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On the Future of American Civilization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

John U. Nef
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Extract

The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed forever, it may be thrown back for centuries.… Persecution has always succeeded, save where the heretics were too strong a party to be effectively persecuted. No reasonable person can doubt that Christianity might have been extirpated in the Roman Empire. It spread, and became predominant, because the persecutions were only occasional, lasting but a short time, and separated by long intervals of almost undisturbed propagandism. It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , July 1940 , pp. 261 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1940

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References

1 The Review of Politics, vol. i, no. 3 (1939), p. 260Google Scholar.

2 “In Defence of Democracy,” in The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle, XLII (1939), pp. 17–38Google Scholar.

3 Hutchins, R. M., No Friendly Voice, Chicago, 1936, p. 4Google Scholar.

4 Religio Medici (reprint of 1643 ed.), Oxford, 1909, p. 125Google Scholar.

5 As quoted by Richardson, Samuel in the concluding note to The History of Sir Charles Crandison (1753)Google Scholar.

5a Cf. Thorndike, E. L., Your City, New York, 1939Google Scholar.

6 Gras, N. S. B., Business and Capitalism, New York, 1939, p. vii (my italics)Google Scholar.

7 As President Hutchins, pointed out in his convocation address in 1931 (“The New Atlantis,” The University of Chicago Record, vol. xvii, no. 3, pp. 145–50)Google Scholar.

8 Other American writers, Poe, Emerson, Melville, Whitman, who might also be included, were the products of an earlier period, though it is possible to regard Whitman as the forerunner of a later school. (Cf. Parrington, V. L., Main Currents in American Thought, New York, 1927, vol. ii)Google Scholar.

9 It is debatable, of course, whether the art of Russia belongs properly to western civilization. If it does, then Russia shared with France leadership in the art of literature during the late nineteenth century.

10 I say “rather less rightly” because Descartes' philosophy was based, not primarily on man's need for material improvement, but on his power to reason and above all to reason abstractly, mathematically. Material improvement came to Descartes somewhat as an afterthought. (Cf. Gilson, E., “Descartes, Harvey et la scolastique,” Etudes de philosophie médiévale, Strasbourg, 1921, pp. 191–245.)Google Scholar I hope to return to this subject in a chapter on the history of philosophical thought in a book that I have in hand dealing with industry and civilization in France and England, 1540–1640.

11 “Accustomed to Misfortunes, I laugh at every Event, least on consideration I should find myself more disposed to cry” (The Barber of Seville, act i, scene ii, translation, London, 1776)Google Scholar.

12 Journal de Eugène Delacroix (Joubin, André), Paris, 1932, vol. i, pp. 275–6Google Scholar.

13 Cf. Nef, , “A Social Science Objective,” The University of Chicago Magazine, 11, 1939Google Scholar.