Saving Communities

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The Ethics of Democracy

by Louis F. Post

Part 1, The Democratic Optimist
Chapter 2, Affirmative Negations and Negative Affirmations

OPTIMISM of the happy-go-lucky sort has but one test to distinguish good from bad. It clings to the affirmative; it abhors the negative. "I believe," said the optimistic sponsor for one of the many new religious movements, while explaining that his movement aimed to promote the affirmative instead of the negative principle of life - "I believe," he said, "that by laying stress on the affirmative, the world will be improved"; and then he added, by way of exhortation: "The heart lays stress on the affirmative when it loves, and on the negative when it hates."

In its essence, that is good doctrine. But your spurious optimist makes its truth his falsehood. For he ignores the spirit of the doctrine, which makes for life, and clings to its letter, which kills. His error is not in the principle he proclaims. The principle is true. It is in his application of the principle. For he handily settles the question of which of two opposing things is affirmative, by adopting the one that happens, though by the merest accident, to be affirmative in form. The temptation must be great to such a man to strike from the decalogue all the prohibitory commandments as pessimistic negations.

In substance, affirmation is indeed life and negation death. We should therefore prefer the affirmative to the negative - that which is engendered by love to that which is engendered by hate. But before doing so, let us be sure that the subject of our choice is substance regardless of form and not form regardless of substance. Affirmative negations, which are affirmative in form but negate the substance, must be distinguished from negative affirmations, which are negative in form but affirm the substance.

An impressive example of the negative affirmation is to be found in the political history of the United States. The Republican party at its birth was in form a party of negation. It held but two leading doctrines, and both were what at a more recent time would have been slangily called "anties" - "anti-slavery" and "anti-polygamy." Yet, essentially, the Republican party was not a party of negation. Though it held the negative side of the issues of that day, it was nevertheless then the party of life and progress. Its negation of the false was equivalent to an affirmation of the true. Anti-slavery and anti-polygamy, though in form negative, were in substance affirmative. Anti-wrong is always pro-right.

A very common example of word juggling for the purpose of giving negations the appearance of affirmations, and thereby misleading spurious optimists, may often be observed in the proceedings of deliberative bodies. It is a common trick of parliamentary tactics. Whenever the tricky tactician's side of a question happens to be in negative form, he moves an amendment which embodies essentially the same proposition in affirmative form. For illustration: It is moved that ten dollars be appropriated to such-and-such a purpose. If this presents a proposition to which the tactician is opposed, he moves an amendment to the effect that the purpose named be excluded from all appropriations. He does this because he knows that the spurious optimists, and they usually hold the balance of power in assemblies, will vote "aye" as naturally as leaves wither in the Fall. So, with an inexperienced opposition, together with an unfair or unsophisticated chairman, he may succeed in this design, and win on an "aye" vote the identical point that he would lose on a "nay" vote. A little intelligent reflection upon this common parliamentary trick should suggest to spurious optimists that more wholesome affirmation may be concealed in negative forms than they had suspected.

By some such word juggling all the opposition to falsity and evil that has given life to the world could be condemned as pessimistic negation. Error could always be transformed into truth if mere verbal affirmation were truth. Suppose one should assert that there is a personal devil superior to God; or that the earth is larger than the sun or that dogs are men; or that theft is righteous. Would denial be negation? Obviously not. What here purport to be affirmations are such only in form. They affirm falsehood, not truth, and are therefore negations of substance. To deny them is, consequently, not negation. In spite of its negative form, it is in substance affirmation.

This is true of the whole brood of negations in affirmative form that embryonic tyranny has hatched for the deception and undoing of mankind. Whenever power goes wrong, the evil it does assumes affirmative forms. The forms of righteousness in such cases must consequently of necessity be negative. Before condemning any negation, then, which consists in opposing public policies, it is of transcendent importance that those policies, even though affirmative in form, be thoroughly dissected to see if they may not nevertheless be negative in substance.

Opposition to wrong things is not negation but affirmation. It is not pessimism but optimism.