Beyond The Blind

BEYOND THE BLIND

As Maeterlinck notes in "Our Social Duty":
"At every crossway on the road that leads to the future, each
progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to
guard the past ....

"Let us not say to ourselves that the best truth always
lies in moderation, in the decent average. This would perhaps
be so if the majority of men did not think on a much lower plane
than is needful. That is why it behooves others to think and hope
on a higher plane than seems reasonable (at the time)."
(Reprinted in the forepages of Homer W. Smith's book,
"Man And His Gods" -- Little, Brown, 1953.)

To overturn the dogma of the day, or contradict and
rearrange the accepted mindset, is a challenge not easily
undertaken. Copernicus, in his time, was careful not to upset
the religious status quo by rushing into print too quickly. As
Timothy Ferris points out in "Coming of Age in the Milky Way"
(Anchor, 1989, page 67): "He was an old man before he finally
released the manuscript of De Revolutionibus (On The
Revolutions) to the printer, and was on his death bed by the
time the final page proofs arrived."

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Galileo was born in 1564, twenty years after its
publication, and sought to champion its cause at every turn. He
would be forced to recant this endorsement in 1633 (at age 70) at
the urging of the Inquisition, for even his accomplishments and
reputation were not enough to break the bonds of ignorance long
held in place. Progress is a relative thing: at least Galileo would
not be burned at the stake for this heresy, as with Giordano
Bruno in 1600.

Official vindication would not come until (strangely)
Halloween of 1992, when the Pope finally decided after
thirteen years of tortuous thought that Galileo had been right all
along: the Earth does move around the Sun.

Even Darwin was careful not to include elaboration on the
human animal in his first treatise, for the undeniable shock it would create in Victorian sensibilities of 1859. Before all these and
subject to the same censure was Nostradamus (1502-1566), who
carefully hid his true pronouncements in disguised quatrains, out of the same hope of self-preservation, no doubt.

The culture of any age is supported and reinforced by
those currently in power. Despite individual leanings or opinions
against the common dictate, the mass of any people will follow
religiously and sublimate their own true feelings, even common
sense, in the pressure of the age. Even decent people defer,
their worthy opinions too easily deflated by the sharp rhetoric of
bullies. Much worse, the average person will embrace his culture

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without assertion pro or con, bending easily in whatever direction
the social wind commands.

In the mean average, or the medium opinion of what is
good or reasonable or acceptable, that which is currently
so will often later be defined as the product of limited morality or
intelligence. Maeterlinck elaborates: "At the time of the Spanish
Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium
was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of
heretics, (though) extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously
demanded that they should burn none at all."

The true vision of progress for any age will usually require a
perspective which denies the common view and the comfort of
tradition. Many will consider new ideas, but refuse to embrace the
difference; most will deny the need for change and refuse to
even see it. Progress does occur despite resistance, when
people lose their fear and learn to see beyond the blind.