[In the following review of Dewey's Freedom and Culture, Merriam concludes that Dewey has a firm grasp on the theories of political science.]

[Freedom and Culture] by the Nestor of American philosophy, writing at the age of eighty, is one of the most penetrating and stimulating contributions yet made to modern political science. The theory of government is already deeply indebted to Dr. Dewey's previous contributions—Democracy and Education (1916), Human Nature and Conduct (1922), The Public and Its Problems (1927), Individualism Old and New (1930), and Liberalism and Social Action (1935), not to speak of many other articles and reviews and volumes covering his observations on politics for a generation. This distillation of these works is presented in brief form in the present volume on Freedom and Culture. Space does not permit an analysis of the important philosophical background of Dewey, or of his earlier political writings. In a later discussion, I shall deal more fully with the basic philosophy underlying Dr. Dewey's politics and estimate the trends and meaning of his very important work in political science.

The writer discusses and analyzes at the outset the confusion of the modern day regarding the nature and implications of democratic society. Many of the older forms, he points out, have been upset by unexpected economic developments which have brought confusion and uncertainty into the works of popular government and have subjected the whole plan to a basic strain. The government has found it necessary to take on broader functions and to organize these new governmental powers more effectively than before. This combination has brought about a state of affairs in which what he calls "wholesale theories" arise in opposition to one another, such as "individualism" or "socialism"—an antithesis, he maintains, not warranted by experience or analysis.

The facts that justify economic emphasis are not, in Dewey's judgment, to be taken as indicating that the economic interpretation of social relations is a complete explanation either of the present or the future. The idea of a "pre-established harmony between the existing socalled capitalistic régime and democracy is as absurd a piece of metaphysical speculation as human history has ever evolved." Marxism eliminates psychological as well as moral considerations, yet unconsciously assumes the existence and operation of factors in the constitution of human nature which must coöperate with "external" economic or "material" conditions in producing what actually happens. I do not know what Professor Sidney Hook may say after his generous attempt to prove the near Marxian quality of the distinguished Dr. Dewey. "It is ironical," Dewey continues, "that the theory which has made the most display and the greatest pretense of having a scientific foundation should be the one which has violated most systematically every principle of scientific method"; for science not merely tolerates but welcomes diversity of opinion.

Of Mr. John Strachey's assertion that Communists, in "refusal to tolerate the existence of incompatible opinions . . . are simply asserting the claim that Socialism is scientific," Dr. Dewey says: "It would be difficult, probably impossible, to find a more direct and elegantly finished denial of all the qualities that make ideas and theories either scientific or democratic than is contained in this statement. It helps to explain why literary persons have been chiefly the ones in this country who have fallen for Marxist theory, since they are the ones who, having the least amount of scientific attitude, swallow most readily the notion that 'science' is a new kind of infallibility."

Democracy needs fundamentally a new psychology of human nature, for trust in the "common man" has no significance save as an expression of belief in the intimate and vital connection of democracy and human nature. But the picture of human nature drawn by some of its nineteenth-century democratic defenders was only a sketch of existing institutions generalized as basic laws of human nature. A special type of economic organizations was made the essential condition of free and democratic institutions, he declares, and interference with its profits, a violation of the laws of human nature. Democracy, however, implies faith in the potentialities of human nature in a far broader sense than this. It involves faith in the values of tolerance and in the method of persuasion and discussion. The democratic road is a hard one to take, and backsets will continue to occur, but what is its weakness at a particular time is precisely its strength in the long course of human history.

The question of what is involved in self-governing methods is far more complex in our times than in earlier days, and for this reason the task of those who retain belief in democracy is to revive and maintain in full vigor the original conviction of the intrinsic moral nature of democracy. "We have advanced far enough to realize that democracy is a way of life. We have yet to realize that it is a way of personal life and one which provides a moral standard for personal conduct."

But if democracy is a moral problem, what then is the relation of science to democracy? It is no longer possible, Dr. Dewey maintains, to hold the simple faith of the Enlightenment that the advance of science will automatically produce free institutions by dispelling ignorance and superstition. Already the progress of natural science has been even more rapid and extensive than was imagined, but it has also produced unexpected results: in industry, creating corporations and the concentration of capital; giving to dictators new means of controlling opinion and sentiment and reducing through organized propaganda all previous agencies of despotic rulers to a mere shadow.

This leads to the old question whether science has any part to play in the formation of human ends and purposes. Liberal and progressive movements based themselves on the principle that action is determined chiefly by ideas, and neglected the importance of emotions and habits in the determination of conduct. In more recent times, the opposite has been true, and the older doctrine has been stood upside down by emphasis on the emotional and nonrational. Science is not, however, in Mr. Dewey's view, merely a body of technical conclusions. It is an attitude embodied in habitual will to employ certain methods of observation, reflection, and test rather than others. Scientific men themselves have often created confusion by disclaiming any social responsibility for scientific results or by advocacy of personal conclusions in scientific terminology and with scientific prestige. The real question is whether science has "intrinsic moral potentialities."

Historically, the position that science is devoid of moral quality has been held by theologians and their metaphysical allies. But if control of conduct amounts to conflict of desires scientifically implemented, with no possibility of the determination of desire and purpose by scientifically warranted beliefs, then the practical alternative is only competition and conflict between unintelligent forces for control of desire. To say that there are no such things as moral facts because human desires control formation and valuation of ends is in truth but to point to desires and interests as themselves moral facts requiring control by intelligence equipped with knowledge. If, says Dr. Dewey solemnly, science is "incapable of developing moral techniques which will also determine these relations, the split in modern culture goes so deep that not only democracy but all civilized values are doomed. . . . A culture which permits science to destroy traditional values but which distrusts its power to create new ones is a culture which is destroying itself. War is a symptom as well as a cause of the inner division."

Liberty and democracy must in the end be set in a framework of culture and of human nature without which it has no enduring meaning, without which it has no power of adaptation and adjustment. The most serious threat to our democracy is not the existence of totalitarian states; it is the existence within our own personal attitude, and within our own institutions, of disordered and unintegrated conditions similar to those which have given a victory to external authority, discipline, uniformity, and dependence upon the Leader in some foreign countries. The battlefield is also accordingly here within ourselves and within our institutions. This battle Dewey asserts can be won only by extending the application of democratic methods, methods of consultation, persuasion, negotiation, communication, coöperative intelligence, all in the effort to make our politics, industry, education, and culture an evolving manifestation of democratic ideas. "An American democracy can serve the world only as it demonstrates in the conduct of its own life the efficacy of plural, partial, and experimental methods in securing and maintaining an ever-increasing release of the powers of human nature, in service of a freedom which is coöperative and a coöperation which is voluntary."

This is not an easy volume to read or to review fairly. In arrangement, it is somewhat disorganized, and the discourse is at times repetitive. Some of the paragraphs are condensed to a point where they require many readings to interpret. But it must be said that if one must search, there is much to be found. Dr. Dewey's Freedom and Culture is a gold mine which students of political science cannot afford to pass by. I do not know of any study which examines more sharply and intelligently the basic problem of human relations that threatens the whole civilization of the Western world. If Dr. Dewey had known more of economics, of politics, of administration, and of law, he might have written with greater sophistication and sureness in these fields, but he might have lost the broad sweep and perspective of his present view. The design of lifting the problem of democracy above economic determination, above emotional violence, above outdated psychology, tribal or industrial, and of elevating the discussion to a scientific-moral, cultural basis, is a noble and challenging one, even if not fully achieved.