Adventures of ideas / by Alfred North Whitehead.

  • Alfred North Whitehead
Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Adventures of ideas / by Alfred North Whitehead. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    question of slavery has been explicitly faced. In Europe, it was already a decaying institution, slowly withdrawing from slavery to serfdom, from serfdom to feudalism, from feudalism to aristocracy, from aristocracy to legal equality, from legal equality to careers effectively open to talent. But the question was assuming a new and menacing form by reason of the impact of the European and Arabian races upon the African tribes. So modern Democrats, in the nineteenth century, nerved themselves to face the question of Slavery, explicitly and with thoroughness. The slow working of ideas is thereby illustrated. Two thousand years had elapsed since the foun¬ dation of Plato’s Academy, since the reforms of the Stoic lawyers, since the composition of the Gospels. The great programme of reform bequeathed by the classical civilization was achieving another triumph. Section VI. The slow issue of general ideas into practical consequences is not wholly due to inefficiency of human character. There is a problem to be solved, and its com¬ plexity is habitually ignored by impetuous seekers. The difficulty is just this: It may be impossible to conceive a reorganization of society adequate for the removal of some admitted evil without destroying the social organization and the civilization which depends on it. An allied plea is that there is no known way of removing the evil without the introduction of worse evils of some other type. Such arguments are usually implicit. Even the wisest are unable to conceive the possibility of untried forms of social relations. Human nature is so complex that paper plans for society are to the statesman not worth even the price of the defaced paper. Successful progress creeps from point to point, testing each step. It is not difficult to frame the sort of defence that Cicero would have advanced, if challenged
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