Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/171

Rh clarity of exposition that it has attained truth. This little science has contributed a great deal towards creating the crisis in Marxism, and every day we hear the new school accused of delighting in the obscurities of which Marx has so often been accused, while French Socialists and Belgian Sociologists, on the contrary, … !

Perhaps the best way of giving an accurate idea of the error committed by these sham scientists against whom the new school is waging war will be to examine the general characteristics of some social phenomena, and to run through some of the achievements of the mind, beginning with the highest.

A. (1) The positivists, who represent, in an eminent degree, mediocrity, pride, and pedantry, had decreed that philosophy was to give way before their science; but philosophy is not dead, and it has acquired a new and vigorous lease of life thanks to Bergson, who far from wishing to reduce everything to science, has claimed for the philosopher the right to proceed in a manner quite opposed to that employed by the scientist. It might be said that metaphysics has reclaimed the lost ground by demonstrating to man the illusion of so-called scientific solutions, and by bringing the mind back to the mysterious region which the little science abhors. Positivism is still admired by a few Belgians, the employees of the Office du Travail, and General André; but these are people who count for very little in the world of thought.

(2) Religions do not seem to be on the point of disappearing. Liberal Protestantism is dying because it