The Approach to Philosophy
by Ralph Barton Perry · English · Gutenberg #25110 · 641,858 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Approach to Philosophy
Author: Ralph Barton Perry
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE APPROACH TO PHILOSOPHY ***
Produced by Stephen Hope, Fox in the Stars, Lisa Reigel,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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Transcriber's Notes: Some typographical errors have been corrected. A
complete list follows the text. Words in Greek in the original are
transliterated and placed between +plus signs+. In the transliterations
e: and o: represent the vowel with a circumflex. Words italicized in
the original are surrounded by _underscores_.
THE
APPROACH TO PHILOSOPHY
BY PROF. RALPH BARTON PERRY
THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
THE MORAL ECONOMY
THE APPROACH TO PHILOSOPHY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
THE APPROACH TO
PHILOSOPHY
BY
RALPH BARTON PERRY, PH.D.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON
COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Printed in the United States of America
F
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED TO
MY FATHER
AS A TOKEN OF MY LOVE AND ESTEEM
PREFACE
In an essay on "The Problem of Philosophy at the Present Time,"
Professor Edward Caird says that "philosophy is not a first venture into
a new field of thought, but the rethinking of a secular and religious
consciousness which has been developed, in the main, independently of
philosophy."[vii:A] If there be any inspiration and originality in this
book, they are due to my great desire that philosophy should appear in
its vital relations to more familiar experiences. If philosophy is, as
is commonly assumed, appropriate to a phase in the development of every
individual, it should _grow out_ of interests to which he is already
alive. And if the great philosophers are indeed never dead, this fact
should manifest itself in their classic or historical representation of
a perennial outlook upon the world. I am not seeking to attach to
philosophy a fictitious liveliness, wherewith to insinuate it into the
good graces of the student. I hope rather to be true to the meaning of
philosophy. For there is that in its stand-point and its problem which
makes it universally significant entirely apart from dialectic and
erudition. These are derived interests, indispensable to the scholar,
but quite separable from that modicum of philosophy which helps to make
the man. The present book is written for the sake of elucidating the
inevitable philosophy. It seeks to make the reader more solicitously
aware of the philosophy that is in him, or to provoke him to philosophy
in his own interests. To this end I have sacrificed all else to the task
of mediating between the tradition and technicalities of the academic
discipline and the more common terms of life.
The purpose of the book will in part account for those shortcomings that
immediately reveal themselves to the eye of the scholar. In Part I
various great human interests have been selected as points of departure.
I have sought to introduce the general stand-point and problem of
philosophy through its implication in practical life, poetry, religion,
and science. But in so doing it has been necessary for me to deal
shortly with topics of great independent importance, and so risk the
disfavor of those better skilled in these several matters. This is
evidently true of the chapter which deals with natural science. But the
problem which I there faced differed radically from those of the
foregoing chapters, and the method of treatment is correspondingly
different. In the case of natural science one has to deal with a body of
knowledge which is frequently regarded as the only knowledge. To write a
chapter about science from a philosophical stand-point is, in the
present state of opinion, to undertake a polemic against exclusive
naturalism, an attitude which is itself philosophical, and as such is
well known in the history of philosophy as _positivism_ or
_agnosticism_. I have avoided the polemical spirit and method so far as
possible, but have, nevertheless, here taken sides against a definite
philosophical position. This chapter, together with the Conclusion, is
therefore an exception to the purely introductory and expository
representation which I have, on the whole, sought to give. The
relatively great space accorded to the discussion of religion is, in my
own belief, fair to the general interest in this topic, and to the
intrinsic significance of its relation to philosophy.
I have in Part II undertaken to furnish the reader with a map of the
country to which he has been led. To this end I have attempted a brief
survey of the entire programme of philosophy. An accurate and full
account of philosophical terms can be found in such books as Kuelpe's
"Introduction to Philosophy" and Baldwin's "Dictionary of Philosophy,"
and an attempt to emulate their thoroughness would be superfluous, even
if it were conformable to the general spirit of this book. The scope of
Part II is due in part to a desire for brevity, but chiefly to the hope
of furnishing an epitome that shall follow the course of the _natural
and historical differentiation_ of the general philosophical problem.
Finally, I have in Part III sought to present the tradition of
philosophy in the form of general types. My purpose in undertaking so
difficult a task is to acquaint the reader with philosophy in the
concrete; to show how certain underlying principles may determine the
whole circle of philosophical ideas, and give them unity and distinctive
flavor. Part II offers a general classification of philosophical
problems and conceptions independently of any special point of view. But
I have in Part III sought to emphasize the point of view, or the
internal consistency that makes a _system of philosophy_ out of certain
answers to the special problems of philosophy. In such a division into
types, lines are of necessity drawn too sharply. There will be many
historical philosophies that refuse to fit, and many possibilities
unprovided for. I must leave it to the individual reader to overcome
this abstractness through his own reflection upon the intermediate and
variant stand-points.
Although the order is on the whole that of progressive complexity, I
have sought to treat each chapter with independence enough to make it
possible for it to be read separately; and I have provided a carefully
selected bibliography in the hope that this book may serve as a stimulus
and guide to the reading of other books.
The earlier chapters have already appeared as articles: Chapter I in the
_International Journal of Ethics_, Vol. XIII, No. 4; Chapter II in the
_Philosophical Review_, Vol. XI, No. 6; Chapter III in the _Monist_,
Vol. XIV, No. 5; Chapter IV in the _International Journal of Ethics_,
Vol. XV, No. 1; and some paragraphs of Chapter V in the _Journal of
Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, Vol. I, No. 7. I am
indebted to the editors of these periodicals for permission to reprint
with minor changes.
In the writing of this, my first book, I have been often reminded that
a higher critic, skilled in the study of internal evidence, could
probably trace all of its ideas to suggestions that have come to me from
my teachers and colleagues of the Department of Philosophy in Harvard
University. I have unscrupulously forgotten what of their definite ideas
I have adapted to my own use, but not that I received from them the
major portion of my original philosophical capital. I am especially
indebted to Professor William James for the inspiration and resources
which I have received from his instruction and personal friendship.
RALPH BARTON PERRY.
CAMBRIDGE, March, 1905.
FOOTNOTES:
[vii:A] Edw. Caird: _Literature and Philosophy_, Vol. I, p. 207.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I
APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM OF PHILOSOPHY
PAGE
CHAPTER I. THE PRACTICAL MAN AND THE PHILOSOPHER 3
Sect. 1. Is Philosophy a Merely Academic Interest? 3
Sect. 2. Life as a Starting-point for Thought 4
Sect. 3. The Practical Knowledge of Means 8
Sect. 4. The Practical Knowledge of the End or Purpose 10
Sect. 5. The Philosophy of the Devotee, the Man of Affairs, and
the Voluptuary 12
Sect. 6. The Adoption of Purposes and the Philosophy of Life 17
CHAPTER II. POETRY AND PHILOSOPHY 24
Sect. 7. Who is the Philosopher-Poet? 24
Sect. 8. Poetry as Appreciation 25
Sect. 9. Sincerity in Poetry. Whitman 27
Sect. 10. Constructive Knowledge in Poetry. Shakespeare 30
Sect. 11. Philosophy in Poetry. The World-view. Omar Khayyam 36
Sect. 12. Wordsworth 38
Sect. 13. Dante 42
Sect. 14. The Difference between Poetry and Philosophy 48
CHAPTER III. THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 53
Sect. 15. The Possibility of Defining Religion 53
Sect. 16. The Profitableness of Defining Religion 54
Sect. 17. The True Method of Defining Religion 56
Sect. 18. Religion as Belief 59
Sect. 19. Religion as Belief in a Disposition or Attitude 62
Sect. 20. Religion as Belief in the Disposition of the Residual
Environment, or Universe 64
Sect. 21. Examples of Religious Belief 66
Sect. 22. Typical Religious Phenomena. Conversion 69
Sect. 23. Piety 72
Sect. 24. Religious Instruments, Symbolism, and Modes of
Conveyance 74
Sect. 25. Historical Types of Religion. Primitive Religions 77
Sect. 26. Buddhism 78
Sect. 27. Critical Religion 79
CHAPTER IV. THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF RELIGION 82
Sect. 28. Resume of Psychology of Religion 82
Sect. 29. Religion Means to be True 82
Sect. 30. Religion Means to be Practically True. God is a
Disposition from which Consequences May Rationally
be Expected 85
Sect. 31. Historical Examples of Religious Truth and Error. The
Religion of Baal 88
Sect. 32. Greek Religion 89
Sect. 33. Judaism and Christianity 92
Sect. 34. The Cognitive Factor in Religion 96
Sect. 35. The Place of Imagination in Religion 97
Sect. 36. The Special Functions of the Religious Imagination 101
Sect. 37. The Relation between Imagination and Truth in Religion 105
Sect. 38. The Philosophy Implied in Religion and in Religions 108
CHAPTER V. NATURAL SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 114
Sect. 39. The True Relations of Philosophy and Science.
Misconceptions and Antagonisms 114
Sect. 40. The Spheres of Philosophy and Science 117
Sect. 41. The Procedure of a Philosophy of Science 120
Sect. 42. The Origin of the Scientific Interest 123
Sect. 43. Skill as Free 123
Sect. 44. Skill as Social 126
Sect. 45. Science for Accommodation and Construction 127
Sect. 46. Method and Fundamental Conceptions of Natural Science.
The Descriptive Method 128
Sect. 47. Space, Time, and Prediction 130
Sect. 48. The Quantitative Method 132
Sect. 49. The General Development of Science 134
Sect. 50. The Determination of the Limits of Natural Science 135
Sect. 51. Natural Science is Abstract 136
Sect. 52. The Meaning of Abstractness in Truth 139
Sect. 53. But Scientific Truth is Valid for Reality 142
Sect. 54. Relative Practical Value of Science and Philosophy 143
PART II
THE SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER VI. METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY 149
Sect. 55. The Impossibility of an Absolute Division of the
Problem of Philosophy 149
Sect. 56. The Dependence of the Order of Philosophical Problems
upon the Initial Interest 152
Sect. 57. Philosophy as the Interpretation of Life 152
Sect. 58. Philosophy as the Extension of Science 154
Sect. 59. The Historical Differentiation of the Philosophical
Problem 155
Sect. 60. Metaphysics Seeks a Most Fundamental Conception 157
Sect. 61. Monism and Pluralism 159
Sect. 62. Ontology and Cosmology Concern Being and Process 159
Sect. 63. Mechanical and Teleological Cosmologies 160
Sect. 64. Dualism 162
Sect. 65. The New Meaning of Monism and Pluralism 163
Sect. 66. Epistemology Seeks to Understand the Possibility of
Knowledge 164
Sect. 67. Scepticism, Dogmatism, and Agnosticism 166
Sect. 68. The Source and Criterion of Knowledge according to
Empiricism and Rationalism. Mysticism 168
Sect. 69. The Relation of Knowledge to its Object according to
Realism, and the Representative Theory 172
Sect. 70. The Relation of Knowledge to its Object according to
Idealism 175
Sect. 71. Phenomenalism, Spiritualism, and Panpsychism 176
Sect. 72. Transcendentalism, or Absolute Idealism 177
CHAPTER VII. THE NORMATIVE SCIENCES AND THE PROBLEMS OF RELIGION 180
Sect. 73. The Normative Sciences 180
Sect. 74. The Affiliations of Logic 182
Sect. 75. Logic Deals with the Most General Conditions of Truth
in Belief 183
Sect. 76. The Parts of Formal Logic. Definition, Self-evidence,
Inference, and Observation 184
Sect. 77. Present Tendencies. Theory of the Judgment 187
Sect. 78. Priority of Concepts 188
Sect. 79. Aesthetics Deals with the Most General Conditions of
Beauty. Subjectivistic and Formalistic Tendencies 189
Sect. 80. Ethics Deals with the Most General Conditions of Moral
Goodness 191
Sect. 81. Conceptions of the Good. Hedonism 191
Sect. 82. Rationalism 193
Sect. 83. Eudaemonism and Pietism. Rigorism and Intuitionism 194
Sect. 84. Duty and Freedom. Ethics and Metaphysics 196
Sect. 85. The Virtues, Customs, and Institutions 198
Sect. 86. The Problems of Religion. The Special Interests of
Faith 199
Sect. 87. Theology Deals with the Nature and Proof of God 200
Sect. 88. The Ontological Proof of God 200
Sect. 89. The Cosmological Proof of God 203
Sect. 90. The Teleological Proof of God 204
Sect. 91. God and the World. Theism and Pantheism 205
Sect. 92. Deism 206
Sect. 93. Metaphysics and Theology 207
Sect. 94. Psychology is the Theory of the Soul 208
Sect. 95. Spiritual Substance 209
Sect. 96. Intellectualism and Voluntarism 210
Sect. 97. Freedom of the Will. Necessitarianism, Determinism,
and Indeterminism 211
Sect. 98. Immortality. Survival and Eternalism 212
Sect. 99. The Natural Science of Psychology. Its Problems and
Method 213
Sect. 100. Psychology and Philosophy 216
Sect. 101. Transition from Classification by Problems to
Classification by Doctrines. Naturalism.
Subjectivism. Absolute Idealism. Absolute Realism 217
PART III
SYSTEMS OF PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER VIII. NATURALISM 223
Sect. 102. The General Meaning of Materialism 223
Sect. 103. Corporeal Being 224
Sect. 104. Corporeal Processes. Hylozoism and Mechanism 225
Sect. 105. Materialism and Physical Science 228
Sect. 106. The Development of the Conceptions of Physical
Science. Space and Matter 228
Sect. 107. Motion and its Cause. Development and Extension of the
Conception of Force 231
Sect. 108. The Development and Extension of the Conception of
Energy 236
Sect. 109. The Claims of Naturalism 239
Sect. 110. The Task of Naturalism 241
Sect. 111. The Origin of the Cosmos 242
Sect. 112. Life. Natural Selection 244
Sect. 113. Mechanical Physiology 246
Sect. 114. Mind. The Reduction to Sensation 247
Sect. 115. Automatism 248
Sect. 116. Radical Materialism. Mind as an Epiphenomenon 250
Sect. 117. Knowledge. Positivism and Agnosticism 252
Sect. 118. Experimentalism 255
Sect. 119. Naturalistic Epistemology not Systematic 256
Sect. 120. General Ethical Stand-point 258
Sect. 121. Cynicism and Cyrenaicism 259
Sect. 122. Development of Utilitarianism. Evolutionary Conception
of Social Relations 260
Sect. 123. Naturalistic Ethics not Systematic 262
Sect. 124. Naturalism as Antagonistic to Religion 263
Sect. 125. Naturalism as the Basis for a Religion of Service,
Wonder, and Renunciation 265
CHAPTER IX. SUBJECTIVISM 267
Sect. 126. Subjectivism Originally Associated with Relativism and
Scepticism 267
Sect. 127. Phenomenalism and Spiritualism 271
Sect. 128. Phenomenalism as Maintained by Berkeley. The Problem
Inherited from Descartes and Locke 272
Sect. 129. The Refutation of Material Substance 275
Sect. 130. The Application of the Epistemological Principle 277
Sect. 131. The Refutation of a Conceived Corporeal World 278
Sect. 132. The Transition to Spiritualism 280
Sect. 133. Further Attempts to Maintain Phenomenalism 281
Sect. 134. Berkeley's Spiritualism. Immediate Knowledge of the
Perceiver 284
Sect. 135. Schopenhauer's Spiritualism, or Voluntarism. Immediate
Knowledge of the Will 285
Sect. 136. Panpsychism 287
Sect. 137. The Inherent Difficulty in Spiritualism. No Provision
for Objective Knowledge 288
Sect. 138. Schopenhauer's Attempt to Universalize Subjectivism.
Mysticism 290
Sect. 139. Objective Spiritualism 292
Sect. 140. Berkeley's Conception of God as Cause, Goodness, and
Order 293
Sect. 141. The General Tendency of Subjectivism to Transcend
Itself 297
Sect. 142. Ethical Theories. Relativism 298
Sect. 143. Pessimism and Self-denial 299
Sect. 144. The Ethics of Welfare 300
Sect. 145. The Ethical Community 302
Sect. 146. The Religion of Mysticism 303
Sect. 147. The Religion of Individual Cooperation with God 304
CHAPTER X. ABSOLUTE REALISM 306
Sect. 148. The Philosopher's Task, and the Philosopher's Object,
or the Absolute 306
Sect. 149. The Eleatic Conception of Being 309
Sect. 150. Spinoza's Conception of Substance 311
Sect. 151. Spinoza's Proof of God, the Infinite Substance. The
Modes and the Attributes 312
Sect. 152. The Limits of Spinoza's Argument for God 315
Sect. 153. Spinoza's Provision for the Finite 317
Sect. 154. Transition to Teleological Conceptions 317
Sect. 155. Early Greek Philosophers not Self-critical 319
Sect. 156. Curtailment of Philosophy in the Age of the Sophists 319
Sect. 157. Socrates and the Self-criticism of the Philosopher 321
Sect. 158. Socrates's Self-criticism a Prophecy of Truth 323
Sect. 159. The Historical Preparation for Plato 324
Sect. 160. Platonism: Reality as the Absolute Ideal or Good 326
Sect. 161. The Progression of Experience toward God 329
Sect. 162. Aristotle's Hierarchy of Substances in Relation to
Platonism 332
Sect. 163. The Aristotelian Philosophy as a Reconciliation of
Platonism and Spinozism 335
Sect. 164. Leibniz's Application of the Conception of Development
to the Problem of Imperfection 336
Sect. 165. The Problem of Imperfection Remains Unsolved 338
Sect. 166. Absolute Realism in Epistemology. Rationalism 339
Sect. 167. The Relation of Thought and its Object in Absolute
Realism 340
Sect. 168. The Stoic and Spinozistic Ethics of Necessity 342
Sect. 169. The Platonic Ethics of Perfection 344
Sect. 170. The Religion of Fulfilment and the Religion of
Renunciation 346
CHAPTER XI. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 349
Sect. 171. General Constructive Character of Absolute Idealism 349
Sect. 172. The Great Outstanding Problems of Absolutism 351
Sect. 173. The Greek Philosophers and the Problem of Evil. The
Task of the New Absolutism 352
Sect. 174. The Beginning of Absolute Idealism in Kant's Analysis
of Experience 354
Sect. 175. Kant's Principles Restricted to the Experiences which
they Set in Order 356
Sect. 176. The Post-Kantian Metaphysics is a Generalization of
the Cognitive and Moral Consciousness as Analyzed
by Kant. The Absolute Spirit 358
Sect. 177. Fichteanism, or the Absolute Spirit as Moral Activity 360
Sect. 178. Romanticism, or the Absolute Spirit as Sentiment 361
Sect. 179. Hegelianism, or the Absolute Spirit as Dialectic 361
Sect. 180. The Hegelian Philosophy of Nature and History 363
Sect. 181. Resume. Failure of Absolute Idealism to Solve the
Problem of Evil 365
Sect. 182. The Constructive Argument for Absolute Idealism is
Based upon the Subjectivistic Theory of Knowledge 368
Sect. 183. The Principle of Subjectivism Extended to Reason 371
Sect. 184. Emphasis on Self-consciousness in Early Christian
Philosophy 372
Sect. 185. Descartes's Argument for the Independence of the
Thinking Self 374
Sect. 186. Empirical Reaction of the English Philosophers 376
Sect. 187. To Save Exact Science Kant Makes it Dependent on Mind 377
Sect. 188. The Post-Kantians Transform Kant's Mind-in-general
into an Absolute Mind 380
Sect. 189. The Direct Argument. The Inference from the Finite
Mind to the Infinite Mind 382
Sect. 190. The Realistic Tendency in Absolute Idealism 385
Sect. 191. The Conception of Self-consciousness Central in the
Ethics of Absolute Idealism. Kant 386
Sect. 192. Kantian Ethics Supplemented through the Conceptions of
Universal and Objective Spirit 388
Sect. 193. The Peculiar Pantheism and Mysticism of Absolute
Idealism 390
Sect. 194. The Religion of Exuberant Spirituality 393
CHAPTER XII. CONCLUSION 395
Sect. 195. Liability of Philosophy to Revision Due to its
Systematic Character 395
Sect. 196. The One Science and the Many Philosophies 396
Sect. 197. Progress in Philosophy. The Sophistication or
Eclecticism of the Present Age 398
Sect. 198. Metaphysics. The Antagonistic Doctrines of Naturalism
and Absolutism 399
Sect. 199. Concessions from the Side of Absolutism. Recognition
of Nature. The Neo-Fichteans 401
Sect. 200. The Neo-Kantians 403
Sect. 201. Recognition of the Individual. Personal Idealism 404
Sect. 202. Concessions from the Side of Naturalism. Recognition of
Fundamental Principles 405
Sect. 203. Recognition of the Will. Pragmatism 407
Sect. 204. Summary and Transition to Epistemology 408
Sect. 205. The Antagonistic Doctrines of Realism and Idealism.
Realistic Tendency in Empirical Idealism 409
Sect. 206. Realistic Tendency in Absolute Idealism. The Conception
of Experience 410
Sect. 207. Idealistic Tendencies in Realism. The Immanence
Philosophy 412
Sect. 208. The Interpretation of Tradition as the Basis for a New
Construction 413
Sect. 209. The Truth of the Physical System, but Failure of
Attempt to Reduce all Experience to it 414
Sect. 210. Truth of Psychical Relations but Impossibility of
General Reduction to them 415
Sect. 211. Truth of Logical and Ethical Principles. Validity of
Ideal of Perfection, but Impossibility of Deducing
the Whole of Experience from it 415
Sect. 212. Error and Evil cannot be Reduced to the Ideal 417
Sect. 213. Collective Character of the Universe as a Whole 419
Sect. 214. Moral Implications of Such Pluralistic Philosophy.
Purity of the Good 420
Sect. 215. The Incentive to Goodness 422
Sect. 216. The Justification of Faith 423
Sect. 217. The Worship and Service of God 425
Sect. 218. The Philosopher and the Standards of the Market-Place 425
Sect. 219. The Secularism of the Present Age 427
Sect. 220. The Value of Contemplation for Life 428
BIBLIOGRAPHY 431
INDEX 441
PART I
APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM OF
PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER I
THE PRACTICAL MAN AND THE PHILOSOPHER
[Sidenote: Is Philosophy a Merely Academic Interest?]
Sect. 1. Philosophy suffers the distinction of being regarded as
essentially an academic pursuit. The term _philosophy_, to be sure, is
used in common speech to denote a stoical manner of accepting the
vicissitudes of life; but this conception sheds little or no light upon
the meaning of philosophy as a branch of scholarship. The men who write
the books on "Epistemology" or "Ontology," are regarded by the average
man of affairs, even though he may have enjoyed a "higher education,"
with little sympathy and less intelligence. Not even philology seems
less concerned with the real business of life. The pursuit of philosophy
appears to be a phenomenon of extreme and somewhat effete culture, with
its own peculiar traditions, problems, and aims, and with little or
nothing to contribute to the real enterprises of society. It is easy to
prove to the satisfaction of the philosopher that such a view is
radically mistaken. But it is another and more serious matter to bridge
over the very real gap that separates philosophy and common-sense. Such
an aim is realized only when philosophy is seen to issue from some
special interest that is humanly important; or when, after starting in
thought at a point where one deals with ideas and interests common to
all, one is led by the inevitableness of consistent thinking into the
sphere of philosophy.
[Sidenote: Life as a Starting-point for Thought.]
Sect. 2. There is but one starting-point for reflection when all men are
invited to share in it. Though there be a great many special platforms
where special groups of men may take their stand together, there is only
one platform broad enough for all. This universal stand-point, or common
platform, is _life_. It is our more definite thesis, then, that
philosophy, even to its most abstruse technicality, is rooted in life;
and that it is inseparably bound up with the satisfaction of practical
needs, and the solution of practical problems.
Every man knows what it is to live, and his immediate experience will
verify those features of the adventure that stand out conspicuously. To
begin with, life is our birthright. We did not ask for it, but when we
grew old enough to be self-conscious we found ourselves in possession
of it. Nor is it a gift to be neglected, even if we had the will. As is
true of no other gift of nature, we must use it, or cease to be. There
is a unique urgency about life. But we have already implied more, in so
far as we have said that it must be _used_, and have thereby referred to
some form of movement or activity as its inseparable attribute. To
live is to find one's self compelled to do something. To do
_something_--there is another implication of life: some outer
expression, some medium in which to register the degree and form of its
activity. Such we recognize as the environment of life, the real objects
among which it is placed; which it may change, or from which it may
suffer change. Not only do we find our lives as unsolicited active
powers, but find, as well, an arena prescribed for their exercise. That
we shall act, and in a certain time and place, and with reference to
certain other realities, this is the general condition of things that is
encountered when each one of us discovers life. In short, to live means
to be compelled to do something under certain circumstances.
There is another very common aspect of life that would not at first
glance seem worthy of mention. Not only does life, as we have just
described it, mean opportunity, but it means self-conscious opportunity.
The facts are such as we have found them to be, and as each one of us
has previously found them for himself. But when we discover life for
ourselves, we who make the discovery, and we who live, are identical.
From that moment we both live, and know that we live. Moreover, such is
the essential unity of our natures that our living must now express our
knowing, and our knowing guide and illuminate our living. Consider the
allegory of the centipede. From the beginning of time he had manipulated
his countless legs with exquisite precision. Men had regarded him with
wonder and amazement. But he was innocent of his own art, being a
contrivance of nature, perfectly constructed to do her bidding. One day
the centipede discovered life. He discovered himself as one who walks,
and the newly awakened intelligence, first observing, then foreseeing,
at length began to direct the process. And from that moment the
centipede, because he could not remember the proper order of his going,
lost all his former skill, and became the poor clumsy victim of his own
self-consciousness. This same self-consciousness is the inconvenience
and the great glory of human life. We must stumble along as best we
can, guided by the feeble light of our own little intelligence. If
nature starts us on our way, she soon hands over the torch, and bids us
find the trail for ourselves. Most men are brave enough to regard this
as the best thing of all; some despair on account of it. In either case
it is admittedly the true story of human life. We must live as separate
selves, observing, foreseeing, and planning. There are two things that
we can do about it. We can repudiate our natures, decline the
responsibility, and degenerate to the level of those animals that never
had our chance; or we can leap joyously to the helm, and with all the
strength and wisdom in us guide our lives to their destination. But if
we do the former, we shall be unable to forget what might have been, and
shall be haunted by a sense of ignominy; and if we do the second, we
shall experience the unique happiness of fulfilment and
self-realization.
Life, then, is a situation that appeals to intelligent activity. Humanly
speaking, there is no such thing as a situation that is not at the same
time a theory. As we live we are all theorists. Whoever has any
misgivings as to the practical value of theory, let him remember that,
speaking generally of human life, it is true to say that there is no
practice that does not issue at length from reflection. That which is
the commonest experience of mankind is the conjunction of these two, the
thought and the deed. And as surely as we are all practical theorists,
so surely is philosophy the outcome of the broadening and deepening of
practical theory. But to understand how the practical man becomes the
philosopher, we must inquire somewhat more carefully into the manner of
his thought about life.
[Sidenote: The Practical Knowledge of Means.]
Sect. 3. Let anyone inspect the last moment in his life, and in all
probability he will find that his mind was employed to discover the
means to some end. He was already bent upon some definite achievement,
and was thoughtful for the sake of selecting the economical and
effectual way. His theory made his practice skilful. So through life his
knowledge shows him how to work his will. Example, experience, and books
have taught him the uses of nature and society, and in his thoughtful
living he is enabled to reach the goal he has set for the next hour,
day, or year of his activity. The long periods of human life are spent
in elaborating the means to some unquestioned end. Here one meets the
curious truth that we wake up in the middle of life, already making
headway, and under the guidance of some invisible steersman. When first
we take the business of life seriously, there is a considerable stock in
trade in the shape of habits, and inclinations to all sorts of things
that we never consciously elected to pursue. Since we do not begin at
the beginning, our first problem is to accommodate ourselves to
ourselves, and our first deliberate acts are in fulfilment of plans
outlined by some predecessor that has already spoken for us. The same
thing is true of the race of men. At a certain stage in their
development men found themselves engaged in all manner of ritual and
custom, and burdened with concerns that were not of their own choosing.
They were burning incense, keeping festivals, and naming names, all of
which they must now proceed to justify with myth and legend, in order to
render intelligible to themselves the deliberate and self-conscious
repetition of them. Even so much justification was left to the few, and
the great majority continued to seek that good which social usage
countenanced and individual predisposition confirmed. So every man of us
acts from day to day for love's sake, or wealth's sake, or power's
sake, or for the sake of some near and tangible object; reflecting only
for the greater efficiency of his endeavor.
[Sidenote: The Practical Knowledge of the End or Purpose.]
Sect. 4. But if this be the common manner of thinking about life, it
does not represent the whole of such thought. Nor does it follow that
because it occupies us so much, it is therefore correspondingly
fundamental. Like the myth makers of old, we all want more or less to
know the _reason of our ends_. Here, then, we meet with a somewhat
different type of reflection upon life, the reflection that underlies
the adoption of a life purpose. It is obvious that most ends are
selected for the sake of other ends, and so are virtually means. Thus
one may struggle for years to secure a college education. This definite
end has been adopted for the sake of a somewhat more indefinite end of
self-advancement, and from it there issues a whole series of minor ends,
which form a hierarchy of steps ascending to the highest goal of
aspiration. Now upon the face of things we live very unsystematic lives,
and yet were we to examine ourselves in this fashion, we should all find
our lives to be marvels of organization. Their growth, as we have seen,
began before we were conscious of it; and we are commonly so absorbed
in some particular flower or fruit that we forget the roots, and the
design of the whole. But a little reflection reveals a remarkable
unitary adjustment of parts. The unity is due to the dominance of a
group of central purposes. Judged from the stand-point of experience, it
seems bitter irony to say that everyone gets from life just what he
wishes. But a candid searching of our own hearts will incline us to
admit that, after all, the way we go and the length we go is determined
pretty much by the kind and the intensity of our secret longing. That
for which in the time of choice we are willing to sacrifice all else, is
the formula that defines the law of each individual life. All this is
not intended to mean that we have each named a clear and definite ideal
which is our chosen goal. On the contrary, such a conception may be
almost meaningless to some of us. In general the higher the ideal the
vaguer and less vivid is its presentation to our consciousness. But,
named or unnamed, sharp or blurred, vivid or half-forgotten, there may
be found in the heart of every man that which of all things he wants to
be, that which of all deeds he wants to do. If he has had the normal
youth of dreaming, he has seen it, and warmed to the picture of his
imagination; if he has been somewhat more thoughtful than the ordinary,
his reason has defined it, and adopted it for his vocation; if neither,
it has been present as an undertone throughout the rendering of his more
inevitable life. He will recognize it when it is named as the desire to
do the will of God, or to have as good a time as possible, or to make
other people as happy as possible, or to be equal to his
responsibilities, or to fulfil the expectation of his mother, or to be
distinguished, wealthy, or influential. This list of ideals is
miscellaneous, and ethically reducible to more fundamental concepts, but
these are the terms in which men are ordinarily conscious of their most
intimate purposes. We must now inquire respecting the nature of the
thought that determines the selection of such a purpose, or justifies it
when it has been unconsciously accepted.
[Sidenote: The Philosophy of the Devotee, the Man of Affairs, and the
Voluptuary.]
Sect. 5. What is most worth while? So far as human action is concerned
this obviously depends upon what is possible, upon what is expected of
us by our own natures, and upon what interests and concerns are
conserved by the trend of events in our environment. What I had best
do, presupposes what I have the strength and the skill to do, what I
feel called upon to do, and what are the great causes that are entitled
to promotion at my hands. It seems that practically we cannot separate
the ideal from the real. We may feel that the highest ideal is an
immediate utterance of conscience, as mysterious in origin as it is
authoritative in expression. We may be willing to defy the universe, and
expatriate ourselves from our natural and social environment, for the
sake of the holy law of duty. Such men as Count Tolstoi have little to
say of the possible, or the expedient, or the actual, and are satisfied
to stand almost alone against the brutal facts of usage and economy. We
all have a secret sense of chivalry, that prompts, however
ineffectually, to a like devotion. But that which in such moral purposes
appears to indicate a severance of the ideal and the real, is, if we
will but stop to consider, only a severance of the ideal and the
apparent. The martyr is more sure of reality than the adventurer. He is
convinced that though his contemporaries and his environment be against
him; the fundamental or eventual order of things is for him. He believes
in a spiritual world more abiding, albeit less obvious, than the
material world. Though every temporal event contradict him, he lives in
the certainty that eternity is his. Such an one may have found his ideal
in the voice of God and His prophets, or he may have been led to God as
the justification of his irresistible ideal; but in either case the
selection of his ideal is reasonable to him in so far as it is
harmonious with the ultimate nature of things, or stands for the promise
of reality. In this wise, thought about life expands into some
conception of the deeper forces of the world, and life itself, in
respect of its fundamental attachment to an ideal, implies some belief
concerning the fundamental nature of its environment.
But lest in this account life be credited with too much gravity and
import, or it seem to be assumed that life is all knight-errantry, let
us turn to our less quixotic, and perhaps more effectual, man of
affairs. He works for his daily bread, and for success in his vocation.
He has selected his vocation for its promise of return in the form of
wealth, comfort, fame, or influence. He likewise performs such
additional service to his family and his community as is demanded of him
by public opinion and his own sense of responsibility. He may have a
certain contempt for the man who sees visions. This may be his manner of
testifying to his own preference for the ideal of usefulness and
immediate efficiency. But even so he would never for an instant admit
that he was pursuing a merely conventional good. He may be largely
imitative in his standards of value, recognizing such aims as are common
to some time or race; nevertheless none would be more sure than he of
the truth of his ideal. Question him, and he will maintain that his is
the reasonable life under the conditions of human existence. He may
maintain that if there be a God, he can best serve Him by promoting the
tangible welfare of himself and those dependent upon him. He may
maintain that, since there is no God, he must win such rewards as the
world can give. If he have something of the heroic in him, he may tell
you that, since there is no God, he will labor to the uttermost for his
fellow-men. Where he has not solved the problem of life for himself, he
may believe himself to be obeying the insight of some one wiser than
himself, or of society as expressed in its customs and institutions. But
no man ever admitted that his life was purely a matter of expediency, or
that in his dominant ideal he was the victim of chance. In the
background of the busiest and most preoccupied life of affairs, there
dwells the conviction that such living is appropriate to the universe;
that it is called for by the circumstances of its origin, opportunities,
and destiny.
Finally, the man who makes light of life has of all men the most
transparent inner consciousness. In him may be clearly observed the
relation between the ideal and the reflection that is assumed to justify
it.
"A Moment's Halt--a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste--
And Lo!--the phantom Caravan has reach'd
The Nothing it set out from-- . . ."
"We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumin'd Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show."
Where the setting of life is construed in these terms, there is but one
natural and appropriate manner of life. Once believing in the isolation
and insignificance of life, one is sceptical of all worth save such as
may be tasted in the moment of its purchase. If one's ideas and
experiences are no concern of the world's, but incidents of a purely
local and transient interest, they will realize most when they realize
an immediate gratification. Where one does not believe that he is a
member of the universe, and a contributor to its ends, he does well to
minimize the friction that arises from its accidental propinquity, and
to kindle some little fire of enjoyment in his own lonely heart. This is
the life of abandonment to pleasure, accompanied by the conviction that
the conditions of life warrant no more strenuous or heroic plan.
[Sidenote: The Adoption of Purposes and the Philosophy of Life.]
Sect. 6. In such wise do we adopt the life purpose, or justify it when
unconsciously adopted. The pursuit of an ideal implies a belief in its
effectuality. Such a belief will invariably appear when the groundwork
of the daily living is laid bare by a little reflection. And if our
analysis has not been in error, there is something more definite to be
obtained from it. We all believe in the practical wisdom of our
fundamental ideals; but we believe, besides, that such wisdom involves
the sanction of the universe as a whole. The momentousness of an
individual's life will be satisfied with nothing less final than an
absolutely wise disposition of it. For every individual, his life is all
his power and riches, and is not to be spent save for the _greatest good
that he can reasonably pursue_. But the solution of such a problem is
not to be obtained short of a searching of entire reality. Every life
will represent more or less of such wisdom and enlightenment; and in the
end the best selection of ideal will denote the greatest wealth of
experience. It is not always true that he who has seen more will live
more wisely, for in an individual case instinct or authority may be
better sources of aspiration than experience. But we trust instinct and
authority because we believe them to represent a comprehensive
experience on the part of the race as a whole, or on the part of God. He
whose knowledge is broadest and truest would know best what is finally
worth living for. On this account, most men can see no more reasonable
plan of life than obedience to God's will, for God in the abundance of
his wisdom, and since all eternity is plain before him, must see with
certainty that which is supremely worthy.
We mean, then, that the selection of our ideals shall be determined by
the largest possible knowledge of the facts pertaining to life. We mean
to select as one would select who knew all about the antecedents and
surroundings and remote consequences of life. In our own weakness and
finitude we may go but a little way in the direction of such an
insight, and may prefer to accept the judgment of tradition or
authority, but we recognize a distinct type of knowledge as alone worthy
to justify an individual's adoption of an ideal. That type of knowledge
is the knowledge that comprehends the universe in its totality. Such
knowledge does not involve completeness of information respecting all
parts of reality. This, humanly speaking, is both unattainable and
inconceivable. It involves rather a conception of the _kind_ of reality
that is fundamental. For a wise purpose it is unnecessary that we should
know many matters of fact, or even specific laws, provided we are
convinced of the inner and essential character of the universe. Some of
the alternatives are matters of every-day thought and speech. One cannot
tell the simplest story of human life without disclosing them. To live
the human life means to pursue ideals, that is, to have a thing in mind,
and then to try to accomplish it. Here is one kind of reality and power.
The planetary system, on the other hand, does not pursue ideals, but
moves unconscious of itself, with a mechanical precision that can be
expressed in a mathematical formula; and is representative of another
kind of reality and power. Hence a very common and a very practical
question: Is there an underlying law, like the law of gravitation,
fundamentally and permanently governing life, in spite of its apparent
direction by ideal and aspiration? Or is there an underlying power, like
purpose, fundamentally and permanently governing the planetary system
and all celestial worlds, in spite of the apparent control of blind and
irresistible forces? This is a practical question because nothing could
be more pertinent to our choice of ideals. Nothing could make more
difference to life than a belief in the life or lifelessness of its
environment. The faiths that generate or confirm our ideals always refer
to this great issue. And this is but one, albeit the most profound, of
the many issues that arise from the desire to obtain some conviction of
the inner and essential character of life. Though so intimately
connected with practical concerns, these issues are primarily the
business of thought. In grappling with them, thought is called upon for
its greatest comprehensiveness, penetration, and self-consistency. By
the necessity of concentration, thought is sometimes led to forget its
origin and the source of its problems. But in naming itself philosophy,
thought has only recognized the definiteness and earnestness of its
largest task. Philosophy is still thought about life, representing but
the deepening and broadening of the common practical thoughtfulness.
We who began together at the starting-point of _life_, have now entered
together the haven of _philosophy_. It is not a final haven, but only
the point of departure for the field of philosophy proper. Nevertheless
that field is now in the plain view of the man who occupies the
practical stand-point. He must recognize in philosophy a kind of
reflection that differs only in extent and persistence from the
reflection that guides and justifies his life. He may not consciously
identify himself with any one of the three general groups which have
been characterized. But if he is neither an idealist, nor a philistine,
nor a pleasure lover, surely he is compounded of such elements, and does
not escape their implications. He desires something most of all, even
though his highest ideal be only an inference from the gradation of his
immediate purposes. This highest ideal represents what he conceives to
be the greatest worth or value attainable in the universe, and its
adoption is based upon the largest generalization that he can make or
borrow. The complete justification of his ideal would involve a true
knowledge of the essential character of the universe. For such knowledge
he substitutes either authority or his own imperfect insight. But in
either case his life is naturally and organically correlated with a
_thought about the universe in its totality, or in its deepest and
essential character_. Such thought, the activity and its results, is
philosophy. Hence he who lives is, _ipso facto_, a philosopher. He is
not only a potential philosopher, but a partial philosopher. He has
already begun to be a philosopher. Between the fitful or prudential
thinking of some little man of affairs, and the sustained thought of the
devoted lover of truth, there is indeed a long journey, but it is a
straight journey along the same road. Philosophy is neither accidental
nor supernatural, but inevitable and normal. Philosophy is not properly
a vocation, but the ground and inspiration of all vocations. In the
hands of its devotees it grows technical and complex, as do all efforts
of thought, and to pursue philosophy bravely and faithfully is to
encounter obstacles and labyrinths innumerable. The general problem of
philosophy is mother of a whole brood of problems, little and great. But
whether we be numbered among its devotees, or their beneficiaries, an
equal significance attaches to the truth that philosophy is continuous
with life.
CHAPTER II
POETRY AND PHILOSOPHY
[Sidenote: Who is the Philosopher-Poet?]
Sect. 7. As the ultimate criticism of all human interests, philosophy
may be approached by avenues as various as these interests. Only when
philosophy is discovered as the implication of well-recognized special
interests, is the significance of its function fully appreciated. For
the sake of such a further understanding of philosophy, those who find
either inspiration or entertainment in poetry are invited in the present
chapter to consider certain of the relations between poetry and
philosophy.
We must at the very outset decline to accept unqualifiedly the poet's
opinion in the matter, for he would not think it presumptuous to
incorporate philosophy in poetry. "No man," said Coleridge, "was ever
yet a great poet without being at the same time a great philosopher."
This would seem to mean that a great poet is a great philosopher, and
more too. We shall do better to begin with the prosaic and matter of
fact minimum of truth: some poetry is philosophical. This will enable
us to search for the portion of philosophy that is in some poetry,
without finally defining their respective boundaries. It may be that all
true poetry is philosophical, as it may be that all true philosophy is
poetical; but it is much more certain that much actual poetry is far
from philosophical, and that most actual philosophy was not conceived or
written by a poet. The mere poet and the mere philosopher must be
tolerated, if it be only for the purpose of shedding light upon the
philosopher-poet and the poet-philosopher. And it is to the
philosopher-poet that we turn, in the hope that under the genial spell
of poetry we may be brought with understanding to the more forbidding
land of philosophy.
[Sidenote: Poetry as Appreciation.]
Sect. 8. Poetry is well characterized, though not defined, as an
interpretation of life. The term "life" here signifies the human
purposive consciousness, and active pursuit of ends. An interpretation
of life is, then, a selection and account of such values in human
experience as are actually sought or are worth the seeking. For the poet
all things are good or bad, and never only matters of fact. He is
neither an annalist nor a statistician, and is even an observer only
for the sake of a higher design. He is one who appreciates, and
expresses his appreciation so fittingly that it becomes a kind of truth,
and a permanently communicable object. That "unbodied joy," the
skylark's song and flight, is through the genius of Shelley so
faithfully embodied, that it may enter as a definite joy into the lives
of countless human beings. The sensuous or suggestive values of nature
are caught by the poet's quick feeling for beauty, and fixed by his
creative activity. Or with his ready sympathy he may perceive the value
of some human ideal or mastering passion, and make it a reality for our
common feeling. Where the poet has to do with the base and hateful, his
attitude is still appreciative. The evil is apprehended as part of a
dramatic whole having positive moral or aesthetic value. Moral ideas may
appear in both poetry and life as the inspiration and justification of
struggle. Where there is no conception of its moral significance, the
repulsive possesses for the poet's consciousness the aesthetic value of
diversity and contrast. Even where the evil and ugly is isolated, as in
certain of Browning's dramatic monologues, it forms, both for the poet
and the reader, but a part of some larger perception of life or
character, which is sublime or beautiful or good. Poetry involves,
then, the discovery and presentation of human experiences that are
satisfying and appealing. It is a language for human pleasures and
ideals. Poetry is without doubt a great deal more than this, and only
after a careful analysis of its peculiar language could one distinguish
it from kindred arts; but it will suffice for our purposes to
characterize and not differentiate. Starting from this most general
truth respecting poetry, we may now look for that aspect of it whereby
it may be a witness of philosophical truth.
[Sidenote: Sincerity in Poetry. Whitman.]
Sect. 9. For the answer to our question, we must turn to an examination
of the intellectual elements of poetry. In the first place, the common
demand that the poet shall be accurate in his representations is
suggestive of an indispensable intellectual factor in his genius. As we
have seen, he is not to reproduce nature, but the human appreciative
experience of nature. Nevertheless, he must even here be true to his
object. His art involves his ability to express genuinely and sincerely
what he himself experiences in the presence of nature, or what he can
catch of the inner lives of others by virtue of his intelligent
sympathy. No amount of emotion or even of imagination will profit a
poet, unless he can render a true account of them. To be sure, he need
not define, or even explain; for it is his function to transfer the
immediate qualities of experience: but he must be able to speak the
truth, and, in order to speak it, he must have known it. In all this,
however, we have made no demand that the poet should see more than one
thing at a time. Sincerity of expression does not require what is
distinctly another mode of intelligence, _comprehensiveness of view_. It
is easier, and accordingly more usual, to render an account of the
moments and casual units of experience, than of its totality. There are
poets, little and great, who possess the intellectual virtue of
sincerity, without the intellectual power of synthesis and
reconciliation. This distinction will enable us to separate the
intelligence exhibited in all poetry, from that distinct form of
intelligence exhibited in such poetry as is properly to be called
philosophical.
The "barbarian" in poetry has recently been defined as "the man who
regards his passions as their own excuse for being; who does not
domesticate them either by understanding their cause or by conceiving
their ideal goal."[28:1] One will readily appreciate the application of
this definition to Walt Whitman. What little unity there is in this
poet's world, is the composition of a purely sensuous experience,
"The earth expending right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where
it is not wanted."
In many passages Whitman manifests a marvellous ability to discover and
communicate a fresh gladness about the commonest experiences. We cannot
but rejoice with him in all sights and sounds. But though we cannot deny
him truth, his truth is honesty and not understanding. The experiences
in which he discovers so much worth, are random and capricious, and do
not constitute a universe. To the solution of ultimate questions he
contributes a sense of mystery, and the conviction
"That you are here--that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."
His world is justly described by the writer just quoted as "a
phantasmagoria of continuous visions, vivid, impressive, but monotonous
and hard to distinguish in memory, like the waves of the sea or the
decorations of some barbarous temple, sublime only by the infinite
aggregation of parts."[30:2]
As is Walt Whitman, so are many poets greater and less. Some who have
seen the world-view, exhibit the same particularism in their lyric
moods; although, generally speaking, a poet who once has comprehended
the world, will see the parts of it in the light of that wisdom. But
Walt Whitman is peculiarly representative of the poetry that can be
true, without being wise in the manner that we shall come shortly to
understand as the manner of philosophy. He is as desultory in his poet
raptures as is the common man when he lives in his immediate
experiences. The truth won by each is the clear vision of one thing, or
of a limited collection of things, and not the broad inclusive vision of
all things.
[Sidenote: Constructive Knowledge in Poetry. Shakespeare.]
Sect. 10. The transition from Whitman to Shakespeare may seem somewhat
abrupt, but the very differences between these poets serve to mark out
an interesting affinity. Neither has put any unitary construction upon
human life and its environment. Neither, as poet, is the witness of any
world-view; which will mean for us that neither is a philosopher-poet.
As respects Shakespeare, this is a hard saying. We are accustomed to the
critical judgment that finds in the Shakespearian dramas an apprehension
of the universal in human life. But though this judgment is true, it is
by no means conclusive as respects Shakespeare's relation to the
philosophical type of thought. For there can be universality without
philosophy. Thus, to know the groups and the marks of the vertebrates is
to know a truth which possesses generality, in contradistinction to the
particularism of Whitman's poetic consciousness. Even so to know well
the groups and marks of human character, vertebrate and invertebrate, is
to know that of which the average man, in his hand to hand struggle with
life, is ignorant. Such a wisdom Shakespeare possessed to a unique
degree, and it enabled him to reconstruct human life. He did not merely
perceive human states and motives, but he understood human nature so
well that he could create consistent men and women. Moreover,
Shakespeare's knowledge was not only thus universal in being a knowledge
of general groups and laws, but also in respect of its extensity. His
understanding was as rich as it was acute. It is true, then, that
Shakespeare read human life as an open book, knowing certainly the
manner of human thinking and feeling, and the power and interplay of
human motives. But it is equally true, on the other hand, that he
possessed no unitary conception of the meaning and larger relations of
human life. Such a conception might have been expressed either by means
of the outlook of some dominating and persistent type of personality, or
by a pervading suggestion of some constant world-setting for the
variable enterprise of mankind. It could appear only provided the poet's
appreciation of life in detail were determined by an interpretation of
the meaning of life as a whole. Shakespeare apparently possessed no such
interpretation. Even when Hamlet is groping after some larger truth that
may bear upon the definite problems of life, he represents but one, and
that a strange and unusual, type of human nature. And Hamlet's
reflections, it should be noted, have no outcome. There is no
Shakespearian answer to the riddles that Hamlet propounds. The poet's
genius is not less amazing for this fact; indeed, his peculiar
distinction can only be comprehended upon this basis. Shakespeare put no
construction upon life, and by virtue of this very reserve accomplished
an art of surpassing fidelity and vividness. The absence of philosophy
in Shakespeare, and the presence of the most characteristic quality of
his genius, may both be imputed by the one affirmation, that _there is
no Shakespearian point of view_.
This truth signifies both gain and loss. The philosophical criticism of
life may vary from the ideal objectivity of absolute truth, to the
subjectivity of a personal religion. Philosophy aims to correct the
partiality of particular points of view by means of a point of view that
shall comprehend their relations, and effect such reconciliations or
transformations as shall enable them to constitute a universe.
Philosophy always assumes the hypothetical view of omniscience. The
necessity of such a final criticism is implicit in every scientific item
of knowledge, and in every judgment that is passed upon life. Philosophy
makes a distinct and peculiar contribution to human knowledge by its
heroic effort to measure all knowledges and all ideals by the standard
of totality. Nevertheless it is significant that no human individual can
possibly possess the range of omniscience. The most adequate knowledge
of which any generation of men is capable, will always be that which is
conceived by the most synthetic and vigorously metaphysical minds; but
every individual philosophy will nevertheless be a premature synthesis.
The effort to complete knowledge is the indispensable test of the
adequacy of prevailing conceptions, but the completed knowledge of any
individual mind will shortly become an historical monument. It will
belong primarily to the personal life of its creator, as the
articulation of his personal covenant with the universe. There is a
sound justification for such a conclusion of things in the case of the
individual, for the conditions of human life make it inevitable; but it
will always possess a felt unity, and many distinct features, that are
private and subjective. Now such a projection of personality, with its
coloring and its selection, Shakespeare has avoided; and very largely as
a consequence, his dramas are a storehouse of genuine human nature.
Ambition, mercy, hate, madness, guilelessness, conventionality, mirth,
bravery, deceit, purity--these, and all human states and attributes save
piety, are upon his pages as real, and as mysterious withal, as they are
in the great historical society. For an ordinary reader, these states
and attributes are more real in Hamlet or Lear than in his own direct
experience, because in Hamlet and Lear he can see them with the eye and
intelligence of genius. But Shakespeare is the world all over again,
and there is loss as well as gain in such realism. Here is human life,
no doubt, and a brilliant pageantry it is; but human life as varied and
as problematic as it is in the living. Shakespeare's fundamental
intellectual resource is the historical and psychological knowledge of
such principles as govern the construction of human natures. The goods
for which men undertake, and live or die, are any goods, justified only
by the actual human striving for them. The virtues are the old winning
virtues of the secular life, and the heroisms of the common conscience.
Beyond its empirical generality, his knowledge is universal only in the
sense that space and time are universal. His consciousness _contains_
its representative creations, and expresses them unspoiled by any
transforming thought. His poetic consciousness is like the very stage to
which he likens all the world: men and women meet there, and things
happen there. The stage itself creates no unity save the occasion and
the place. Shakespeare's consciousness is universal because it is a fair
field with no favors. But even so it is particular, because, though each
may enter and depart in peace, when all enter together there is anarchy
and a babel of voices. All Shakespeare is like all the world seen
through the eyes of each of its inhabitants. Human experience in
Shakespeare is human experience as everyone feels it, as comprehensive
as the aggregate of innumerable lives. But human experience in
philosophy is the experience of all as thought by a synthetic mind.
Hence the wealth of life depicted by Shakespeare serves only to point
out the philosopher's problem, and to challenge his powers. Here he will
find material, and not results; much to philosophize about, but no
philosophy.
[Sidenote: Philosophy in Poetry. The World-View. Omar Khayyam.]
Sect. 11. The discussion up to this point has attributed to poetry very
definite intellectual factors that nevertheless do not constitute
philosophy. Walt Whitman speaks his feeling with truth, but in general
manifests no comprehensive insight. Shakespeare has not only sincerity
of expression but an understanding mind. He has a knowledge not only of
particular experiences, but of human nature; and a consciousness full
and varied like society itself. But there is a kind of knowledge
possessed by neither, the knowledge sought by coordinating all aspects
of human experience, both particular and general. Not even Shakespeare
is wise as one who, having seen the whole, can fundamentally interpret a
part. But though the philosopher-poet may not yet be found, we cannot
longer be ignorant of his nature. He will be, like all poets, one who
appreciates experiences or finds things good, and he will faithfully
reproduce the values which he discovers. But he must _justify himself in
view of the fundamental nature of the universe_. The values which he
apprehends must be harmonious, and so far above the plurality of goods
as to transcend and unify them. The philosopher-poet will find reality
as a whole to be something that accredits the order of values in his
inner life. He will not only find certain things to be most worthy
objects of action or contemplation, but he will see why they are worthy,
because he will have construed the judgment of the universe in their
favor.
In this general sense, Omar Khayyam is a philosopher-poet. To be sure
his universe is quite the opposite of that which most poets conceive,
and is perhaps profoundly antagonistic to the very spirit of poetry; but
it is none the less true that the joys to which Omar invites us are such
as his universe prescribes for human life.
"Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum."
Herein is both poetry and philosophy, albeit but a poor brand of each.
We are invited to occupy ourselves only with spiritual cash, because the
universe is spiritually insolvent. The immediately gratifying feelings
are the only feelings that the world can guarantee. Omar Khayyam is a
philosopher-poet, because his immediate delight in "youth's
sweet-scented manuscript" is part of a consciousness that vaguely sees,
though it cannot grasp, "this sorry scheme of things entire."
"Drink for you know not whence you come, nor why;
Drink for you know not why you go, nor where."
[Sidenote: Wordsworth.]
Sect. 12. But the poet in his world-view ordinarily sees other than
darkness. The same innate spiritual enterprise that sustains religious
faith leads the poet more often to find the universe positively
congenial to his ideals, and to ideals in general. He interprets human
experience in the light of the spirituality of all the world. It is to
Wordsworth that we of the present age are chiefly indebted for such
imagery, and it will profit us to consider somewhat carefully the
philosophical quality of his poetry.
Walter Pater, in introducing his appreciation of Wordsworth, writes that
"an intimate consciousness of the expression of natural things, which
weighs, listens, penetrates, where the earlier mind passed roughly by,
is a large element in the complexion of modern poetry." We recognize at
once the truth of this characterization as applied to Wordsworth. But
there is something more distinguished about this poet's sensibility even
than its extreme fineness and delicacy; a quality that is suggested,
though not made explicit, by Shelley's allusion to Wordsworth's
experience as "a sort of thought in sense." Nature possessed for him not
merely enjoyable and describable characters of great variety and
minuteness, but an immediately apprehended unity and meaning. It would
be a great mistake to construe this meaning in sense as analogous to the
crude symbolism of the educator Froebel, to whom, as he said, "the world
of crystals proclaimed, in distinct and univocal terms, the laws of
human life." Wordsworth did not attach ideas to sense, but regarded
sense itself as a communication of truth. We readily call to mind his
unique capacity for apprehending the characteristic flavor of a certain
place in a certain moment of time, the individuality of a situation. Now
in such moments he felt that he was receiving intelligences, none the
less direct and significant for their inarticulate form. Like the boy
on Windermere, whom he himself describes,
"while he hung
Loitering, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind,
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received
Into the bosom of the steady lake."
For our purpose it is essential that we should recognize in this
appreciation of nature, expressed in almost every poem that Wordsworth
wrote, a consciousness respecting the fundamental nature of the world.
Conversation, as we know, denotes an interchange of commensurable
meanings. Whatever the code may be, whether words or the most subtle
form of suggestion, communication is impossible without community of
nature. Hence, in believing himself to be holding converse with the
so-called physical world, Wordsworth conceives that world as
fundamentally like himself. He finds the most profound thing in all the
world to be the universal spiritual life. In nature this life manifests
itself most directly, clothed in its own proper dignity and peace. But
it may be discovered in the humanity that is most close to nature, in
the avocations of plain and simple people, and the unsophisticated
delights of children; and, with the perspective of contemplation, even
"among the multitudes of that huge city."
So Wordsworth is rendering a true account of his own experience of
reality when, as in "The Prelude," he says unequivocally:
"A gracious spirit o'er this earth presides,
And in the heart of man; invisibly
It comes to works of unreproved delight,
And tendency benign; directing those
Who care not, know not, think not, what they do."
Wordsworth is not a philosopher-poet because by searching his pages we
can find an explicit philosophical creed such as this, but because all
the joys of which his poet-soul compels him to sing have their peculiar
note, and compose their peculiar harmony, by virtue of such an
indwelling consciousness. Here is one who is a philosopher in and
through his poetry. He is a philosopher in so far as the detail of his
appreciation finds fundamental justification in a world-view. From the
immanence of "the universal heart" there follows, not through any
mediate reasoning, but by the immediate experience of its propriety, a
conception of that which is of supreme worth in life. The highest and
best of which life is capable is contemplation, or the consciousness of
the universal indwelling of God. Of those who fail to live thus
fittingly in the midst of the divine life, Walter Pater speaks for
Wordsworth as follows:
"To higher or lower ends they move too often with something of
a sad countenance, with hurried and ignoble gait, becoming,
unconsciously, something like thorns, in their anxiety to bear
grapes; it being possible for people, in the pursuit of even
great ends, to become themselves thin and impoverished in
spirit and temper, thus diminishing the sum of perfection in
the world at its very sources."[42:3]
The quiet and worshipful spirit, won by the cultivation of the emotions
appropriate to the presence of nature and society, is the mark of the
completest life and the most acceptable service. Thus for Wordsworth the
meaning of life is inseparable from the meaning of the universe. In
apprehending that which is good and beautiful in human experience, he
was attended by a vision of the totality of things. Herein he has had to
do, if not with the form, at any rate with the very substance of
philosophy.
[Sidenote: Dante.]
Sect. 13. Unquestionably the supreme philosopher-poet is Dante. He is
not only philosophical in the temper of his mind, but his greatest poem
is the incarnation of a definite system of philosophy, the most
definite that the world has seen. That conception of the world which in
the thirteenth century found argumentative and orderly expression in the
"Summa Theologiae" of Thomas of Aquino, and constituted the faith of the
church, is visualized by Dante, and made the basis of an interpretation
of life.
The "Divina Commedia" deals with all the heavens to the Empyrean itself,
and with all spiritual life to the very presence of God. It derives its
imagery from the cosmology of the day, its dramatic motive from the
Christian and Greek conceptions of God and his dealings with the world.
Sin is punished because of the justice of God; knowledge, virtue, and
faith lead, through God's grace and mercy manifested in Christ, to a
perpetual union with Him. Hell, purgatory, and paradise give place and
setting to the events of the drama. But the deeper meaning of the poem
is allegorical. In a letter quoted by Lowell, Dante writes:
"The literal subject of the whole work is the state of the
soul after death, simply considered. But if the work be taken
allegorically the subject is man, as by merit or demerit,
through freedom of the will, he renders himself liable to the
reward or punishment of justice."[43:4]
In other words, the inner and essential meaning of the poem has to do
not with external retribution, but with character, and the laws which
determine its own proper ruin or perfection. The punishments described
in the "Inferno" are accounts of the state of guilt itself, implications
of the will that has chosen the part of brutishness. Sin itself is
damnable and deadening, but the knowledge that the soul that sinneth
shall die is the first way of emancipation from sin. The guidance of
Virgil through hell and purgatory signifies the knowledge of good and
evil, or moral insight, as the guide of man through this life of
struggle and progress. The earthly paradise, at the close of the
"Purgatorio," represents the highest state to which human character can
attain when choice is determined by ordinary experience, intelligence,
and understanding. Here man stands alone, endowed with an enlightened
conscience. Here are uttered the last words of Virgil to Dante, the
explorer of the spiritual country:
"Expect no more or word or sign from me. Free, upright, and
sane is thine own free will, and it would be wrong not to act
according to its pleasure; wherefore thee over thyself I crown
and mitre."[44:5]
But moral self-reliance is not the last word. As Beatrice, the image of
tenderness and holiness, comes to Dante in the earthly paradise, and
leads him from the summit of purgatory into the heaven of heavens, and
even to the eternal light; so there is added to the mere human,
intellectual, and moral resources of the soul, the sustaining power of
the divine grace, the illuminating power of divine truth, and the
transforming power of divine love. Through the aid of this higher
wisdom, the journey of life becomes the way to God. Thus the allegorical
truth of the "Divina Commedia" is not merely an analysis of the moral
nature of man, but the revelation of a universal spiritual order,
manifesting itself in the moral evolution of the individual, and above
all in his ultimate community with the eternal goodness.
"Thou shouldst not, if I deem aright, wonder more at thy
ascent, than at a stream if from a high mountain it descends
to the base. A marvel it would be in thee, if, deprived of
hindrance, thou hadst sat below, even as quiet by living fire
in earth would be."[45:6]
Such, in brief, is Dante's world-view, so suggestive of the freer
idealistic conceptions of later thought as to justify a recent
characterization of him as one who, "accepting without a shadow of a
doubt or hesitation all the constitutive ideas of mediaeval thought and
life, grasped them so firmly and gave them such luminous expression that
the spirit in them broke away from the form."[46:7]
But it must be added, as in the case of Wordsworth, that Dante is a
philosopher-poet not because St. Thomas Aquinas appears and speaks with
authority in the Thirteenth Canto of the "Paradiso," nor even because a
philosophical doctrine can be consistently formulated from his writings,
but because his consciousness of life is informed with a sense of its
universal bearings. There is a famous passage in the Twenty-second Canto
of the "Paradiso," in which Dante describes himself as looking down upon
the earth from the starry heaven.
"'Thou art so near the ultimate salvation,' began Beatrice,
'that thou oughtest to have thine eyes clear and sharp. And
therefore ere thou further enterest it, look back downward,
and see how great a world I have already set beneath thy feet,
in order that thy heart, so far as it is able, may present
itself joyous to the triumphant crowd which comes glad through
this round ether.' With my sight I returned through each and
all the seven spheres, and saw this globe such that I smiled
at its mean semblance; and that counsel I approve as the best
which holds it of least account; and he who thinks of other
things maybe called truly worthy."
Dante's scale of values is that which appears from the starry heaven.
His austere piety, his invincible courage, and his uncompromising hatred
of wrong, are neither accidents of temperament nor blind reactions, but
compose the proper character of one who has both seen the world from
God, and returned to see God from the world. He was, as Lowell has said,
"a man of genius who could hold heartbreak at bay for twenty years, and
would not let himself die till he had done his task"; and his power was
not obstinacy, but a vision of the ways of God. He knew a truth that
justified him in his sacrifices, and made a great glory of his defeat
and exile. Even so his poetry or appreciation of life is the expression
of an inward contemplation of the world in its unity or essence. It is
but an elaboration of the piety which he attributes to the lesser saints
of paradise, when he has them say:
"Nay, it is essential to this blessed existence to hold
ourselves within the divine will, whereby our very wills are
made one. So that as we are from stage to stage throughout
this realm, to all the realm is pleasing, as to the King who
inwills us with His will. And His will is our peace; it is
that sea whereunto is moving all that which It creates and
which nature makes."[47:8]
[Sidenote: The Difference between Poetry and Philosophy.]
Sect. 14. There now remains the brief task of distinguishing the
philosopher-poet from the philosopher himself. The philosopher-poet is
one who, having made the philosophical point of view his own, expresses
himself in the form of poetry. The philosophical point of view is that
from which the universe is comprehended in its totality. The wisdom of
the philosopher is the knowledge of each through the knowledge of all.
Wherein, then, does the poet, when possessed of such wisdom, differ from
the philosopher proper? To this question one can give readily enough the
general answer, that the difference lies in the mode of utterance.
Furthermore, we have already given some account of the peculiar manner
of the poet. He invites us to experience with him the beautiful and
moving in nature and life. That which the poet has to express, and that
which he aims to arouse in others, is an appreciative experience. He
requires what Wordsworth calls "an atmosphere of sensation in which to
move his wings." Therefore if he is to be philosophical in intelligence,
and yet essentially a poet, he must find his universal truth in
immediate experience. He must be one who, in seeing the many, sees the
one. The philosopher-poet is he who visualizes a fundamental
interpretation of the world. "A poem," says one poet, "is the very image
of life expressed in its eternal truth."
The philosopher proper, on the other hand, has the sterner and less
inviting task of rendering such an interpretation articulate to thought.
That which the poet sees, the philosopher must define. That which the
poet divines, the philosopher must calculate. The philosopher must dig
for that which the poet sees shining through. As the poet transcends
thought for the sake of experience, the philosopher must transcend
experience for the sake of thought. As the poet sees all, and all in
each, so the philosopher, knowing each, must think all consistently
together, and then know each again. It is the part of philosophy to
collect and criticise evidence, to formulate and coordinate conceptions,
and finally to define in exact terms. The reanimation of the structure
of thought is accomplished primarily in religion, which is a general
conception of the world made the basis of daily living.
For religion there is no subjective correlative less than life itself.
Poetry is another and more circumscribed means of restoring thought to
life. By the poet's imagination, and through the art of his expression,
thought may be sensuously perceived. "If the time should ever come,"
says Wordsworth, "when what is now called Science, thus familiarized to
men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh, and blood,
the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and
will welcome the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of
the household of man."[50:9] As respects truth, philosophy has an
indubitable priority. The very sternness of the philosopher's task is
due to his supreme dedication to truth. But if validity be the merit of
philosophy, it can well be supplemented by immediacy, which is the merit
of poetry. Presuppose in the poet conviction of a sound philosophy, and
we may say with Shelley, of his handiwork, that "it is the perfect and
consummate surface and bloom of all things; it is as the odor and the
color of the rose to the texture of the elements which compose it, as
the form and splendor of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and
corruption." "Indeed," as he adds, "what were our consolations on this
side of the grave--and our aspirations beyond it--if poetry did not
ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the
owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar?"[51:10]
The unity in outlook, attended by differences of method and form, which
may exist between poet and philosopher, is signally illustrated by the
relation between Goethe and Spinoza. What Goethe saw and felt, Spinoza
proved and defined. The universal and eternal substance was to Spinoza,
as philosopher, a theorem, and to Goethe, as poet, a perception and an
emotion. Goethe writes to Jacobi that when philosophy "lays itself out
for division," he cannot get on with it, but when it "confirms our
original feeling as though we were one with nature," it is welcome to
him. In the same letter Goethe expresses his appreciation of Spinoza as
the complement of his own nature:
"His all-reconciling peace contrasted with my all-agitating
endeavor; his intellectual method was the opposite counterpart
of my poetic way of feeling and expressing myself; and even
the inflexible regularity of his logical procedure, which
might be considered ill-adapted to moral subjects, made me his
most passionate scholar and his devoted adherent. Mind and
heart, understanding and sense, were drawn together with an
inevitable elective affinity, and this at the same time
produced an intimate union between individuals of the most
different types."[51:11]
It appears, then, that some poets share with all philosophers that
point of view from which the horizon line is the boundary of all the
world. Poetry is not always or essentially philosophical, but may be so;
and when the poetic imagination restores philosophy to immediacy, human
experience reaches its most exalted state, excepting only religion
itself, wherein God is both seen and also served. Nor is the part of
philosophy in poetry and religion either ignoble or presumptuous, for,
humanly speaking, "the owl-winged faculty of calculation" is the only
safe and sure means of access to that place on high,
"Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But a divine melodious truth;
Philosophic numbers smooth;
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries."
FOOTNOTES:
[28:1] George Santayana, in his _Poetry and Religion_, p. 176.
[30:2] Santayana: _op. cit._, p. 180.
[42:3] _Appreciations_, p. 59.
[43:4] Letter to Can Grande. See Lowell's _Essay on Dante_, p. 34.
[44:5] _Purgatorio_, Canto XXVII. Translation by Norton.
[45:6] _Paradiso_, Canto I.
[46:7] Edward Caird, in his _Literature and Philosophy_, Vol. I, p. 24.
[47:8] _Paradiso_, Canto III.
[50:9] Observations prefixed to the second edition of _Lyrical Ballads_.
[51:10] _A Defence of Poetry._
[51:11] Quoted by Caird in his _Literature and Philosophy_, Vol. I, p.
60.
CHAPTER III
THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
[Sidenote: The Possibility of Defining Religion.]
Sect. 15. The least religious experience is so mysterious and so complex
that a moderate degree of reflection upon it tends to a sense of
intellectual impotence. "If I speak," says Emerson, "I define and
confine, and am less." One would gladly set down religion among the
unspeakable things and avoid the imputation of degrading it. It is
certain that the enterprise of defining religion is at present in
disrepute. It has been undertaken so often and so unsuccessfully that
contemporary students for the most part prefer to supply a list of
historical definitions of religion, and let their variety demonstrate
their futility. Metaphysicians and psychologists agree that in view of
the differences of creed, ritual, organization, conduct, and temperament
that have been true of different religions in different times and
places, one may as well abandon the idea that there is a constant
element.
But on the other hand we have the testimony afforded by the name
religion; and the ordinary judgments of men to the effect that it
signifies something to be religious, and to be more or less religious.
There is an elementary logical principle to the effect that a group name
implies certain common group characters. Impatience with abstract or
euphemistic definitions should not blind us to the truth. Even the
psychologist tends in his description of religious phenomena to single
out and emphasize what he calls a _typical_ religious experience. And
the same applies to the idealist's treatment of the matter.[54:1]
Religion, he reasons, is essentially a development of which the true
meaning can be seen only in the higher stages. The primitive religion is
therefore only implicit religion. But lower stages cannot be regarded as
belonging to a single development with higher stages, if there be not
some actual promise of the later in the earlier, or some element which
endures throughout. It is unavoidable, then, to assume that in dealing
with religion we are dealing with a specific and definable experience.
[Sidenote: The Profitableness of Defining Religion.]
Sect. 16. The profitableness of undertaking such a definition is another
matter. It may well be that in so human and practical an affair as
religion, definition is peculiarly inappropriate. But is there not a
human and practical value in the very defining of religion? Is there not
a demand for it in the peculiar relation that exists between religion
and the progress of enlightenment? Religion associates itself with the
habits of society. The progress of enlightenment means that more or less
all the time, and very profoundly at certain critical times, society
must change its habits. The consequence is that religion is likely to be
abandoned with the old habits. The need of a new religion is therefore a
chronic one. The reformer in religion, or the man who wishes to be both
enlightened and religious, is chiefly occupied with the problem of
disentangling religion pure and undefiled from definite discredited
practices and opinions. And the solution of the problem turns upon some
apprehension of the essence of religion. There is a large amount of
necessary and unnecessary tragedy due to the extrinsic connection
between ideas and certain modes of their expression. There can be no
more serious and urgent duty than that of expressing as directly, and so
as truly as possible, the great permanent human concerns. The men to
whom educational reform has been largely due have been the men who have
remembered for their fellows what this whole business of education is
after all for. Comenius and Pestalozzi served society by stripping
educational activity of its historical and institutional accessories,
and laying bare the genuine human need that these are designed to
satisfy. There is a similar virtue in the insistent attempt to
distinguish between the essential and the accessory in religion.
[Sidenote: The True Method of Defining Religion.]
Sect. 17. Although declining to be discouraged by the conspicuousness of
past failures in this connection, one may well profit by them. The
amazing complexity of religious phenomena must somehow be seen to be
consistent with their common nature. The religious experience must not
only be found, but must also be reconciled with "the varieties of
religious experience." The inadequacy of the well-known definitions of
religion may be attributed to several causes. The commonest fallacy is
to define religion in terms of a religion. My definition of religion
must include my brother's religion, even though he live on the other
side of the globe, and my ancestor's religion, in spite of his
prehistoric remoteness. Error may easily arise through the attempt to
define religion in terms of my own religion, or what I conceive to be
the true religion. Whatever the relation between ideal religion and
actual religion, the field of religion contains by common consent cults
that must on their own grounds condemn one another; religions that are
bad religions, and yet religions.
A more enlightened fallacy, and a more dangerous one, is due to the
supposition that religion can be defined exclusively in terms of some
department of human nature. There have been descriptions of religion in
terms of feeling, intellect, and conduct respectively. But it is always
easy to overthrow such a description, by raising the question of its
application to evidently religious experiences that belong to some other
aspect of life. Religion is not feeling, because there are many
phlegmatic, God-fearing men whose religion consists in good works.
Religion is not conduct, for there are many mystics whose very religion
is withdrawal from the field of action. Religion is not intellection,
for no one has ever been able to formulate a creed that is common to all
religions. Yet without a doubt one must look for the essence of religion
in human nature. The present psychological interest in religion has
emphasized this truth. How, then, may we describe it in terms of
certain constant conditions of human life, and yet escape the
abstractness of the facultative method? Modern psychology suggests an
answer in demonstrating the interdependence of knowledge, feeling, and
volition.[58:2] The perfect case of this unity is _belief_. The
believing experience is cognitive in intent, but practical and emotional
as well in content. I believe what I take for granted; and the object of
my belief is not merely known, but also felt and acted upon. _What I
believe expresses itself in my total experience._
There is some hope, then, of an adequate definition of the religious
experience, if it be regarded as belonging to the psychological type of
belief.[58:3] Belief, however, is a broader category than religion.
There must be some _religious type_ of believing. An account of religion
in terms of believing, and the particular type of it here in question,
would, then, constitute the central stem of a psychology of religion,
and affords the proper conceptions for a description of the religious
experience. Even here the reservation must be made that belief is always
more than the believing _state_, in that it means to be _true_.[59:4]
Hence to complete an account of religion one should consider its object,
or its cognitive implications. But this direct treatment of the relation
between religion and philosophy must be deferred until in the present
chapter we shall have come to appreciate the inwardness of the religious
consciousness. To this end we must permit ourselves to be enlightened by
the experience of religious people as viewed from within. It is not our
opinion of a man's religion that is here in question, but the content
and meaning which it has for him.
"I would have you," says Fielding, in his "Hearts of Men," "go
and kneel beside the Mahommedan as he prays at the sunset
hour, and put your heart to his and wait for the echo that
will surely come. . . . I would have you go to the hillman
smearing the stone with butter that his god may be pleased, to
the woman crying to the forest god for her sick child, to the
boy before his monks learning to be good. No matter where you
go, no matter what the faith is called, if you have the
hearing ear, if your heart is in unison with the heart of the
world, you will hear always the same song."[59:5]
[Sidenote: Religion as Belief.]
Sect. 18. The general identification of religion with belief is made
without serious difficulty. The essential factor in belief, is, as we
have seen, the reaction of the whole personality to a fixed object or
accepted situation. A similar principle underlies common judgments about
a man's religion. He is accounted most religious whose religion
penetrates his life most intimately. In the man whose religion consists
in the outer exercise of attendance upon church, we recognize the sham.
He _appears_ to be religious. He does one of the things which a
religious man would do; but an object of religious faith is not the
constant environment of his life. He may or may not feel sure of God
from his pew, but God is not among the things that count in his daily
life. God does not enter into his calculations or determine his scale of
values. Again, discursive thinking is regarded as an interruption of
religion. When I am at pains to justify my religion, I am already
doubting; and for common opinion doubt is identical with irreligion. In
so far as I am religious, my religion stands in no need of
justification, even though I regard it as justifiable. In my religious
experience I am taking something for granted; in other words I act about
it and feel about it in a manner that is going to be determined by the
special conditions of my mood and temperament. The mechanical and
prosaic man acknowledges God in his mechanical and prosaic way. He
believes in divine retribution as he believes in commercial or social
retribution. He is as careful to prepare for the next world as he is to
be respectable in this. The poet, on the other hand, believes in God
after the manner of his genius. Though he worship God in spirit he may
conduct his life in an irregular manner peculiar to himself. Difference
of mood in the same individual may be judged by the same measure. When
God is most real to him, brought home to him most vividly, or
consciously obeyed, in these moments he is most religious. When, on the
other hand, God is merely a name to him, and church a routine, or when
both are forgotten in the daily occupations, he is least religious. His
life on the whole is said to be religious in so far as periods of the
second type are subordinated to periods of the first type. Further
well-known elements of belief, corollaries of the above, are evidently
present in religion. A certain _imagery remains constant_ throughout an
individual's experience. He comes back to it as to a physical object in
space. And although religion is sporadically an exclusive and isolated
affair, it tends strongly to be social. The religious object, or God, is
a social object, common to me and to my neighbor, and presupposed in
our collective undertakings. This reduction of religion to the type of
the believing state should thus provide us with an answer to that old
and fundamental question concerning the relative priority of faith and
works. The test of the faith is in the works, and the works are
religious in so far as they are the expression of the faith. Religion is
not the doing of anything nor the feeling of anything nor the thinking
of anything, but the reacting as a whole, in terms of all possible
activities of human life, to some accepted situation.
[Sidenote: Religion as Belief in a Disposition or Attitude.]
Sect. 19. We may now face the more interesting but difficult question of
the special character of religious belief. In spite of the fact that in
these days the personality of God is often regarded as a transient
feature of religion, that type of belief which throws most light upon
the religious experience is the _belief in persons_. Our belief in
persons consists in the practical recognition of a more or less
persistent disposition toward ourselves. The outward behavior of our
fellow-men is construed in terms of the practical bearing of the
attitude which it implies. The extraordinary feature of such belief is
the disproportion between its vividness and the direct evidence for it.
Of this we are most aware in connection with those personalities which
we regard as distinctly friendly or hostile to ourselves. We are always
more or less clearly in the presence of our friends and enemies. Their
well-wishing or their ill-wishing haunts the scene of our living. There
is no more important constituent of what the psychologists call our
"general feeling tone." There are times when we are entirely possessed
by a state that is either exuberance in the presence of those who love
us, or awkwardness and stupidity in the presence of those whom we
believe to suspect and dislike us. The latter state may easily become
chronic. Many men live permanently in the presence of an accusing
audience. The inner life which expresses itself in the words, "Everybody
hates me!" is perhaps the most common form of morbid self-consciousness.
On the other hand, buoyancy of spirits springs largely from a constant
faith in the good-will of one's fellows. In this case one is filled with
a sense of security, and is conscious of a sympathetic reinforcement
that adds to private joys and compensates for private sorrows. And this
sense of attitude is wonderfully discriminating. We can feel the
presence of a "great man," a "formidable person," a superior or
inferior, one who is interested or indifferent to our talk, and all the
subtlest degrees of approval and disapproval.
A similar sensibility may quicken us even in situations where no direct
individual attitude to ourselves is implied. We regard places and
communities as congenial when we are in sympathy with the prevailing
purposes or standards of value. We may feel ill at ease or thoroughly at
home in cities where we know no single human soul. Indeed, in a
misanthrope like Rousseau (and who has not his Rousseau moods!) the mere
absence of social repression arouses a most intoxicating sense of
tunefulness and security. Nature plays the part of an indulgent parent
who permits all sorts of personal liberties.
"The view of a fine country, a succession of agreeable
prospects, a free air, a good appetite, and the health I gain
by walking; the freedom of inns, and the distance from
everything that can make me recollect the dependence of my
situation, conspire to free my soul, and give boldness to my
thoughts, throwing me, in a manner, into the immensity of
things, where I combine, choose, and appropriate them to my
fancy, without restraint or fear. I dispose of all nature as I
please."[64:6]
[Sidenote: Religion as Belief in the Disposition of the Residual
Environment, or Universe.]
Sect. 20. In such confidence or distrust, inspired originally by the
social environment, and similarly suggested by other surroundings of
life, we have the key to the religious consciousness. But it is now time
to add that in the case of religion these attitudes are concerned with
the universal or supernatural rather than with present and normal human
relationships. Religious reactions are "total reactions."
"To get at them," says William James, "you must go behind the
foreground of existence and reach down to that curious _sense
of the whole residual cosmos as an everlasting presence_,
intimate or alien, terrible or amusing, lovable or odious,
which in some degree everyone possesses. This _sense of the
world's presence_, appealing as it does to our peculiar
individual temperament, makes us either strenuous or careless,
devout or blasphemous, gloomy or exultant about life at large;
and our reaction, involuntary and inarticulate and often half
unconscious as it is, is the completest of all our answers to
the question, 'What is the character of this universe in which
we dwell?'"[65:7]
This _residual environment_, or profounder realm of tradition and
nature, may have any degree of unity from chaos to cosmos. For religion
its significance lies in the idea of original and far-reaching power
rather than in the idea of totality. But that which is at first only
"beyond," is _practically_ the same object as that which comes in the
development of thought to be conceived as the "world" or the "universe."
We may therefore use these latter terms to indicate the object of
religion, until the treatment of special instances shall define it more
precisely. Religion is, then, _man's sense of the disposition of the
universe to himself_. We shall expect to find, as in the social
phenomena with which we have just dealt, that the manifestation of this
sense consists in a general reaction appropriate to the disposition so
attributed. He will be fundamentally ill at ease, profoundly confident,
or will habitually take precautions to be safe. The ultimate nature of
the world is here no speculative problem. The savage who could feel some
joy at living in the universe would be more religious than the sublimest
dialectician. It is in the vividness of the sense of this presence that
the acuteness of religion consists. I am religious in so far as the
whole tone and temper of my living reflects a belief as to what the
universe thinks of such as me.
[Sidenote: Examples of Religious Belief.]
Sect. 21. The examples that follow are selected because their
differences in personal flavor serve to throw into relief their common
religious character. Theodore Parker, in describing his own boyhood,
writes as follows:
"I can hardly think without a shudder of the terrible effect
the doctrine of eternal damnation had on me. How many, many
hours have I wept with terror as I lay on my bed, till,
between praying and weeping, sleep gave me repose. But before
I was nine years old this fear went away, and I saw clearer
light in the goodness of God. But for years, say from seven
till ten, I said my prayers with much devotion, I think, and
then continued to repeat, 'Lord, forgive my sins,' till sleep
came on me."[67:8]
Compare with this Stevenson's Christmas letter to his mother, in which
he says:
"The whole necessary morality is kindness; and it should
spring, of itself, from the one fundamental doctrine, Faith.
If you are sure that God, in the long run, means kindness by
you, you should be happy; and if happy, surely you should be
kind."[67:9]
Here is destiny frowning and destiny smiling, but in each case so real,
so present, as to be immediately responded to with helpless terror and
with grateful warm-heartedness.
The author of the "Imitatio Christi" speaks thus of the daily living of
the Christian:
"The life of a Christian who has dedicated himself to the
service of God should abound with eminent virtues of all
kinds, that he may be really the same person which he is by
outward appearance and profession. Indeed, he ought not only
to be the same, but much more, in his inward disposition of
soul; because he professes to serve a God who sees the inward
parts, a searcher of the heart and reins, a God and Father of
spirits: and therefore, since we are always in His sight, we
should be exceedingly careful to avoid all impurity, all that
may give offence to Him whose eyes cannot behold iniquity. We
should, in a word, so far as mortal and frail nature can,
imitate the blessed angels in all manner of holiness, since
we, as well as they, are always in His presence. . . . And good
men have always this notion of the thing. For they depend upon
God for the success of all they do, even of their best and
wisest undertakings."[68:10]
Such is to be the practical acknowledgment of God in the routine of
life. The more direct response to this presence appears abundantly in
St. Augustine's conversation and reminiscence with God.
"How evil have not my deeds been; or if not my deeds my words;
or if not my words my will? But Thou, O Lord, art good and
merciful, and Thy right hand had respect unto the profoundness
of my death, and removed from the bottom of my heart that
abyss of corruption. And this was the result, that I willed
not to do what I willed, and willed to do what thou
willedst. . . . How sweet did it suddenly become to me to be
without the delights of trifles! And what at one time I
feared to lose, it was now a joy to me to put away. For Thou
didst cast them away from me, Thou true and highest sweetness.
Thou didst cast them away, and instead of them didst enter in
Thyself--sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and
blood; brighter than all light, but more veiled than all
mysteries; more exalted than all honor, but not to the exalted
in their own conceits. Now was my soul free from the gnawing
cares of seeking and getting. . . . And I babbled unto Thee my
brightness, my riches, and my health, the Lord my God."[69:11]
In these two passages we meet with religious conduct and with the
supreme religious experience, the direct worship of God. In each case
the heart of the matter is an individual's indubitable conviction of the
world's favorable concern for him. The deeper order of things
constitutes the real and the profoundly congenial community in which he
lives.
[Sidenote: Typical Religious Phenomena: Conversion.]
Sect. 22. Let us now apply this general account of the religious
experience to certain typical religious phenomena: _conversion_;
_piety_; and religious _instruments_, _symbolisms_, _and_ modes of
_conveyance_. Although recent study of the phenomenon of _conversion_
has brought to light a considerable amount of interesting material,
there is some danger of misconceiving its importance. The psychology of
conversion is primarily the psychology of crisis or radical alteration,
rather than the psychology of religion. For the majority of religious
men and women conversion is an insignificant event, and in very many
cases it never occurs at all. Religion is more purely present where it
is normal and monotonous. But this phenomenon is nevertheless highly
significant in that religion and irreligion are placed in close
juxtaposition, and the contribution of religion at its inception thereby
emphasized. In general it is found that conversion takes place during
the period of adolescence. But this is the time of the most sudden
expansion of the environment of life; a time when there is the awakening
consciousness of many a new presence. This is sometimes expressed by
saying that it is a period of acute self-consciousness. Life is
conscious of itself as over against its inheritance; the whole setting
of life sweeps into view. Some solution of the life problem, some coming
to terms with the universe, is the normal issue of it. Religious
conversion signifies, then, that in this fundamental adjustment a man
defines and accepts for his life a certain attitude on the part of the
universe. The examples cited by the psychologists, as well as the
generalizations which they derive, bear out this interpretation.
"General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, considers
that the first vital step in saving outcasts consists in
making them feel that some decent human being cares enough for
them to take an interest in the question whether they are to
rise or sink."[71:12]
The new state is here one of courage and hope stimulated by the glow of
friendly interest. The convert is no longer "out in the cold." He is
told that the world wishes him well, and this is brought home to him
through representations of the tenderness of Christ, and through the
direct ministerings of those who mediate it. But somehow the convert
must be persuaded to realize all this. He must _believe_ it before it
can mean anything to him. He is therefore urged to pray--a proceeding
that is at first ridiculous to him, since it involves taking for granted
what he disbelieves. But therein lies the critical point. It is peculiar
to the object in this case that it can exist only for one who already
believes in it. The psychologists call this the element of
"self-surrender." To be converted a man must somehow suffer his
surroundings to put into him a new heart, which may thereupon confirm
its object. Such belief is tremendously tenacious because it so largely
creates its own evidence. Once believe that "God, in the long run, means
kindness by you," and you are likely to stand by it to the end--the more
so in this case because the external evidence either way is to the
average man so insufficient. Such a belief as this is inspired in the
convert, not by reasoning, but by all the powers of suggestion that
personality and social contagion can afford.
[Sidenote: Piety.]
Sect. 23. The psychologists describe _piety_ as a sense of unity. One
feels after reading their accounts that they are too abstract. For there
are many kinds of unity, characteristic of widely varying moods and
states. Any state of rapt attention is a state of unity, and this occurs
in the most secular and humdrum moments of life. Nor does it help
matters to say that in the case of religion this unity must have been
preceded by a state of division; for we cannot properly characterize any
state of mind in terms of another state unless the latter be retained in
the former. And that which is characteristic of the religious sense of
unity would seem to be just such an overcoming of difference. There is a
recognition of two distinct attitudes, which may be more or less in
sympathy with one another, but which are both present even in their
fullest harmony. Were I to be taken out of myself so completely as to
forget myself, I should inevitably lose that sense of sympathy from
which arises the peculiar exultation of religious faith, a heightened
experience of the same type with the freedom and spontaneity that I
experience in the presence of those with whom I feel most in accord. The
further graces and powers of religion readily submit to a similar
description. My sense of positive sympathy expresses itself in an
attitude of well-wishing; living in an atmosphere of kindness I
instinctively endeavor to propagate it. My buoyancy is distinctly of
that quality which to a lesser degree is due to any sense of social
security; my power is that of one who works in an environment that
reenforces him. I experience the objective or even cosmical character of
my enterprises. They have a momentum which makes me their instrument
rather than their perpetrator. A paradoxical relation between religion
and morality has always interested observers of custom and history.
Religion is apparently as capable of the most fiendish malevolence as of
the most saintly gentleness. Fielding writes that,
"When religion is brought out or into daily life and used as
a guide or a weapon in the world it has no effect either for
good or evil. Its effect is simply in strengthening the heart,
in blinding the eyes, in deafening the ears. It is an
intensive force, an intoxicant. It doubles or trebles a man's
powers. It is an impulsive force sending him headlong down the
path of emotion, whether that path lead to glory or to infamy.
It is a tremendous stimulant, that is all."[74:13]
Religion does not originate life purposes or define their meaning, but
stimulates them by the same means that works in all corporate and social
activity. To work with the universe is the most tremendous incentive
that can appeal to the individual will. Hence in highly ethical
religions the power for good exceeds that of any other social and
spiritual agency. Such religion makes present, actual, and real, that
good on the whole which the individual otherwise tends to distinguish
from that which is good for _him_. In daily life the morally valid and
the practically urgent are commonly arrayed against one another; but the
ethical religion makes the valid urgent.
[Sidenote: Religious Instruments, Symbolism, and Modes of Conveyance.]
Sect. 24. The _instruments_ of religion are legion, and it is in order
here only to mention certain prominent cases in which their selection
would seem to have direct reference to the provocation and perpetuation
of such a sense of attitude as we have been describing. This is true in
a general way of all _symbolism_. There is no essential difference
between the religious symbol and such symbols as serve to remind us of
human relationships. In both cases the perceptual absence of will is
compensated for by the presence of some object associated with that
will. The function of this object is due to its power to revive and
perpetuate a certain special social atmosphere. But the most important
vehicle of religion has always been personality. It is, after all, to
priests, prophets, and believers that religious cults have owed their
long life. The traits that mark the prophet are both curious and
sublime. He is most remarkable for the confidence with which he speaks
for the universe. Whether it be due to lack of a sense of humor or to a
profound conviction of truth, is indifferent to our purpose. The power
of such men is undoubtedly in their suggestion of a force greater than
they, whose designs they bring directly and socially to the attention of
men. The prophet in his prophesying is indeed not altogether
distinguished from God, and it is through the mediation of a directly
perceptible human attitude that a divine attitude gets itself fixed in
the imagination of the believer. What is true of the prophet is equally
true of the preacher whose function it is not to represent God in his
own person, but to depict him with his tongue. It is generally
recognized that the preacher is neither a moralizer nor a theologian.
But it is less perfectly understood that it is his function to suggest
the presence of God. His proper language is that of the imagination, and
the picture which he portrays is that of a reciprocal social
relationship between man and the Supreme Master of the situation of
life. He will not define God or prove God, but introduce Him and talk
about Him. And at the same time the association of prayer and worship
with his sermon, and the atmosphere created by the meeting together of a
body of disciples, will act as the confirmation of his suggestions of
such a living presence.
The _conveyance_ of any single religious cult from generation to
generation affords a signal illustration of the importance in religion
of the recognition of attitude. Religions manage somehow to survive any
amount of transformation of creed and ritual. It is not what is done, or
what is thought, that identifies the faith of the first Christians with
that of the last, but a certain reckoning with the disposition of God.
The successive generations of Christians are introduced into the
spiritual world of their fathers, with its furnishing of hopes and fears
remaining substantially the same; and their Christianity consists in
their continuing to live in it with only a slight and gradual
renovation. To any given individual God is more or less completely
represented by his elders in the faith in their exhortations and
ministerings; and through them he fixes as the centre of his system an
image of God his accuser or redeemer.
[Sidenote: Historical Types of Religion. Primitive Religions.]
Sect. 25. The complete verification of this interpretation of the
religious experience would require the application of it to the
different historical cults. In general the examination of such instances
is entirely beyond the scope of this chapter; but a brief consideration
may be given to those which seem to afford reasonable grounds for
objection.
First, it may be said that in _primitive religions_, notably in
fetichism, tabooism, and totemism, there is no recognition of a cosmical
unity. It is quite evident that there is no conception of a universe.
But it is equally evident that the natural and historical environment in
its generality has a very specific practical significance for the
primitive believer. It is often said with truth that these earliest
religions are more profoundly pantheistic than polytheistic. Man
recognizes an all-pervading interest that is capable of being directed
to himself. The selection of a deity is not due to any special
qualification for deification possessed by the individual object itself,
but to the tacit presumption that, as Thales said, "all things are full
of gods." The disposition of residual reality manifests to the believer
no consistency or unity, but it is nevertheless the most constant object
of his will. He lives in the midst of a capriciousness which he must
appease if he is to establish himself at all.
[Sidenote: Buddhism.]
Sect. 26. Secondly, in the case of _Buddhism_ we are said to meet with a
religion that is essentially atheistic.
"Whether Buddhas arise, O priests, or whether Buddhas do not
arise, it remains a fact and the fixed and necessary
constitution of being, that all its constituents are
transitory."[78:14]
The secret of life lies in the application of this truth:
"O builder! I've discovered thee!
This fabric thou shalt ne'er rebuild!
Thy rafters all are broken now,
And pointed roof demolished lies!
This mind has demolition reached,
And seen the last of all desire!"[78:15]
The case of Buddha himself and of the exponents of his purely esoteric
doctrine, belong to the reflective type which will presently be given
special consideration. But with the ordinary believer, even where an
extraneous but almost inevitable polytheism is least in evidence, the
religious experience consists in substantially the same elements that
appear in theistic religions. The individual is here living
appropriately to the ultimate nature of things, with the ceaseless
periods of time in full view. That which is brought home to him is the
illusoriness and hollowness of things when taken in the spirit of active
endeavor. The only profound and abiding good is nothingness. While
nature and society conspire to mock him, Nirvana invites him to its
peace. The religious course of his life consists in the use of such
means as can win him this end. From the stand-point of the universe he
has the sympathy only of that wisdom whose essence is self-destruction.
And this truth is mediated by the imagination of divine sympathy, for
the Blessed One remains as the perpetual incarnation of his own
blessedness.
[Sidenote: Critical Religion.]
Sect. 27. Finally there remains the consideration of the bearing of this
interpretation upon the more refined and disciplined religions. The
religion of the critically enlightened man is less naive and credulous
in its imagery. God tends to vanish into an ideal or a universal, into
some object of theoretical definition. Here we are on that borderland
where an assignment of individual cases can never be made with any
certainty of correctness. We can generalize only by describing the
conditions that such cases must fulfil if they are properly to be
denominated religious. And there can be no question of the justice of
deriving such a description from the reports of historical and
institutional religions. An idealistic philosophy will, then, be a
religion just in so far as it is rendered practically vivid by the
imagination. Such imagination must create and sustain a social
relationship. The question of the legitimacy of this imagination is
another matter. It raises the issue concerning the judgment of truth
implied in religion, and this is the topic of the next chapter. At any
rate the religious experience _may be_ realized by virtue of the
metaphorical or poetical representation of a situation as one of
intercommunication between persons, where reflective definition at the
same time denies it. The human worshipper may supply the personality of
God from himself, viewing himself as from the divine stand-point. But
whatever faculty supplies this indispensable social quality of religion,
he who defines God as the ultimate goodness or the ultimate truth, has
certainly not yet worshipped Him. He begins to be religious only when
such an ideal determines the atmosphere of his daily living; when he
regards the immanence of such an ideal in nature and history as the
object of his will; and when he responds to its presence in the spirit
of his conduct and his contemplation.
FOOTNOTES:
[54:1] Cf. Caird: _The Evolution of Religion_, Lectures II, III.
[58:2] Cf. Leuba: _Introduction to a Psychological Study of Religion_,
_Monist_, Vol. XI, p. 195.
[58:3] Cf. Leuba: _Ibid._
[59:4] Cf. Sect. 29.
[59:5] P. 322.
[64:6] Rousseau: _Confessions_, Book IV, p. 125.
[65:7] William James: _The Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 35.
The italics are mine. I am in the present chapter under constant
obligation to this wonderfully sympathetic and stimulating book.
[67:8] Chadwick: _Theodore Parker_, p. 18.
[67:9] Stevenson: _Letters_, Vol. I, p. 229.
[68:10] Thomas a Kempis: _Imitation of Christ_, Chap. XIX. Translation
by Stanhope, p. 44.
[69:11] St. Augustine: _Confessions_, Book I, Chap. I. Translation in
Schaff: _Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, Vol. I, p. 129.
[71:12] James: _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 203.
[74:13] Fielding: _op. cit._, p. 152.
[78:14] Warren: _Buddhism in Translations_, p. 14.
[78:15] _Ibid._, p. 83.
CHAPTER IV
THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF RELIGION
[Sidenote: Resume of Psychology of Religion.]
Sect. 28. It has been maintained that religion is closely analogous to
one's belief in the disposition toward one's self of men or communities.
In the case of religion this disposition is attributed to the more or
less vaguely conceived residual environment that is recognized as lying
outside of the more familiar natural and social relations. After the
rise of science this residual environment tends to be conceived as a
unity which is ultimate or fundamental, but for the religious
consciousness it is more commonly regarded as a general source of
influence practically worthy of consideration. Such a belief, like all
belief, is vitally manifested, with such emphasis upon action, feeling,
or intellection as temperament and mood may determine.
[Sidenote: Religion Means to be True.]
Sect. 29. But if the psychology of belief is the proper starting-point
for a description of the religious experience, it is none the less
suggestive of the fact that religion, just because it _is_ belief, is
not wholly a matter for psychology. For religion _means to be true_, and
thus submits itself to valuation as a case of knowledge. The
psychological study of religion is misleading when accepted as a
substitute for philosophical criticism. The religious man takes his
religion not as a narcotic, but as an enlightenment. Its subjective
worth is due at any rate in part to the supposition of its objective
worth. As in any case of insight, that which warms the heart must have
satisfied the mind. The religious experience purports to be the part of
wisdom, and to afford only such happiness as increasing wisdom would
confirm. And the charm of truth cannot survive its truthfulness. Hence,
though religion may be described, it cannot be justified, from the
stand-point of therapeutics. Were such the case it would be the real
problem of religious leaders to find a drug capable of giving a
constantly pleasant tone to their patient's experience.[83:1] There
would be no difference between priests and physicians who make a
specialty of nervous diseases, except that the former would aim at a
more fundamental and perpetual suggestion of serenity. Now no man wants
to be even a blessed fool. He does not want to dwell constantly in a
fictitious world, even if it be after his own heart. He may from the
cynical point of view actually do so, but if he be religious he thinks
it is reality, and is satisfied only in so far as he thinks so. He
regards the man who has said in his heart that there is no God as the
fool, and not because he may have to suffer for it, but because he is
cognitively blind to the real nature of things. Piety, on the other
hand, he regards as the standard experience, the most veracious life.
Hence, it is not an accident that religion has had its creeds and its
controversies, its wars with science and its appeals to philosophy. The
history of these affairs shows that religion commonly fails to
understand the scope of its own demand for truth; but they have issued
from the deep conviction that one's religion is, implicitly, at least,
in the field of truth; that there are theoretical judgments whose truth
would justify or contradict it.
This general fact being admitted, there remains the task to which the
present discussion addresses itself, that of defining the kind of
_theoretical judgment_ implied in religion, and the relation to this
central cognitive stem of its efflorescences of myth, theology, and
ritual. It is impossible to separate the stem and the efflorescence, or
to determine the precise spot at which destruction of the tissue would
prove fatal to the plant, but it is possible to obtain some idea of the
relative vitality of the parts.
[Sidenote: Religion Means to be Practically True. God is a Disposition
from which Consequences May Rationally be Expected.]
Sect. 30. The difficulty of reaching a definite statement in this matter
is due to the fact that the truth in which any religious experience
centres is a practical and not a scientific truth. A practical truth
does not commit itself to any single scientific statement, and can often
survive the overthrow of that scientific statement in which at any given
time it has found expression. In other words, an indefinite number of
scientific truths are compatible with a single practical truth. An
instance of this is the consistency with my expectation of the
alternation of day and night, of either the Ptolemaic or Copernican
formulation of the solar system. Now expectation that the sun will rise
to-morrow is an excellent analogue of my religious belief. Celestial
mechanics is as relevant to the one as metaphysics to the other. Neither
is overthrown until a central practical judgment is discredited, and
either could remain true through a very considerable alteration of
logical definition; but neither is on this account exempt from
theoretical responsibility. In so far as religion deliberately enters
the field of science, and defines its formularies with the historical or
metaphysical method, this difficulty does not, of course, exist. Grant
that the years of Methuselah's life, or the precise place and manner of
the temptation of Jesus, or the definition of Christ in the terms of the
Athanasian Creed, are constitutive of Christianity, and the survival of
that religion will be determined by the solution of ordinary problems of
historical or metaphysical research. But the Christian will very
properly claim that his religion is only externally and accidentally
related to such propositions, since they are never or very rarely
intended in his experience. As religious he is occupied with Christ as
his saviour or with God as his protector and judge. The history of Jesus
or the metaphysics of God essentially concern him only in so far as they
may or may not invalidate this relationship. He cares only for the power
and disposition of the divine, and these are affected by history and
metaphysics only in so far as he has definitely put them to such proof.
For my religion is my sense of a practical situation, and only when
that has been proved to be folly has my religion become untrue. My God
is my practical faith, my plan of salvation. My religion is overthrown
if I am convinced that I have misconceived the situation and mistaken
what I should do to be saved. The conception of God is very simple
practically, and very complex theoretically, a fact that confirms its
practical genesis. My conception of God contains _an idea of my own
interests_, _an idea of the disposition of the universe toward my
interests_, and _some working plan for the reconciliation of these two
terms_. These three elements form a practical unity, but each is capable
of emphasis, and a religion may be transformed through the modification
of any one of them. It appears, then, as has always been somewhat
vaguely recognized, that the truth of religion is ethical as well as
metaphysical or scientific. My religion will be altered by a change in
my conception of what constitutes my real interest, a change in my
conception of the fundamental causes of reality, or a change in my
conception of the manner in which my will may or may not affect these
causes. God is neither an entity nor an ideal, but always a relation of
entity to ideal: _reality regarded from the stand-point of its
favorableness or unfavorableness to human life, and prescribing for the
latter the propriety of a certain attitude_.
[Sidenote: Historical Examples of Religious Truth and Error. The
Religion of Baal.]
Sect. 31. The range of historical examples is limitless, but certain of
these are especially calculated to emphasize the application of a
criterion to religion. Such is the case with Elijah's encounter with the
prophets of Baal, as narrated in the Old Testament.
"And Elijah came near unto all the people, and said, How long
halt ye between two opinions? If Yahweh be God, follow him:
but if Baal, then follow him. . . . And call ye on the name of
your god, and I will call on the name of Yahweh: and the God
that answereth by fire, let him be God. . . . And Elijah said
unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one bullock for
yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call on
the name of your god, but put no fire under. And they took the
bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called
on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O
Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that
answered. . . . And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah
mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he
is musing, or he is gone aside, or he is in a journey, or
peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked. And they cried
aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and
lances, till the blood gushed out upon them. . . . But there
was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that
regarded."[88:2]
The religion of the followers of Baal here consists in a belief in the
practical virtue of a mode of address and form of ritual associated with
the traditions and customs of a certain social group. The prophets of
this cult agree to regard the experiment proposed by Elijah as a crucial
test, and that which is disproved from its failure is a plan of action.
These prophets relied upon the presence of a certain motivity, from
which a definite response could be evoked by an appeal which they were
peculiarly able to make; but though "they prophesied until the time of
the offering of the evening oblation," there was none that regarded.
[Sidenote: Greek Religion.]
Sect. 32. An equally familiar and more instructive example is the
refutation of the Greek national religion by Lucretius. The conception
of life which Lucretius finds unwarranted is best depicted in Homer.
There we hear of a society composed of gods and men. Though the gods, on
the one hand, have their own history, their affairs are never sharply
sundered from those of men, who, on the other hand, must constantly
reckon with them, gauge their attitude, and seek their favor by paying
tribute to their individual humors and preferences. In the Ninth Book of
the "Iliad," Phoenix addresses himself to the recalcitrant Achilles as
follows:
"It fits not one that moves
The hearts of all, to live unmov'd, and succor hates for loves.
The Gods themselves are flexible; whose virtues, honors, pow'rs,
Are more than thine, yet they will bend their breasts as we bend
ours.
Perfumes, benign devotions, savors of offerings burn'd,
And holy rites, the engines are with which their hearts are turn'd,
By men that pray to them."[90:3]
Here is a general recognition of that which makes sacrifice rational. It
is because he conceives this presupposition to be mistaken, that
Lucretius declares the practices and fears which are founded upon it to
be folly. It is the same with all that is practically based upon the
expectation of a life beyond the grave. The correction of the popular
religion is due in his opinion to that true view of the world taught by
Epicurus, whose memory Lucretius thus invokes at the opening of the
Third Book of the "De Rerum Natura":
"Thee, who first wast able amid such thick darkness to raise
on high so bright a beacon and shed a light on the true
interests of life, thee I follow, glory of the Greek race,
and plant now my footsteps firmly fixed in thy imprinted
marks. . . . For soon as thy philosophy issuing from a
godlike intellect has begun with loud voice, to proclaim the
nature of things, the terrors of the mind are dispelled, the
walls of the world part asunder, I see things in operation
throughout the whole void: the divinity of the gods is
revealed and their tranquil abodes which neither winds do
shake nor clouds drench with rains nor snow congealed by sharp
frost harms with hoary fall: an ever cloudless ether
o'ercanopies them, and they laugh with light shed largely
round. Nature too supplies all their wants and nothing ever
impairs their peace of mind. But on the other hand the
Acherusian quarters[91:4] are nowhere to be seen, though earth
is no bar to all things being descried, which are in operation
underneath our feet throughout the void."[91:5]
In another passage, after describing the Phrygian worship of Cybele, he
comments as follows:
"All which, well and beautifully as it is set forth and told,
is yet widely removed from true reason. For the nature of gods
must ever in itself of necessity enjoy immortality together
with supreme repose, far removed and withdrawn from our
concerns; since exempt from every pain, exempt from all
dangers, strong in its own resources, not wanting aught of us,
it is neither gained by favors nor moved by anger. . . . The
earth however is at all time without feeling, and because it
receives into it the first-beginnings of many things, it
brings them forth in many ways into the light of the
sun."[91:6]
If the teaching of Epicurus be true it is evident that those who
offered hecatombs with the idea that they were thereby mitigating anger,
or securing special dispensation, were playing the fool. They were
appealing to a fictitious motivity, one not grounded in "the nature of
things." To one for whom the walls of the world had parted asunder, such
a procedure was no longer possible; though he might choose to "call the
sea Neptune" and reverence the earth as "mother of the gods."[92:7]
[Sidenote: Judaism and Christianity.]
Sect. 33. The history of religion contains no more impressive and
dramatic chapter than that which records the development of the religion
of the Jews. Passing over its obscure beginnings in the primitive
Semitic cult, we find this religion first clearly defined as tribal
self-interest sanctioned by Yahweh.[92:8] God's interest in his chosen
people determines the prosperity of him who practices the social
virtues.
"The name of Yahweh is a strong tower: the righteous runneth
into it, and is safe."
"He that is steadfast in righteousness shall attain unto
life."
"To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to Yahweh than
sacrifice."[93:9]
But in time it is evident to the believer that his experience does not
bear out this expectation. Neither as a Jew nor as a righteous man does
he prosper more than his neighbor. He comes, therefore, to distrust the
virtue of his wisdom.
"Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light
excelleth darkness. The wise man's eyes are in his head, and
the fool walketh in darkness: and yet I perceived that one
event happeneth to them all. Then said I in my heart, As it
happeneth to the fool, so will it happen even to me; and why
was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also
was vanity. For of the wise man, even as of the fool, there is
no remembrance forever; seeing that in the days to come all
will have been already forgotten. And how doth the wise man
die even as the fool! So I hated life; because the work that
is wrought under the sun was grievous unto me: for all is
vanity and a striving after wind."[93:10]
It is evident that he who expects the favor of fortune in return for
his observance of precept is mistaken. The "work that is wrought under
the sun" makes no special provision for him during his lifetime. Unless
the cry of vanity is to be the last word there must be a
reinterpretation of the promise of God. This appears in the new ideal of
patient submission, and the chastened faith that expects only the love
of God. And those whom God loves He will not forsake. They will come to
their own, if not here, then beyond, according to His inscrutable but
unswerving plan.
"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a
contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise."
"For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth
eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy
place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit,
to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of
the contrite ones."[94:11]
In this faith Judaism merges into Christianity.[94:12] In the whole
course of this evolution God is regarded as the friend of his people,
but his people learn to find a new significance in his friendship. That
which is altered is the conduct which that friendship requires and the
expectation which it determines. The practical ideal which the
relationship sanctions, changes gradually from that of prudence to that
of goodness for its own sake. God, once an instrument relevant to human
temporal welfare, has come to be an object of disinterested service.
No such transformation as this was absolutely realized during the period
covered by the writings of the Old Testament, nor has it even yet been
realized in the development of Christianity. But the evolution of both
Judaism and Christianity has taken this direction. The criterion of this
evolution is manifestly both ethical and metaphysical. A Christian avows
that he rates purity of character above worldly prosperity, so that the
former cannot properly be prized for the sake of the latter.
Furthermore, he shares more or less unconsciously such philosophical and
scientific opinions as deny truth to the conception of special
interferences and dispensations from a supernatural agency. Therefore he
looks for no fire from heaven to consume his sacrifice. But his religion
is nevertheless a practical expectation. He believes that God is good,
and that God loves him and sustains him. He believes that there obtains
between himself, in so far as good, and the universe _sub specie
eternitatis_, a real sympathy and reciprocal reenforcement. He believes
that he secures through the profoundly potent forces of the universe
that which he regards as of most worth; and that somewhat is added to
these forces by virtue of his consecration. The God of the Christians
cannot be defined short of some such account as this, inclusive of an
ideal, an attitude, and an expectation. In other words the God of the
Christians is to be known only in terms of the Christlike outlook upon
life, in which the disciple is taught to emulate the master. When moral
and intellectual development shall have discredited either its scale of
values, or its conviction that cosmical events are in the end determined
in accordance with that scale of values, then Christianity must either
be transformed, or be untenable for the wise man. If we have conceived
the essence of Christianity too broadly or vaguely, it does not much
matter for our present purposes. Its essence is, at any rate, some such
inwardness of life resolving ideality and reality into one, and drawing
upon objective truth only to the extent required for the confirming of
that relation.
[Sidenote: The Cognitive Factor in Religion.]
Sect. 34. We conclude, then, our attempt to emphasize the cognitive
factor in religion, with the thesis that every religion centres in a
practical secret of the universe. _To be religious is to believe that a
certain correlation of forces, moral and factual, is in reality
operative, and that it determines the propriety and effectiveness of a
certain type of living. Whatever demonstrates the futility, vanity, or
self-deception of this living, discredits the religion. And, per contra,
except as they define or refute such practical truth, religion is not
essentially concerned with theoretical judgments._
[Sidenote: The Place of Imagination in Religion.]
Sect. 35. But neither religion nor any other human interest consists in
essentials. Such a practical conviction as that which has been defined
inevitably flowers into a marvelous complexity, and taps for its
nourishment every spontaneity of human nature. If it be said that only
the practical conviction is essential, this is not the same as to say
that all else is superfluous. There may be no single utterance that my
religion could not have spared, and yet were I to be altogether dumb my
religion would, indeed, be as nothing. For if I believe, I accept a
presence in my world, which as I live will figure in my dreams, or in my
thoughts, or in my habits. And each of these expressions of myself will
have a truth if it do but bear out my practical acceptance of that
presence. The language of religion, like that of daily life, is not the
language of science except it take it upon itself to be so. There is
scarcely a sentence which I utter in my daily intercourse with men which
is not guilty of transgressions against the canons of accurate and
definite thinking. Yet if I deceive neither myself nor another, I am
held to be truthful, even though my language deal with chance and
accident, material purposes and spiritual causes, and though I vow that
the sun smiles or the moon lets down her hair into the sea. Science is a
special interest in the discovery of unequivocal and fixed conceptions,
and employs its terms with an unalterable connotation. But no such
algebra of thought is indispensable to life or conversation, and its
lack is no proof of error. Such is the case also with that eminently
living affair, religion. I may if I choose, and I will if my reasoning
powers be at all awakened, be a theologian. But theology, like science,
is a special intellectual spontaneity. St. Thomas, the master
theologian, did not glide unwittingly from prayer into the _quaestiones_
of the "Summa Theologiae," but turned to them as to a fresh adventure.
Theology is inevitable, because humanly speaking adventure is
inevitable. For man, with his intellectual spontaneity, every object is
a problem; and did he not seek sooner or later to define salvation,
there would be good reason to believe that he did not practically reckon
with any. But this is _similarly_ and _independently_ true of the
imagination, the most familiar means with which man clothes and vivifies
his convictions, the exuberance with which he plays about them and
delights to confess them. The imagination of religion, contributing what
Matthew Arnold called its "poetry and eloquence," does not submit itself
to such canons as are binding upon theology or science, but exists and
flourishes in its own right.
The indispensableness to religion of the imagination is due to that
faculty's power of realizing what is not perceptually present. Religion
is not interested in the apparent, but in the secret essence or the
transcendent universal. And yet this interest is a practical one.
Imagination may introduce one into the vivid presence of the secret or
the transcendent. It is evident that the religious imagination here
coincides with poetry. For it is at least one of the interests of poetry
to cultivate and satisfy a sense for the universal; to obtain an
immediate experience or appreciation that shall have the vividness
without the particularism of ordinary perception. And where a poet
elects so to view the world, we allow him as a poet the privilege, and
judge him by the standards to which he submits himself. That upon which
we pass judgment is the _fitness of his expression_. This expression is
not, except in the case of the theoretical mystic, regarded as
constituting the most valid form of the idea, but is appreciated
expressly for its fulfilment of the condition of immediacy. The same
sort of critical attitude is in order with the fruits of the religious
imagination. These may or may not fulfil enough of the requirements of
that art to be properly denominated poetry; but like poetry they are the
translation of ideas into a specific language. They must not, therefore,
be judged as though they claimed to excel in point of validity, but only
in point of consistency with the context of that language. And _the
language of religion is the language of the practical life_. Such
translation is as essential to an idea that is to enter into the
religious experience, as translation into terms of immediacy is
essential to an idea that is to enter into the appreciative
consciousness of the poet. No object can find a place in my religion
until it is conjoined with my purposes and hopes; until it is taken for
granted and acted upon, like the love of my friends, or the courses of
the stars, or the stretches of the sea.
[Sidenote: The Special Functions of the Religious Imagination.]
Sect. 36. The religious imagination, then, is to be understood and
justified as that which brings the objects of religion within the range
of living. The central religious object, as has been seen, is an
_attitude_ of the residuum or totality of things. To be religious one
must have a sense for the _presence of an attitude_, like his sense for
the presence of his human fellows, with all the added appreciation that
is proper in the case of an object that is unique in its mystery or in
its majesty. It follows that the religious imagination fulfils its
function in so far as it provides the object of religion with properties
similar to those which lend vividness and reality to the normal social
relations.
The presence of one's fellows is in part the perceptual experience of
their bodies. To this there corresponds in religion some extraordinary
or subtle appearance. The gods may in visions or dreams be met with in
their own proper embodiments; or, as is more common, they may be
regarded as present for practical purposes: in some inanimate object,
as in the case of the fetish; in some animal species, as in the case of
the totem; in some place, as in the case of the shrine; or even in some
human being, as in the case of the inspired prophet and miracle worker.
In more refined and highly developed religions the medium of God's
presence is less specific. He is perceived with
"--a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man."
God is here found in an interpretation of the common and the natural,
rather than in any individual and peculiar embodiment. And here the
poet's appreciation, if not his art, is peculiarly indispensable.
But, furthermore, his fellows are inmates of "the household of man" in
that he knows their history. They belong to the temporal context of
actions and events. Similarly, the gods must be historical. The sacred
traditions or books of religion are largely occupied with this history.
The more individual and anthropomorphic the gods, the more local and
episodic will be the account of their affairs. In the higher religions
the acts of God are few and momentous, such as creation or special
providence; or they are identical with the events of nature and human
history when these are _construed_ as divine. To find God in this latter
way requires an interpretation of the course of events in terms of some
moral consistency, a faith that sees some purpose in their evident
destination.
There is still another and a more significant way in which men recognize
one another: the way of address and conversation. And men have
invariably held a similar intercourse with their gods. To this category
belong communion and prayer, with all their varieties of expression. I
have no god until I address him. This will be the most direct evidence
of what is at least from my point of view a social relation. There can
be no general definition of the form which this address will take. There
may be as many special languages, as many attitudes, and as much
playfulness and subtlety of symbolism as in human intercourse. But, on
the other hand, there are certain utterances that are peculiarly
appropriate to religion. In so far as he regards his object as endowed
with both power and goodness the worshipper will use the language of
adoration; and the sense of his dependence will speak in terms of
consecration and thanksgiving.
"O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee:
My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee,
In a dry and weary land, where no water is.
So have I looked upon thee in the sanctuary,
To see thy power and thy glory.
For thy loving-kindness is better than life;
My lips shall praise thee."
These are expressions of a hopeful faith; but, on the other hand, God
may be addressed in terms of hatred and distrust.
"Who is most wretched in this dolorous place?
I think myself; yet I would rather be
My miserable self than He, than He
Who formed such creatures to his own disgrace.
"The vilest thing must be less vile than Thou
From whom it had its being, God and Lord!
Creator of all woe and sin! abhorred,
Malignant and implacable."[104:13]
In either case there may be an indefinite degree of hyperbole. The
language of love and hate, of confidence and despair, is not the
language of description. In this train of the religious consciousness
there is occasion for whatever eloquence man can feel, and whatever
rhetorical luxuriance he can utter.
[Sidenote: The Relation between Imagination and Truth in Religion.]
Sect. 37. Such considerations as these serve to account for the exercise
and certain of the fruits of the religious imagination, and to designate
the general criterion governing its propriety. But _how is one to
determine the boundary between the imaginative and the cognitive_? It is
commonly agreed that what religion says and does is not all intended
literally. But when is expression of religion only poetry and eloquence,
and when is it matter of conviction? If we revert again to the cognitive
aspect of religion, it is evident that there is but one test to apply:
_whatever either fortifies or misleads the will is literal conviction_.
This test cannot be applied absolutely, because it can properly be
applied only to the intention of an individual experience. However I may
express my religion, that which I express, is, we have seen, an
expectation. The degree to which I literally mean what I say is then the
degree to which it determines my expectations. Whatever adds no item to
these expectations, but only recognizes and vitalizes them, is pure
imagination. But it follows that it is entirely impossible from direct
inspection to define any given _expression_ of religious experience as
myth, or to define the degree to which it is myth. It submits to such
distinctions only when viewed from the stand-point of the concrete
religious experience which it expresses. Any such given expression could
easily be all imagination to one, and all conviction to another.
Consider the passage which follows:
"And I saw the heaven opened; and behold, a white horse, and
he that sat thereon, called Faithful and True; and in
righteousness he doth judge and make war. And his eyes are a
flame of fire, and upon his head are many diadems; and he hath
a name written, which no one knoweth but he himself. And he is
arrayed in a garment sprinkled with blood: and his name is
called The Word of God."[106:14]
Is this all rhapsody, or is it in part true report? There is evidently
no answer to the question so conceived. But if it were to express my own
religious feeling it would have some specific proportion of literal and
metaphorical significance, according to the degree to which its detail
contributes different practical values to me. It might then be my
guide-book to the heavens, or only my testimony to the dignity and
mystery of the function of Christ.
The development of religion bears in a very important way upon this last
problem. The factor of imagination has undoubtedly come to have a more
clearly recognized role in religion. There can be no doubt that what we
now call myths were once beliefs, and that what we now call poetry was
once history. If we go back sufficiently far we come to a time when the
literal and the metaphorical were scarcely distinguishable, and this
because science had not emerged from the early animistic extension of
social relations. Men _meant_ to address their gods as they addressed
their fellows, and expected them to hear and respond, as they looked for
such reactions within the narrower circle of ordinary intercourse. The
advance of science has brought into vogue a description of nature that
inhibits such expectations. The result has been that men, continuing to
use the same terms, essentially expressive as they are of a practical
relationship, have come to regard them as only a general expression of
their attitude. The differences of content that are in excess of factors
of expectation remain as poetry and myth. On the other hand, it is
equally possible, if not equally common, for that which was once
imagined to come to be believed. Such a transformation is, perhaps,
normally the case when the inspired utterance passes from its author to
the cult. The prophets and sweet singers are likely to possess an
exuberance of imagination not appreciated by their followers; and for
this reason almost certainly misunderstood. For these reasons it is
manifestly absurd to fasten the name of myth or the name of creed upon
any religious utterance whatsoever, unless it be so regarded from the
stand-point of the personal religion which it originally expressed, or
unless one means by so doing to define it as an expression of his own
religion. He who defines "the myth of creation," or "the poetical story
of Samson," as parts of the pre-Christian Judaic religion, exhibits a
total loss of historical sense. The distinction between cognition and
fancy does not exist among objects, but only in the _intending_
experience; hence, for me to attach my own distinction to any individual
case of belief, viewed apart from the believer, is an utterly confusing
projection of my own personality into the field of my study.
[Sidenote: The Philosophy Implied in Religion and in Religions.]
Sect. 38. Only after such considerations as these are we qualified to
attack that much-vexed question as to whether religion deals invariably
with a personal god. It is often assumed in discussion of this question
that "personal god," as well as "god," is a distinct and familiar kind
of entity, like a dragon or centaur; its existence alone being
problematical. This is doubly false to the religious employment of such
an object. If it be true that in religion we mean by God a practical
interpretation of the world, _whatsoever be its nature_, then the
personality of God must be a derivative of the attitude, and not of the
nature of the world. Given the practical outlook upon life, there is no
definable world that cannot be construed under the form of God. My god
is my world practically recognized in respect of its fundamental or
ultimate attitude to my ideals. In the sense, then, conveyed by this
term _attitude_ my god will invariably possess the characters of
personality. But the degree to which these characters will coincide with
the characters which I assign to human persons, or the terms of any
logical conception of personality, cannot be absolutely defined.
Anthropomorphisms may be imagination or they may be literal conviction.
This will depend, as above maintained, upon the degree to which they
determine my expectations. Suppose the world to be theoretically
conceived as governed by laws that are indifferent to all human
interests. The practical expression of this conception appears in the
naturalism of Lucretius, or Diogenes, or Omar Khayyam. Living in the
vivid presence of an indifferent world, I may picture my gods as leading
their own lives in some remote realm which is inaccessible to my
petitions, or as regarding me with sinister and contemptuous cruelty. In
the latter case I may shrink and cower, or return them contempt for
contempt. I mean this literally only if I look for consequences
following directly from the emotional coloring which I have bestowed
upon them. It may well be that I mean merely to regard myself _sub
specie eternitatis_, in which case I am _personifying_ in the sense of
free imagination. In the religion of enlightenment the divine attitude
tends to belong to the poetry and eloquence of religion rather than to
its cognitive intent. This is true even of optimistic and idealistic
religion. The love and providence of God are less commonly supposed to
warrant an expectation of special and arbitrary favors, and have come
more and more to mean the play of my own feeling about the general
central conviction of the favorableness of the cosmos to my deeper or
moral concerns. But the factor of personality cannot possibly be
entirely eliminated, for the religious consciousness _creates_ a social
relationship between man and the universe. Such an interpretation of
life is not a case of the pathetic fallacy, unless it incorrectly
_reckons with_ the inner feeling which it attributes to the universe. It
is an obvious practical truth that the total or residual environment is
significant for life. Grant this and you make rational a recognition of
that significance, or a more or less constant sense of coincidence or
conflict with cosmical forces. Permit this consciousness to stand, and
you make some expression of it inevitable. Such an expression may,
furthermore, with perfect propriety and in fulfilment of human nature,
set forth and transfigure this central belief until it may enter into
the context of immediacy.
Thus any conception of the universe whatsoever may afford a basis for
religion. But there is no religion that does not virtually make a more
definite claim upon the nature of things, and this entirely
independently of its theology, or explicit attempt to define itself.
Every religion, even in the very living of it, is naturalistic, or
dualistic, or pluralistic, or optimistic, or idealistic, or pessimistic.
And there is in the realm of truth that which justifies or refutes these
definite practical ways of construing the universe. But no historical
religion is ever so vague even as this in its philosophical
implications. Indeed, we shall always be brought eventually to the
inner meaning of some individual religious experience, where no general
criticism can be certainly valid.
There is, then, a place in religion for that which is not directly
answerable to philosophical or scientific standards. But there is
always, on the other hand, an element of hope which conceives the nature
of the world, and means to be grounded in reality. In respect of that
element, philosophy is indispensable to religion. The meaning of
religion is, in fact, the central problem of philosophy. There is a
virtue in religion like that which Emerson ascribes to poetry. "The poet
is in the right attitude; he is believing; the philosopher, after some
struggle, having only reasons for believing." But whatever may be said
to the disparagement of its dialectic, philosophy is the justification
of religion, and the criticism of religions. To it must be assigned the
task of so refining positive religion as to contribute to the perpetual
establishment of true religion. And to philosophy, with religion,
belongs the task of holding fast to the idea of the universe. There is
no religion except before you begin, or after you have rested from, your
philosophical speculation. But in the universe these interests have a
common object. As philosophy is the articulation and vindication of
religion, so is religion the realization of philosophy. In philosophy
thought is brought up to the elevation of life, and in religion
philosophy, as the sum of wisdom, enters into life.
FOOTNOTES:
[83:1] As Plato interprets the scepticism of Protagoras to mean that one
state of mind cannot be more _true_ than another, but only _better_ or
worse. Cf. _Theaetetus_, 167.
[88:2] Quoted with some omissions from _I Kings_, 18:21-29. The Hebrew
term _Yahweh_, the name of the national deity, has been substituted for
the English translation, "the Lord."
[90:3] _Iliad_, Book IX, lines 467 _sq._ Translation by Chapman.
[91:4] The supposed abode of departed spirits.
[91:5] Lucretius: _De Rerum Natura_, Book III, lines 1 _sq._ Translated
by Munro.
[91:6] _Ibid._, Book II, lines 644 _sq._
[92:7] It would be interesting to compare the equally famous criticism
of Greek religion in Plato's _Republic_, Book II, 377 _sq._
[92:8] Cf. W. Robertson Smith's admirable account of the Semitic
religions:
"What is requisite to religion is a practical acquaintance with the
rules on which the deity acts and on which he expects his worshippers to
frame their conduct--what in II Kings, 17:26 is called the 'manner,' or
rather the 'customary law' (_mishpat_), of the god of the land. This is
true even of the religion of Israel. When the prophets speak of the
knowledge of God, they always mean a practical knowledge of the laws and
principles of His government in Israel, and a summary expression for
religion as a whole is 'the knowledge and fear of Jehovah,' _i. e._, the
knowledge of what Jehovah prescribes, combined with a reverent
obedience." _The Religion of the Semites_, p. 23.
[93:9] _Proverbs_, 18:10; 11:19; 21:3.
[93:10] _Ecclesiastes_, 2:13 _sq._
[94:11] _Psalms_, 51:17; _Isaiah_, 57:15.
[94:12] In this discussion of Judaism I am much indebted to Matthew
Arnold's _Literature and Dogma_, especially Chapters I and II.
[104:13] James Thomson: _The City of Dreadful Night_. Quoted by James,
in _The Will to Believe, etc._, p. 45.
[106:14] _Revelation_, 19:11-13.
CHAPTER V
NATURAL SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY
[Sidenote: The True Relations of Philosophy and Science. Misconceptions
and Antagonisms.]
Sect. 39. In the case of natural science we meet not only with a special
human interest, but with a theoretical discipline. We are confronted,
therefore, with a new question: that of the relation within the body of
human knowledge of two of its constituent members. Owing to the militant
temper of the representatives of both science and philosophy, this has
long since ceased to be an academic question, and has frequently been
met in the spirit of rivalry and partisanship. But the true order of
knowledge is only temporarily distorted by the brilliant success of a
special type of investigation; and the conquests of science are now so
old a story that critical thought shows a disposition to judge of the
issue with sobriety and logical highmindedness.
In the seventeenth century a newly emancipated and too sanguine reason
proposed to know the whole of nature at once in terms of mathematics
and mechanics. Thus the system of the Englishman Hobbes was science
swelled to world-proportions, simple, compact, conclusive, and
all-comprehensive. Philosophy proposed to do the work of science, but in
its own grand manner. The last twenty years of Hobbes's life, spent in
repeated discomfiture at the hands of Seth Ward, Wallis, Boyle, and
other scientific experts of the new Royal Society, certified
conclusively to the failure of this enterprise, and the experimental
specialist thereupon took exclusive possession of the field of natural
law. But the idealist, on the other hand, reconstructed nature to meet
the demands of philosophical knowledge and religious faith. There
issued, together with little mutual understanding and less sympathy, on
the one hand _positivism_, or exclusive experimentalism, and on the
other hand a rabid and unsympathetic transcendentalism. Hume, who
consigned to the flames all thought save "abstract reasoning concerning
quantity or number," and "experimental reasoning concerning matter of
fact and existence"; Comte, who assigned metaphysics to an immature
stage in the development of human intelligence; and Tyndall, who reduced
the religious consciousness to an emotional experience of mystery, are
typical of the one attitude. The other is well exhibited in Schelling's
reference to "the blind and thoughtless mode of investigating nature
which has become generally established since the corruption of
philosophy by Bacon, and of physics by Boyle." Dogmatic experimentalism
and dogmatic idealism signify more or less consistently the abstract
isolation of the scientific and philosophical motives.
There is already a touch of quaintness in both of these attitudes. We of
the present are in the habit of acknowledging the autonomy of science,
and the unimpeachable validity of the results of experimental research
in so far as they are sanctioned by the consensus of experts. But at the
same time we recognize the definiteness of the task of science, and the
validity of such reservations as may be made from a higher critical
point of view. Science is to be transcended in so far as it is
understood as a whole. Philosophy is critically empirical; empirical,
because it regards all _bona fide_ descriptions of experience as
knowledge; critical, because attentive to the conditions of both general
and special knowledge. And in terms of a critical empiricism so defined,
it is one of the problems of philosophy _to define and appraise the
generating problem of science_, and so to determine the value
assignable to natural laws in the whole system of knowledge.
[Sidenote: The Spheres of Philosophy and Science.]
Sect. 40. If this be the true function of philosophy with reference to
science, several current notions of the relations of the spheres of
these disciplines may be disproved. In the first place, philosophy will
not be all the sciences regarded as one science. Science tends to unify
without any higher criticism. The various sciences already regard the
one nature as their common object, and the one system of interdependent
laws as their common achievement. The philosopher who tries to be all
science at once fails ignominiously because he tries to replace the work
of a specialist with the work of a dilettante; and if philosophy be
identical with that body of truth accumulated and organized by the
cooperative activity of scientific men, then philosophy is a name and
there is no occasion for the existence of the philosopher as such.
Secondly, philosophy will not be the assembling of the sciences; for
such would be a merely clerical work, and the philosopher would much
better be regarded as non-existent than as a book-keeper. Nor, thirdly,
is philosophy an auxiliary discipline that may be called upon in
emergencies for the solution of some baffling problem of science. A
problem defined by science must be solved in the scientific manner.
Science will accept no aid from the gods when engaged in her own
campaign, but will fight it out according to her own principles of
warfare. And as long as science moves in her own plane, she can
acknowledge no permanent barriers. There is then no need of any
superscientific research that shall replace, or piece together, or
extend the work of science. But the savant is not on this account in
possession of the entire field of knowledge. It is true that he is not
infrequently moved to such a conviction when he takes us about to view
his estates. Together we ascend up into heaven, or make our beds in
sheol, or take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts
of the sea--and look in vain for anything that is not work done, or work
projected, by natural science. Persuade him, however, to _define_ his
estates, and he has circumscribed them. In his definition he must employ
conceptions more fundamental than the working conceptions that he
employs within his field of study. Indeed, in viewing his task as
definite and specific he has undertaken the solution of the problem of
philosophy. The logical self-consciousness has been awakened, and there
is no honorable way of putting it to sleep again. This is precisely
what takes place in any account of the generating problem of science. To
define science is to define at least one realm that is other than
science, the realm of active intellectual endeavor with its own proper
categories. One cannot reflect upon science and assign it an end, and a
method proper to that end, without bringing into the field of knowledge
a broader field of experience than the field proper to science, broader
at any rate by the presence in it of the scientific activity itself.
Here, then, is the field proper to philosophy. The scientist _qua_
scientist is intent upon his own determinate enterprise. The philosopher
comes into being as one who is interested in observing what it is that
the scientist is so intently doing. In taking this interest he has
accepted as a field for investigation that which he would designate as
the totality of interests or the inclusive experience. He can carry out
his intention of defining the scientific attitude only by standing
outside it, and determining it by means of nothing less than an
exhaustive searching out of all attitudes. Philosophy is, to be sure,
itself a definite activity and an attitude, but an attitude required by
definition to be conscious of itself, and, if you please, conscious of
its own consciousness, until its attitude shall have embraced in its
object the very principle of attitudes. Philosophy defines itself and
all other human tasks and interests. None have furnished a clearer
justification of philosophy than those men of scientific predilections
who have claimed the title of agnostics. A good instance is furnished by
a contemporary physicist, who has chosen to call his reflections
"antimetaphysical."
"Physical science does not pretend to be a _complete_ view of
the world; it simply claims that it is working toward such a
complete view in the future. The highest philosophy of the
scientific investigator is precisely this _toleration_ of an
incomplete conception of the world and the preference for it,
rather than an apparently perfect, but inadequate
conception."[120:1]
It is apparent that if one were to challenge such a statement, the issue
raised would at once be philosophical and not scientific. The problem
here stated and answered, requires for its solution the widest
inclusiveness of view, and a peculiar interest in critical reflection
and logical coordination.
[Sidenote: The Procedure of a Philosophy of Science.]
Sect. 41. One may be prepared for a knowledge of the economic and social
significance of the railway even if one does not know a throttle from a
piston-rod, provided one has broad and well-balanced knowledge of the
interplay of human social interests. One's proficiency here requires one
to stand off from society, and to obtain a perspective that shall be as
little distorted as possible. The reflection of the philosopher of
science requires a similar quality of perspective. All knowledges,
together with the knowing of them, must be his object yonder, standing
apart in its wholeness and symmetry. Philosophy is the least dogmatic,
the most empirical, of all disciplines, since it is the only
investigation that can permit itself to be forgetful of nothing.
But the most comprehensive view may be the most distorted and false. The
true order of knowledge is the difficult task of logical analysis,
requiring as its chief essential some determination of the scope of the
working conceptions of the different independent branches of knowledge.
In the case of natural science this would mean an examination of the
method and results characteristic of this field, for the sake of
defining the kind of truth which attaches to the laws which are being
gradually formulated. But one must immediately reach either the one or
the other of two very general conclusions. If the laws of natural
science cover all possible knowledge of reality, then there is left to
philosophy only the logical function of justifying this statement. Logic
and natural science will then constitute the sum of knowledge. If, on
the other hand, it be found that the aim of natural science is such as
to exclude certain aspects of reality, then philosophy will not be
restricted to logical criticism, but will have a cognitive field of its
own. The great majority of philosophers have assumed the latter of these
alternatives to be true, while most aggressive scientists have intended
the former in their somewhat blind attacks upon "metaphysics." Although
the selection of either of these alternatives involves us in the defence
of a specific answer to a philosophical question, the issue is
inevitable in any introduction to philosophy because of its bearing upon
the extent of the field of that study. Furthermore there can be no
better exposition of the meaning of philosophy of science than an
illustration of its exercise. The following, then, is to be regarded as
on the one hand a tentative refutation of _positivism_, or the _claim of
natural science to be coextensive with knowable reality_; and on the
other hand a programme for the procedure of philosophy with reference
to natural science.
[Sidenote: The Origin of the Scientific Interest.]
Sect. 42. Science issues through imperceptible stages from organic
habits and instincts which signify the possession by living creatures of
a power to meet the environment on its own terms. Every organism
possesses such a working knowledge of nature, and among men the first
science consists in those habitual adjustments common to men and
infra-human organisms. Man is already practising science before he
recognizes it. As _skill_ it distinguishes itself early in his history
from lore, or untested tradition. Skill is familiarity with general
kinds of events, together with ability to identify an individual with
reference to a kind, and so be prepared for the outcome. Thus man is
inwardly prepared for the alternation of day and night, and the periods
of the seasons. He practically anticipates the procession of natural
events in the countless emergencies of his daily life. But science in
the stricter sense begins when skill becomes _free_ and _social_.
[Sidenote: Skill as Free.]
Sect. 43. Skill may be said to be _free_ when the essential terms of the
action have been abstracted from the circumstances attending them in
individual experiences, and are retained as ideal plans applicable to
any practical occasion. The monkey who swings with a trapeze from his
perch on the side of the cage, counts upon swinging back again without
any further effort on his own part. His act and its successful issue
signify his practical familiarity with the natural motions of bodies. We
can conceive such a performance to be accompanied by an almost entire
failure to grasp its essentials. It would then be necessary for nearly
the whole situation to be repeated in order to induce in the monkey the
same action and expectation. He would require a similar form, color, and
distance. But he might, on the other hand, regard as practically
identical all suspended and freely swinging bodies capable of affording
him support, and quite independently of their shape, size, time, or
place. In this latter case his skill would be applicable to the widest
possible number of cases that could present themselves. Having a
discerning eye for essentials, he would lose no chance of a swing
through looking for more than the bare necessities. When the
physicist describes the pendulum in terms of a formula such as
t = 2pi[squareroot(l/g)] he exhibits a similar discernment. He has
found that the time occupied by an oscillation of any pendulum may be
calculated exclusively in terms of its length and the acceleration due
to gravity. The monkey's higher proficiency and the formula alike
represent a knowledge that is free in the sense that it is contained in
terms that require no single fixed context in immediacy. The knowledge
is valid wherever these essential terms are present; and calculations
may be based upon these essential terms, while attendant circumstances
vary _ad infinitum_. Such knowledge is said to be _general_ or
_universal_.
There is another element of freedom, however, which so far has not been
attributed to the monkey's knowledge, but which is evidently present in
that of the physicist. The former has a practical ability to deal with a
pendulum when he sees it. The latter, on the other hand, knows about a
pendulum whether one be present or not. His knowledge is so retained as
always to be available, even though it be not always applicable. His
knowledge is not merely skill in treating a situation, but the
possession of resources which he may employ at whatever time, and in
whatever manner, may suit his interests. Knowing what he does about the
pendulum, he may act from the idea of such a contrivance, and with the
aid of it construct some more complex mechanism. His formulas are his
instruments, which he may use on any occasion. Suppose that a situation
with factors _a_, _b_, and _c_ requires factor _d_ in order to become
_M_, as desired. Such a situation might easily be hopeless for an
organism reacting directly to the stimulus _abc_, and yet be easily met
by a free knowledge of _d_. One who knows that _l_, _m_, and _n_ will
produce _d_, may by these means provide the missing factor, complete the
sum of required conditions, _abcd_, and so obtain the end _M_. Such
indirection might be used to obtain any required factor of the end, or
of any near or remote means to the end. There is, in fact, no limit to
the complexity of action made possible upon this basis; for since it is
available in idea, the whole range of such knowledge may be brought to
bear upon any individual problem.
[Sidenote: Skill as Social.]
Sect. 44. But knowledge of this free type becomes at the same time
_social_ or _institutional_. It consists no longer in a skilful
adaptation of the individual organism, but in a system of terms common
to all intelligence, and preserved in those books and other monuments
which serve as the articulate memory of the race. A knowledge that is
social must be composed of unequivocal conceptions and fixed symbols.
The mathematical laws of the exact sciences represent the most
successful attainment of this end so far as form is concerned.
Furthermore, the amount of knowledge may now be increased from
generation to generation through the service of those who make a
vocation of its pursuit. Natural science is thus a cumulative racial
proficiency, which any individual may bring to bear upon any emergency
of his life.
[Sidenote: Science for Accommodation and Construction.]
Sect. 45. Such proficiency as science affords is in every case the
anticipation of experience. This has a twofold value for mankind, that
of _accommodation_, and that of _construction_. Primitively, where mere
survival is the function of the organism as a whole, the value of
accommodation is relatively fundamental. The knowledge of what may be
expected enables the organism to save itself by means of its own
counter-arrangement of natural processes. Construction is here for the
sake of accommodation. But with the growth of civilization construction
becomes a positive interest, and man tends to save himself for definite
ends. Accommodation comes to take place for the sake of construction.
Science then supplies the individual with the ways and means wherewith
to execute life purposes which themselves tend to assume an absolute
value that cannot be justified merely on the ground of science.
[Sidenote: Method and Fundamental Conceptions of Natural Science. The
Descriptive Method.]
Sect. 46. If natural science be animated by any special cognitive
interest, this motive should appear in the development of its method and
fundamental conceptions. If that interest has been truly defined, it
should now enable us to understand the progressive and permanent in
scientific investigation as directly related to it. For the aim of any
discipline exercises a gradual selection from among possible methods,
and gives to its laws their determinate and final form.
The _descriptive method_ is at the present day fully established. A
leading moral of the history of science is the superior usefulness of an
exact account of the workings of nature to an explanation in terms of
some qualitative potency. Explanation has been postponed by enlightened
science until after a more careful observation of actual processes shall
have been made; and at length it has been admitted that there is no need
of any explanation but perfect description. Now the practical use of
science defined above, requires no knowledge beyond the actual order of
events. For such a purpose sufficient reason signifies only sufficient
conditions. All other considerations are irrelevant, and it is proper
to ignore them. Such has actually been the fate of the so-called
metaphysical solution of special problems of nature. The case of Kepler
is the classic instance. This great scientist supplemented his laws of
planetary motion with the following speculation concerning the agencies
at work:
"We must suppose one of two things: either that the moving
spirits, in proportion as they are more removed from the sun,
are more feeble; or that there is one moving spirit in the
centre of all the orbits, namely, in the sun, which urges each
body the more vehemently in proportion as it is nearer; but in
more distant spaces languishes in consequence of the
remoteness and attenuation of its virtue."[129:2]
The following passage from Hegel affords an interesting analogy:
"The moon is the waterless crystal which seeks to complete
itself by means of our sea, to quench the thirst of its arid
rigidity, and therefore produces ebb and flow."[129:3]
No scientist has ever sought to refute either of these theories. They
have merely been neglected.
They were advanced in obedience to a demand for the ultimate
explanation of the phenomena in question, and were obtained by applying
such general conceptions as were most satisfying to the reasons of their
respective authors. But they contributed nothing whatsoever to a
practical familiarity with the natural course of events, in this case
the times and places of the planets and the tides. Hence they have not
been used in the building of science. In our own day investigators have
become conscious of their motive, and do not wait for historical
selection to exclude powers and reasons from their province. They
deliberately seek to formulate exact descriptions. To this end they
employ symbols that shall serve to identify the terms of nature, and
formulas that shall define their systematic relationship. These systems
must be exact, or deductions cannot be made from them. Hence they tend
ultimately to assume a mathematical form of expression.
[Sidenote: Space, Time, and Prediction.]
Sect. 47. But science tends to employ for these systems only such
conceptions as relate to _prediction_; and of these the most fundamental
are _space_ and _time_. The first science to establish its method was
the science of astronomy, where measurement and computation in terms of
space and time were the most obvious means of description; and the
general application of the method of astronomy by Galileo and Newton, or
the development of mechanics, is the most important factor in the
establishment of modern science upon a permanent working basis. The
persistence of the term _cause_, testifies to the fact that science is
primarily concerned with the determination of _events_. Its definitions
of objects are means of identification, while its laws are dynamical,
_i. e._, have reference to the conditions under which these objects
arise. Thus the chemist may know less about the properties of water than
the poet; but he is pre-eminently skilled in its production from
elements, and understands similarly the compounds into which it may
enter. Now the general conditions of all anticipation, whereby it
becomes exact and verifiable, are spacial and temporal. A predictable
event must be assigned to what is here now, or there now; or what is
here then, or there then. An experimentally verifiable system must
contain space-time variables, for which can be substituted the here and
now of the experimenter's immediate experience. Hence science deals
primarily with calculable places and moments. The mechanical theory of
nature owes its success to a union of space and time through its
conceptions of _matter_ and _motion_.[132:4] And the projected theory of
energetics must satisfy the same conditions.
[Sidenote: The Quantitative Method.]
Sect. 48. But, furthermore, science has, as we have seen, an interest in
freeing its descriptions from the peculiar angle and relativity of an
individual's experience, for the sake of affording him knowledge of that
with which he must meet. Science enlightens the will by acquainting it
with that which takes place in spite of it, and for which it must hold
itself in readiness. To this end the individual benefits himself in so
far as he eliminates himself from the objects which he investigates. His
knowledge is useful in so far as it is valid for his own indefinitely
varying stand-points, and those of other wills recognized by him in his
practical relations. But in attempting to describe objects in terms
other than those of a specific experience, science is compelled to
describe them in terms of one another. For this purpose _the
quantitative method_ is peculiarly serviceable. With its aid objects
permit themselves to be described as multiples of one another, and as
occupying positions in relation to one another. When all objects are
described strictly in terms of one another, they are expressed in terms
of arbitrary units, and located in terms of arbitrary spacial or
temporal axes of reference. Thus there arises the universe of the
scientific imagination, a vast complexity of material displacements and
transformations, without color, music, pleasure, or any of all that rich
variety of qualities that the least of human experiences contains. It
does not completely rationalize or even completely describe such
experiences, but formulates their succession. To this end they are
reduced to terms that correspond to no specific experience, and for this
very reason may be translated again into all definable hypothetical
experiences. The solar system for astronomy is not a bird's-eye view of
elliptical orbits, with the planets and satellites in definite phases.
Nor is it this group of objects from any such point of view, or from any
number of such points of view; but a formulation of their motions that
will serve as the key to an infinite number of their appearances. Or,
consider the picture of the ichthysauria romping in the mesozoic sea,
that commonly accompanies a text-book of geology. Any such picture, and
all such pictures, with their coloring and their temporal and spacial
perspective, are imaginary. No such special and exclusive manifolds can
be defined as having been then and there realized. But we have a
geological knowledge of this period, that fulfils the formal demands of
natural science, in so far as we can construct this and countless other
specific experiences with reference to it.
[Sidenote: The General Development of Science.]
Sect. 49. Science, then, is to be understood as springing from the
practical necessity of anticipating the environment. This anticipation
appears first as congenital or acquired reactions on the part of the
organism. Such reactions imply a fixed coordination or system in the
environment whereby a given circumstance determines other circumstances;
and science proper arises as the formulation of such systems. The
requirement that they shall apply to the phenomena that _confront_ the
will, determines their spacial, temporal, and quantitative form. The
progress of science is marked by the growth of these conceptions in the
direction of comprehensiveness on the one hand, and of refinement and
delicacy on the other. Man lives in an environment that is growing at
the same time richer and more extended, but with a compensatory
simplification in the ever closer systematization of scientific
conceptions under the form of the order of nature.
[Sidenote: The Determination of the Limits of Natural Science.]
Sect. 50. At the opening of this chapter it was maintained that it is a
function of philosophy to criticise science through its generating
problem, or its self-imposed task viewed as determining its province and
selecting its categories. The above account of the origin and method of
science must suffice as a definition of its generating problem, and
afford the basis of our answer to the question of its limits. Enough has
been said to make it clear that philosophy is not in the field of
science, and is therefore not entitled to contest its result in detail
or even to take sides within the province of its special problems.
Furthermore, philosophy should not aim to restrain science by the
imposition of external barriers. Whatever may be said of the sufficiency
of its categories in any region of the world, that body of truth of
which mathematics, mechanics, and physics are the foundations, must be
regarded as a whole that tends to be all-comprehensive in its own terms.
There remains for philosophy, then, the critical examination of these
terms, and the appraisal as a whole of the truth that they may express.
[Sidenote: Natural Science is Abstract.]
Sect. 51. The impossibility of embracing the whole of knowledge within
natural science is due to the fact that the latter is _abstract_. This
follows from the fact that natural science is governed by a selective
interest. The formulation of definitions and laws in exclusively
mechanical terms is not due to the exhaustive or even pre-eminent
reality of these properties, but to their peculiar serviceableness
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