DEMOCRACY’S BASIS OF INTELLECT

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 63, 7 December 1938, Page 11

DEMOCRACY’S BASIS OF INTELLECT

Process Of Sifting And Comparing EVOLUTIONARY MEANS OF PROGRESS It is my. firm belief that the fate of democracy is linked up with the fate of intellect, wrote Karel Capek recently. That modern democracy should have originated in England where philosophy had enthroned common-sense and experience, is not mere accident of history. It is no accident either that the French revolution should have sprung from the intellectual Age of Enlightenmeut For democracy proceeds along the path of intellectual experience. It is inchoate, never completed, forever tentative. New experience necessitates constant readjustments. Democracy is not to be considered as an ideal state of society already achieved, but as an eternal goal, just as knowledge is an eternal goal. We must not expect that it will solve all otir problems or cure every trouble and difficulty. The very essence of democracy is to have done away with miracles and magic formulas. Every step forward has to be paid for with considerable effort and patience. A dictatorship, on the other hand, resembles a man obstinately zig-zagging from one side of the street to the other with a great show of careless energy and singing marching songs. In its tentative progress democracy resembles evolution, while dictatorships spell adventure. Do you believe that the history of mankind is meant to be an evolutionary process or rather a series of adventurous incidents? Of course, adventure is attractive, specially for young people. Every revolutionary impulse is more or less adventurous, and every extremist considers himself a romantic and takes pleasure in the risks of the political game. Not a Game. Democracy, however, is not a game. It is a method of adjusting irrational factors to intellectual standards by coordinating and controlling them. It is the same process which our intellect, applies to our experience, sentiments and motives—a process of sifting and comparing.

One of the slogans of the recent crisis in Europe is that we have been let down by our intellect. It did not answer all our burning questions. It did not enable us to abide in the security of belief. It did not save our soul. It does not lend us to a distinct and final goal. It does not give us wings of a blind and passionate courage. Therefore, let it be cast out and replaced by something else. Let instinct, will and faitli guide our steps. Do not let us hesitate in uncertainty. May some new dynamic force show us the way. Investigation and Trial.

As long as we accept intellect we accept, also its limits and uncertainty, its tentative nature and lack of finality. For these very defects are its stimuli and raison d'etre. If we did not come across obstacles and unsolved problems we need no intellect. For creative inlelle..t means perpetual investigation and trial.

The disillusion which we have mentioned is only a fear of intellect which would sooner or later confront us with reality. To say that intellect, has fulled us means that it makes us feel the pain of disappointment, either by anticipating our failures or by registering them honestly and pitilessly. We avoid its verdict by trying to act, so to speak, behind its back. We behave like a debtor who believes he will (•scape his obligations by not looking nt his bills. Turning away from intellect is nothing but an attempt at an escape. It. is a feature of a decadent period when courage has been sapped.