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The final example of the failure to use available evidence, though evidence of a different kind from that which has so far been considered, comes from Fromm's treatment of some other writers who have dealt with the same themes.

In a brief chapter dealing with `` Various Other Diagnoses '', he quotes isolated passages from some writers whose views seem to corroborate his own, and finds it `` most remarkable that a critical view of twentieth-century society was already held by a number of thinkers living in the nineteenth.

'' He finds it equally `` remarkable that their critical diagnosis and prognosis should have so much in common among themselves and with the critics of the twentieth century ''.

There is nothing remarkable about this at all.

It is largely a matter of finding passages that suit one's purposes.

There is a difference between evidence and illustration, and Fromm's citation of the other diagnosticians fits the latter category.

Glance at the list: Burckhardt, Tolstoy, Proudhon, Thoreau, London, Marx, Tawney, Mayo, Durkheim, Tannenbaum, Mumford, A. R. Heron, Huxley, Schweitzer, and Einstein.

This is a delightfully motley collection.

One can make them say the same thing only by not listening to them very carefully and hearing only what one wants to hear.

The method of selection Fromm uses achieves exactly that.

Furthermore, the list is interesting for its omissions.

It omits, for example, practically the whole line of great nineteenth century English social critics, nearly all the great writers whose basic position is religious, and all those who are with more or less accuracy called Existentialists.

Of course, the list also excludes all writers who are fairly `` optimistic '' about the modern situation ; ;

these, almost by definition, are spokesmen for an alienated ideology.

It is not hard to find that concurrence of opinion which Fromm finds so remarkable when you ignore all who hold a different opinion.