Willard Huntington Wright

“ La Mettrie, the atheist, who held no brief for the pious virtues or for the theological soul so beloved by the British, receives just half a column of biography in which the facts of his doctrine are set down more in sorrow than in anger. Von Holbach, the German-Parisian prophet of earthly happiness, who denied the existence of a deity and believed that the soul became extinct at physical death, receives only a little more space than La Mettrie — less than a column. ”

“ There have been several adequate histories of philosophy written by British critics, proving that it is not necessary for an Englishman to regard the evolution of thinking only through distorted and prejudiced eyes. ”

“ One going to the Encyclopædia Britannica for critical information concerning philosophy will encounter the very essence of that spirit which is merely reflected in the other departments of the Encyclopædia's culture. In this field the English editors and contributors of the Britannica are dealing with the sources of thought, and as a result British prejudice finds a direct outlet.
To be sure, it is difficult for a critic possessing the mental characteristics and the ethical and religious predispositions of his nation, to reveal the entire field of philosophy without bias. ”

“ But so long as unimportant English philosophical writers are given biographies, we have a right to expect, in a work which calls itself an “international dictionary of biography,” the adequate inclusion of the more deserving philosophers of other nations.
But what do we actually find? You may hunt the Encyclopædia Britannica through, yet you will not see the names of John Dewey and Stanley Hall mentioned! John Dewey, an American, is perhaps the world's leading authority on the philosophy of education ”

“ The German “philosophers of the enlightenment” are given even less consideration. Christian Wolff, whose philosophy admittedly held almost undisputed sway in Germany till eclipsed by Kantianism, receives only a column-and-a-half biography, only half the space given to Samuel Clarke, the English theological writer, and equal space with John Norris, the English philosophical divine, and with Arthur Collier, the English High Church theologian. Even Anthony Collins, the English deist, receives nearly as long a biography. ”

“ The first distortion which will impress one who seeks information in the Britannica is to be found in the treatment of English empirical philosophers — that is, of John Locke, Isaac Newton, George Berkeley, Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson, Joseph Butler, Mandeville, Hume, Adam Smith and David Hartley. ”

“ At bottom they are Churchmen. They mistake the tastes and antipathies which have been bred in them by a narrow religious and ethical culture, for pure critical criteria. They regard the great men of other nations through the miasma of their tribal taboos.
This rigid and self-satisfied provincialism of outlook, as applied to philosophers in the Encyclopædia Britannica, is not, I am inclined to believe, the result of a deliberate attempt to exaggerate the importance of British thinkers and to underrate the importance of non-British thinkers. ”

“ Bentham's doctrines “have become so far part of the common thought of the time, that there is hardly an educated man who does not accept as too clear for argument truths which were invisible till Bentham pointed them out. ”

“ The supposed doctrine of Nietzsche is here used to expose the personal opinions of the tutor of Corpus Christi College who was assigned the task of interpreting Nietzsche to the readers of the Britannica. It would be impossible to gather any clear or adequate idea of Nietzsche and his work from this biased and moral source. Here middle-class British insularity reaches its high-water mark.
Other important modern thinkers, however, are given but little better treatment. Lange receives only three-fourths of a column ”

“ He has certain temperamental affinities which will draw him toward his own country's philosophical systems, and certain antipathies which will turn him against contrary systems of other nations. But in the higher realms of criticism it is possible to find that intellectual detachment which can review impersonally the development of thought, no matter what tangential directions it may take. ”

“ Such is the brief record of the manner in which the world's modern philosophers are treated in the Encyclopædia Britannica. From this work hundreds of thousands of Americans are garnering their educational ideas. ”

“ Harry Calderwood, whose work was based on the contention that fate implies knowledge and on the doctrine of divine sanction; David George Ritchie, an unimportant Scotch thinker; Henry Sidgwick, an orthodox religionist and one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research ”