THE IMPUDENCE OF MODERN PHILOSOPHERS
In Herbert Spencer's new book Justice, he defines that
principle thus: "Every man is free to do that which he wills,
provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man,"
and then goes on to say in his appendix that for more than thirty
years he was the first to recognize this "equal freedom"
as the summing up of justice in the abstract. But not till 1883
did this modern philosopher discover that Kant had made the same
formula. He does not appear to know or recognize the French method
of putting it in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, nor the
attempt to insist upon it in the American Revolution, nor, indeed,
in the thousands of declarations make long before the birth of
Spencer.
We have nothing to say against Mr. Spencer's motives, but
a great deal against the impudence, perhaps of an unconscious
kind, of the schools of modern philosophers of which he forms
one. Laboriously for years they write books and construct systems
of thought called new by themselves, but as old as any Egyptian
pyramid. These systems and formulas they make up in the most
refreshing ignorance of what the ancients said about the same
things, for "surely," they seem to be saying, "what
could the ancients have knows of such deep matters/" The
theory that no energy is lost was not for the first time known
in the world when our moderns gave it out, nor is Mr. Spencer's
theory of evolution, nor even his statement of it, his invention
or discovery. All these were known to the Ancients. They are
found in the Bhagavad-Gita and in many another eastern
philosophical book.
If these modern philosophers confined themselves to their
studies and had no influence in the world and upon the minds
of young men who make the new nation, we would not have a word
to say. But since they influence many minds and have enormous
weight in the thinking of our day, it seems well to point out
that is savors of impudence on their part to ignore the development
of philosophy in the East, where nearly all the mooted philosophical
questions of the day were ages ago discussed and disposed of.
If Herbert Spencer could be so blind as he confesses himself
to be as to suppose that he was the first to recognize the abstract
formula of justice, then of course we are justified in presuming
that he is equally ignorant of what has been said and decided
in the six great schools of India. If such minds as Spencer's
would acquaint themselves with all human thought upon any doctrine
they may be considering, then they might save valuable time and
maybe avoid confusion in their own minds and the minds of the
vast numbers of men who read their books.
Our position, clearly stated by H.P.B. long ago, is
that the present day has no philosophy and can have none that
will not be a copy or a distortion of some truth or long-discarded
notion once held by our superiors the Ancients, and that modern
philosophers are only engaged in reproducing out of the astral
light and out of their own past-lives' recollections that which
was known, published, declared, and accepted or rejected by the
men of old time, some of whom are now here in the garb of philosophers
turning over and over again the squirrels'-wheels they invented
many lives ago. For "there is nothing new under the sun."
William Brehon
Path, December, 1891
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