

The Berne Conference, although not strictly a conference of the old Second International either in origin or composition, made arrangements for the resumption of the International at a full congress to be held the next year, and appointed a Permanent Commission for this purpose. The conference also passed resolutions in favour of a League of Nations based on a just peace, of national self-determination, and of an International Labour Charter. War responsibilities and Bolshevism gave rise to sharp debates. The former subject was remitted to a subsequent congress. On the latter subject a resolution denouncing the dictatorship of the proletariat and declaring democracy the only possible means of achieving socialism received a majority of votes; but the conference decided to postpone a definite decision until it had sent a mission of inquiry to Russia (for which, however, passports were refused).

The Permanent Commission appointed at the Berne Conference met at Amsterdam in April 1919, and at Lucerne in Aug. 1919. It made arrangements for the first full after-war congress to be held at Geneva in Feb. 1920, and drew up a provisional constitution. Difficulties in the way of the Geneva Congress arose owing to the growing strength of the newly founded Third or Communist International and the steady defection of parties and sections from the Second International. In consequence the Geneva Congress was postponed until Aug. 1920.

By the time the Geneva Congress was held in Aug. 1920, the Second International had come to represent in practice the right wing of the International Labour movement, although still in its basis accepting all labour and socialist organizations. Its main strength lay in the British Labour party and the German Majority socialists, together with the parties of certain smaller countries, including Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Holland and Hungary. The official parties of America, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, the Balkans, Ukraine and Russia had left it, as had also the German Independent socialists, while of the British socialist organizations only the Fabian Society remained with it.

The Geneva Congress adopted for the first time a regular constitution for the International, and drew up a carefully worded programme on the economic and political side. This

follows more or less the lines made familiar in England by Fabian socialism, together with the recognition of a large measure of workers' control in industry. The Geneva Congress further recommended that the Secretariat should be transferred to London; and the British section was invited to undertake the task of negotiating with national socialist and labour bodies not represented, in order to secure their adherence. A negotiating commission was accordingly set up in Nov. 1920, consisting of Mr. Arthur Henderson, Mr. J. H. Thomas, Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald and Mr. H. Gosling.

The Third International.—The decision to found a new revolutionary International, in view of the failure of the old Second International under the test of war, was first definitely framed by the Russian Social Democratic party (Bolshevik) at their congress in 1915, and subsequently adopted, as has been related, by the Zimmerwaldian International Socialist Commission at Stockholm in 1917. In Jan. 1919, the invitation for the first congress of the new International was issued by the Russian Communist party (the name adopted by the Russian Bolsheviks after their revolution of Nov. 1917) together with representatives of other Communist parties. This inaugural congress was held at Moscow in March 1919, and was attended by the Russian Communist party, the Norwegian Labour party, the German Spartacusbund and other smaller parties and groups. The congress wound up the Zimmerwaldian Commission, whose secretary became the secretary of the new International, and appointed an executive to arrange for the next congress, to which was left the drafting of the full constitution and conditions of admission. In the meantime a manifesto was drawn up expounding the general principles of the new Communist International, and inviting the adhesion of the revolutionary movements of the world. A summary of the principles and programme of the Communist International, as expounded in their manifesto, is given in the article on.

The first congress of the new International had been a hurried meeting with little pretence at a fully representative character. The policy of precipitating its foundation had been deliberately adopted in spite of criticism as a means of crystallizing the situation in the whole International Socialist movement. This object received a considerable degree of fulfilment. Within the next twelvemonth every party had to define its attitude in relation to the new issues, and a great shifting of the centre of gravity began in the whole International movement. Section after section left the Second International, and a slower, but steady, influx passed into the Third International. By the time of the Second Congress in Aug. 1920, accredited representatives attended from parties of varying size in nearly every country.

The Second Congress had to determine the constitution and conditions of admission of the new International. This raised a new problem. The effect of the world-wide movement towards the Third International had been to produce a series of demands for admission from parties which were not fully communist in character. This applied particularly to the applications of the larger parties, the parties of Italy, Germany (the Independent Socialists), France and America. Of these Italy had joined the Third International while retaining a small reformist section within its ranks; France, Germany and America were applying for admission, although all containing anti-communist sections. The danger was that the Communist International would be swamped and become like the old pre-war Second International. Accordingly severe measures were taken to stem the tide, and a series of 21 conditions of membership were drawn up to serve as a test to sift the genuine communists from the “centrists.” These measures produced the effect desired. The Italian communists broke away from their connexion with the reformist socialists (who were not themselves numerous, but received support from the majority of the party in the name of unity); the French and German parties came over only after a break with their right-wing minorities; the American communists, who were also in a majority in their party, but were expelled by the official right-wing minority, affiliated separately.

The statutes and 21 conditions of membership reveal the

basis and organization of the Third International. The object of the organization is laid down as follows:—

In contrast with the pre-war International great stress is laid on international discipline. The World Congress is constituted as the supreme authority of the International, and is given power to confirm or revise the programme and policy of the national sections. In the intervals of the congresses this power is exercised by the International Executive, which has the right to issue obligatory instructions to the component organizations. In further contrast with the pre-war International, great stress is laid on the necessity for illegal work and the preparation for eventual armed conflict.

In addition to the statutes and conditions a series of theses were adopted by the Second Congress, outlining the communist policy and tactics in relation to Parliament, the trade unions, cooperative societies, national and colonial movements, etc. The statutes, conditions and theses, taken together, constitute the official statement of policy of the Communist International, which is held to be binding on all members.

The Vienna International.—While the issues of the Second and Third Internationals were agitating the socialist world, a number of parties which occupied a centre position endeavoured to start a new movement with a view to the reconstruction of the International. These parties had left the Second International, but were not prepared to enter the Third International. In Dec. 1920, a conference was held at Berne which made preparations for an inaugural congress of the new movement at Vienna in Feb. 1921. This congress was attended by the Austrian, Swiss and Hungarian parties, the British Independent Labour party, and the right-wing minorities of the French Socialists and the German Independent Socialists, the Russian Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, and one or two groups from other countries. An “International Working Union of Socialist Parties” was constituted, open to all parties not affiliated with either the Second or the Third International, and with the object of “unifying the activities of the affiliated parties, arranging common action, and promoting the establishment of an International which will embrace the whole revolutionary working class of the world.” A statement on the “Organization and Methods of the Class Struggle” was adopted, which insisted on the probable necessity of expecting the use of violent measures by the capitalist class, but claimed national autonomy for each party to determine its own method of action.

Thus, by the summer of 1921, there were in existence three Internationals claiming the allegiance of the labour and socialist movements of the world.

(R. P. D.)


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ETAPHYSICS, or the attempt to conceive the world as a whole by means of thought, has been developed, from the first, by the union and conflict of two very different human impulses, the one urging men towards mysticism, the other urging them towards science. Some men have achieved greatness through one of these impulses alone, others through the other alone: in Hume, for example, the scientific impulse reigns quite unchecked, while in Blake a strong hostility to science co-exists with profound mystic insight. But the greatest men who have been philosophers have felt the need both of science and of mysticism: the attempt to harmonise the two was what made their life, and what always must, for all its arduous uncertainty, make philosophy, to some minds, a greater thing than either science or religion.

Before attempting an explicit characterisation of the scientific and the mystical impulses, I will illustrate them by examples from two philosophers whose greatness lies in the very intimate blending which they achieved. The two philosophers I mean are Heraclitus and Plato.

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2 Heraclitus, as every one knows, was a believer in universal flux: time builds and destroys all things. From the few fragments that remain, it is not easy to discover how he arrived at his opinions, but there are some sayings that strongly suggest scientific observation as the source.

"The things that can be seen, heard, and learned," he says, "are what I prize the most." This is the language of the empiricist, to whom observation is the sole guarantee of truth. "The sun is new every day," is another fragment; and this opinion, in spite of its paradoxical character, is obviously inspired by scientific reflection, and no doubt seemed to him to obviate the difficulty of understanding how the sun can work its way underground from west to east during the night. Actual observation must also have suggested to him his central doctrine, that Fire is the one permanent substance, of which all visible things are passing phases. In combustion we see things change utterly, while their flame and heat rise up into the air and vanish.

"This world, which is the same for all," he says, "no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be, an ever-living Fire, with measures kindling, and measures going out."

"The transformations of Fire are, first of all, sea; and half of the sea is earth, half whirlwind."

This theory, though no longer one which science can accept, is nevertheless scientific in spirit. Science, too, might have inspired the famous saying to which Plato alludes: "You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you." But we find also another statement among the extant fragments: "We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not."


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 pipes have been found preferable to cast-iron. He says that it had been demonstrated by practice that cast-iron cannot compete with wrought-iron or steel pipes in the states west of the Rocky Mountains, on the Pacific slope. This is due to the absence of coal and iron ore in these states, and to the weight of the imported cast-iron pipes compared with steel pipes of equal capacity and strength. The works of the East Jersey Water Company for the supply of Newark, N.J., include a riveted steel conduit 48 in. in diameter and 21 m. long. This conduit is designed to resist only the pressure due to the hydraulic gradient, in contradistinction to that which would be due to the hydrostatic head, this arrangement saving 40% in the weight and cost of the pipes. For the supply of Rochester, N.Y., there is a riveted steel conduit 36 in. in diameter and 20 m. long; and for Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, there is a steel conduit 5 ft. in diameter and nearly 10 m. long. The works for bringing the water from La Vigne and Verneuil to Paris include a steel main 5 ft. in diameter between St. Cloud and Paris.

Cast-iron pipes rarely exceed 48 in. in diameter, and even this diameter is only practicable where the pressure of the water is low. In the Thirlmere aqueduct the greatest pressure is nearly 180 ℔ on the square inch, the pipes where this occurs being 40 in. in diameter and 1 in. thick. These large pipes, which are usually made in lengths of 12 ft., are generally cast with a socket at one end for receiving the spigot end of the next pipe, the annular space being run with lead, which is prevented from flowing into the interior of the pipe by a spring ring subsequently removed; the surface of the lead is then caulked all round the outside of the pipe. A wrought-iron ring is sometimes shrunk on the outer rim of the socket, previously turned to receive it, in order to strengthen it against the wedging action of the caulking tool. Sometimes the pipes are cast as plain tubes and joined with double collars, which are run with lead as in the last case. The reason for adopting the latter type is that the stresses set up in the thicker metal of the socket by unequal cooling are thereby avoided, a very usual place for pipes to crack under pressure being at the back of the socket. The method of turning and boring a portion, slightly tapered, of spigot and socket so as to ensure a watertight junction by close annular metallic contact, is not suitable for large pipes, though very convenient for smaller diameters in even ground. Spherical joints are sometimes used where a line of main has to be laid under a large river or estuary, and where, therefore, the pipes must be jointed before being lowered into the previously dredged trench. This was the case at the Willamette river, Portland, Oregon, where a length of 2000 ft. was required. The pipes are of cast-iron 28 in. in diameter, 1 in. thick, and 17 ft. long. The spigots were turned to a spherical surface of 20 in. radius outside, the inside of the sockets being of a radius 3⁄8 in. greater. After the insertion of the spigot into the socket, a ring, 3 in. deep, turned inside to correspond with the socket, was bolted to the latter, the annular space then being run with lead. These pipes were laid on an inclined cradle, one end of which rested on the bed of the river and the other on a barge where the jointing was done; as the pipes were jointed the barge was carefully advanced, thus trailing the pipes into the trench (Trans. Am. Soc. C. E. vol. xxxiii. p. 257). As may be conjectured from the pressure which they have to stand, very great care has to be taken in the manufacture and handling of cast-iron pipes of large diameter, a care which must be unfailing from the time of casting until they are jointed in their final position in the ground. They are cast vertically, socket downwards, so that the densest metal may be at the weakest part, and it is advisable to allow an extra head of metal of about 12 in., which is subsequently cut off in a lathe. An inspector representing the purchaser watches every detail of the manufacture, and if, after being measured in every part and weighed, they are found satisfactory they are proved with internal fluid pressure, oil being preferable to water for this purpose. While under pressure, they are rapped from end to end with a hand hammer of about 5 ℔ in weight, in order to discover defects. The wrought-iron rings are then, if required, shrunk on to the sockets, and the pipes, after being made hot in a stove, are dipped vertically in a composition of pitch and oil, in order to preserve them from corrosion. All these operations are performed under cover. A record should be kept of the history of the pipe from the time it is cast to the time it is laid and jointed in the ground, giving the date, number, diameter, length, thickness, and proof pressure, with the name of the pipe-jointer whose work closes the record. Such a history sometimes enables the cause (which is often very obscure) of a burst in a pipe to be ascertained, the position of every pipe being recorded.

Cast-iron pipes, even when dipped in the composition referred to, suffer considerably from corrosion caused by the water, especially soft water, flowing through them. One pipe may be found in as good a condition as when made, while the next may be covered with nodules of rust. The effect of the rust is twofold; it reduces the area of the pipe, and also, in consequence of the resistance offered by the rough surface, retards the velocity of the water. These two results, expecially the latter, may seriously diminish the capability of discharge, and they should always be allowed for in deciding the diameter. Automatic scrapers are sometimes used with good results, but it is better to be independent of them as long as possible. In one case the discharge of pipes, 40 in. in diameter, was found after a period of about twelve years to have diminished at the rate of about 1% per year; in another case, where the water was soft and where the pipes were 40 in. in diameter, the discharge was diminished by 7% in ten years. An account of the state of two cast-iron mains supplying Boston with water is given in the ''Trans. Am. Soc. C. E.'' vol. xxxv. p. 241. These pipes, which were laid in 1877, are 48 in. in diameter and 1800 ft. long. When they were examined in 1894-1895, it was estimated that the tubercles of rust covered nearly one-third of the interior surfaces, the bottom of the pipe being more encrusted than the sides and top. They had central points of attachment to the iron, at which no doubt the coating was defective, and from them the tubercles spread over the surface of the surrounding coating. In this case they were removed by hand, and the coating of the pipes was not injured in the process. Cast-iron pipes must not be laid in contact with cinders from a blast furnace with which roads are sometimes made, because these corrode the metal. Mr Russell Aitken (Proc. Inst. C. E. vol. cxv. p. 93) found in India that cast-iron pipes buried in the soil rapidly corroded, owing to the presence of nitric acid secreted by bacteria which attacked the iron. The large cast-iron pipes conveying the water from the Tansa reservoir to Bombay are laid above the surface of the ground. Cast-iron pipes of these large diameters have not been in existence sufficiently long to enable their life to be predicted. A main, 40 in. in diameter, conveying soft water, after being in existence fifty years at Manchester, was apparently as good as ever. In 1867 Mr J. B. Francis found that no apparent deterioration had taken place in a cast-iron main, 8 in. diameter, which was laid in the year 1828, a period of thirty-nine years (Trans. Soc. Am. C. E. vol. i. p. 26). These two instances are probably not exceptional.

Pipes in England are usually laid with not less than 2 ft. 6 in. of cover, in order that the water may not be frozen in a severe winter. Where they are laid in deep cutting they should be partly surrounded with concrete, so that they may not be fractured by the weight of earth above them. Angles are turned by means of special bend pipes, the curves being made of as large a radius as convenient. In the case of the Thirlmere aqueduct, double socketed castings about 12 in. long (exclusive of the sockets) were used, the sockets being inclined to each other at the required angle. They were made to various angles, and for any particular curve several would be used connected by straight pipes 3 ft. long. As special castings are nearly double the price of the regular pipes, the cost was much diminished by making them as short as possible, while a curve, made up of the slight angles used, offered practically no more impediment to the flow of water in consequence of its polygonal form, than would be the case had special bend pipes been used. In all cases of curves on a line of pipes under internal fluid pressure, there exists a resultant force tending to displace the pipes. When the curve is in a horizontal plane and the pipes are buried in the ground, the side of the pipe trench offers sufficient resistance to this force. Where, however, the pipes are above ground, or when the curve is in a vertical plane, it is necessary to anchor them in position. In the case of the Tansa aqueduct to Bombay, there is a curve of 500 ft. radius near Bassein Creek. At this point the hydrostatic head is about 250 ft., and the engineer, Mr Clerke, mentions that a tendency to an outward movement of the line of pipes was observed. At the siphon under Kurla Creek the curves on the approaches as originally laid down were sharp, the hydrostatic head being there about 210 ft.; here the outward movement was so marked that it was considered advisable to realign the approaches with easier curves (Proc. Inst. C. E. vol. cxv. p. 34). In the case of the Thirlmere aqueduct the greatest hydrostatic pressure, 410 ft., occurs at the bridge over the river Lune, where the pipes are 40 in. in diameter, and in descending from the bridge make reverse angles of 31°. The displacing force at each of these angles amounts to 54 tons, and as the design includes five lines of pipes, it is obvious that the anchoring arrangements must be very efficient. The steel straps used for anchoring these and all other bends were curved to fit as closely as possible the castings to be anchored. Naturally the metal was not in perfect contact, but when the pipes were charged the disappearance of all the slight inequalities showed that the straps were fulfilling their intended purpose. At every summit on a line of pipes one or more valves must be placed in order to allow the escape of air, and they must also be provided on long level stretches, and at changes of gradient where the depth of the point of change below the hydraulic gradient is less than that at both

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Rh The comparison of this statement, which is mystical, with the one quoted by Plato, which is scientific, shows how intimately the two tendencies are blended in the system of Heraclitus. Mysticism is, in essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in regard to what is believed about the universe; and this kind of feeling leads Heraclitus, on the basis of his science, to strangely poignant sayings concerning life and the world, such as:

"Time is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child's."

It is poetic imagination, not science, which presents Time as despotic lord of the world, with all the irresponsible frivolity of a child. It is mysticism, too, which leads Heraclitus to assert the identity of opposites: "Good and ill are one," he says; and again: "To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right."

Much of mysticism underlies the ethics of Heraclitus. It is true that a scientific determinism alone might have inspired the statement: "Man's character is his fate"; but only a mystic would have said:

"Every beast is driven to the pasture with blows"; and again:

"It is hard to fight with one's heart's desire. What ever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of soul"; and again:

"Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things."

Examples might be multiplied, but those that have been given are enough to show the character of the man: the facts of science, as they appeared to him, fed the


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1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Interstate Commerce

INTERSTATE COMMERCE (see ).—Subsequently to 1910 numerous Acts of the United States Congress and decisions of the Supreme Court extended the scope of Federal control over interstate commerce. The regulation of railways was made more complete, and the authority of the United States is now exercised regarding railway rates on traffic within the states when such rates affect interstate commerce. The Anti-Trust Act of 1890

was broadened and strengthened by the decisions of the Supreme Court in the oil and tobacco cases in 1911 and by the Clayton Act of 1913. In the adjustment of labour disputes between employers and employees engaged in interstate commerce the U.S. Government plays a constantly larger rôle.

Railway Regulation.—The Interstate Commerce Commission was given authority by the Hepburn Act of 1906 to establish reasonable maximum railway rates on interstate traffic, but could act only on complaints. By the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910, the Commission was authorized to establish reasonable rates after hearings initiated on its own motion. By this law the Interstate Commerce Act was made to apply also to telegraph and telephone companies. The most important addition to the powers of the Commission by the Act of 1910 was the authority to suspend proposed increases in rates. Rates filed by the carriers were to become effective in 30 days, but the Commission might suspend the increase for 120 days, and, if necessary, for an additional period of not exceeding six months. Another important provision of the Mann-Elkins Act gave renewed vitality to the fourth section, or the long and short haul clause, of the Interstate Commerce Act. Previously a carrier might decide whether this clause applied to any particular route, and, as the law had been interpreted by the courts, the fourth section had practically become a dead letter. By the Mann-Elkins Act no carrier may charge more for the shorter intermediate haul than for a longer haul until he has applied to the Commission and permission has been granted because of special circumstances.

The Panama Canal Act, passed in 1912, contains some important items extending Federal power over interstate commerce. It had long been thought by the public that it was the policy of the railways to secure control of competing carriers by water and force them out of existence. In response to this feeling, Congress, by the Panama Canal Act of 1912, provided that it should be unlawful for any railway company or common carrier, subject to the Interstate Commerce Act, to secure control by stock ownership or otherwise of any common carrier by water operating through the Panama Canal or elsewhere, provided the carrier by water and the railway company did or might compete with each other. The Commission was charged with the duty of deciding the questions of fact as to competition. The drastic nature of the law was somewhat modified by the provision that, if the Commission was of opinion that the public interests would be served and competition would not be prevented or reduced by the continued control by the railway company of a competing carrier by water the Commission might extend the period of control. In enforcing this provision, the Commission has compelled the trunk-line railways to sell the passenger and freight lines which they had efficiently operated upon the Great Lakes. The railways have been permitted to continue to operate steamships coastwise between New England ports. The prohibition of the use of the Panama Canal by vessels owned by a competing railway is absolute. The Panama Canal Act also gave the Commission authority, as regards interstate traffic, to require rail carriers to make physical connexion with the docks of steamship companies and to establish through routes and maximum joint rates. Rail carriers, moreover, that have entered into through arrangements with a carrier by water, operating from a port of the United States to a foreign country, must enter into like arrangements with any or all other lines of steamships operating from the same port. The purpose of this provision was to insure shippers from interior points the benefits of competition by through routes to foreign destinations.

Prior to 1915, it was the practice of railway companies by contracts in bills of lading to fix a maximum value for different articles, and in case of loss or damage the owner could collect only to the amount of the maximum value so fixed. By the Cummins Amendment (1915) to the Interstate Commerce Act carriers were made liable for the actual value of commodities. Subsequently the carriers were, however, permitted to establish a scale of rates varying with different values, provided the Commission approved.

As a result of the steady rise in cost of living after 1910, and of the more effective organization of railway employees, a series of demands was made by railway labour for increased wages. The demands were only partially satisfied by arbitration proceedings, and finally in 1916 the employees of the railways of the country threatened a nation-wide strike on Sept. 1 unless the demand for increased wages and for an eight-hour day was granted. The railway companies were unable to grant the demand and the men refused to arbitrate, although the President of the United States sought settlement by arbitration. The urgency of the situation caused the President to recommend and Congress to enact a law establishing the eight-hour day beginning Jan. 1 1917, and providing that the wages then in force should not be reduced for a period of nine months. In March 1917 this law was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

On March 1 1913 Congress directed the Interstate Commerce Commission to undertake the valuation of railways to enable the Commission to regulate interstate carriers more intelligently and effectively. It is expected that the Commission will complete this work in 1923.

The most important legislation affecting the carriers enacted

since the passage of the original Interstate Commerce Law of 1887 is the Transportation Act of 1920, which returned the railways to their owners March 1 (at the end of the 26 months of Government operation), provided for a more comprehensive regulation of carriers by the Commission, and established new principles to be followed in the regulation of rates, revenues and capital expenditures of the carriers. An active propaganda for the purchase of the railways by the Government was carried on during 1919 by the leaders of the railway brotherhoods and unions. The agitation received also the support of socialists and other advocates of the extension of Government functions. The movement, however, did not meet with popular approval, and Congress by a large majority decided in favour of the continuance of private ownership and the return to corporate operation of the railways.

In the Transportation Act of 1920 a new principle of rate-making was incorporated. The Commission, as previously, is the final authority as to rates. But in the future the Commission was to adjust rates with a view to enabling carriers, as a whole, to earn 5½% on the aggregate value of their property devoted to the public service. The Commission might also authorize the carriers to earn one-half of 1% per annum additional, the amount thus earned to be devoted to improvements without capitalizing the amount thus invested. Individual carriers whose net operating revenues exceed 6% were to devote one-half of the excess to building up a company reserve fund until the amount reaches 5%, and are to turn the other half of the excess over to the Government to go into a fund from which it might make advances to the carriers.

The regulation of railway securities by the Commission is authorized by the Transportation Act of 1920, which so amends the laws against combinations as to permit railway companies to consolidate with the Commission's approval. Consolidation or grouping of the railways into a limited number of systems of approximately equal strength is recognized to be an ultimate necessity, and there was some sentiment in favour of making consolidation compulsory by law. That principle, however, was not incorporated in the Act.

One of the most important features of the Transportation Act of 1920 is that providing for the adjustment of disputes as to wages and working conditions of employees. The Act makes it the duty of employers and employees to endeavor by negotiation to settle their differences. If negotiation fails, disputes as to working conditions may be referred to boards of adjustment composed of an equal number of representatives of the employer and employees. These boards may be either local, district or national. The law also provides for the appointment by the President of a Railroad Labour Board made up of nine men, three representing the public, three the railway employees and three the railway companies. Such a Board was appointed by the President in the spring of 1920, and it became active in considering many questions involving wages and working conditions.

Intra-state Rates.—The power of the Federal Government over intra-state rates has been extended by important decisions of the Supreme Court and by the Transportation Act of 1920. In the Minnesota Rate Case (Simpson et al. vs. Shepard, 230 U.S. 352), decided in 1913, the Supreme Court upheld the action of the state of Minnesota establishing railway rates within the state, although the facts showed thai these intra-state rates affected the rates on interstate traffic and the revenues of the carriers engaged both in interstate and intra-state traffic. Justice Hughes, speaking for the Court, declared that the “state of Minnesota did not transcend the limits of its authority in prescribing the rates here involved, assuming them to be reasonable.” But Justice Hughes was careful to point out that “if the situation has become such, by reason of the interblending of the inter- and intra-state operations of interstate carriers, that adequate regulation of their interstate rates cannot be maintained without imposing requirements with respect to their intra-state rates which substantially affect the former, it is for Congress to determine, within the limits of its constitutional authority over interstate commerce and its instruments, the measure of the regulation it should supply.” In 1914 the Supreme Court was called on to consider the validity of the order of the Interstate Commerce Commission in its Shrevepqrt decision. The business interests of Shreveport, La., had complained to the Commission that rates within the state of Texas, which had been fixed by the State Commission of Texas, were so much lower than the interstate rates that it was not possible for the merchants of Shreveport to do business in northwestern Texas. The Commission decided that the wide difference between the interstate and intra-state rates constituted an unreasonable discrimination, and the carriers were ordered to correct this, which they did by raising the intra-state to the level of the interstate charges. When the case reached the Supreme Court, the Commission's order was upheld (234 U.S. 342). The principle established by this decision was embodied in the Transportation Act of 1920. The statute provided that when the Interstate Commerce Commission finds that any intra-state rate constitutes an unjust discrimination against interstate or foreign commerce, the Commission may prescribe the maximum or minimum intra-state rate thereafter to be charged. The limitation by the Federal Government of the power of the states over railway charges within their respective territories was not accepted by the states without contest. A test case was pending in the Supreme Court in 1921.

Amendments to the Anti-Trust Act of 1890.—Prior to 1911, the Supreme Court by a series of decisions (see ) had defined the scope of the Anti-Trust law of 1890; but while the Act had been sustained, the net effect of the interpretations given to the law had been to limit its effectiveness. However, in the oil and tobacco cases decided in 1911 (221 U.S. 1-106 and 106-193) the Supreme Court adopted a “rule of reason” formulated by Chief Justice White, which gave greater flexibility to the Act and promised to make the law more effective. In a previous decision involving railway combinations, the Supreme Court had interpreted literally the language of the statute, and had not considered whether the combination was reasonable or in harmony with sound public policy. This interpretation had made the statute almost a dead letter as far as regulating combinations. In the oil case, the Supreme Court, speaking through Chief Justice White, said: “It becomes obvious that the criterion to be resorted to in any given case, for the purpose of ascertaining whether violations of the section have been committed, is the rule of reason guided by the established law and by the plain duty to enforce the prohibitions of the Act, and thus the public policy which its restrictions were obviously enacted to subserve.” The Court held, in effect, that the purpose of the law was to prevent undue restraint of every kind and that it did not deny to individuals the right to enter into contracts when the right was not improperly exercised.

This interpretation of the Anti-Trust law was unsatisfactory to the extreme opponents of industrial combinations, and it was thought by many that Congress should define combinations and monopolies. In response, the Clayton Act of 1913 was passed, prohibiting, under specified provisions, discriminations in prices and containing numerous other sections intended to make the general provisions of the Anti-Trust Act of 1890 more specific. It is doubtful, however, whether the Clayton Act has really strengthened the Act of 1890. Labour unions and organizations of farmers are exempted from the provisions of the Anti-Trust law. Interlocking directorates of banks are prohibited, and it is made unlawful for a corporation engaged in interstate commerce to acquire control by stock ownership of another corporation engaged in interstate commerce when such acquisition will lessen competition. Carriers engaged in interstate commerce are prohibited, after two years from the passage of the law, from dealing in securities or supplies or from making construction contracts amounting to more than $50,000 with a corporation, firm or partnership having on its board of directors or as one of its officers a person who is at the same time a director or officer of the common carrier. This provision was suspended until after the conclusion of the World War, but was in force in 1921.

The most important decision of the Supreme Court subsequently to 1911 was its finding in the case of the United States against the Steel Corporation, March 1 1920 (251 U.S. 417). By this decision, the largest of all industrial combinations was held not to be a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. It was not shown that the Steel Corporation had unduly limited competition. The Court decided that it “should consider not what the corporation had power to do or did but what it has power to do and is doing.” It reached the conclusion that the public interest would not be served by requiring the dissolution of the Steel Corporation, but that, on the contrary, its dissolution might result in a material disturbance to American foreign trade.

Adjustment of Labour Disputes.—The Erdman Act of 1898 was amended by the Newlands Act of July 15 1913, and more adequate machinery provided for mediation and arbitration of labour disputes. The Erdman Act had provided for voluntary conciliation upon the initiative of the chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Commissioner of Labor. If conciliation failed, the parties might submit their controversy to arbitration. In that case a board of three men was provided, one arbitrator selected by each side, these to choose the third arbitrator, or, if they failed, the third arbitrator to be chosen by the chairman of the Commission and the Commissioner of Labor. Both the railway companies and their employees objected to submitting their disputes to such a small board, and the Newlands Act therefore provided for a board of five to nine men and also created a board of mediation and conciliation composed of a commissioner and two other designated officials of the Government. A series of important arbitration proceedings was held under the Newlands Act, but by 1916 the railway employees had become dissatisfied with the results of arbitration and made a demand on the carriers for the establishment of an eight-hour day and for a general increase in wages. The carriers resisted and the deadlock was broken by the passage of the Adamson Act in Sept. 1916, establishing the standard eight-hour day in the railway service, and providing for a commission to decide upon wages. There was much popular dissatisfaction with the Adamson Law, which was hurriedly enacted by Congress under the pressure of a threatened labour crisis. The Supreme Court the following spring held the law to be constitutional, and the Adamson Law has definitely established the standard eight-hour day in the railway service (243 U.S. 232). The Newlands Act and the machinery it created have been supplemented and in fact supplanted by the labour provisions of the Transportation Act of 1920. Whether the machinery created by this Act would work satisfactorily had not been fully determined in

1921, but the success of the Board in averting a threatened strike on Nov. 1 of that year gave the Board increased popular support.

For details as to statutes, consult Barnes' Federal Code (1919) and the supplement (1921). The most important decisions of the Supreme Court interpreting the power of the Federal Government over intra-state railway rates are Simpson et al. vs. Shepard, 230 U.S. 352; Houston East and West Texas Railway Co., and Houston and Shreveport Railway Co. et al. vs. United States, 234 U.S. 342. The most recent significant decisions of the Supreme Court interpreting the Anti-Trust Law are Standard Oil Co. vs. United States, 221 U.S. 1; United States vs. American Tobacco Co., 221 U.S. 106; United States vs. U.S. Steel Corporation, 251 U.S. 417, und the Adamson Law Case, Wilson vs. New, 243 U.S. 232. (E. R. J.)


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4 flame in his soul, and in its light he saw into the depths of the world by the reflection of his own dancing swiftly penetrating fire. In such a nature we see the true union of the mystic and the man of science—the highest eminence, as I think, that it is possible to achieve in the world of thought.

In Plato, the same twofold impulse exists, though the mystic impulse is distinctly the stronger of the two, and secures ultimate victory whenever the conflict is sharp. His description of the cave is the classical statement of belief in a knowledge and reality truer and more real than that of the senses:

"Imagine a number of men living in an underground cavernous chamber, with an entrance open to the light, extending along the entire length of the cavern, in which they have been confined, from their childhood, with their legs and necks so shackled that they are obliged to sit still and look straight forwards, because their chains render it impossible for them to turn their heads round: and imagine a bright fire burning some way off, above and behind them, and an elevated roadway passing between the fire and the prisoners, with a low wall built along it, like the screens which conjurors put up in front of their audience, and above which they exhibit their wonders.

I have it, he replied.

Also figure to yourself a number of persons walking behind this wall, and carrying with them statues of men, and images of other animals, wrought in wood and stone and all kinds of materials, together with various other articles, which overtop the wall; and, as you might expect, let some of the passers-by be talking, and others silent.


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 Since he was familiar with the unit, he had no difficulty. "Solar disturbances as usual," he muttered, "but no radio signals or undiscovered mass formations—wait a second. Maybe I'm wrong. The indicator won't remain on the zero line. Ah! There is a disturbance caused by the presence of matter. It's center—let me calculate roughly—just as I thought— about seventeen degrees to the left of the planet Neptune."

"Well?" Carruthers' voice had a touch of impatience.

Vignot peered at a map of star constellations on the nearest wall. "You tell me, Aaron. There's nothing but bleak emptiness in that part of the sky. It's a place where time seems to stand still, where distances from one body to another are fixed at millions of miles. It's a vast immensity where there is no light, no heat, no sound, and nothing more substantial than occasional streamers of dark, gaseous clouds."

He turned to Carruthers and spread his hands, palms upward. "The disturbance is caused by a comet. Any astronomer could have told you that much. It's that simple."

"Not quite," said Carruthers. "I thought of comets. On the table beside the Thermo-cell unit you'll find charts. The top one was made in 1967, and based on figures and negatives furnished me by the Palomar Observatory. Plotted on this chart are the paths of various wanderers of the sky—meteors, asteroids and comets. None of them are to be found in the sky area on which the unit's detector beam is centered.

"On the second chart you'll find the periodic comets and their paths across the heavens. Biela's comet, first observed in 1772, returns every seven years. It isn't due again for five years. Rule that one out."

Vignot shrugged. "Go on," he urged.

"Following it is one discovered by Encke. Its period of visibility at a fixed point in the sky occurs every three years. Then Halley's comet comes along with a period of seventy-six years, followed by Donati's which appears at intervals several thousand years apart. None are due this year—or now."

George Vignot tugged thoughtfully at his beard. "I see," he nodded. "But all this talk about comets must mean something. What?"

Carruthers watched both men seat themselves in comfortable chairs but made no motion to follow their example. Instead he began to pace the floor. "I didn't say anything about comets. You brought them into our talk yourself. The thing that is causing the disturbance on the sensitive plates of the Thermo-cell unit might be a planet or a star, or a globe like our own inhabitatedinhabited [sic] with human beings.

"Or it may be nothing more than a sphere of black gas with a metallic core because it isn't yet visible. And it's out there in that bleak emptiness as, you call it, beyond the gravitational pull of Neptune. It's still impossible to correctly determine its size or structure. But if the Thermo-cell unit is accurate to within one tenth of a degree, that invisible body is headed toward our earth at a tremendous speed which will accelerate to an even greater velocity as its expanding gases drive it onward. And unless it meets with some other mass in the sky, it should be hurling itself in a mighty cataclysm against our earth—"

ODD Lord," breathed Vignot. "When does all this take place?"

"That's the problem in arithmetic you so caustically referred to. We have its location in the sky. We have its speed—"

"Speed?" Vignot looked doubtful.

"That can be determined by examining the strength of the first disturbance signals on the cell plate recording tape. Each day they have grown stronger. By comparing this difference from day to day—"


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Rh You are describing a strange scene, and strange prisoners.

They resemble us, I replied.

Now consider what would happen if the course of nature brought them a release from their fetters, and a remedy for their foolishness, in the following manner. Let us suppose that one of them has been released, and compelled suddenly to stand up, and turn his neck round and walk with open eyes towards the light; and let us suppose that he goes through all these actions with pain, and that the dazzling splendour renders him incapable of discerning those objects of which he used formerly to see the shadows. What answer should you expect him to make, if some one were to tell him that in those days he was watching foolish phantoms, but that now he is somewhat nearer to reality, and is turned towards things more real, and sees more correctly; above all, if he were to point out to him the several objects that are passing by, and question him, and compel him to answer what they are? Should you not expect him to be puzzled, and to regard his old visions as truer than the objects now forced upon his notice?

Yes, much truer. . ..

Hence, I suppose, habit will be necessary to enable him to perceive objects in that upper world. At first he will be most successful in distinguishing shadows; then he will discern the reflections of men and other things in water, and afterwards the realities; and after this he will raise his eyes to encounter the light of the moon and stars, finding it less difficult to study the heavenly bodies and the heaven itself by night, than the sun and the sun's light by day.

Doubtless.

Last of all, I imagine, he will be able to observe and


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6 contemplate the nature of the sun, not as it appears in water or on alien ground, but as it is in itself in its own territory.

Of course.

His next step will be to draw the conclusion, that the sun is the author of the seasons and the years, and the guardian of all things in the visible world, and in a manner the cause of all those things which he and his companions used to see.

Obviously, this will be his next step. . ..

Now this imaginary case, my dear Glancon, you must apply in all its parts to our former statements, by comparing the region which the eye reveals, to the prison house, and the light of the fire therein to the power of the sun: and if, by the upward ascent and the contemplation of the upper world, you understand the mounting of the soul into the intellectual region, you will hit the tendency of my own surmises, since you desire to be told what they are; though, indeed, God only knows whether they are correct. But, be that as it may, the view which I take of the subject is to the following effect. In the world of knowledge, the essential Form of Good is the limit of our enquiries, and can barely be perceived; but, when perceived, we cannot help concluding that it is in every case the source of all that is bright and beautiful,—in the visible world giving birth to light and its master, and in the intellectual world dispensing, immediately and with full authority, truth and reason;—and that whosoever would act wisely, either in private or in public, must set this Form of Good before his eyes."

But in this passage, as throughout most of Plato's teaching, there is an identification of the good with the truly real, which became embodied in the philosophical


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Rh tradition, and is still largely operative in our own day. In thus allowing a legislative function to the good, Plato produced a divorce between philosophy and science, from which, in my opinion, both have suffered ever since and are still suffering. The man of science, whatever his hopes may be, must lay them aside while he studies nature; and the philosopher, if he is to achieve truth must do the same. Ethical considerations can only legitimately appear when the truth has been ascertained: they can and should appear as determining our feeling towards the truth, and our manner of ordering our lives in view of the truth, but not as themselves dictating what the truth is to be.

There are passages in Plato—among those which illustrate the scientific side of his mind—where he seems clearly aware of this. The most noteworthy is the one in which Socrates, as a young man, is explaining the theory of ideas to Parmenides.

After Socrates has explained that there is an idea of the good, but not of such things as hair and mud and dirt, Parmenides advises him "not to despise even the meanest things," and this advice shows the genuine scientific temper. It is with this impartial temper that the mystic's apparent insight into a higher reality and a hidden good has to be combined if philosophy is to realise its greatest possibilities. And it is failure in this respect that has made so much of idealistic philosophy thin, lifeless, and insubstantial. It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit: divorced from it, they remain barren. But marriage with the world is not to be achieved by an ideal which shrinks from fact, or demands in advance that the world shall conform to its desires.

Parmenides himself is the source of a peculiarly


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8 interesting strain of mysticism which pervades Plato's thought—the mysticism which may be called "logical" because it is embodied in theories on logic. This form of mysticism, which appears, so far as the West is concerned, to have originated with Parmenides, dominates the reasonings of all the great mystical metaphysicians from his day to that of Hegel and his modern disciples. Reality, he says, is uncreated, indestructible, unchanging, indivisible; it is "immovable in the bonds of mighty chains, without beginning and without end; since coming into being and passing away have been driven afar, and true belief has cast them away." The fundamental principle of his inquiry is stated in a sentence which would not be out of place in Hegel: "Thou canst not know what is not—that is impossible—nor utter it; for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be." And again: "It needs must be that what can be thought and spoken of is; for it is possible for it to be, and it is not possible for what is nothing to be." The impossibility of change follows from this principle; for what is past can be spoken of, and therefore, by the principle, still is.

Mystical philosophy, in all ages and in all parts of the world, is characterised by certain beliefs which are illustrated by the doctrines we have been considering.

There is, first, the belief in insight as against discursive analytic knowledge: the belief in a way of wisdom, sudden, penetrating, coercive, which is contrasted with the slow and fallible study of outward appearance by a science relying wholly upon the senses. All who are capable of absorption in an inward passion must have experienced at times the strange feeling of unreality in common objects, the loss of contact with daily things, in which the solidity of the outer world is lost, and the soul


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Rh seems, in utter loneliness, to bring forth, out of its own depths, the mad dance of fantastic phantoms which have hitherto appeared as independently real and living. This is the negative side of the mystic's initiation: the doubt concerning common knowledge, preparing the way for the reception of what seems a higher wisdom. Many men to whom this negative experience is familiar do not pass beyond it, but for the mystic it is merely the gateway to an ampler world.

The mystic insight begins with the sense of a mystery unveiled, of a hidden wisdom now suddenly become certain beyond the possibility of a doubt. The sense of certainty and revelation comes earlier than any definite belief. The definite beliefs at which mystics arrive are the result of reflection upon the inarticulate experience gained in the moment of insight. Often, beliefs which have no real connection with this moment become subsequently attracted into the central nucleus; thus in addition to the convictions which all mystics share, we find, in many of them, other convictions of a more local and temporary character, which no doubt become amalgamated with what was essentially mystical in virtue of their subjective certainty. We may ignore such inessential accretions, and confine ourselves to the beliefs which all mystics share.

The first and most direct outcome of the moment of illumination is belief in the possibility of a way of knowledge which may be called revelation or insight or intuition, as contrasted with sense, reason, and analysis, which are regarded as blind guides leading to the morass of illusion. Closely connected with this belief is the conception of a Reality behind the world of appearance and utterly different from it. This Reality is regarded with an admiration often amounting to worship; it is


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Author:Henry Dale

Works

 * Translation of Thucydides History of the Pelponnesian War(Dale); 1848.
 * Speeches from History of the Pelponnesian War(Dale) in The World's Famous Orations.
 * Pericles, "In Favor of the Pelponnesian War."
 * Pericles, "Funeral Oration."
 * Pericles, "Third Oration."
 * Cleon, "On the Punishment of the Mytileneans."
 * Alcibiades, "In Support of the Athenian Expedition to Sicily."
 * Alcibiades, "To the Spartans."
 * Nicias, "Against the Sicilian Expedition."
 * Hermocrates, "On the Union of Sicily Against Invaders."

 * The Cyropaedia, or, Institution of Cyrus, and the Hellenics, or Grecian history: literally translated from the Greek of Xenophon, (1855), Translation of Xenophon's Cyropaedia.

title: Author:Henry Dale


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10 felt to be always and everywhere close at hand, thinly veiled by the shows of sense, ready, for the receptive mind, to shine in its glory even through the apparent folly and wickedness of Man. The poet, the artist, and the lover are seekers after that glory: the haunting beauty that they pursue is the faint reflection of its sun. But the mystic lives in the full light of the vision: what others dimly seek he knows, with a knowledge beside which all other knowledge is ignorance.

The second characteristic of mysticism is its belief in unity, and its refusal to admit opposition or division anywhere. We found Heraclitus saying "good and ill are one"; and again he says, "the way up and the way down is one and the same." The same attitude appears in the simultaneous assertion of contradictory propositions, such as: "We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not." The assertion of Parmenides, that reality is one and indivisible, comes from the same impulse towards unity. In Plato, this impulse is less prominent, being held in check by his theory of ideas; but it reappears, so far as his logic permits, in the doctrine of the primacy of the Good.

A third mark of almost all mystical metaphysics is the denial of the reality of Time. This is an outcome of the denial of division; if all is one, the distinction of past and future must be illusory. We have seen this doctrine prominent in Parmenides; and among moderns it is fundamental in the systems of Spinoza and Hegel.

The last of the doctrines of mysticism which we have to consider is its belief that all evil is mere appearance, an illusion produced by the divisions and oppositions of the analytic intellect. Mysticism does not maintain that such things as cruelty, for example, are good, but it denies that they are real: they belong to that lower


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 world of phantoms from which we are to be liberated by the insight of the vision. Sometimes—for example in Hegel, and at least verbally in Spinoza—not only evil, but good also, is regarded as illusory, though nevertheless the emotional attitude towards what is held to be Reality is such as would naturally be associated with the belief that Reality is good. What is, in all cases, ethically characteristic of mysticism is absence of indignation or protest, acceptance with joy, disbelief in the ultimate truth of the division into two hostile camps, the good and the bad. This attitude is a direct outcome of the nature of the mystical experience: with its sense of unity is associated a feeling of infinite peace. Indeed it may be suspected that the feeling of peace produces, as feelings do in dreams, the whole system of associated beliefs which make up the body of mystic doctrine. But this is a difficult question, and one on which it cannot be hoped that mankind will reach agreement.

Four questions thus arise in considering the truth or falsehood of mysticism, namely:

 * I. Are there two ways of knowing, which may be called respectively reason and intuition? And if so, is either to be preferred to the other?
 * II. Is all plurality and division illusory?
 * III. Is time unreal?
 * IV. What kind of reality belongs to good and evil?

On all four of these questions, while fully developed mysticism seems to me mistaken, I yet believe that, by sufficient restraint, there is an element of wisdom to be learned from the mystical way of feeling, which does not seem to be attainable in any other manner. If this is the truth, mysticism is to be commended as an attitude towards life, not as a creed about the world. The


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12 creed, I shall maintain, is a mistaken outcome of the emotion, although this emotion, as colouring and informing all other thoughts and feelings, is the inspirer of whatever is best in Man. Even the cautious and patient investigation of truth by science, which seems the very antithesis of the mystic's swift certainty, may be fostered and nourished by that very spirit of reverence in which mysticism lives and moves.

Of the reality or unreality of the mystic's world I know nothing. I have no wish to deny it, nor even to declare that the insight which reveals it is not a genuine insight. What I do wish to maintain—and it is here that the scientific attitude becomes imperative—is that insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth, in spite of the fact that much of the most important truth is first suggested by its means. It is common to speak of an opposition between instinct and reason; in the eighteenth century, the opposition was drawn in favour of reason, but under the influence of Rousseau and the romantic movement instinct was given the preference, first by those who rebelled against artificial forms of government and thought, and then, as the purely rationalistic defence of traditional theology became increasingly difficult, by all who felt in science a menace to creeds which they associated with a spiritual outlook on life and the world. Bergson, under the name of "intuition," has raised instinct to the position of sole


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 "I know how to calculate speed, Aaron. The point I still don't understand is this. That Mass out in space may be pointed at our earth right now. But our earth isn't stationary. We're revolving around the sun once every three-hundred and sixty-five days. Also, in the course of a year, our whole planetary system is moving at an incredible speed away from where it is now. In other words, our earth after each journey around the sun never returns to the identical spot from which it started. The Mass should miss us by a million miles."

"That's possible," admitted Carruthers. "And I'd like to believe you. Since, however, I've figured it out mathematically, I've come to the conclusion that your theory is not justified. The collision takes place ten years from this summer or fall. And that will be the end of the world, and of the Moon, too. A collision of such catastrophic proportions is bound to draw our Lunar neighbor into the earth's attraction so that the Mass, Moon and Earth will come together and merge into a sphere of flaming whiteness."

Vignot scoffed. "Phooey! Where is your copy of Einstein's calculator of variable factors of time and space?"

From his pocket Carruthers removed a leather-bound book and handed it to his colleague. Then he sat down.

"Very well," announced Vignot. "We'll see." He sprawled across the marble-topped table and began his tabulations which he fitted into complicated equations. From time to time his forehead wrinkled with thought. Then pure concentration erased everything from his face except a hard, purposeful glow in his eyes.

An hour passed with no interruption from either Carruthers or Danzig. They sat relaxed in their chairs, waiting. Vignot's pencil covered scratch papers with numerals and symbols. Occasionally he blinked as the figures began to take on meaning. Finally he pushed the papers aside and looked up.

"Your calculations agree with mine, Aaron. We'll have ten years of worry, floods, earthquakes, cyclones—then absolute chaos."

Carruthers said nothing for the moment. Instead he got to his feet, crossed the room to the quartz glass windows and stared uneasily across the roofs of the great city. After a time he turned from the window, walked to the table and examined Vignot's tabulations.

"You used a different arrangement of symbols and calculation devices than those I used," he acknowledged. "But you arrived at the same answer—the year of 2017. It looks," he added, "like absolute annihilation—which means the end of the world."

"I wish," sighed the bearded chemist, "you hadn't sent for me." He blinked owlishly. "Absolute annihilation beyond a doubt ... unless ... unless the earth's air barrier should prove heavy enough to turn it from its course. His eyes stopped blinking. Instead, they stared straight into those of the young scientist. "You propose to do something about this collision, Aaron. What?"

"I'm still mortal, Vignot, and human as the next man. What can I do?"

Vignot wagged his head impatiently. "That's not exactly what I meant. You've got something on your mind that you haven't yet explained to me. I want to hear it—now."

"Even if it means death before the Mass strikes the earth?"

"Even if it means death within the next twenty-four hours," snapped the bearded chemist.

HE voice of Aaron Carruthers became low and purposeful. "Ten years is a long time to wait for death especially when we know there is no way to avoid it. Yet,


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Rh arbiter of metaphysical truth. But in fact the opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realm, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.

Where instinct and reason do sometimes conflict is in regard to single beliefs, held instinctively, and held with such determination that no degree of inconsistency with other beliefs leads to their abandonment. Instinct, like all human faculties, is liable to error. Those in whom reason is weak are often unwilling to admit this as regards themselves, though all admit it in regard to others. Where instinct is least liable to error is in practical matters as to which right judgment is a help to survival: friendship and hostility in others, for instance, are often felt with extraordinary discrimination through very careful disguises. But even in such matters a wrong impression may be given by reserve or flattery; and in matters less directly practical, such as philosophy deals with, very strong instinctive beliefs are sometimes wholly mistaken, as we may come to know through their perceived inconsistency with other equally strong beliefs. It is such considerations that necessitate the harmonising mediation of reason, which tests our beliefs by their mutual compatibility, and examines, in doubtful cases, the possible sources of error on the one side and on the other. In this there is no opposition to instinct as a whole, but only to blind reliance upon some one interesting aspect of instinct to the exclusion of other more


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14 commonplace but not less trustworthy aspects. It is such one-sidedness, not instinct itself, that reason aims at correcting.

These more or less trite maxims may be illustrated by application to Bergson's advocacy of "intuition" as against "intellect." There are, he says, "two profoundly different ways of knowing a thing. The first implies that we move round the object: the second that we enter into it. The first depends on the point of view at which we are placed and on the symbols by which we express ourselves. The second neither depends on a point of view nor relies on any symbol. The first kind of knowledge may be said to stop at the relative; the second, in those cases where it is possible, to attain the absolute." The second of these, which is intuition, is, he says, "the kind of intellectual sympathy by which one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with what is unique in it and therefore inexpressible" (p. 6). In illustration, he mentions self-knowledge: "there is one reality, at least, which we all seize from within, by intuition and not by simple analysis. It is our own personality in its flowing through time—our self which endures" (p. 8). The rest of Bergson's philosophy consists in reporting, through the imperfect medium of words, the knowledge gained by intuition, and the consequent complete condemnation of all the pretended knowledge derived from science and common sense.

This procedure, since it takes sides in a conflict of instinctive beliefs, stands in need of justification by proving the greater trustworthiness of the beliefs on one side than of those on the other. Bergson attempts this justification in two ways, first by explaining that intellect is a purely practical faculty to secure biological success,


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Rh secondly by mentioning remarkable feats of instinct in animals and by pointing out characteristics of the world which, though intuition can apprehend them, are baffling to intellect as he interprets it.

Of Bergson's theory that intellect is a purely practical faculty, developed in the struggle for survival, and not a source of true beliefs, we may say, first, that it is only through intellect that we know of the struggle for survival and of the biological ancestry of man: if the intellect is misleading, the whole of this merely inferred history is presumably untrue. If, on the other hand, we agree with him in thinking that evolution took place as Darwin believed, then it is not only intellect, but all our faculties, that have been developed under the stress of practical utility. Intuition is seen at its best where it is directly useful, for example in regard to other people's characters and dispositions. Bergson apparently holds that capacity, for this kind of knowledge is less explicable by the struggle for existence than, for example, capacity for pure mathematics. [sic]Yet the savage deceived by false friendship is likely to pay for his mistake with his life; whereas even in the most civilised societies men are not put to death for mathematical incompetence. All the most striking of his instances of intuition in animals have a very direct survival value. The fact is, of course, that both intuition and intellect have been developed because they are useful, and that, speaking broadly, they are useful when they give truth and become harmful when they give falsehood. Intellect, in civilised man, like artistic capacity, has occasionally been developed beyond the point where it is useful to the individual; intuition, on the other hand, seems on the whole to diminish as civilisation increases. It is greater, as a rule, in children than in adults, in the uneducated than in the educated.


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Author:Emory Richard Johnson

Works

 * Principles of Railroad Transportation (1916)
 * Principles of Ocean Transportation
 * History of domestic and foreign commerce of the United States
 * Elements of transportation a discussion of steam railroad electric railway and ocean and inland water transportation

title: Author:Emory Richard Johnson


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16 Probably in dogs it exceeds anything to be found in human beings. But those who see in these facts a recommendation of intuition ought to return to running wild in the woods, dyeing themselves with woad and living on hips and haws.

Let us next examine whether intuition possesses any such infallibility as Bergson claims for it. The best instance of it, according to him, is our acquaintance with ourselves; yet self-knowledge is proverbially rare and difficult. Most men, for example, have in their nature meannesses, vanities, and envies of which they are quite unconscious, though even their best friends can perceive them without any difficulty. It is true that intuition has a convincingness which is lacking to intellect: while it is present, it is almost impossible to doubt its truth. But if it should appear, on examination, to be at least as fallible as intellect, its greater subjective certainty becomes a demerit, making it only the more irresistibly deceptive. Apart from self-knowledge, one of the most notable examples of intuition is the knowledge people believe themselves to possess of those with whom they are in love: the wall between different personalities seems to become transparent, and people think they see into another soul as into their own. Yet deception in such cases is constantly practised with success; and even where there is no intentional deception, experience gradually proves, as a rule, that the supposed insight was illusory, and that the slower more groping methods of the intellect are in the long run more reliable.

Bergson maintains that intellect can only deal with things in so far as they resemble what has been experienced in the past, while intuition has the power of apprehending the uniqueness and novelty that always belong to each fresh moment. That there is something unique


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Rh and new at every moment, is certainly true; it is also true that this cannot be fully expressed by means of intellectual concepts. Only direct acquaintance can give knowledge of what is unique and new. But direct acquaintance of this kind is given fully in sensation, and does not require, so far as I can see, any special faculty of intuition for its apprehension. It is neither intellect nor intuition, but sensation, that supplies new data; but when the data are new in any remarkable manner, intellect is much more capable of dealing with them than intuition would be. The hen with a brood of ducklings no doubt has intuition which seems to place her inside them, and not merely to know them analytically; but when the ducklings take to the water, the whole apparent intuition is seen to be illusory, and the hen is left helpless on the shore. Intuition, in fact, is an aspect and development of instinct, and, like all instinct, is admirable in those customary surroundings which have moulded the habits of the animal in question, but totally incompetent as soon as the surroundings are changed in a way which demands some non-habitual mode of action.

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men. It is hardly to be supposed, therefore, that the rapid, rough and ready methods of instinct or intuition will find in this field a favourable ground for their application. It is the older kinds of activity, which bring out our kinship with remote generations of animal and semi-human ancestors, that show intuition at its best. In such matters as self-preservation and love, intuition will act sometimes (though not always) with a swiftness and precision which are astonishing to the critical intellect. But philosophy is not one of the


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18 pursuits which illustrate our affinity with the past: it is a highly refined, highly civilised pursuit, demanding, for its success, a certain liberation from the life of instinct, and even, at times, a certain aloofness from all mundane hopes and fears. It is not in philosophy, therefore, that we can hope to see intuition at its best. On the contrary, since the true objects of philosophy, and the habit of thought demanded for their apprehension, are strange, unusual, and remote, it is here, more almost than anywhere else, that intellect proves superior to intuition, and that quick unanalysed convictions are least deserving of uncritical acceptance.

In advocating the scientific restraint and balance, as against the self-assertion of a confident reliance upon intuition, we are only urging, in the sphere of knowledge, that largeness of contemplation, that impersonal disinterestedness, and that freedom from practical preoccupations which have been inculcated by all the great religions of the world. Thus our conclusion, however it may conflict with the explicit beliefs of many mystics, is, in essence, not contrary to the spirit which inspires those beliefs, but rather the outcome of this very spirit as applied in the realm of thought.

One of the most convincing aspects of the mystic illumination is the apparent revelation of the oneness of all things, giving rise to pantheism in religion and to monism in philosophy An elaborate logic, beginning with Parmenides, and culminating in Hegel and his followers, has been gradually developed, to prove that the universe is one indivisible whole, and that what seem to be its parts, if considered as substantial and


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Rh, are mere illusion. The conception of a Reality quite other than the world of appearance, a reality one, indivisible, and unchanging, was introduced into Western philosophy by Parmenides, not, nominally at least, for mystical or religious reasons, but on the basis of a logical argument as to the impossibility of not-being, and most subsequent metaphysical systems are the outcome of this fundamental idea.

The logic used in defence of mysticism seems to be faulty as logic, and open to technical criticisms, which I have explained elsewhere. I shall not here repeat these criticisms, since they are lengthy and difficult, but shall instead attempt an analysis of the state of mind from which mystical logic has arisen.

Belief in a reality quite different from what appears to the senses arises with irresistible force in certain moods, which are the source of most mysticism, and of most metaphysics. [sic]While such a mood is dominant, the need of logic is not felt, and accordingly the more thorough going mystics do not employ logic, but appeal directly to the immediate deliverance of their insight. But such fully developed mysticism is rare in the West. When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself. But since the belief already exists, he will be very hospitable to any ground that suggests itself. The paradoxes apparently proved by his logic are really the paradoxes of mysticism, and are the goal which he feels his logic must reach if it is to be in accordance with insight. The resulting logic has rendered most philosophers incapable of giving any account of the world of science and daily life, If they had been anxious to give such an account, they would probably have discovered the errors of their


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20 logic; but most of them were less anxious to understand the world of science and daily life than to convict it of unreality in the interests of a super-sensible "real" world.

It is in this way that logic has been pursued by those of the great philosophers who were mystics. But since they usually took for granted the supposed insight of the mystic emotion, their logical doctrines were presented with a certain dryness, and were believed by their disciples to be quite independent of the sudden illumination from which they sprang. Nevertheless their origin clung to them, and they remained—to borrow a useful word from Mr. Santayana—"malicious" in regard to the world of science and common sense. It is only so that we can account for the complacency with which philosophers have accepted the inconsistency of their doctrines with all the common and scientific facts which seem best established and most worthy of belief.

The logic of mysticism shows, as is natural, the defects which are inherent in anything malicious. The impulse to logic, not felt while the mystic mood is dominant, reasserts itself as the mood fades, but with a desire to retain the vanishing insight, or at least to prove that it was insight, and that what seems to contradict it is illusion. The logic which thus arises is not quite disinterested or candid, and is inspired by a certain hatred of the daily world to which it is to be applied. Such an attitude naturally does not tend to the best results. Everyone knows that to read an author simply in order to refute him is not the way to understand him; and to read the book of Nature with a conviction that it is all illusion is just as unlikely to lead to understanding. If our logic is to find the common world intelligible, it must not be hostile, but must be inspired by a genuine


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Rh such as is not usually to be found among metaphysicians.

The unreality of time is a cardinal doctrine of many metaphysical systems, often nominally based, as already by Parmenides, upon logical arguments, but originally derived, at any rate in the founders of new systems, from the certainty which is born in the moment of mystic insight. As a Persian Sufi poet says:

The belief that what is ultimately real must be immutable is a very common one: it gave rise to the metaphysical notion of substance, and finds, even now, a wholly illegitimate satisfaction in such scientific doctrines as the conservation of energy and mass.

It is difficult to disentangle the truth and the error in this view. The arguments for the contention that time is unreal and that the world of sense is illusory must, I think, be regarded as fallacious. Nevertheless there is some sense—easier to feel than to state—in which time is an unimportant and superficial characteristic of reality. Past and future must be acknowledged to be as real as the present, and a certain emancipation from slavery to time is essential to philosophic thought. The importance of time is rather practical than theoretical, rather in relation to our desires than in relation to truth. A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is. [sic]Both in