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diff --git a/78763-0.txt b/78763-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ccf5cd7 --- /dev/null +++ b/78763-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6918 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78763 *** + + + MODERN THINKERS + AND + PRESENT PROBLEMS + + AN APPROACH TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY + THROUGH ITS HISTORY + + BY + EDGAR A. SINGER, Jr., Ph.D. + + PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY + IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA + + + NEW YORK + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + 1923 + + + + + Copyright, 1923, + BY + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + + + PRINTED IN + UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + + PREFACE + + +These papers, which had been written from time to time and for various +occasions, have been brought together without any attempt to make +them tell a smooth unbroken story, yet not without regard to their +connectedness. They have sometimes served me to bring before the mind +of youth certain problems on which philosophers have thought again and +again. But if they have had any interest for youth, if they are to have +any for maturity, it can only be because the names that stand over the +chapters might, if moments had names, be those of moments in each man’s +history. + +And as such, unless I have altogether failed to make my characters +real, these names will be recognized. Who has not sometime been that +Bruno who stepped from his Father’s House, where all had revolved so +solicitously about himself, to find without the cold stars gazing down +on his atomy from their places in endless emptiness? + +Who has not come to feel, with Spinoza, those inviolable laws of +mechanism which govern the world about him creeping into his own inmost +being, threatening there all that he had so simply and yet so dearly +clung to as his freedom and autonomy? + +How many reflecting in their maturity on the unquestioning faiths +of their childhood have thought to bring these to the test of such +experience as natural science depends on, only to find, as Hume found, +these faiths unconfirmed? + +And of those who have lived through this moment of disillusionment, +there will always be some who will have come in their own way to the +position severe reasoning forced on Kant: The spiritual aspects of +reality are not issues of science and intellection, but belong to that +other order of truth grasped by the “practical reason.” + +Others, meanwhile, will have refused to let their speculation go beyond +the insight experience yields, and of these some at least will have +found that experience holds out nothing hopeful for now or forever. +They will have seen with Schopenhauer into the “deep abyss” and found +at the bottom of it only this counsel: Not-being is better than being. + +Or if perhaps they have for a moment thought, with Nietzsche, that +evolutionary science had brought to view a goal that gave heart to the +pitiless struggle of life by holding before it the vision of the “far +future man,” they may in the end have come to see beyond this Superman. +But to have seen beyond him nothing but the super-superman is to have +seen the goal vanish and the heart lose its hope. + +And what then? The pages on “Pragmatism” and on “Progress” may offer +suggestions of an answer. They are still historical in their spirit, +and like those that had gone before them mean to illustrate, not to +demonstrate or affirm. They, too, would stand for moments of any +thoughtful life and will have done all they were intended to do if they +inform such a life with, and give it a sense of attachment to the world +that has gone before and is going on ’round. + +But if one would at the outset know something of what the writer +suspects to be the outcome of ordered and historically guided +reflection on these subjects, let him turn to the closing chapter, if +not for encouragement then for warning. + + * * * * * + +Every one will remember the word to his reader with which Montaigne +closes the preface to his Essays. ’Tis but of himself he would write +and “it is then no reason thou shouldst employ thy time about so +frivolous and vain a subject. Therefore farewell.” + +I cannot close _my_ preface without confessing a misgiving that must +have beset everyone who ever wrote of the past: that whereas he set out +to lose himself in history, he may have found in history nothing but +himself. But on the bare chance of this having befallen me, I need not +say “farewell” beforehand; for well I know no reader will accompany me +far through this past save one who finds _him_self there too. + + + + + TABLE OF CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + + I. Giordano Bruno, 1548-1600 3 + + II. Benedict de Spinoza 1632-1677 37 + + III. A Disciple of Spinoza (An Illustration) 65 + + IV. David Hume, 1711-1776 97 + + V. Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804 129 + + VI. Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860 155 + + VII. Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900 183 + + VIII. Pragmatism 213 + + IX. Progress 249 + + X. Royce on Love and Loyalty 283 + + XI. Retrospect and Prospect 303 + + + + +I + +GIORDANO BRUNO + +1548-1600 + + +The straightest way to the heart of old matters is an old letter. Here +is one written on the twenty-third of May, 1592, by a gentleman of +Venice to the Father of the Venetian Inquisition. + +“Very Reverend Father and Most-to-be-observed Sir: + +“I, Gioanni Mocenigo, son of the Clarissimo Messer Marcoantonio, +compelled by my conscience and ordered by my confessor, denounce to +Your Very Reverend Paternity Giordano Bruno of Nola, whom I have heard +say on various occasions when he was conversing with me in my own +house, that Catholics do but blaspheme when they hold the Bread to be +transubstantiated into the Flesh; that he is against the Mass; that +no religion satisfies him; that Christ was a charlatan who, since he +resorted to tricks to fool people, might well enough have foreseen +that he would die a criminal’s death; that there is no distinction +of Persons in God; ... that the world is eternal and that there are +an infinite number of worlds, and that God is continually making an +infinity of them because He wants as many as He can have; that Christ +performed specious miracles; that he was a magician and the apostles +were magicians too.”... + +The letter runs on in breathless denunciation, but already one begins +to make out the image of Bruno reflected in the average mind of his +time. The limited intelligence of Mocenigo has honestly misunderstood +some of Bruno’s utterances, his malice has distorted others; but the +perversity of the whole is not due to these faults of detail. Lost in +this jumble of stock heresies lies hidden a great idea, the greatest +perhaps that has ever been contributed by a single mind to the cause of +our science. “And he says the world is eternal and that there are an +infinity of worlds.” This sentence has brought the old world to an end, +has shattered the heavens under which Christendom was then living, yet +it falls on the ear of its time with no more meaning or portent than a +doubt respecting the doctrine of transubstantiation or the authenticity +of miracles. Bruno, throughout the course of his driven life and up to +the moment of his tragic death, knew most forms of martyrdom. He bore +none of these meekly, for his was a lusty soul that did not love to +suffer. But neither the hatred nor the cruelty of his world seems to +have hurt him so to the quick as did its stupidity. Doubt him and hate +if you will; but value him you must! He was master of a great idea and +unacquainted with modesty. + +Meanwhile Mocenigo has more to say of this sinner: “He has expressed +the intention of making himself the founder of a new sect under the +name of the new philosophy. He has said that the Virgin could not have +brought a child into the world, and that our Catholic faith is full +of blasphemies against the majesty of God; that it would be better to +suppress the largesses of wrangling friars because they befoul the +world; that they are all asses and that our common opinions are the +teaching of asses; that we have no proof that our faith has merit +with God; that the simple rule of not doing unto others what we would +not have done unto us is sufficient for right living.”... Perhaps I +may stop here. Evidently one who could be guilty of all these follies +would be ingenious in inventing others, and Mocenigo’s letter may run +endlessly on. + +While this letter was writing, Bruno lay locked in a room of Mocenigo’s +house. “I had thought to learn from him,” Mocenigo explains, “not +knowing him to be the wicked man he is, and having noted all these +things to lay before your Very Reverend Paternity, and fearing that he +would take his departure as he said he wished to do, I have locked him +in a room at your disposal. As I think him possessed of the devil, I +hope you will decide quickly what is to be done with him....” + + * * * * * + +It has sometimes been wondered how Bruno came to accept the invitation +of Mocenigo to take up his residence in Venice. Italy was for him a +place of such peril that it seems incredible he should have ventured to +set foot in it. “Tell me one thing more,” concludes a letter written +in this same year 1592 by a gentleman of Bologna to a friend in Padua, +“tell me one thing more. Giordano Bruno, whom you knew at Wittenberg, +the Nolan, is said to be living among you just now at Padua. Is it +really so? What sort of man is this that he dares to enter Italy, which +he left in exile as he himself used to confess? I wonder, I wonder. I +cannot yet believe the rumor, although I have it on good authority. You +shall tell me whether it is true.” And history has wondered all the +more seeing that Bruno himself had long before prophesied the result. +“Torches,” he had written, “fifty or a hundred, will not fail me though +the march be at noonday should it be my fate to die in a Catholic +country.” + +So far as documents furnish any answer to this question, it lies +suggested in a second letter written by Mocenigo to the Holy +Inquisition two days after the denunciation. “In the course of the day +that I kept Giordano Bruno locked up, I asked him whether the things +that he would not teach me, as he promised to do in return for the +many kindnesses I had done him and the many gifts that I had given +him, whether he would not consent to teach me them if I abstained +from denouncing him for all the criminal things he had uttered to me +against our Lord Jesus Christ and against the Holy Catholic Church. He +answered that he did not fear the Inquisition, for he had harmed no +one by living in his own way, and moreover he could not recall having +said anything sinful, but that if he had said such things he had said +them only to me, and he need not fear that I would do him harm in the +way I suggested.” Those who can may believe that Bruno is here telling +the truth about himself. Those who can may believe that he who eight +years before and at a safe distance from Italy had so clearly seen +the torches that awaited him there, had since grown blind to them or +indifferent. + +The next document of the trial is brief enough. Under date of the +following day--that is, Tuesday, the twenty-sixth of May--is found this +entry: “Clarissimo Dom Aloysius Fuscari presiding. Presented himself +Dom Matheus de Avantio, Captain of the Constabulary, and reported as +follows: Sabbath at three o’clock of the night,[1] I arrested Giordano +Bruno of Nola, whom I found in a house over against Saint Samuels, in +which dwells the Clarissimo Ser Gioanni Mocenigo, and I have imprisoned +him in the Prisons of the Holy Office, and this I have done by order of +this Holy Tribunal.” + +The doors of the prison closing on Bruno bring to an end the story of +his life, but from behind these doors there come to us fragments of the +story itself as Bruno retells it to his judges. For on the very day +of his arrest he is examined by a tribunal composed of the Apostolic +Nuncio, the Patriarch of Venice, the Very Reverend Father Inquisitor. +Before these, as the clerk of the tribunal records it, was brought a +certain man of ordinary height with a chestnut beard, who, when he +had been admonished to speak the truth, and before any question could +be put to him, burst out of his own accord: “I will tell the truth. +Several times have I been threatened with being brought before this +Holy Office, but I have always taken the threat for a joke, because +I am ever ready to give account of myself.” Whereupon he tells how, +having found himself at Frankfurt the previous year, he received there +two letters from Gioanni Mocenigo, inviting him to come to Venice to +instruct Mocenigo in the art of memory and the art of invention, for +which this Venetian gentleman had promised to pay him well and treat +him in a way that should content him. And so Bruno had come to Venice +seven or eight months before, living first in lodgings, then for a +brief space in Padua, until some two months prior to his arrest he had +taken up his residence in Mocenigo’s own house. We already know how, +“compelled by his conscience and ordered by his confessor,” Mocenigo +finally disposed of his guest. + +Then Bruno questioned by the tribunal, laid before it a formal account +of his life. “My name is Giordano Bruno, of the family of the Bruni, of +the city of Nola, twelve miles from Naples. In this place I was born +and raised, and my profession was and is letters and the sciences. My +father was named Gioanni, and my mother Fraulissa Savolina, and my +father’s calling was that of a soldier. He is dead since, and my mother +too. + +“I am about forty-four years of age, and I was born, so far as I have +heard from my people, in the year 1548. I remained in Naples learning +the humanities, logic, and dialectics until fourteen years of age ... +and then I took the habit of Saint Dominic in the monastery or convent +of Saint Dominic in Naples, and was invested by a Padre who was then +prior of that convent, called Maestro Ambrosio Pasqua. When the year +of probation was passed, I was admitted by him to profession, which +was solemnly made in the same convent.... Later I was promoted to +holy orders and at the usual season to the priesthood. I sang my first +mass in Campagnia, a city of the same state at a distance from Naples, +residing the while in a convent of the order, the San Bartholomeo, and +continued in the religious habit of Saint Dominic, celebrating masses +and the divine offices, obedient to the superior of the Order and to +the priors of the monasteries and convents where I was stationed until +1576....” + +I have not wanted to interrupt Bruno, nor to hurry him in his story, +tedious as it is in the telling. Little event after little event of his +secular and of his religious life befalls with the trivial monotony +of dropping rain. But is it not just so that these little events and +endless others like them must have fallen on the soul of the living +Bruno, soaking in, soaking in, unnoticed as rain, until his very humors +ran with their humor? Now their humor was the spirit of the old world, +the spirit of his Father’s House. Would it not be curious if, having +pulled down this ridiculous old dwelling and in the very act of dancing +among its ruins, Bruno should suddenly come to see that it was the +only house his soul, being such a soul as it was, could dwell in? If +something of this kind did not happen at a moment of his life we are +fast approaching, then only the gods know what did happen. But I am +anticipating, or rather laying up reflections against our hour of need. +For the moment we have no more than come to the day in Bruno’s life +when he stepped out of his Father’s House to make his way _ins Freie +hinaus_. + + * * * * * + +Fifty years ago, before Berti had unearthed the documents of this +trial, it was difficult to trace the life of Bruno. Since then it has +become well-nigh impossible. Documents are a great embarrassment to the +conscientious historian. They are there, these documents, and have to +be put in the text; the truth about the case must be relegated to the +foot-notes. Now the text runs in this wise: “In 1576 ... I was in Rome +at the Convent of Minerva, obedient to the orders of Maestro Sisto de +Luca, Procurator of the Order. Thither I had gone to present myself +because at Naples two processes had been instituted against me, the +first for having given away certain images of the saints and retaining +only a crucifix, it being thought that this showed a lack of respect +for the images of the saints; and the other for having said to a novice +who was reading a story of the Seven Beatitudes in verse, What did he +think he was doing with a book like that?--why didn’t he throw it away +and read rather some other book, as the lives of the Holy Fathers? This +process was renewed at the time I went to Rome, with other articles +added to it which I do not know, for I abandoned the order and threw +aside the habit and went to Noli in the region of Genoa, where I +supported myself four or five months teaching grammar to young boys.” + +This is indeed the text, but is not a comment inevitable? What! Bruno +would have us believe that in 1576 he is of such fearful mood and timid +temper that, having no more on his conscience than the events recited, +he abandons church and country, peace and security at the mere frown of +his Order, but that in 1592, having in the meanwhile upset, smashed, +and abused the Christian world, he can look upon the Inquisition +without fear, bethinking him that he had harmed no man in living in his +own way? + +However, flee he did. What followed on this flight he recounts to his +judges as his trial proceeds. Sixteen years of as hard-driven a life +as one could wish for one’s dearest foe, from Italy to Switzerland +(to the Geneva of Calvin’s day, where one may imagine that Bruno was +as much at home as fire on an iceberg), then across to France, from +Lyons to Toulouse, from Toulouse to Paris, from France to England, from +London back to Paris, then hastily to Germany, through many German and +Bohemian cities! Sixteen years of homeless, friendless poverty, now +teaching small boys, now lecturing at great universities, now living +with fine gentlemen, received by a king or a queen, now gathering a few +curious students about him, who somehow confused the promise of the +great idea with old mysteries and the arts we call black. Until at last +we find him at Frankfurt receiving Mocenigo’s letters promising him a +home in Italy, his native land, and a treatment that should content him. + +Yet these years of travail were those in which his works were written, +the Italian dialogues in England, the Latin poems in Germany. The +great idea had received full expression, the “Excubitor,” as Bruno +called himself, the Awakener of sleeping minds, had blown his trumpet +and the walls of the world had fallen. Splendid is the enthusiasm +with which Bruno first announces this new vision of the morning: “Lo! +here is one who has swept the air, pierced the heavens, sped by the +stars and passed beyond the bounds of the world, who has annihilated +the fantastic spheres with which foolish mathematicians and vulgar +philosophers had closed us in. The key of his diligent curiosity has +opened to the view of every sense and every power of reason such +closets of truth as can be opened by us. He has stripped nature of her +robe and veil. He has given eyes to the mole, vision to the blind.... +No longer is our reason imprisoned within the confines of imaginary +heavens.... We know that there is but one heaven, one immense ether, +where magnificent fires maintain their proper distances by reason of +that eternal life in which they have part. These flaming bodies are the +ambassadors which announce the excellence of God’s glory and majesty.” + +This is indeed the voice of an Awakener. But, alas for awakeners! the +vision of the morning is never fair to those just shaken out of their +dreams. In an introductory letter to the last of the dialogues we catch +an echo of the sleeper’s complaint: “If I shoved a plow, if I kept a +flock, if I cultivated a garden, if I mended old clothes, no one would +notice me, few would consider me, not many would find fault with me, +and I could easily please everybody. But for having been studious of +the field of nature, solicitous for the pasture of the soul, enamored +of the cultivation of the mind, a very Daedalus fashioning raiment for +the intellect, every passer-by threatens me, every one who sees me +attacks me, who comes upon me rends me, who lays hold on me devours. +It is not one, it is not a few; it is many, it is almost all. If you +would know why this is, I will tell you the reason of it--I despise the +crowd, I hate the mob, the multitude contents me not. One thing I love, +one thing for whose sake I am free in bondage, content in pain, rich +in poverty, alive in very death. One thing for whose sake I envy not +those who are slaves in their liberty, troubled in their pleasure, poor +in their riches, dead in their life. Their body is the chain that binds +them, in their mind is the hell that tortures them, in their spirit +the falsehood that makes them sick, in their soul the lethargy that +kills. Not theirs the greatness of mind which frees, the breadth of +view which ennobles. Not theirs the splendor which illumines, nor the +science which gives life.” It is a brave, even an over-brave flourish +with which Bruno ends this proemial epistle: “And so the gods deliver +me from all those who unjustly hate me, and my God be always propitious +unto me!... The stars let my sowing fit the field and the field my +sowing, that the world be made content with the useful and glorious +fruits of my labors!... And if I err, I truly do not believe myself +to err; whether speaking or writing, I do not dispute for the love +of victory.... For love of true wisdom and desire for true insight I +exhaust, I crucify, I torture myself....” + + * * * * * + +Brave is the flourish, how over-brave we realize with unexpected +intensity as we follow this solemn trial to its last scene. Having +recounted the episodes of his life, Bruno proceeds to the explanation +and defense of his teachings. At first the new philosophy is presented +with no little boldness and confidence, its difference from the formal +teaching of Christianity admitted and even pointed out. But always with +a certain reserve, as of one who would say, “Yes, I have broken the +frame and melted the flesh of your religion, but if you will let me, I +will show how much more nobly its divine spirit dwells in the new body +I have made for it.” Now this new body differs in no important way from +the physical universe as we see it today, so that Bruno’s problem has +been the problem of all Christian thought since his time. What Aquinas +had done in the way of making the spirit of Christianity at home in +the finite heaven-enclosed world of Aristotle, that Bruno felt must +be done over again, now that the world was no longer finite and the +distinction between Heaven and Earth had vanished. This is the thought +that pervades the first days of Bruno’s account of himself before the +Venetian tribunal, but as one by one the accusations of Mocenigo’s +letter fall on him, he seems to lose hope and confidence in himself. He +denies, and denies, and denies! + +I am not convinced that he is telling the truth in these denials. I am +not convinced that Mocenigo’s account of him, barring a few obvious +misunderstandings, is false in spirit. No more am I convinced that +Bruno has been frightened into lying himself out of danger. He seems +to me to say, “Alas! if these matters on which you question me are of +the essence of Christianity, then have I been wrong in supposing that +the old wine can be put in the new bottle.” Driven and perplexed, he +has to decide which lies nearest to his heart, the new bottle or the +old wine. Remember him fleeing in his early manhood from his Father’s +House, ostensibly in childish fear and unwillingly, but really perhaps +because he needed space, endless space, through which to follow the new +idea. Remember him coming back to Italy sixteen years later, ostensibly +because he realized that his manner of living and thinking had hurt +no man and so ought to bring down no judgment on his head, but really +perhaps because the craving for the old wine was deeper in him than +the enthusiasm for the new bottle. Perhaps then we can understand the +closing scene of his trial at Venice. “It may be,” he cries, “in the +long time that has passed I have committed other sins and departed from +the Church in other ways than those which I have explained, and that +I have not cleansed myself of all matters of censure, but although +I have thought much over these things, I can recall nothing more. I +have confessed, and I now confess anew my errors, and I am here in the +hands of Your Most Illustrious Lordships to receive punishment for the +saving of my soul. My soul cannot express the depth of its contrition +for my fault.” And falling on his knees, he said, “I humbly ask pardon +of the Lord God and of Your Most Illustrious Lordships for all the +errors which I have committed and which I now stand ready to expiate +in such wise as your wisdom may think proper and judge expedient for +my soul. And moreover, I beg that you give me a punishment which shall +exceed in severity rather than set any public example which may throw +dishonor on the sacred religious habit I have worn. And if by God’s +mercy and the mercy of Your Most Illustrious Lordships, life shall be +spared me, I promise to make such notable reform of my life as shall +pay for the scandal I have given with equal and greater edification.” + +In this unhappy posture I leave Bruno the man to take up the story of +his great idea. We shall see him once more indeed, at the moment when, +eight years later, he calmly dies for the idea he now so abjectly +abandons; but no understanding of the alternating enthusiasm and +despair that filled this life can afford to neglect the qualities of +the gospel it stood for, forsook, then died for in the end. + + * * * * * + +Like all very great ideas, this one is of the simplest. It begins with +the observation that the flame of a candle grows bigger as we approach +it, smaller as we recede from it. Nothing very new in this, you say, +nor very imposing. No, it is the next step that was so new in Bruno’s +day, and of such tremendous destructive and creative power. Yet it is +just as simple as the first. What is true of a candle flame must be +true of a sun and of a star. Is it not indeed simple? Yes, but in all +the long while the world had lasted it had occurred to no one before +Bruno to seize upon this simple idea and to follow whither it led. It +led far, wonderfully far. It led Bruno to journey in imagination out +and out toward those most distant stars that were then called fixed, +and were indeed supposed to be fixed in one great sphere that enclosed +all things, beyond which was nothing, and not even nothing, for there +was no beyond; space ended where matter ended, at the walls of the +world. But Bruno as he journeyed saw this great sun of ours growing +smaller and smaller as he receded from it, and yonder star growing +larger and larger as he approached it, until the most wonderful thing +happened. The sun began to look more and more like a star, and the star +more and more like a sun. There was now no escaping the conclusion--the +stars that had been called fixed are other suns, our sun but a +near-lying star. + +A child might have grasped this idea which brought a world to an end. +Do I say a child? It may be that Bruno was that child, for his mind +throughout had much of the waywardness, something of the random and +tumultuous association of a child’s mind. The past might interest him, +might even inspire him; it never had the power of capturing and holding +him. But childish as it was, this idea did destroy the old world, for +if stars were in no wise different from the sun we know, nor the sun +from a star, evidently there was at least one star that was not fixed +to the ethereal sphere that contained all things. There could then be +no longer any motive for supposing these other suns to be all at the +same distance from the center. They might be anywhere, they might even +(Bruno had this very modern idea) be moving with respect to each other. +Inevitably Bruno must come to look upon the stars as suns sprinkled +irregularly throughout the regions of infinite space. + +Nor was this all. Coming after Copernicus as he did, Bruno had from +the first grasped with enthusiasm Copernicus’ idea that not the +Earth but the Sun was the center of the sphere. I say the center of +the sphere, for we must remember that Copernicus never touched the +boundary of the world, but only changed its center from Earth to Sun. +In Copernicus’ thought we still lived within a star-spangled heaven. +But now that Bruno had shattered this heaven and sprinkled these stars +through space, he could not well help surrounding those other suns with +planets, until not merely an infinity of suns but an infinity of solar +systems spread themselves out before his imagination. But could he stop +here? When one has once destroyed the distinction between Heaven and +Earth, when one has once begun to think of nature as everywhere alike, +it is not easy to stop. Was not one of the planets making its journey +around our sun inhabited with manifold forms of life? Then why should +they not all be? And is it likely that one solar system should be a +scene of life and the infinity of others not? So it was that Bruno, +looking out into space, saw as many inhabited globes as there were +“hundreds of thousands of stars.” + + * * * * * + +These are the matters which Bruno brought back with him from his +journey to the stars and beyond the confines of the world. I have told +them simply, for eloquence is wasted in describing such feats of the +imagination. They are of themselves eloquent. And we recall with what +enthusiasm Bruno himself recounted his journey. Is it not possible, +however, that when he returned to earth and told his journeyings to +men, he came to perceive, as these men at once perceived, that his new +vision was not all made of beauty? Is there not in this infinite cosmos +that which may depress and even terrify? + +In his “Garden of Epicurus,” Anatole France has put the two worlds side +by side. One has only to do this to feel that Bruno, who at first held +out his hands to the new vision, may afterwards have snatched them back +again to shut it out. + +“We have some trouble,” says France, “in imagining the state of mind +of a man in olden times who firmly believed that the Earth was the +center of the Universe, and that all the stars turned round it. He felt +under his feet damned souls writhing in flames, and perhaps he had seen +with his own eyes, and smelled with his own nostrils the sulphurous +fumes of Hell escaping from some fissures in the rocks. Lifting his +head he contemplated the spheres, ... those bearing the Moon, Mercury, +Venus--the one that Dante visited on Good Friday of the year 1300--the +Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, then the incorruptible firmament from which +the stars were suspended like lamps. Beyond, his mind’s eye discerned +the Ninth Heaven to which the saints were rapt, the Primum Mobile or +Crystalline; and finally Empyrion, dwelling of the blessed, toward +which, he firmly hoped, two angels robed in white would bear away, +as it were a little child, his soul washed in baptism and perfumed +with the oil of the last sacraments. In those days God had no other +children than man, and all his creation was ordered in a fashion at +once childlike and poetic like an immense cathedral. Thus imagined, the +universe was so simple that it was represented in its entirety with its +true figure and motions in certain great clocks run by machinery and +appropriately painted.” + +[Illustration: Dante’s Conception of the Universe + +(From Hearnshaw’s _Mediaeval Contributions to Modern Civilization_.)] + +But now! “We are done with the spheres and the planets under which +one was born lucky or unlucky, jovial or saturnine. The solid vault +of the firmament is shattered. Our eye and our thought plunge into +infinite abysses of heaven. Beyond the planets we discover no longer +the Empyrion of the elect and of the angels, but a hundred millions of +rolling suns escorted by their cortège of obscure satellites invisible +to us. In the midst of this infinity of worlds our own Sun is but a +bubble of gas and our Earth but a fleck of mud.” + +The contrast speaks for itself and needs no comment. It is enough to +point out the effect it must have had upon the ethical and religious +notions of him who first realized it. What in such a world are we to +make of the central episode of Christianity? Bruno’s imagination that +had swept through space and sped by the stars had found these worlds +inhabited by beings “perhaps better, perhaps worse than we are.” If +there was no evidence that these dwellers in distant solar systems were +so much better than we as to need no saving, neither was there any +evidence that they were so much worse as to deserve none. We were no +longer the only children of God. What then? Are we to suppose that the +drama of Redemption is being enacted over and over again throughout the +infinity of worlds? Is the Son of God being sacrificed over and over +again for the sake of His other children? Is He at this moment perhaps +redeeming with His life the dwellers on some star in the night yonder? + +But destruction did not stop here. Not only the gentler aspects which +Christianity had given to the sterner religion of pagandom were +threatened. That older religion itself, with its well-thought-out +theory of the relation between God and man, must either be rejected or +remodeled. For Aristotle as well as for Aquinas, God and man had formed +the real plot of the universe. God, revealing himself most clearly in +the turning of the enclosing heaven, set thereby the rest of nature in +motion and stirred things down to their very center. So that in the +region of earth, water, air and fire there came to be composed bodies +mixed of all these. They were the living beings we know, which, holding +their ingredients in proper proportion for a while, fell apart again +and passed away. + +These living beings differed in power. As we pass from the vegetable +through the animal to the human they show themselves increasingly able +to control the matter in which and of which they are. Highest of all is +the human male. It is for the sake of producing him that the mechanism +which fills the region between Heaven and Earth exists and is operated. +One might almost say that Nature is God’s workshop for producing man. +But why should God be thus interested in producing this particular kind +of animal? Aristotle’s answer comes less clearly than one could wish, +yet it comes. It is because man differs from the animals not only in +degree but in kind. He is not altogether animal. In his superior body +there is contained a soul which is not only of God’s making, but of +God’s very substance. That is why man alone can know God. It is as +though God needed to be known, recognized, reflected as in a mirror. +As for man, he is a bit of divinity momentarily estranged from his +home and dwelling, but with the privilege of returning thither can he +but free his soul from earthly and sensuous entanglements and interest +himself in knowing his Father which is in Heaven. + +And now that Bruno has destroyed this difference between Heaven and +Earth, has he not destroyed along with it the distinction between God +and man? Has not his infinite homogenous world left man a mere mite +shivering on his fleck of mud as it rolls around its bubble of gas? Man +is no longer the center of interest; he no longer plays an important +part in any thinkable plot. “Man is no more than an ant in the presence +of the infinite,” cries Bruno. “A star is no more than a man.” + +We can understand that Bruno’s awakening, with however great an +enthusiasm it may have been heralded, can be no pleasant awakening for +the sleeper. The world of his dreams was infinitely fairer and warmer +than that reality to whose garish light his eyes have been opened. It +cannot be expected that the awakened should feel any gratitude, and he +did not. But what is less obvious is the matter of Bruno’s own feeling +as the consequences of his new idea gradually unfold themselves to +him. Can that first enthusiasm be sustained to the end, or must he too +shrink before the fuller vision of what he has done? + + * * * * * + +If we were to classify men in terms of their reactions to new ideas, I +think we should all hit upon these three types. Let me call the first +the radical. He is easy to initiate into a new truth, bold to accept +it at all costs, loses at once all perspective and sees in the past +only a bundle of errors without beauty and with no other interest +than to furnish matter for jest. And then there is the conservative. +The hold that the past has on such a mind is sometimes enormous. He +is capable of clinging to it at the expense of all the rest of his +science and experience. If it has enthralled his heart and imagination, +he falls into a mood which the Renaissance called the acceptance +of “two-fold truth.” He believes against all evidence. He believes +as Tertullian had it, just because the thing is absurd. He insists +with Pascal, that the heart has its reasons which the reason cannot +understand. He is a creature of faiths and of mysticisms. Finally +there is the philosopher, the only one of the three completely made +for unhappiness. He gets no thrill from novelty. He has followed human +thought through too many revolutions to expect the most violent of +cataclysms to change things much. He struggles to keep his perspective +as he would keep his reason, and the views of older humanity do not +lose their beauty because their expression has been proved wrong. +Required to readjust his thought of yesterday to the new fact of today, +he undertakes the task cheerfully enough as part of the day’s work. +That is what yesterdays, todays, and if it may be, tomorrows are given +to him for. He measures his success by the extent to which he can mold +new thought to the satisfaction of old desire, to old desire newly +instructed. + +And Bruno--to which of these classes does he belong? Is he the radical +who would light-heartedly take his place on the fleck of mud and watch +it roll around its bubble of gas, while he laughs at his neighbors, +who in the face of such a universe charm themselves into a continued +faith that they are somehow divine souls in whom a God of Heaven is +interested? Or will he, on the other hand, become one of those thus +held by the past? Will the awakener, now himself fully awakened, try +to snatch at the fading dream and somehow manage to keep his faith in +what he knows can’t be true? Or will he set laboriously to work, as a +philosopher should, to find that interpretation of the new facts which +lies closest to the meaning, though it may differ from the verbal +expression of world-old desires and longings? + +Alas! if Bruno would but make up his mind to be any one of these three, +the task of his biographer would be easy. But the real Bruno, the +Bruno who mocked, who thought, who recanted, and who died, was not a +type. He was a man, and as he was the most human of men, he gathered +the greatest possible number of inconsistencies to his heart. Yes, +he was a radical who mocked and jeered. Yes, he was a philosopher +who labored and thought. And yes, finally, he was a mystic who could +hold as a splendid if inexplicable possession of his faith, all the +things his reason showed to be impossible. I have shown you Bruno’s +mockery reflected in the somewhat muddy and turbid medium of Mocenigo’s +denunciation. I have shown you Bruno the mystic, kneeling before the +Inquisition, completely abandoning the great idea. It remains for +me to show Bruno the philosopher, Bruno the Pantheist, Bruno the +unacknowledged inspiration of much that is recognized as great in +Spinoza and Leibnitz, the acknowledged and highly honored forerunner of +much we take to be greatest in the German Idealism that centers about +1800. + + * * * * * + +We left the great idea at the moment, when, having pierced the heavens, +it had come to realize the consequences of its act. The gentle meaning +of Christ, the sterner pagan wisdom of God and man had been lost in an +infinity that knew no enclosing heaven, in a dreary waste of sameness +that knew no distinction, not even that between man and God. Bruno the +philosopher was not one to let this work of scientific devastation +go on unchallenged. What if there were a God who could dwell just as +clearly in a heaven that was everywhere as in a Heaven that was above? +What if man could have an interest for and could serve this God, not +because he was different in kind from the ant, but because he was, or +rather in proportion as he was, different in degree? Does not the life +that quickens an animate thing pervade that thing? Is it not the same +life which in me beckons with my finger, beats with my heart, thinks +with my brain? What then if this infinite world of ours were one great +living thing made up of other living things, as our body is made up of +finger, and heart, and brain, each of which in doing its own work does +consciously or unconsciously the work of the whole? “Natura est Deus in +rebus.” This is one of the phrases Bruno found in trying to express his +philosophy. Nature is God in things, or let us put it--God is the life; +suns and planets, men and ants, falling rain and mounting mist are but +the gestures of this life. Each thinks it does what it does for its +own sake, but those who think clearest realize that the joy of their +doing as well as the solace of their undoing is the part they play in +working out the ideal of the whole. “And He lives in me as I live in my +hand”--the phrase is Von Hofmannsthal’s, the thought is Bruno’s, and it +is the whole thought of Bruno the Pantheist. + + * * * * * + +The end of this life is told in a letter written by one Gaspard Schopp +(a converted Lutheran) to his friend Rittershausen, rector of the +University of Altdorf: + +“If I write to you now, it is because this very day Giordano Bruno was +publicly burned for heresy in the Field of Flowers in front of the +theater of Pompey.... If you were in Rome, you would learn from each +and every Italian that a Lutheran was burned, and so you would be not +a little strengthened in your opinion of our savage hatred. But you +must know, my Rittershausen, that our Italians do not draw a sharp line +between heretics and heretics, nor do they know fine distinctions, +but if any one is a heretic they take him for a Lutheran, in which +simplicity I pray that God may continue them.... + +“Now Bruno was that Nolan ... a professed Dominican who some +twenty-three years agone began to doubt of Transubstantiation ... +then forthright to deny it, and likewise the virginity of the Blessed +Mary. He migrated to Geneva, ... whence, not approving himself +altogether sound in his Calvinism (than which, nevertheless, nothing +leads straighter to atheism), he was driven to Lyons, whence to +Toulouse, from whence he passed on to Paris, where he was a professor, +but extraordinarius, as he found that the professor ordinarius was +obliged to attend Mass. Thence to London, where he published a little +book called the ‘Beast Triumphant,’ meaning thereby the Pope, whom +your party is wont to honor with the name of beast.[2] From here to +Wittenberg, where, if I am not mistaken, he lectured publicly for two +years. Having gone on to Prague, he published there the works, ‘On the +Boundless,’ ‘On the Innumerable Worlds,’ and yet one other, ‘On the +Shadows of Ideas,’ in which he taught horrible and moreover most absurd +things, as that there are innumerable worlds, that the soul passes from +one body into another, ... that magic is a good thing and permissible, +the Holy Spirit is nothing but the soul of the world, and that this +was what Moses meant when he wrote, ‘The spirit of God moved on the +face of the waters,’ that the world is eternal.... In a word, whatever +is asserted by the Pagan philosophers, whatever by our older or newer +heretics he (Bruno) maintained. + +“From Prague he went on to Brunswick and Helmstadt, and there for a +time is said to have taught. Then to Frankfurt for the publishing +of certain books, and later fell into the hands of the Inquisition +at Venice, whence when they had had enough of him, he was sent to +Rome. Frequently examined by the Holy Office ... of the Inquisition, +convicted by the highest theologians, he now besought eighty days that +he might consider, now promised recantation, now defended his point +anew, now obtained another eighty days; but was really doing nothing +but make a fool of the Pontiff and the Inquisition. + +“So that, nearly eight years after he had come before the Inquisition +here, on the ninth of February in the Palace of the Grand Inquisitor, +there being present the Most Illustrious Cardinals of the Holy Office +of the Inquisition, ... theologians of counsel, and the secular +magistrate, governor of the city, Bruno was brought in, and on bended +knees heard sentence pronounced against him. And it was in this way: +the story of his life was told, of his studies and teachings, and with +what diligence and fraternal admonishment the Inquisition had sought to +effect his conversion, and what obduracy and impiety he had shown. Then +they defrocked him, as we say, and straightway excommunicated him and +handed him over to the secular arm to be punished, asking that this be +done with clemency and without the shedding of blood. + +“While this was passing he answered nothing, except this word: ‘In +greater fear, perhaps, do you impose sentence upon me than I do receive +it.’ So, taken away to prison by the governor’s lictors, he was +allowed a fortnight in case he should wish to recant his errors; but +in vain. Today he was led to the stake. When the image of our Saviour +on the Cross was shown to him as he was about to die, he turned away +his head and sullenly rejected it. In great misery he thus died, and +is gone, I think, to tell in those other worlds of his imagining after +what manner the men of Rome are wont to treat impious blasphemers....” + + * * * * * + +Surely, he came to that other world of his imagining. It is our world +and he dwells among us. Little does he remember of the men of Rome, +of their Illustrious Lordships of Venice, of all the toil and travail +of that old life of his--hardly enough to fill an idle hour in the +telling. But we know him easily for the unchanged soul he was. He +is that one who came to us of a day and opened our eyes to new and +troubling visions. “Now you are free,” he said, “be glad!” He is that +same one who stole back another day and whispered, “But you are afraid! +Remember your Father’s House, how safe it was and warm.” He may be +there to close the eyes that have seen enough, with what counsel then, +who can tell? But once he was fond of saying, “Not only he who wins +deserves the laurels; but also he who dies no coward.” + + + + +II + +BENEDICT DE SPINOZA + +1632-1677 + + +“All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.” These words +which bring to a close Spinoza’s masterpiece “Ethics, after the manner +of Geometry,” sum up the experience of a life as rare as it was +difficult. + +But then, the things that make life difficult are so much a question +of the nature that accepts or invites them! We may be sure that +few, brought to the lap of Lachesis, would have the courage to pick +therefrom Spinoza’s lot. To be born of exiled Jews, to be cast off by +family and race as an offender against holy traditions, to live then in +loneliness among Christians whose faith one does not accept, to die by +inches at the age of forty-five,--even as lives go this would hardly +be called an easy one. How seriously then must we take the sustaining +power of a philosophy which enabled Spinoza, partly accepting, partly +inviting his destiny, to lend it an aspect of calm beauty that touches +our wonder! + +One is tempted to recall the unhappy Bruno; without, tossed and +hunted; within, torn by a conflict between a new science at once grand +and desolate, and a memory of things lovable but untrue. In him a +lofty philosophy was to have quieted this struggle and consoled this +isolation but did not, unless indeed it did at that last moment when he +stood at his stake in the Field of Flowers. + +There is much likeness but an all-important difference between Bruno +and Spinoza, whose names a curious fate linked together first in +general condemnation, then in general praise. The two were alike in +this, that if anything more lonely can be conceived than the fugitive +existence of Bruno, it is the monk-like reclusion of Spinoza; if +anything more desolate than the infinite wind-swept universe of Bruno, +it is this same universe bereft of the quivering life and all-inspiring +purpose that Bruno found in it, this world left on our hands a rolling +mechanism fatal and purposeless. But the difference is profound. The +philosophy, yes, one may boldly say the religion of Spinoza, sustained +him from day to day, from hour to hour. Bruno’s was rather the poet’s +vision, vivid enough while it lasted, but dispelled by the shock of +reality to return only at such moments as that in which his life went +out. Is it in the power of a thought, is it in the temperament of a man +that this difference lies explained? + +Spinoza’s thought, whatever its worth, owned a distinguished lineage. +When in 1658 he was excommunicated by the Jews at Amsterdam, he turned +with eager curiosity to the learning if not to the faith of the +Christians. In particular the Dutch physician, Francis Van den Ende, +himself a freethinker, became his teacher and friend. From him Spinoza +acquired his knowledge of Latin and German, by him was initiated into +the sciences and introduced to the works of Giordano Bruno and of +one other destined to play a determining part in his thought, René +Descartes--“the father of modern philosophy” as he is sometimes called. + +Descartes, whose life overlaps that of Bruno at the one end and of +Spinoza at the other, is founder of the school of thought the historian +calls Rationalistic. Now a rationalist is obviously enough one who is +bent on following his reason, but reason as opposed to what? We think +first of reason as opposed to authority and revelation; but although +rationalism came inevitably to discard these sources of belief--had +already discarded them in the thought of our very Spinoza--the father +of rationalism had left some room for both; partly because it might +furnish a convenient refuge if the official church with which he +desired to live in comfortable relation should press him; partly +because Descartes was in one or two respects less of a rationalist +than his school. + +On the other hand the master was emphatic enough on the distinction +between the reason and the senses. It might seem to us moderns that the +old saying “seeing is believing,” with its implied prohibition against +believing aught that might not be seen, erred, if at all, from a very +excess of reasonableness. To Descartes, seeing with the body’s eye was +still but flimsy evidence. This organ had too often deceived him to be +implicitly trusted, and to back its testimony with that of the other +senses,--touch, taste, smell, hearing--was but to multiply unreliable +witnesses. Their combined voices might give a certain presumption in +favor of their opinion but never an assurance amounting to certainty. +Not indeed with the eye of the body but with the eye of the mind could +we see truth in its nakedness. But what is this organ, this eye of the +mind, and who is to teach us to use it? The mathematicians, Descartes +replies, have long possessed it and long used it. It is to them we must +turn for instruction. + +If we do--if we turn to Euclid, say--we find that the whole complex and +difficult body of truth that we call geometry is made to follow from a +few simple truths so certain that we call them self-evident. Why should +not all truths be susceptible of the same kind of proof? Why should +we not be able to find an axiom of axioms whose certainty was no mere +matter of observation, and why, if we find it, should we not be able to +draw from it all possible truth, as we deduce the theorems of geometry +from its axioms? + +It was this idea that Descartes followed and it was this idea that +Spinoza accepted at his hands: To construct a theory of life that +should be no mere summing up of various peoples’ experiences, but +should, after the manner of geometry, draw from an indubitable source +the certainties of morals and religion no less than the truths of +science. + +But when we learn what is this axiom of axioms that Spinoza received +from Descartes and made the fountain head of all truth, we find +ourselves spectators of one of those curious tricks of the human mind +that make its history always diverting. It may well seem to us as +though rationalism were not so much standing on its reason as standing +on its head. For that axiom which is to be the simplest and most +certain of all truths, more elementary than that 2 and 2 make 4, or +that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points,--that +axiom is the very proposition before which most of us find our reason +staggering, our faith panting and breathless. That axiom consists of +two words: “_God is_.” + +I do not propose to develop here the tortured processes of reasoning by +which the rationalists were wont to convince themselves that _what_ God +is and _that_ He is, were no mere questions of experience. It seemed +to them as though the very meaning of God assured his existence. But I +question if in the end any of our day would be strongly convinced by +their argument about it. The whole matter is of the less importance +that Spinoza’s results in the domain of ethics are not so dependent on +his method but that one may readily reword the problem of 17th century +rationalism in the language of modern science. + +Nevertheless it is in the first instance devotion to the method he had +received from Descartes that requires Spinoza to differ with his master +on two points of the greatest importance to the sequel. This God, this +“all-perfect being” as the rationalists commonly defined Him, plays a +rather capricious part in Descartes’ thinking. He is represented as the +Creator of the physical universe, and in this act of creation as quite +arbitrarily choosing this sort of a world rather than another, a world +working out a destiny that is not chosen because it is good but is good +because it is chosen of _God_. For the rest, what this end may be is +beyond the ken of human reason, and after having done homage to the +divine purpose Descartes feels at liberty to confine his attention to +studying the mechanism and reconstructing the history of nature as we +find it. + +Here one can imagine Spinoza exclaiming “What! You would follow the +guidance of the geometers, deducing all truth from the axiom of God’s +existence, and you leave it to God to decide what shall and what shall +not follow from his nature!” Do then the axioms of geometry select the +theorems they shall establish, accepting some and rejecting others +for a motive whether good or bad? No, says Spinoza, God has neither +intellect nor will: facts and laws follow from His nature as the +properties of a triangle from its definition. + +The other element of caprice in Descartes’ final picture of the +world is just _man_. He alone of all things occupying a place in +God’s universe is not subjected to mechanical law. But how, Spinoza +may well ask, can we conceive ourselves to be following the lead of +mathematicians if we violate the first principles of their science? +Does the geometry of a triangle depend upon the place in which the +triangle finds itself? How then can the laws of the behavior of bodies +depend upon these bodies being in or out of the human machine? The +human body must be determined by the same laws of physics that govern +all extended things. “And as for the mind,” Spinoza adds, “the order +and connection of its ideas are parallel to the order and connection +of the bodily states.” + +“There is,” he concludes, “in mind no absolute or free will; but the +mind is determined to this or that volition by a cause which has itself +been determined by another cause, this again by another and so on _in +infinitum_.” + + * * * * * + +That the world reflects God’s choice, that it might to a perfect +understanding reveal God’s purpose, that in it the human being is free +in body or mind; these are aspects of irrationality which Spinoza is +eager to remove from the fair creation of reason. They represent to +him last vestiges of vulgar thought of which the master had after all +been unable to rid himself. Spinoza is at his best in exposing the +psychology of the multitude with its quaint illusions respecting God +and man. In the famous appendix to the first book of the Ethics he +summons these prejudices as he calls them before the bar of reason: +“They all,” he lays it down, “depend on just this one; that men +commonly suppose all things in nature to act as they themselves do +with a view to some end, nay, even assume that God himself directs all +things to some definite end, saying that God has made all things for +man, and man that he might worship God. I shall therefore consider this +prejudice. I shall inquire in the first place why most persons assent +to it and all are by nature so prone to embrace it. In the second place +I shall show that it is false; and lastly I shall show how there have +sprung from it prejudices respecting good and evil, merit and sin, +praise and blame, beauty and ugliness, and other things of the sort.... + +“It will here suffice to assume certain facts all must admit, namely, +that all men are born ignorant of the causes of things, and that all +men have, and are conscious of having, an impulse to seek their own +advantage. From this it follows _first_ that men think themselves free +for the reason that they are conscious of their volitions and desires, +and, being ignorant of the causes by which they are led to will and +desire, they do not so much as dream of these. It follows _second_ that +men do everything with some purpose in view; that is, with a view to +the advantage they seek. Hence it is they always desire to know the +motives of action, and when they have learned these, are satisfied.” + +Against this background Spinoza sketches in with a few quick, vigorous +strokes what we may call his psychology of popular religion. + +“Since men find in themselves,” he writes, “and external to themselves, +many things which are of no small assistance in obtaining what is to +their advantage, as for example, the eyes for seeing, the teeth for +chewing, plants and animals for food, the sun for giving light, and +so on, this has led them to regard all things in nature as means to +their advantage. And knowing these means to have been discovered, not +provided by themselves, they have made this a reason for believing +that there is some one else who has provided them for their use. But +as they had never had any information concerning the character of this +being, they had to judge it from their own. Hence, they maintained +that the gods direct all things with a view to man’s advantage, to +lay men under obligation to themselves, and to be held in the highest +honor; whence it has come to pass that each one has thought out for +himself, according to his disposition, a different way of worshipping +God, that God might love him above others, and direct all nature to the +service of his ... desire. But while they sought to show that nature +does nothing uselessly (in other words nothing that is not to man’s +advantage) they seem to have shown only that nature and gods and men +are all equally mad.” + +And Spinoza seizes the opportunity to pay tribute to a respectable, +well-worn theology: + +“Just see how far the thing has been carried! Among all useful +things in nature they could not help finding a few harmful things, +as tempests, earthquakes, diseases, etc. They maintained that these +occurred because the gods were angry on account of injuries done +them by men or on account of faults committed in their worship. And +although experience daily contradicted this and showed by an infinity +of instances that good and evil fall to the lot of the pious and of the +impious indifferently, that did not make them abandon their inveterate +prejudice. They found it easier to class these facts with other unknown +things whose use they could not name and thus to retain their present +and innate condition of ignorance, than to destroy the whole fabric of +their reasoning and think out a new one. Hence they assumed that the +judgment of the gods very far surpasses man’s power of comprehension.” +This in itself, Spinoza concludes, would have been sufficient to hide +the truth forever from mankind had not science, which looks into the +why and not the wherefore of things, shown men a different standard of +truth. + +The second paragraph in which he fulfils his promise to show the folly +of the popular belief in a providence is pervaded by a dry humor: + +“I must not overlook the fact that the adherents of this doctrine +who have chosen to display their ingenuity in assigning final causes +to things, have employed in support of their doctrine a new form of +argument, namely, a reductio, not ad absurdum, but ad ignorantiam; +which shows that there was no other way to set about proving this +doctrine. If, for example, a stone has fallen from a roof upon +someone’s head and has killed him, they will prove as follows: If it +did not fall in accordance with God’s will for this purpose, how could +there have been a chance concurrence of so many circumstances?... +Perhaps you will answer, It happened because the wind blew and the man +had an errand there. But they will insist, Why did the wind blow at +that time? and why had that man an errand that way at just that time? +If you answer again, The wind rose at that time because on the day +before, while the weather was still calm, the sea began to be rough +and the man had an invitation from a friend, they will again insist, +since one may ask no end of questions, But why was the sea rough? and +why was the man invited at that time? And so they will keep on asking +the causes of causes until you take refuge in the will of God, that +asylum of ignorance.... Hence it happens that he who seeks for the +true causes of miracles and endeavors like a scholar to comprehend +things in nature, and not like a fool to wonder at them, is everywhere +regarded and proclaimed an heretic and an impious man by those whom the +multitude reverence as interpreters of nature and the gods. But this I +leave and pass on to the third point I promised to treat here.” + +The treatment of this third point, our perverted notions of good and +evil, beauty and ugliness, etc., may readily be imagined. “Since men as +we have just said believe that everything was made for their sake, they +call the nature of a thing good or bad, sound or corrupt, according +as it affects _them_.” And from this springs the world-old _problem +of evil_ as it is called. “Many are accustomed to reason as follows: +If everything has followed from the necessity of God’s most perfect +nature, whence so many imperfections in nature, the stinking rottenness +of things, their disgusting ugliness, confusion, evil, sin and so +forth?” But those who ask thus are merely confused, for “the perfection +of things is to be determined solely from their nature and power, nor +are things more or less perfect because they please or displease men’s +senses, are helpful or harmful to man’s nature.” + + * * * * * + +Were we to lay aside our Spinoza at this point, we should be inclined +to agree with the judgment of most of his contemporaries and of his +successors for more than a century, that although the name of God is +constantly on his lips his thought makes the name an empty one, that +he is at bottom an atheist. Furthermore we should fail to see how +he could have called his great work an “ethics,” inasmuch as it is +hardly to be understood how in a world where every act of the body is +necessitated by eternal laws of physics, every thought of the mind by +equally rigid laws of psychology, there could be such a thing as a good +or bad act, a good or bad thought. Where there is no freedom, how can +there be right and wrong, worth and unworthiness? + +And yet we shall find that into this hard inhospitable world-picture, +Spinoza has set a theory of life that not only recognizes and defines +the difference between the good and the bad, but culminates in a phrase +whose religious feeling is unmistakable: Virtue is knowledge; the only +knowledge is to know God; to know God is to love him. If one grasp this +part of his philosophy, one will understand how it came about that him +whom the eighteenth century called atheist, the nineteenth remembered +as a _Gottrunkener Mensch_--a God-intoxicated man. + +It would be too much to attempt to follow the technical expression +that Spinoza gives to his thought. Every word is heavy with the burden +of long centuries of scholasticism. But I think it is not impossible +to put oneself in possession of one principal idea on which the rest +follows, not without jolt, yet with a fair degree of ease. + +Let us then put the problem clearly before us. Suppose Nature, +including the incident of human life, were one great machine without +purpose in the whole, without freedom in the detail, how would it be +possible to regard any part of nature, a given man for example, as +either good or bad? If this man lives as he must, what use, nay what +meaning in advising him how he _ought_ to live? + +Spinoza’s answer involves this fundamental point. There are some +machines that exist for a purpose. We may, if we choose, regard it +as _the nature_ of such a machine to accomplish this purpose. In +proportion as it accomplishes it we call it good; in proportion as +it fails we call it bad. Thus a clock is mechanical enough, a matter +of cogwheels and springs, but that is not _the nature_ of a clock, +for we can recognize such an implement without knowing anything about +these same cogwheels and springs, if only we know that the thing keeps +time. As it keeps accurate time we call it a good clock, and as it +loses or gains we call it a bad one. It is true that we do not exactly +blame the clock if it goes wrong; we rather blame the clock-maker. +But there is no reason why we should cease to blame the clock-maker, +were we to convince ourselves that he too was a mechanism, and owed +his lack of skill to the physical constitution of hands and brain. +In a word, a mechanism whose nature is to perform a certain function +may nevertheless be a good or a bad mechanism for the purpose, and is +praiseworthy or blameworthy in so far as it performs its function well +or ill. + +It is only then a mechanism that reveals in its behavior the pursuit of +a purpose that may be regarded as good or bad. So too it is only such +a mechanism that may be regarded as more or less free, more or less +bound. This notion of freedom and bondage that Spinoza here introduces, +turns on a distinction which all of us make without realizing the +difficulty of defining what we mean by it. It is the distinction +between a being and its environment. With respect to each thing Spinoza +divides nature into two parts: one part he calls the inner nature of +the thing; the other, nature external to it. Now in one use of the +term “nature” this distinction seems to be an impossible one; for in +so far as I regard a man’s body as composed of atoms obeying the laws +of mechanics, everything that takes place among these atoms is the +resultant of the relation of these atoms to all others in the universe. +“It is impossible,” Spinoza himself sees it--“it is impossible for a +man not to be a part of nature and not to follow its general order.” + +But suppose in reference to a given kind of body we neglect all +those differences in behavior that make neither for nor against the +accomplishment of a purpose we have ascribed to it. Will not the grain +of corn spring up in this field or in that? Will not the human being +pass through the cycle of life in this age and country, or in that? +And in so far as he carries out the purposes of his being in various +surroundings, whatever difference of detail in his way of doing it, +may we not say that man has a nature of his own independent of his +environment? Finally is not this just what we mean by being free: the +ability to carry out one’s end independently of the circumstances in +which one is placed? On the other hand is not an inability to win out +under all circumstances just what we mean by bondage? + +There is then no reason why we should not recognize freedom and +bondage, good and evil, in certain _parts_ of a world that atom by atom +is mechanical and purposeless in its constitution. + + * * * * * + +Having presented this central idea, we may now follow with greater ease +Spinoza’s account of the degree of freedom of which a man is capable, +of the use of this freedom which we should call good, and finally of +the rewards of a “good life.” + +Here we seem to have asked three questions because we have followed the +general ideas on the subject. To these questions, however, Spinoza +would return a single answer. To be good, to be free, to be blessed +mean one and the same thing. It is a divine thought, if only it can be +made to appear. + +First then let us note that we habitually distinguish the forms of +life as higher and lower; the grain of corn is lower than the bee, the +bee is lower than the man. If we ask ourselves what we mean by this +distinction, we shall find I think that we refer to the difference of +the degree to which these forms are capable of carrying out a given +purpose whatever the environment. The biologist would say they differ +in adaptability. Take merely the common end of self-preservation: the +grain of corn is lost if it fall on rocky ground or among the thorns. +It can do nothing to save itself. To the bee these circumstances are +indifferent, yet it in turn would succumb to a blight of the flowers. +To the man, this would be but a small matter and we enjoy losing +ourselves in admiration of the ingenuity with which he manages to +subsist under the most unusual and threatening conditions. In a word, +the higher the form of life, the greater the freedom from environment; +the lower, the greater the bondage to circumstance. + +What now in the future of a thing determines its degree of freedom? +Spinoza studies the question only within the domain of human life. +Within this domain his answer is striking: Freedom comes with +knowledge; ignorance is bondage. + +But there is more than one sense in which this saying may be taken. We +have for example the Baconian thought, “knowledge is power.” That is, +given any end to be striven for, other things being equal the one who +brings science to bear is the more likely to conquer circumstances, +to triumph, to be free. This sense of the power of knowledge is not +lacking in Spinoza. + +But the freedom that comes with knowledge may be of a higher kind than +the mere bettering of our chances of success. After all, human skill is +extremely limited; defeat is every man’s portion, and one of the most +important questions in life is how to bear failure. + +If knowledge is our best arm to ward off defeat, so is it our best +solace when defeat, the inevitable, comes. For do we but understand +that the fate that has come upon us was not to be escaped but was +imposed by the eternal laws of nature, repining becomes impossible. +Pain is a fact, we cannot escape it altogether, we cannot deny it when +it has seized us. We _can_ though prevent the sourness and bitterness +that the ignorant fall prey to when they suffer. For pain is one thing, +hate another. Pain is not to be escaped; hate may be. And the way to +kill hate in our hearts is to connect the individual fact that is +painful with the whole order of nature which makes this as every other +fact necessary. Now the order of nature as we have seen flows from God +as the theorems of geometry flow from its axioms. To understand the +necessity of any fact is to recognize God as its cause. When we have +done this the bitterness of defeat is gone. No man, says Spinoza, can +hate God. + +I have mentioned two senses in which knowledge meant freedom: (1) the +sense in which it reduces the chances of failure and pain to a minimum; +(2) the sense in which it frees us from the bondage of passion and +bitterness, when the unavoidable remainder of pain comes upon us. There +is still one deepest sense in which knowledge is freedom. So far, the +excellence of knowledge has been made to depend upon its fitness as a +means--either to the end of obtaining a maximum of success, or to the +end of bearing the still inevitable minimum of defeat. We have now to +consider knowledge as an end in itself. + +Since, as we have seen, the pain of life is the sense of defeat, of +limitation; its pleasure the sense of triumph, of freedom, we should +expect to find Spinoza urging as the blessed way of life that one, if +any such there be, which could meet no defeat; that one whose success +did not hang upon circumstances in which a man’s life happened to be +cast; that life, in a word, that was at each moment absolute freedom. + +You will doubtless have anticipated that these blessings are claimed by +our philosopher for that way of life which is a single hearted pursuit +of knowledge. “Wherefore,” he has written, “the ultimate aim of the man +who is controlled by reason, that is, the highest desire with which he +strives to restrain all others, is that which impels him adequately to +know himself and all other things that can fall within the scope of his +understanding.” + +And again he has said: “There is nothing in nature that is opposed +to the understanding; nothing that can destroy it.” (The word +“understanding” replaces the original expression “intellectual love.” +We shall see presently that for Spinoza to understand is to love God.) + +It is to be regretted that Spinoza did not deal as minutely with the +question: Are we free to obtain knowledge, as he did with the thesis: +Knowledge when obtained is freedom. For one feels that whatever the +blessedness of knowledge, if understanding is denied us we are not +blessed. And has not Spinoza himself said that the path to knowledge is +a difficult one? And he adds “surely it must be difficult, since it +is so rarely found. For if salvation were easily attained and could be +found without great labor, how could it be neglected by nearly every +one?” + +Had Spinoza maintained that not only knowledge but the pursuit of +knowledge was blessed, then indeed salvation must lie at every man’s +door. For is not life itself one long education? And if it bring +its share of disillusionment, may we not repeat the words of a +distinguished German scientist of our own day, “All disillusionment is +enlightenment”? And this I think is the burden of Spinoza’s teaching: +“Let the pain of life teach you to understand and you will not hate +life, but in the joy of understanding, love it.” + + * * * * * + +You will learn to love life! But Spinoza has a loftier word for it: +You will learn to love God. A clearing up of this expression may +well end our account of the religion of Spinoza. You must recall our +saying that for Spinoza and his fellow rationalists, all truths were +deducible from the single one “God is,” as all theorems of geometry +are proved from its axioms. If the truths respecting triangles follow +from the nature of a triangle and are not merely the result of physical +measurement, so too, the truths about the world follow from the nature +of God and are not merely brute facts that we have to accept because +we are continually bumping against them. To understand a particular +experience is to recognize God as its cause. But we have seen that such +understanding is the greatest happiness that can come to man, for it +is his assurance of power, of freedom from pain. Now Spinoza defines +love as “pleasure accompanied with the idea of an external cause.” If +understanding is pleasure, and if it is at the same time recognition of +God as a cause, it fulfils the condition of being love, and of course, +love of God. It is this love of God that is at once knowledge, freedom, +virtue and blessedness. “For blessedness,” our philosopher has written, +“blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; nor do we +rejoice in it _because_ we restrain our desires, but on the contrary +because we rejoice in it we are able to restrain our desires.” + +“I know,” he writes, “that the belief of the multitude is different. +Most men seem to think that they are free just in so far as they are +permitted to gratify desire, and that they give up their independence +just in so far as they are obliged to live according to the precept of +the divine law. + +“Piety, then, and religion and all things without restriction that are +referred to as greatness of soul, they regard as burdens; and they +hope after death to receive the reward of their bondage, that is, of +piety and religion. And not by this hope alone, but also and chiefly by +fear--the fear of being punished after death with dire torments--are +they induced to live according to the precept of the divine law so far +as their poverty and feebleness of soul permit. If men had not this +hope and fear, but if on the contrary they thought that minds perished +with the body, and that for the wretched, worn out with the burden of +piety, there was no continuance of existence, they would return to +their inclinations, and decide to regulate everything according to +their lusts and to be governed by chance rather than by themselves. +This seems to me no less absurd than it would if some one because he +does not believe he can nourish his body with good food to eternity +should choose to stuff himself with what is poisonous and deadly; or +because he sees that his mind is not eternal or immortal should choose +on that account to be mad and to live without reason.” + +And Spinoza closes his doctrine of life with a calm hymn to science. +“I have completed all that I intended to show regarding the power of +the mind over the emotions, and the freedom of the mind. From what I +have said it is evident how much stronger and better the wise man is +than the ignorant man, who is held by mere desire. For the ignorant +man, besides being agitated in many ways by external causes and never +attaining to true satisfaction of the soul, lives as it were without +consciousness of himself, of God, and of things, and just as soon as he +ceases to be acted upon, ceases to be. While on the contrary the wise +man is little disturbed in mind, but conscious by a certain eternal +necessity of himself, of God, and of things, he never ceases to be, +but is always possessed of true satisfaction of soul. If indeed, the +path that I have shown to lead to this appear difficult, yet it may be +found, and all excellent things are as difficult as they are rare.” + + + + +III + +A DISCIPLE OF SPINOZA + +An Illustration + + +I have somewhere found it recorded that as Johann Gottlieb Fichte +progressed with his first reading of Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” +he was moved to tears. To those who have labored through the tortured +pages of the great German thinker this would be no matter for surprise, +were it not for the quality of the tears:--not those of vexation and +baffled understanding, indeed, but of enthusiasm and sheer gratitude. +For Fichte had fallen into the melancholy persuasion of Spinoza. +At least, certain views of this austere thinker of the seventeenth +century appeared to Fichte as no less gloomy in their implication than +irresistible in the logic which led to them. Irresistible were the +reasons which had driven Spinoza to look upon nature as governed by +inexorable Fate. In the world as a whole there was no purpose, in its +parts there was no freedom. Gloomy, then, was the implication few but +Spinoza himself could escape, that man in such a machine had lost all +the familiar marks of a moral being. It was from the heavy chains of +such bondage that Kant seemed to free the poor Spinozist by holding +out to him the hope of a deeper-lying freedom, while not denying his +apparent subjection to the universal and necessary laws of physical +nature. It was by this promise of freedom that Fichte was moved to the +enthusiasm, the gratitude, the tears of which I have spoken. + +If I have mentioned these matters, it is not because our present +reflections are to dwell upon the philosophy of Fichte, nor yet upon +the historic contrast between Spinoza and Kant. It is rather because +the seriousness with which Fichte faced the issue between these two +thinkers is shared by the men of all times and of all countries +who have given themselves to the pleasures and to the burdens of +reflection. The issue was not first raised by the seventeenth century, +and was not laid with the eighteenth. That it remains one of the +most interesting to which we of the twentieth century can turn our +attention is just the point which I wish to bring out in the form of +an example--an example taken, not indeed from the technical philosophy +of our day, but from a writer holding a distinguished place among its +novelists. Those of you who have enjoyed the more mundane writings +of M. Paul Bourget,--his “Cosmopolis,” his “Coeur de Femme,” his +“Complications Sentimentales,”--are perhaps not prepared to meet in him +the philosopher and moralist that shows through his less widely known, +but sometimes more admired work, “Le Disciple.” You will allow me, +then, to present so much as is indispensable of the story of Bourget’s +“Disciple.” + + * * * * * + +Let me begin by giving some idea of the way in which the plot of the +tale may have worked itself out in the author’s mind. If a mass of +rock were to fall from a cliff, and at its foot to crush before your +eyes a human being--and not a mere vague humanity, but, let us say, +a young girl just entering upon the promise of life--you would, of +course, feel the full horror of the catastrophe. More than that, you +would not be a descendant of the myth-makers, as we all of us are, +were you not to cast about for some soul in the order of things on +whom to blame the calamity as though it were a crime. Such shadowy +beings from out of the past as the Fates, the “purblind doomsters,” are +creatures of this human instinct to transform physical nature into a +moral being. But it is no longer easy to take these inventions of our +fancy as seriously as did our forefathers. Galileo and Newton have come +between us and the myth-makers. They have enabled us, and at the same +time have constrained us, to envisage the event I have just depicted +as essentially a conflict between gravitational and elastic forces, +not one between the human soul and the soul of Fate. The thing moves +us more, no doubt, than it would had the heavy mass rolled quietly +on to the bottom of the valley, because the young girl as a possible +object of sympathy and love is nearer to ourselves than is a mere +topographical contour; but our emotions, be they what they may, are not +of themselves enough to transform a physical fact into a moral event, a +catastrophe into a crime. + +Robert Greslou, the Disciple of our story, is not indeed made to kill +such a young girl, but in a singularly detestable fashion to render +it inevitable that she should kill herself. The author has taken care +that we should have no feeling but loathing for this creature of his +brain. We cannot even extend to him that pity and half-forgiveness that +the instinctive man commonly feels for the aberrations of passion. To +Robert the whole episode was a carefully planned piece of psychological +research,--a vivisection of the emotional life. The author, in his +anxiety that we should not be tempted to excuse, but should confine +ourselves to understanding, has created a monster. “Non, monsieur,” +says André de Jussat, the brother of Charlotte, to Robert who has +offered him all the satisfaction left in his power, “Non, monsieur, +people do not fight men like you, they execute them.” + +Now, Bourget’s interest in the situation thus created I conceive to be +this: May we not gain sufficient insight into the causes of this young +man’s conduct to make it appear as inevitable as the fall of the rock +from the cliff? And if we do this, must we not view the catastrophe in +which a human being happens to play a part as no less void of moral +aspects than that in which a falling mass is concerned? There we could +not blame the stone; here, if the case is made out, we should not blame +the man. In neither situation is it meaningful to blame the facts and +laws of nature. + +It is for the right so to regard his own conduct that the Disciple +pleads with his old master, Adrien Sixte. At the end of his +autobiography he makes a tragic appeal to the man whose writings had +formed his mind. “I felt assured,” he writes, “that I should be able +to tell you my story as you develop your problems of psychology in the +books I have so constantly read, and having finished, I find nothing +to offer you but the despairing cry, De profundis! Write to me, cher +maître, guide me. Strengthen me in the doctrine which was, which still +_is_, my own,--in that conviction of universal necessity which holds +that even our most detestable, our most damning acts, even this cold +enterprise of seduction, even my weakness when it came to keeping my +side of the compact of death, are the outcome of laws that govern this +immense universe. Tell me that I am not a monster, that there is no +such thing as a monster, that you will still be there when I come out +of this supreme crisis to welcome me as your disciple, as your friend.” + + * * * * * + +What, then, is the philosophy of this Adrien Sixte that, having brought +a human being to such a pass, it could still be appealed to to bring +him through? + +Adrien Sixte had made two contributions to philosophy. The first was +a negative analysis of what Herbert Spencer calls the Unknowable. +“Many excellent minds,” the author assures us, “catch a glimpse of +the probable reconciliation of science and religion on this ground of +the Unknowable. For M. Sixte it is a last illusion which he is hot to +destroy with an energy of argument that has not been equalled since +Kant.” + +“M. Sixte’s second title to honor as a psychologist consists in a +quite new and ingenious development of the animal origin of human +sensibility.... He undertook for the genesis of types of thought the +work that Darwin essayed for the forms of life. Applying the laws of +evolution to all the facts that make up the human heart, he thought to +show that our most exquisite sensibilities, our most delicate moral +discriminations, as well as our most shameful degradations, are the +final development, the ultimate metamorphosis of very simple instincts, +themselves transformations of the properties of the primitive cell: in +such wise that the moral universe exactly reproduces the physical, and +that the former is only the consciousness, now painful, now ecstatic, +of the latter.” + +We owe to M. Sixte some phrases that translate with extreme energy this +conviction that all is necessitated in the soul--even the illusion that +the soul is free. + +“Every act,” he writes, “is but an addition. To say that it is free, is +to say that there is in a sum more than there is in the elements added. +This is as absurd in psychology as in arithmetic.” + +And elsewhere he put it thus: “If we knew truly the relative position +of all the phenomena which constitute the actual universe, we could at +this moment with a certainty equal to that of the astronomers, tell +the day, the hour, the minute at which, say, England will evacuate +India, when Europe will have burned its last lump of coal, when such a +criminal, still to be born, will assassinate his father, when such a +poem, yet to be conceived, will be composed. The future is contained in +the present as all the properties of a triangle are contained in its +definition.” + +The provenance of this type of thought is obvious enough to the +experienced reader. Our author has in an ingenious way translated his +Spinoza into the language of contemporary science. Let us merely catch +up a note or two that will render our Spinozist’s attitude toward +common morality, and his understanding of the master’s doctrine of +emancipation through science. + +In the first sense we find that Adrien Sixte has somewhere written, +“All conscious beings must be looked upon by the scientist as +experiments set up by nature. Among these experiments some are useful +to society, and one hears of virtue; others are destructive, and one +hears of vice and of crime.” And he adds, a little by way of flourish, +“These last are nevertheless the most significant, and we should lack +an essential datum for the science of mind if Nero, say, or such and +such a tyrant of the fifteenth century had not existed.” Or again he +has said, “To consider one’s destiny as a corollary of this living +geometry which is nature, and therefore as an inevitable consequence of +the eternal axiom whose indefinite development is prolonged through all +time and all space, this is the unique way to emancipation.” + + * * * * * + +To show that human conduct is so necessitated as to be without moral +aspects: “this is the unique way to emancipation.” It was just for +the master’s aid over the last rough steps of the path to this +emancipation that we left our Disciple crying, “De profundis.” Can +the aid be given? Can it not? This is the singularly philosophical +catastrophe of this singularly reflective novel. + +For us the issue depends upon an analysis of what our philosopher would +regard as determinants of human conduct. That it is not meaningless to +seek explanations of human acts all admit, for all alike are engaged +in the search for them, and much that is of importance to daily life +depends upon one’s ability correctly to explain and so to predict +the conduct of one’s fellows. The only question is whether the laws +by which we explain and predict could conceivably be increased in +precision until they completely determined conduct. To judge this we +must consider of what nature these laws are, _i.e._, in the present +context, with what illustrations of such laws our author furnishes us. + +We are familiar with the idea that the explanation of a fact consists +in pointing out its likeness to others. We are not surprised, then, +to find our young analyst, following the guide of a master who, we +have heard, regarded “our most exquisite sensibilities” as “the +development of very simple instincts,” looking upon his relations with +a singularly pure young woman as not without likeness to the battle of +life throughout the animal kingdom. “It is the law of the world,” he +reasons, “that all existence is a conquest carried on and maintained +by the stronger at the expense of the weaker. This is as true of the +moral universe as of the physical. There are souls of prey as there are +wolves, tiger-cats, and hawks,” and he kept repeating to himself, “I +am a soul of prey, a soul of prey,” with a furious access of what the +mystics call _the pride of life_. + +But if the animal instincts are the most widely related of those that +display themselves in human conduct, more special instincts must be +appealed to to account for what is special in the act. Well, in its +proper place we find that the family of Robert Greslou had its roots +in war-trodden Lorraine. Of no very remote peasant origin, son of a +conquered race, he catches himself at certain moments reacting with +instinctive hate toward an individual whom he hardly knows and who has +done him no personal injury, yet whose every aspect shows him to have +sprung from the conquerors, in whose most courteous gesture there lurks +a polished insolence of aristocracy. + +When, then, a human pity for his prospective victim comes upon this +“soul of prey,” it is such a hate that neutralizes it. “Why,” he cries, +“in so many of my imaginings does Charlotte appear by the side of her +brother André? What secret fibre of hatred had this man by his mere +existence touched in my heart, that simply to imagine him with his +sister dried up the fountain of my pity and left nothing in me but the +will to win?” + +In answer we are expected to recall the moment when Robert Greslou, +introduced into the family of the Marquis de Jussat as tutor to the +younger son, finds himself for the first time in the presence of the +Comte André, heir and dominating spirit of the house. “I felt then,” +our young analyst records, “in its full force, in the depths of that +instinct of life into which it is so hard for thought to descend, the +revelation of that sense of race which modern science attributes to all +nature, and which consequently must be found in man.... Why should not +this hostility be an heredity like the rest? The horse that has never +approached a lion trembles with fear when his stall is made up with +straw on which such a beast of prey has lain. Then fear is inherited, +and is not fear a form of hate? Why should not hate be inherited too? +And in a thousand cases envy is probably nothing but that--was nothing +more than that in my case, certainly,--the echo in us of hatreds long +ago acquired by those whose sons we are, and which continue in us the +battle of hearts begun hundreds of years ago.” + +No less carefully does our author work out another group of +influences: those that fall within the experience of the individual. +Influences of family, of school, of books read, of friends, of +adventures of sex, of religious education, all culminating in the +forming of a character whose foundations have already been laid in its +heredities, in this case a type for which the French have invented +the expressive term, a _cérébral_. The rest one can readily imagine, +the delicate suggestions of daily life, the influences, slight in +themselves, that play upon the attuned character and to which it +resounds with acts of this kind or that, an instrument touched by the +fingers of Fate. + + * * * * * + +Such, then, is our author’s understanding of what it means so to +explain a human act that it shall appear to follow inevitably from +recognized laws of nature. If it do so follow, we ask again: Can it in +the end be regarded as either good or bad? + +It is not to our author that we may turn for an answer. M. Bourget is +an artist, and owes his allegiance to the interests of the heart, not +to the curiosities of the intellect. For him it is sufficient to have +shown that to have lived out a Spinozistic philosophy would in extreme +cases lead to very ugly results. He is addressing himself, as he tells +us in his preface, to the youth of France, and it may not be without +interest to note the place he gives to the type of philosophy we have +just been considering among the influences dangerous to the young +France of his day. + +“There are two types of young men,” he says, “that I see before me +at the present moment, which are before you too, as two forms of +temptation equally redoubtable and dangerous. The one is cynical and by +preference jovial. He has, since his twentieth year, discounted life, +and his religion is contained in the single word, _to enjoy_,--which +is translated by this other, _to succeed_. Whether he go into +politics or business, literature or art, sport or industry, whether +he be an officer, diplomat, or lawyer, he has only himself for god, +for beginning and for end. This young man is a monster, is he not? +For it is to be a monster, to have lived but twenty-five years and +to have by way of a soul a calculating machine at the service of a +pleasure-machine. Yet I fear him less for you than I do a certain other +type. This one has all the aristocratic traits of nervous organization, +all those of mentality. He is an intellectual and refined epicure, +as the first was a brutal and scientific epicure. This delicate +nihilist, how unpleasant he is to encounter, and how he abounds in +the land! At twenty-five years he has made the tour of all ideas. His +critical spirit, precociously awakened, has grasped the last results +of the most subtle philosophy of this age. Do not speak to him of +impiety or materialism. He knows that the word _matter_ has no very +precise sense. He is, on the other hand, too intelligent not to admit +that all religions may have been legitimate in their time, only he +has never believed and never will believe any one of them any more +than he will ever believe in anything in particular, if not in the +amusing play of his mind which he has transformed into an instrument +of elegant perversity. Good and evil, beauty and ugliness, vice and +virtue appear to him objects of simple curiosity. The human soul is +for him a clever mechanism which it amuses him to take apart by way +of experiment. To him nothing is true, nothing is false; nothing is +moral, nothing is immoral. He is an egoist, subtle and refined, whose +one occupation lies in adorning his Self, in dressing it out with new +sensations. The religious life of humanity is for him only a pretext +for such sensations, as is the intellectual life, as is the life of +feeling. His corruption is vastly more profound than that of the +barbarian of pleasure, is vastly more complicated, and the pretty name +of dilettantism with which he covers it hides its cold ferocity, its +appalling hardness. Ah, we know him too well, this young man; we have +all just missed being such as he is, we whom the paradoxes of too +eloquent masters have too much charmed. We have all _been_ this man +for a day, for an hour, and if I have written this book, it is to show +you, you who are not yet like him, child of twenty whose soul is yet in +process of making, what base things such egoism may hide in its depths.” + +For Bourget, then, to have justified this picture of the youthful +Spinozist, is enough. But for us, who for the moment have become +philosophers, who have given ourselves up to the curiosities of the +mind, it is not enough to have convinced ourselves that certain +teachings are ugly and unpleasant to contemplate; we must know whether +they are true or false. While much that is unlovely is also untrue, +who but the poet can feel sure in his heart that only the beautiful is +true? Well, then, if we were to face the issue that seems to be drawn +between that universal necessity which science hopes to establish +throughout the domain of nature, and that freedom which ethics regards +as indispensable to the existence of moral beings,--if we are to face +this issue squarely, on which side should we range ourselves? + +I answer: On both sides. If you say: But this is difficult to do, I +should not be inclined to dispute it; were it otherwise, opinions +on this subject would not be so much at variance. Yet it may not be +impossible to do. And that the satisfaction of the result has been +thought to be worth any effort it may cost to reach it, is evidenced +by the long struggle which the history of human reflection records, to +hold at the same time the vital ideals of science and the no less vital +ideals of morality. To consider a way in which I believe this may be +done, will occupy us throughout the remainder of the present discussion. + + * * * * * + +Let us begin by making clear just what _is_ the ideal which guides +the scientist in his expectations respecting the world he studies. +Perhaps no one accomplishment of science has been more inspiring than +the picture of certain large aspects of nature that Newton succeeded +in drawing,--such aspects, namely, as are presented in the behavior +of suns, and planets, and moons. All these huge masses are governed +by a single law, called the law of gravitation. Now to say that they +are governed by this law means no more than this, that if we knew +the mass, the position, and the velocity of each of these heavenly +bodies at a given moment, we should be able by means of the law +to predict their masses, positions, and velocities for all future +moments. This result is, to be sure, only an approximation, for we +know that gravitation is not the only force which bodies exert on each +other. We have never succeeded, _e.g._, in reducing the attractions +and repulsions of electrified bodies to gravitation, nor do we any +longer try to do this. But Newton’s degree of success provides us with +an ideal to which we seem ever more and more closely to approach. +Instead of considering such huge bodies as suns and planets and their +satellites, we divide these up into extremely minute parts, which we +may call for the moment _atoms_. We struggle then to conceive a law +as completely determining the behavior of these atoms, as the law of +gravitation determines that of planets. So that, if we knew a limited +number of characteristics of each of these atoms at a given moment, +our law would enable us to predict their future and to reconstruct +their past history. As we approach more and more closely to this ideal, +less and less in the behavior of these small parts of nature is left +to guess-work. In so far as we hope this ideal may be continuously +approached, we hope that in its atomic parts nature is entirely devoid +of freedom. And if we hope this, we must inevitably hope, too, that +what we have called an atom is neither a moral nor an immoral being. +This hope is usually called _the mechanical ideal_, and nature in the +light of it is viewed as a mechanism. It has guided science to victory +after victory, and I venture to think that no result of philosophical +experience is more firmly established than this, that whatever theory +we may in the end accept respecting human nature, its freedom, its +moral responsibilities, no assumption of that theory may stand in +contradiction with the mechanical ideal. To have recognized this truth +and to have had the courage to maintain it at all costs, was the +heroic service rendered by Spinoza at a moment in human history when +such service was badly needed. It is also the reason why Spinozism, in +spite of its apparently gloomy outlook upon the world, has made such a +forcible and lasting appeal to the imagination of thinking men. In what +follows it is against certain false implications that have been thought +to lie in this mechanical ideal, and not against the ideal itself, that +our criticism must be directed. + +Now there is one implication that lies so near the surface I doubt not +most who have followed so far will already have drawn it. If, namely, +the atoms of which we have spoken are bound by strict mechanical law, +if it is these same atoms that make up the human body and that are +concerned in its every act, must not the conduct of that body be an +outcome of this same mechanical necessity? And if this be so, must +not the science whose ideal we have described set itself once for all +against the hope of finding in human conduct any vestige of freedom, +any trace of moral responsibility? You remember with what vigor Adrien +Sixte drew this very conclusion. “Every act,” he said, “is but an +addition. To say that it is free, is to say there is in a sum more +than there is in its elements added. This is as absurd in psychology as +in arithmetic.” + +Yet natural as this inference may seem, we should, I think, see that +it is unjustified, that the instinct which has led mankind to read +moral aspects into nature was possessed of a deeper insight than was +our philosopher with his plausible mathematics. If, indeed, we could +construct the notion of a man out of that of atoms by a process of +addition, we could not escape the conclusion of Adrien Sixte. Then, +truly, moral aspects would be as completely lacking to the whole being +as they are to the atoms which enter into his composition. That we +cannot do this,--that we can, indeed, offer no mechanical definition of +life, is just the insight which permits us, nay, practically forces us, +to treat man as a free moral agent. + + * * * * * + +We can frame no mechanical definition of life! Nor is this the only +example offered by experience of a term applied exclusively to +mechanisms and yet meaning nothing mechanical. Let me give a homely +illustration. There is, I presume every one would admit, no time-piece +which is not a machine. And yet we can offer no mechanical definition +of a time piece, for the simple reason that the various machines to +which this term applies have no mechanical principle in common. A +class which may include such divers mechanisms as a sun dial, an hour +glass, a water clock, a pendulum clock, a spring watch, a chronograph, +has evidently not been given a single name to mark in the members +composing it a single mechanical nature. The only thing these members +have in common is a certain function or purpose,--that of producing a +movement keeping pace with the apparent motion of the sun. Just so with +the class of beings we call living. Each of them at each moment of its +existence is a complete illustration of mechanical law, yet all of them +offer such divers illustrations of this law that they cannot have been +put into a single class because of a common mechanical nature. That +which they have in common, by virtue of which they have been grouped +under one name, is once more a function or a purpose. For we observe +that living things, by whatever mechanical devices, accomplish for the +most part a common result, that of self-preservation. + +In these two examples, the one taken from the inanimate, the other +comprising the animate world, we see how well it may come about that a +certain character belong to a whole, no vestige of which is to be found +in its constituent parts. A single atom cannot, if the mechanical ideal +is maintained, be regarded as acting purposefully, yet a sufficiently +complex group of atoms may well enough display purpose in its behavior +and to that purpose owe its right to the name we give it. In such +cases the real absurdity we are in danger of committing is not the one +that Adrien Sixte scoffs at, but the one he unsuspectingly falls into. +Axioms of addition are excellent guides for those whose problem is to +add. But not all composition of parts into a whole is so simple as the +business of forming a sum. And where we are not adding, the axioms of +addition may prove the worst of company. + +Let us proceed to an immediate consequence of this last observation. +If no mechanical definition can be offered for a given term, it is +impossible that the things to which this term applies should be +governed by mechanical law. We may easily convince ourselves, however, +that although not subjected to mechanical law, they are frequently, +indeed generally, governed by another kind of law that is of the +greatest interest to us. Let me recur to our illustration of the +time-piece. There is a trite truth about time-pieces, which we may +say holds as a rule, to wit, that cheap time-pieces are poor ones. +Yet it would be meaningless to ask for a mechanical explanation of +this law, for the mechanical imperfection of the cheap sun dial bears +no resemblance whatever to the mechanical imperfection of the cheap +watch. The former may be a poor time-keeper because inexpensively +(and so grossly) graduated; the latter because the escapement is +inexpensively (and so crudely) constructed. So it is in the animal +world. Of its members we may lay down the rule, say, that each must eat +if it would live, but the physics and chemistry of nutrition in an oak +tree are so different from the physics and chemistry of nutrition in a +human being, that if anyone were to ask for a mechanical explanation of +this rule we could not offer it, or rather we should have to offer a +different one for each type of organism we considered. These examples +will be sufficient to illustrate the sense of the saying, “Beings whose +nature is not capable of mechanical definition cannot be subjected to +mechanical law.” + +But we said further, that the laws to which such beings _were_ subject +were of a peculiar nature, and it is particularly important to point +out one respect in which these laws differ from the mechanical. Such +laws as we find controlling the behavior of organisms, for example, +are of the kind that may be called _laws of purpose_. We explain, that +is to say, the conduct of organisms in terms of the end or purpose for +the sake of which that conduct has taken place. This holds from the +lowest biological functioning to the highest form of deliberate human +behavior. If we consider the explanation which our author offers of +the conduct of his unhappy hero, we see that in the end he has been +exclusively interested in pointing out the motives to which the young +man reacted. To point out motives is simply to recognize the end for +the sake of which the act is accomplished. Now, although this type of +explanation is in daily use among all men of all times, it was not +erected into a scientific system before the reflections of Plato and +Aristotle had shown of what extension it was susceptible. Aristotle +in particular is responsible for having pushed to the very limit the +notion that the greater part of nature’s happenings can be explained +in terms of the end for the sake of which they occur. The whole drama +of nature was to him what that of organic life is to most of us, the +struggle of individual beings to accomplish their natural purposes. +But, interested as Aristotle was in pushing this concept of purpose +in nature to the limit, he could not blind himself to the fact that +no purpose could be found in nature which was always and invariably +accomplished or attained by the beings whose nature it was to struggle +for it. Consequently, he was in the habit of saying that “laws of +nature (by which he meant of laws of purpose) were descriptions of what +happens always, or for the most part.” That is to say, they pointed +out the behavior that was normal, but not free from exception. Nature +was full of the accidental, of the abortive; and although later science +did its best to exclude this notion of the accidental in nature’s +happenings, the effort was uniformly unsuccessful and, I think, wrongly +inspired. For it is exactly to the circumstance that laws of purpose +are statements of average and not of unexceptional fact, that they owe +their scientific value as labor-saving devices. And what is perhaps of +more interest in the present connection, it is to this very lack of +rigor in the laws governing animal and human behavior that we owe our +right to regard the individual to which they apply as free. + +In this respect the contrast between laws of purpose with the situation +of the things to which they apply, and the laws of mechanics with the +predicament of the things they govern, is complete. For example, the +most inveterate statistician will hardly venture beyond the point of +asserting that the man of alcoholic heredity will for the most part be +unable to resist the attraction of drink. Yet sometimes he will be able +to, for sometimes he _does_ resist. Can one conceive of the student of +mechanics contenting himself with the result that bodies _generally_ +fall to earth with an acceleration of thirty-two feet per second? +During all the while Mercury’s unorthodox behavior baffled Newtonian +physics, could any astronomer be found suggesting that perhaps this +was a case of exceptional gravitation? As with heredity, so with all +the other so-called forces our author brings to bear upon the conduct +of his hero, giving in the end the illusion of mechanically determined +action. Heredity, environment, education, serve their purpose well +enough as terms that point out an analogy between the ends that attract +beings of like history, but they yield only an _expectation_ of the +normal, not an _assurance_ of the inevitable. Nor could any increase +of statistical data of this kind do more than give us the materials +for a closer calculus of probabilities. It is for the reason that all +the laws which apply to human conduct are of this statistical nature, +that, being permanently unable to predict it, we must regard it as +free. And to be free to attain or not to attain a given end, is to be +responsible, is to possess the first condition of a moral nature. Nor, +in attaining to this insight have we sacrificed aught of our mechanical +ideal. Only, who cares that atoms may neither be saved nor damned, if +the beings they so fleetingly compose may be both? One might almost say +that moral beings pass over the surface of mechanism as waves upon the +face of the waters. But they constitute its beauty and its terror. + +May we not then sum up our conclusions in some such form as +this?--Mechanical laws _do_ completely determine the conduct of +everything to which they may be applied, but they cannot be applied to +an animate being, since no mechanical definition of such a being is +possible. Laws of purpose _can_ be applied to such a being, but they do +not completely determine his conduct. It is because the only law which +can thus apply to a human being does not necessitate his behavior, that +we are obliged to regard that behavior as free and the being himself +as responsible. The most that we can do in terms of such laws is to +calculate the _chances_ for or against the individual’s success, for or +against his ultimate worth. + + * * * * * + +Here let us stop. Our discussion shows signs of falling into the +abstract and mathematical, and one may wonder whether anything +practical can come of it. One will recall the unhappy disciple of +Adrien Sixte, and will ask oneself: What answer, after all, are we +return to his cry, “De profundis!” Can we offer him any solace in his +wretchedness? I think we can, only it is not the kind of solace he asks +for, nor can it come from the direction in which he seeks it. I should +be inclined to say to him, to Fichte in his Spinozistic mood, to any +other over whom the mechanical ideal hangs heavily: This ideal is a +safe guide in all thinking for which it has a meaning; no atom in your +body nor out of it, but what is determined by mechanical necessity; +but the sum of these atoms is not you; there is a difference between +the whole we call a man, and the sum of the atoms that make up the +machine that is to him. These atoms may come and go, the man remains. +What constitutes his nature as a living being, an animal, a man, can +receive no definition in terms of the atoms now in his body, nor those +that may later take their place. You as living, as animal, as man, +can be defined only in terms of the ends common to the individuals of +these classes. In so far as thus natured, you fall under laws not of a +mechanical order. They are laws of average which determine not you, but +your chances of accomplishing the ends that define your being. In so +far as you accomplish such ends, you are good of your kind; in so far +as you fail, you are evil,--and if you fail egregiously enough, you are +a monster. The most your self-analysis could have made out by the way +of excuse is that the chances were against you. And this indeed you may +have made out, for who could maintain that all men have equal chances +in this world? But to have had the chances against you, is not to have +been determined as a falling rock is determined; there is no chance for +it. + +In the most mechanical system, then, there is, so long as +classification of its parts in terms of purpose is possible, a +distinction between good and bad, with enough freedom to make this +distinction meaningful. But such a philosophy may still seem hard. +Even to have the chances against one, is not this a gloomy situation? +Is there, then, no supreme end to accomplish which all men’s chances +are equal, so that at each moment of life the road to perfection is +equally open to all, and equally wide for all? We know how many and +how beautiful the dreams of such a world-view, recorded in man’s long +history. To judge their rationality is for a deeper insight than mine. +But be they real or be they dreams, there is yet one voice from the +past whose sanity comes home to us. It is that of our old philosopher +of Koenigsberg, which keeps repeating at this moment the sentence, +“There is nothing good but a good will.” With this saying of Kant’s I +should even hope to breathe inspiration into the souls that cry, “De +profundis!” My last word to them would be: Trouble yourselves with +nothing but to make the best of the chances that are left to you. There +is nothing good but a good will. + + * * * * * + +I would willingly take it as evidence that the instinct of the artist +and the reflection of the philosopher are not unsympathetic, that when +Bourget’s Disciple is at last brought out of his ordeal, it is not to +be comforted with the longed-for assurance that all is necessitated +in the soul; but rather to find for himself the way to redemption by +making the best--the tragic best--of the chances that are left him. + + + + +IV + +DAVID HUME + +1711-1776 + + +The characters that have occupied us on two previous occasions, +different as they are, have yet this in common; that their most +passionate interest was centred in God, and their theory of what man +is and ought to be depended upon the likeness in which God in the end +appeared to them. + +I have felt that our illustrations of modern thought would be +incomplete, were I not to include in the series an example of an +attempt to work out the duty and destiny of man without waiting for +an insight into the mystery of God. It is the more advisable that we +examine one such character, that this way of thinking is neither newly +invented, nor yet grown out of fashion. + +We recall that Lucretius, the enthusiastic disciple of Epicurus, +claimed for his master the glory of having lifted from the world the +terror of the gods, of having left man free to study his own nature +and to work out his own happiness. And I find on my shelves a recent +work that bears the title “Morals without the Sanctions of Religion,” +one of many that might be cited whose purpose is to study the good of +man without making it dependent on God. It is, then, as an expression +of a common enough idea, but as an uncommonly good expression of this +idea, that I have settled upon David Hume for our third illustration of +modern thought. + + * * * * * + +It has for some time been rather the fashion to find the grounds of a +man’s scientific beliefs in his personality and in the character of the +environment in which he lives. And doubtless thinking, like any other +activity, has its psychology, an insight into which is helpful enough, +though it is notoriously easy to find that characteristic _après coup_ +which we should never have been able to predict beforehand. + +When I say, then, that Hume had many human traits reminding us of the +Philosophers of the Garden whose science is so sympathetic with his +own, it must not be supposed that only such as are of like easy habit +of body and companionable temper of mind should take to his principles. +But it is interesting to note, after having followed the furious career +of Bruno, looked in on the sober reclusion of Spinoza, that a different +type of man may utter great thoughts; the type that could look back, +at fifty-eight years, on a life well filled with profitable industry, +and forward to one thus comfortably pictured in a letter to a friend: +“I have been settled here [in Edinburgh] for two months, and am here +body and soul, without casting the least thought of regret to London, +or even Paris. I live still, and must for a twelvemonth, in my old +house in James’s Court which is very cheerful and even elegant, but +too small to display my great talent for cookery, the science to which +I intend to addict the remaining years of my life! I have just now, +lying on the table before me, a receipt for making _soupe à la reine_, +copied with my own hand; for beef and cabbage (a charming dish) and old +mutton and old claret nobody excels me. I make also sheep-head broth +in a manner that Mr. Keith speaks of it for eight days after; and the +Duc de Nivernois would bind himself apprentice to my lass to learn it. +I have already sent a challenge to David Moncreiff: you will see that +in a twelvemonth he will take to writing history, the field I have +deserted; for as to the giving of dinners, he can now have no further +pretensions. I should have made very bad use of my abode in Paris if I +could not get the better of a mere provincial like him. All my friends +encourage me in this ambition, as thinking it will redound very much to +my honor.” + +These “friends” to whom Hume refers, were at that time, as they had +been throughout his life, the best of good company, that is, the +kind for whom a good dinner would have been nothing had not good +conversation been its sauce, but for whom the sauce was none the +worse for dressing out a good dinner. In such good company, it is not +a great matter that Hume should have been free of pleasant sallies +after the manner of the letter I have quoted. It throws a higher light +on his character when we find him preparing to receive his last, the +unbidden guest in the same cheerful humor. “I now reckon upon a speedy +dissolution,” he writes at the conclusion of his little sketch “My own +Life.” “I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is +more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, +never suffered a moment’s abatement of spirits; insomuch that were I +to name the period of my life which I should most choose to pass over +again, I might be tempted to point to this latter period. I possess +the same ardor as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company. I +consider, besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a +few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary +reputation’s breaking out at last with additional lustre, I knew that +I could have but a few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more +detached from life than I am at present.” + +And there follows a characterization of himself that could indeed be +hardly more detached were it written by a stranger. “I am,” he says, +“or rather was (for that style I must now use in speaking of myself, +which emboldens me the more to speak my sentiments); I was, I say, +a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open social +and cheerful humor, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of +enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions.... My company was +not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious +and literary: and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of +modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met +with from them.... My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one +circumstance of my character and conduct: not but that the zealots, +we may well suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any +story to my disadvantage, but they could never find any which they +thought would wear the face of probability. I cannot say there is no +vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a +misplaced one; and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and +ascertained.” + +It is hardly to convict this worthy Scot of misstatement, to point out +that his pleasing picture of good will toward all men omits to record +his two hatreds; hatreds as whole-hearted and constant as one could +wish. One was for those he called “priests;” the other was reserved +for Englishmen. “O! how I long to see America and the East Indies +revolted, totally and finally--the revenue reduced to half--public +credit fully discredited by bankruptcy--the third of London in ruins, +and the rascally mob subdued! I think I am not too old to despair of +being witness to all these things.” This, to his friend Sir Gilbert +Elliot in 1768. It is curious to note that Hume lived just long enough +to have heard of the signing of the _Declaration of Independence_. + + * * * * * + +If, then, something of the nonchalance with which Hume throws off +comfortable tradition is due to his personal character, much may be +gathered respecting his motives for so treating common opinion from a +study of his philosophical ancestry. For Hume is the _fine fleur_ of a +growth flourishing in the England of the 17th and 18th centuries, which +in contrast to the Rationalism of the Continent, is usually called +Empiricism. We find anticipations of an empirical philosophy in Bacon +and Hobbes; but perhaps we should regard John Locke as the real founder +of the school. Rationalism, as we saw in connection with Descartes and +Spinoza, was inspired by the example of the mathematicians to hope +that all science might be, as their science seemed to be, deduced from +axioms called self-evident. These axioms appeared to be something +more than the mere summing up of experiences. Between the undependable +predictions of a weather prophet, who has frequently observed that a +“twinge of rheumatism means coming storm,” and the confidence of the +geometer that if two angles of a triangle measure 120° the other will +be found to measure 60°, there seemed to the rationalist not merely +a difference in degree of certainty, but a difference in kind of +evidence. The former knowledge, unsatisfactory as it was, could only +come after experience; the latter, beautiful in its precision, would +seem to be at the command of a thoughtful man before experience. Hence, +for the rationalist, experience fell to the level of a mere _suggestor_ +of truth, an awakener of thought; reason alone could _demonstrate_ the +suggestion. + +In complete contrast with such a view-point, the empiricist came +in the end to make experience the sole test of truth, even of such +truth as the mathematician possessed. If the issue is between taking +thought respecting all things with the rationalist, or everywhere +trusting to observation with the empiricist, it is clear the latter has +plausibility on his side. Who, closing his eyes and reasoning it out, +could learn that there were just eight planets, and not seven or nine? +If we must do one thing or the other exclusively, is it not easier to +imagine that the axioms of geometry embody the experience of the ages +and nothing more, than to suppose that equipped only with the pure +reason, _i.e._, with the principles of logic, one could discover the +one thinkable world to be that in which a person that is “I” should +exist with a sheet of paper this moment before him and a fly buzzing by +his ear? + +So it seemed more and more as empiricism was developed at the hands of +Locke, Berkeley and Hume. Belief, we find Hume maintaining in the end, +is all of a kind; it is the inference from an actual impression (A) to +an expected impression (B), based on the remembered experience that A +has always in the past been followed by B. Since this past experience +is limited and since the remembrance of it may be defective, the belief +based on the two can never amount to certainty. + +Such an attitude may well be called sceptical when contrasted with +the older rationalism, in that it denies the possibility of complete +certainty in any field of science, substituting as the ideal of +scientific evidence an ever-increasing balance of probability in favor +of the opinion we are constrained to accept. But though to think of +our body of accepted opinion after this manner is to induce an extreme +flexibility of the imagination, which must be prepared to conceive that +the firmest truth may be untrue and has only a more or less inadequate +array of facts behind which to defend itself, yet it does not follow +that nature is a fantastic dream, without order and coherence. Indeed, +_that_ experience which is to be our guide from now on, assures us of +just the contrary, and the new evidence that would be required to make +us admit that an event in exception to any well-founded law had really +occurred would have to be overwhelming. + + * * * * * + +Nowhere does Hume’s faith in the evidence upon which the best tested +uniformities of experience base their claim to acceptance as nature’s +laws, show itself more clearly than in his treatment of miracles. +To an analysis of the evidence for such miracles as history records +he devotes an entire section of his “Enquiry Concerning Human +Understanding,” (1748): + +“A miracle” he there writes, “is a violation of the laws of nature; +and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, +the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as +entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Why +is it more than probable that all men must die; that lead cannot, of +itself, remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and +is extinguished by water; unless it be that these events are found +agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation +of these laws, or in other words, a miracle to prevent them? Nothing +is ever esteemed a miracle if it ever happen in the common course of +nature.... There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every +miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. +And as a uniform experience amounts to proof, there is here a direct +and full _proof_, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of +any miracle; nor can such proof be destroyed or the miracle rendered +credible, but by an opposite proof which is superior. + +“The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our +attention), ‘That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, +unless the testimony be of such kind that its falsehood would be more +miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.’” And Hume +illustrates--“When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to +life, I immediately consider with myself whether it is more probable +that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact +which he relates should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle +against the other; and according to the superiority which I discover I +pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the +falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event +which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my +belief or opinion.” + +As a specimen of the manner in which Hume would have one weigh the +probabilities for and against miracles, we may take the oft-cited +passage with which the discussions closes. “... Let us examine those +miracles related in scripture; and not to lose ourselves in too wide a +field, let us confine ourselves to such as we find in the _Pentateuch_, +which we shall examine, ... not as the word or testimony of God +himself, but as the production of a mere human writer and historian. +Here, then, we are first to consider a book presented to us by a +barbarous and ignorant people, written in an age when they are still +more barbarous, and in all probability long after the facts which +it relates, corroborated by no concurring testimony, and resembling +those fabulous accounts which every nation gives of its origin. Upon +reading this book, we find it full of prodigies and miracles. It gives +us an account of a state of the world and of human nature entirely +different from the present; of our fall from that state; of the age +of man extended to nearly a thousand years; of the destruction of +the world by a deluge; of the arbitrary choice of one people as the +favorites of heaven, and that people the countrymen of the author; +of their deliverance from bondage by prodigies the most astonishing +imaginable: I desire any one to lay his hand upon his heart, and after +a serious consideration declare whether he thinks that the falsehood of +such a book, supported by such testimony, would be more extraordinary +and miraculous than all the miracles it relates; which is, however, +necessary to make it to be received, according to the measure of +probability above established.” + +Higher critical ability and wider knowledge have since Hume’s day +been brought to bear upon the interpretation of such documents as the +books of the Old Testament, and it is not as an ethnologist that he +has any claim upon our attention. But the citation will serve to show +that the skepticism of the empirical method is not of a kind greatly +to disturb our confidence in the commonly accepted laws of nature. It +will further serve to establish one point respecting Hume’s theology, +a point which throughout all his hesitating utterances on this subject +he never abandons, that, namely, if aught in the world as we know it +points to a God, it is not the strange and exceptional, but the regular +and law-abiding aspects of nature. To him, a wonder-working God is a +superstition of the ages of ignorance and of the ignorant of all ages. + +“Even at this day, and in Europe,” he writes in his “Natural History +of Religion,” “ask any of the vulgar, why he believes in an omnipotent +creator of the world; he will never mention the beauty of final causes, +of which he is wholly ignorant. He will not hold out his hand, and +bid you contemplate the suppleness and variety of the joints in his +fingers, their bending all one way, the counterpoise which they receive +from the thumb, the softness and fleshy parts of the inside of his +hand, with all other circumstances which render that member fit for +the use to which it is destined. To these he has been long accustomed, +and he beholds them with listlessness and unconcern. He will tell +you of the sudden and unexpected death of such a one; the fall and +bruise of such another; the excessive drought of this season; the cold +and rains of another. These he ascribes to the immediate operations +of providence; and such events as with good reasoners are the chief +difficulties in admitting a supreme intelligence, are with him the sole +arguments for it.” + +But, he adds on this occasion, “many theists, even the most zealous +and refined, have denied a _particular_ providence, and have asserted +that the Sovereign mind or first principle of all things, having fixed +general laws, by which nature is governed, gives free and uninterrupted +course to these laws, and disturbs not, at every turn, the settled +order of events by particular volitions. From the beautiful +connection, say they, and rigid observance of established rules, we +draw the chief argument for theism; and from the same principles are +enabled to answer the principal objections against it.” + +It is in this “refined” variety that we shall expect to find Hume in +the end, if among theists at all. Meanwhile it will be interesting to +follow up this reference to a particular providence, belief in which +Hume associates so closely with the acceptance of miracles. + + * * * * * + +Section XI of Hume’s “Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,” is +entitled “Of a Providence and of a Future State.” A literary device +puts the argument in the mouth of a friend who has been invited by one +referred to in the first person to imagine himself making a speech +for Epicurus before an audience of enlightened Athenians. Accepting +the challenge the friend opens his apology as follows: “The religious +philosophers [O, ye Athenians], not satisfied with the tradition of +your forefathers and doctrine of your priests (in which I willingly +acquiesce) indulge a rash curiosity in trying how far they can +establish religion on the principles of reason; and they thereby +excite, instead of satisfying, the doubts which naturally arise from a +diligent and scrutinous enquiry. They paint in the most magnificent +colors the order, beauty and wise arrangement of the universe; and then +ask, if such a glorious display of intelligence could proceed from the +fortuitous concourse of atoms, or if chance could produce what the +greatest genius can never sufficiently admire. I shall not examine +the justness of this argument. I shall allow it to be as solid as my +antagonists and accusers can desire. It is sufficient if I can prove, +from this very reasoning, that the question is entirely speculative and +that when I deny a providence and a future state, I undermine not the +foundations of society, but advance principles which they themselves, +upon their own topics, if they argue consistently, must allow to be +solid and satisfactory. + +“You then, who are my accusers, have acknowledged that their chief +or sole argument for a divine existence is derived from the order of +nature.... From the order of the work you infer that there must have +been project and forethought in the workman.” Now, “if the cause be +known only by the effect, we never ought to ascribe to it any qualities +beyond what are precisely requisite to produce the effect.... No one, +merely from the sight of one of Zeuxis’s pictures, could know that he +was also a statuary or architect.... + +“Allowing, therefore, the gods to be authors of the existence or +order of the universe, it follows that they posses that precise +degree of power, intelligence and benevolence which appears in +their workmanship.... The supposition of farther attributes is mere +hypothesis; much more the supposition that in distant regions of space +or periods of time there has been or will be a more magnificent display +of these attributes and a scheme of administration more suitable to +such imaginary virtues.... Let your gods, therefore, O philosophers, be +suited to the present appearances of nature, and presume not to alter +these appearances by arbitrary suppositions in order to suit them to +attributes which you so fondly ascribe to your deities.” + +And the pleader proceeds to show that it is as useless to practice as +unsupported by reason, to supplement the order of things we know by +another for which there is no evidence. + +“Are there any marks of a distributive justice in the world?” he puts +it to his hearers. “If you answer in the affirmative, I conclude that +since justice here exerts itself, it is satisfied. If you reply in the +negative, I conclude that you have then no reason to ascribe justice in +our sense of it to the gods. If you hold a medium between affirmation +and negation by saying that the justice of the gods at present exerts +itself in part, but not in its full extent, I answer that you have no +reason to give it any particular extent, but only as far as you see it +_at present_ exert itself.” + + * * * * * + +We had rather anticipated that we should find Hume among those “zealous +and refined theists” who point to the “beautiful connection” and +“single plan” of nature as to the ultimate evidence of an intelligence +back of it. But now that we have gathered together his important +denials, we begin to feel that Hume’s “zeal” for theism must be of the +most restrained order, that the “refinement” of his proof must approach +attenuation. + +And so in the end, it proves. Not but that there are emphatic enough +avowals of conviction: “The whole frame of nature bespeaks an +intelligent author;” we find it written, “and no rational enquirer +can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard +to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion.” But this +firmness of assertion is not an enduring mood. Elsewhere we find at +least one “rational enquirer” suspending his belief, not for a moment, +but indefinitely. The essay which opens with the passage just quoted +concludes with these words: “The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an +inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspense of judgment appear +the only result of our most accurate scrutiny concerning this subject. +But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible +contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely +be upheld did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of +superstition to another, set them-a-quarrelling; while we ourselves, +during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the +calm, though obscure regions of philosophy.” + +To explain this flickering mood, one is abandoned to one’s own insight +into the nature of the man and into the conditions of his problem. In +the first connection, we make it out that Hume’s genial bearing before +men cloaked, in a seemly well-bred fashion, a deep seriousness of +character, just as the light tone of certain of Plato’s dialogues is +chosen as a fit medium for the setting forth of lofty ideas in polite +company. At sixteen, before he had acquired this _pudeur_ of high +sounding discourse, we find him writing to his friend Michael Ramsay +with the shameless solemnity of a Roman sage: “The perfectly wise man +that outbraves fortune is much greater than the husbandman who slips by +her, and indeed that pastoral and saturnian happiness I have in a great +measure come at just now--” and more of the like! We may safely take +it that the sage of sixteen had not died in the man of sixty, for all +that the latter preferred to talk with his worldly friends of “_soupe +à la reine_ and beef and cabbage (a charming dish).” Well, then, in +common with most natures possessed of a like “high seriousness,” Hume +would have preferred to see the world in a religious light, would +instinctively have looked in it too for high purpose. And this high +purpose, he seemed to see it out of the corner of his eye as one does +the first star in the twilight. But when he sought it with full, clear +vision--it was gone. + +The reason for this phenomenon may, perhaps, lie in the nature of the +problem as Hume habitually thought of it. It was, there could be no +doubt of it, the order and uniformity of nature that was to reveal +to us an intelligent cause. But in daily life, as in the highest +philosophy, we recognize two kinds of order and uniformity in our +experience. It is an established rule that a stone will fall to the +earth, that all stones will fall in the same way, that a single law +describes a behavior common to this stone’s falling and to the planets’ +swinging in their orbits, a law we imagine to hold for every particle +of matter in the universe in its reaction toward every other, and which +we call the law of gravitation. The law of gravitation is about as high +an expression of a uniformity holding throughout nature as we have as +yet come upon. Such laws as those of physics and chemistry are among +the best attested results of experience, and we may stare at them +quite boldly without fear of putting them out of countenance; but then, +too, we may examine them as intently as we will without finding in them +the revelation of an intelligence that framed them. For merely as such +laws they make no reference to a purpose to which the mechanism they +govern is adapted. + +But there is quite another type of uniformity which we are ever +discovering and appealing to, if not in the whole of nature, at least +in many of its parts. Hume calls it “unity of plan,” and he points +to the general adaptation of the organs of the body to the end of +preserving the life of that body. And where we find such adaptation of +various means to a single end, we ascribe life and even intelligence to +the organic whole. Nature, from this point of view, is full of life and +intelligence. Or, rather, should we not say it is full of _lives and +intelligences_? Here indeed, is the difficulty; can we treat the whole +cosmos as one great organism? Can we find one supreme end that all the +obvious minor ends subserve, as they in turn are served by diverse +means? Or, as another similar possibility, can we establish an analogy +between the cosmos and a machine of human invention, an implement of +the arts,--a watch, say, to follow Paley’s argument? Here, too, we +must find a purpose, for a machine is not merely a mechanism--it is a +mechanism with a function. + +Many excellent minds have expended themselves on this problem, whose +difficulty is supreme, and I think we shall not be far wrong in +asserting that it is at moments when the issue presents itself in this +way to Hume’s mind that “doubt,” as he says, “uncertainty, suspense of +judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny.” There +seems something beyond Hume’s usual imperturbability in the words +with which one of his dialogues concludes: “Believe me, Cleanthes, +the most natural sentiment which a well-disposed mind will feel on +this occasion, is a longing desire and expectation that Heaven would +be pleased to dissipate, at least alleviate, this profound ignorance, +by affording some more particular revelation to mankind, and making +discoveries of the nature, attributes and operations of the divine +object of our faith.”[3] But perhaps this is only a phrase, for nowhere +else do the lips of Hume shape the words “revelation” and “faith” but +that the lines of mockery are seen to form around them. + + * * * * * + +In this state of mind respecting theology, it is inevitable that Hume +should struggle in quite a pagan spirit with the problem of human +wisdom. Our experience of life being what it is, how may man most +successfully attain to happiness, and what relation has the line +of conduct which prudence would recommend to that which has been +traditionally regarded as virtuous? + +But first, _has_ there been any one principle of conduct that defines +it as virtuous; or are there as many notions of virtue as there are +communities with more or less independent traditions? It is a problem +of ethics upon which every inquirer from Socrates down has spent his +best thought. + +There is a little dialogue of Hume’s that suggests the nature of the +problem and hints at a solution in a way altogether charming. “My +friend, Palamedes,” the narrator begins, “who is as great a rambler in +his thoughts as in his person, ... surprised me lately with an account +of a nation with whom he told me he had passed a considerable part of +his life, and whom he found, in the main, a people extremely civilized +and intelligent. + +“‘There is a country,’ said he, ‘in the world called Fourli, no matter +for its longitude and latitude, whose inhabitants have ways of thinking +in many things, particularly in morals, diametrically opposite to +ours.... + +“‘As it was my fortune to come among this people on a very +advantageous footing, I was immediately introduced to the best company; +and being desired by Alcheic to live with him, I readily accepted his +invitation, as I found him universally esteemed for his personal merit, +and indeed regarded by every one in Fourli as a perfect character.’” + +And we are thereupon regaled with a display of Alcheic’s virtues. We +accompany him first in a serenade that he offers, not indeed to his +lady-love, but to a certain youth, and we learn in this connection, +that Alcheic, himself, who had been very handsome in his youth, had +been courted by many lovers, but had bestowed his favors chiefly on +the sage Elcouf, to whom he was supposed to owe, in great measure, +the astonishing progress he had made in philosophy and wisdom. “It +gave me great surprise,” the traveller adds, “that Alcheic’s wife (who +by-the-by, happened also to be his sister) was no wise scandalized at +this species of infidelity.” + +Later it appears that Alcheic was a murderer and a parricide; and when +asked what was his motive for this action, he replies coolly that he +“was not then so much at ease in his circumstances as he is at present, +and that he had acted in that particular at the advice of all his +friends.” + +But that, of all his actions, which was most highly applauded by the +Fourlians, was the assassination of Usbek. “This Usbek had been to the +last moment Alcheic’s intimate friend, had laid many high obligations +upon him, had even saved his life on a certain occasion, and had, +by his will, which was found after the murder, made him heir to a +considerable part of his fortune. Alcheic, it seems, conspired with +about twenty or thirty more, most of them also Usbek’s friends; and +falling all together on that unhappy man when he was not aware, they +had torn him with a hundred wounds, and given him that reward for +all his past favors and obligations.” Usbek “had many great and good +qualities; ... but this action of Alcheic’s sets him far above Usbek in +the eyes of all judges of merit; and is one of the noblest that ever +perhaps the sun shone upon.” + +Other splendid achievements of this gentleman are recounted, and the +list might have been longer had not the narrator interrupted his +friend. “Pray,” said he, “Palamedes, when you were at Fourli, did you +also learn the art of turning your friends into ridicule by telling +them strange stories, and then laughing at them if they believed you?” +“I assure you,” replied the traveller, “had I been disposed to learn +such a lesson there was no place in the world more proper. My friend +did nothing from morning to night but sneer and banter and rally; +and you could scarcely ever distinguish whether he were in jest or +earnest. But you think, then, that my story is improbable, and that I +have used, or rather abused, the privilege of a traveller?” + +“To be sure,” said I, “you were but in jest. Such barbarous and +savage manners are not only incompatible with a civilized intelligent +people, such as you said those were; but are scarcely compatible with +human nature. They exceed all we ever read among the Mingrelians and +Topinamboues.” + +“Have a care,” cried Palamedes, “have a care! You are not aware that +you are speaking blasphemy, and are abusing your favorites, the Greeks, +especially the Athenians, whom I have couched all along under these +bizarre names I employed. If you consider aright, there is not one +stroke of the foregoing character which might not be found in the +man of highest merit at Athens.... The amours of the Greeks, their +marriages (the laws of Athens allowed a man to marry his sister by +the father), and the exposing of their children cannot but strike +you immediately. The death of Usbek is an exact counterpart to that +of Caesar,”--and so the parallel runs on until Palamedes concludes +triumphantly, “I think I have fairly made it appear that an Athenian +man of merit might be ... incestuous, a parricide, an assassin, +an ungrateful perjured traitor, and something else too abominable +to be named and having lived in this manner, his death might be +entirely suitable; he might conclude the scene by a desperate act of +self-murder, and die with the most absurd blasphemies in his mouth. And +notwithstanding this he shall have statues, if not altars, erected to +his memory.” + +I need hardly say that Hume has in the “Dialogue” from which I quote +made use of a pleasant artifice to force on the reader’s attention the +nature and difficulty of his problem: to find, namely, a common meaning +for the words “virtue” and “vice,” by whomsoever used; in spite of the +fact that nearly kindred civilizations will be the one confident it has +found virtue, where the other is certain it has found vice. “How shall +we pretend to fix a standard for judgments of this nature?” he finally +puts the question. “By tracing matters,” he answers himself, “a little +higher.... The Rhine flows north, the Rhone south; yet both spring from +the _same_ mountain, and are also actuated in their opposite directions +by the _same_ principle of gravity. The different inclinations of the +ground on which they run cause all the differences of their courses.” +And one by one with admirable skill, he takes up the virtues of our +friend Alcheic, which to us are such conspicuous vices, to show that +under the conditions of Greek life most had a quality in common with +those perhaps directly opposite acts, which, under the conditions of +our life we should commend, and that quality, which is the keynote of +all Hume’s ethics, is “utility.” + +“It appears,” he puts it, “that there never was any quality recommended +by anyone as a virtue or moral excellence, but on account of its being +_useful_ or _agreeable_, to a man _himself_ or to _others_. For what +other reason can ever be assigned for praise or approbation? Or where +would be the sense of extolling a _good_ character or action, which at +the same time is allowed to be _good for nothing_? All the differences, +therefore, in morals may be reduced to this one general foundation, and +may be accounted for by the different views which people take of these +circumstances.” + + * * * * * + +Given Hume’s world-view, it is evident that the only ones whom we have +a right to count in estimating the agreeable or disagreeable effects of +our actions are such other sentient beings as experience reveals to us: +to wit, our fellow humans and perhaps the higher animals. Moreover, the +only period which we have a right to consider as containing a life’s +measure of happiness and unhappiness is that which experience confirms +to us: to wit, that bounded by birth and death. + +Thus defined, the calculus of utility involved in judging the merit +of an act may be difficult, but is possible of an empirical solution. +There remains only one question of human destiny to be settled, but +it is an important one. What, namely, is the relation between the +happiness experience gives me a right to expect, and the virtue of +my conduct? For Hume’s ethics are not egoistic. The utility that +measures the excellence of my act is not merely, nor even primarily, +its agreeableness to me; but also, and perhaps in larger measure, its +agreeableness to others. How for this large element of altruism in all +good actions am I, the actor, to be paid, if paid I am to be? To this +question Hume gives an elaborate reply in a section of his “Enquiry +Concerning the Principles of Morals” entitled “Why Utility Pleases.” +The answer is simple enough. There is in the human heart a sentiment +we call sympathy, or, to use Hume’s favorite word, “humanity.” To +possess this sentiment is to rejoice in another’s joy, grieve with +another’s grief. To possess such a sentiment is to possess the reward +of all altruism; for happiness bestowed upon another is bread cast +upon the waters that returns to us after days as few or as many as may +be required to produce in our own soul the sympathetic image of the +happiness we have wrought in another’s. + +Such is the theory of human duty and of human destiny which Hume +has worked out by the method of Empiricism, which pretends not to +a knowledge of God, nor of a system of things broader than the +world of our experience. We may allow his own words to contrast the +resulting attitude toward life and duty with the theological: “I +deny a providence, you say, and supreme governor of the world, who +guides the course of events and punishes the vicious with infamy and +disappointment, and rewards the virtuous with honor and success in +all their undertakings. But surely I deny not the course itself of +events, which lies open to every one’s enquiry and examination. I +acknowledge that in the present order of things virtue is attended with +more peace of mind than vice and meets with a more favorable reception +from the world. I am sensible that according to the past experience +of mankind, friendship is the chief joy of human life, and moderation +the only source of tranquillity and happiness. I never balance between +the virtuous and the vicious course of life but am sensible that to a +well-disposed mind every advantage is on the side of the former. And +what can you say more, allowing all your suppositions and reasonings?” + + + + +V + +IMMANUEL KANT + +1724-1804 + + +The religion of Immanuel Kant can be put in one phrase, “We cannot +know that there is a God; but we ought to live as though there were +one”--the difficulty lies in interpreting the phrase. + +That we cannot know there is a God is a conclusion to which we have +seen the decline of rationalism and the growth of empiricism slowly +tending. But that we ought to live as though there were a God--what can +such a phrase mean? What manner of life does it prescribe? Above all, +what sort of an _ought_ is this and how does it bind us? + +There is no deeper interest for Kant than that which invites one to +consider the meaning of the word “ought.” I say, _the_ meaning of +“ought,” yet it may be that the word has more than one meaning. For +compare these two examples of its use,--first this: If you want to +bisect a line you ought to describe certain arcs and draw a certain +straight line. And then this: “You ought to speak the truth.” + +We notice at once a rhetorical difference in these two uses of the +_ought_. In the first, a certain procedure is commanded _if_ and only +_if_ we want to bisect a line. Leave out the condition this _if_ +introduces, and the _ought_ with all that follows on it loses its +meaning. No decalogue could be imagined to contain among its commands +an injunction to describe arcs and draw lines. Let us call this use +of the _ought_ the hypothetical use, let us call the command such an +_ought_ introduces a hypothetical command or in Kant’s own phrase a +“_hypothetical imperative_.” An _ought_ that is inseparable from an +_if_ is a hypothetical imperative. + +On the other hand when I say, “You ought to speak the truth,” “You +ought not to steal,” I seem to be using the _ought_ in a sense that +needs no _if_ to make its meaning clear. More than that, attempts to +supply an _if_, so far from making the meaning of the _ought_ clearer, +have more often than not the effect of changing, of travestying the +meaning we instinctively see in it. Truthful speaking and honest +dealing be indeed useful devices for getting along in the world, but +one who is honest because honesty is the best policy seems to us hardly +honest--at all events he seems to have missed the point that honesty is +enjoined on us without _ifs_ or _buts_. The obligation to be honest is +an unconditional command, a “_categorical imperative_.” It is of such +stuff as decalogues are made on--it is so the voice of duty speaks in +us. + +It needs no pointing out that so far as our examples go, the +hypothetical ought has no moral flavor. No sin attaches to one who has +left undone the things he ought to have done _if_ he aimed at bisecting +a line. Sin does attach to one who has done what he ought not to have +done in the way of lying, no matter what end seemed to justify the +means. This hypothetical _ought_ finds its reason in pure science, this +categorical in pure morality. + +All this is true, and yet one would form a poor opinion of Kant’s +thoroughness if one represented him as having rushed from one or two +examples to the generalization: All hypothetical uses of the _ought_ +are scientific and non-moral; all categorical uses are moral and +non-scientific. To such a generalization Kant does indeed come, and to +it he clings through difficulties more than enough to discourage one +in whom the conviction of its truth were less a matter of heart than +it was to Kant. But however it fitted in with Kant’s character to view +the command of duty as sternly categorical, it was equally part of his +character patiently to seek a reason for the faith that was in him. + +If Kant had wished to establish no more than that there must be +_something_ categorical about the moral _ought_ distinguishing it +from the many _oughts_ that suggest nothing of morality, his task +would not have been hard. For suppose that to every command there +was really a hidden condition attached; suppose that the categorical +was really a hypothetical imperative in disguise. Then the goodness +of the act commanded could mean no more than its fitness to bring +about a certain result. But what of the result? Is it, too, good? The +question can obviously have no meaning, for only the way can be good; +the goal cannot. And yet we seem to revolt against such meaning of +goodness: there is a difference to us between a good way of cheating +one’s neighbor and a way of being good. Either then there is some way +of defining a good end--an end which justifies the means--or else +there must be a moral excellence that belongs to certain types of act +irrespective of what they may lead to, if indeed they lead to aught in +common. In either case we come upon the categorical _ought_--the end +that ought to be pursued for its own sake, or else the type of act that +ought to be followed for its own sake with no view to consequences. +The first interpretation of the moral ought would be illustrated in a +theory that pointed, as did Hume’s, to the happiness of the community +as an end imposed without condition, while it defined good actions to +be such as were well calculated to bring about this end. The second +interpretation is in the spirit of the Decalogue, or of the classic +saying, Let justice be done though the heavens fall. It is not the +business of the actor to consider the consequences of his just dealing; +if the world is so divinely ordered that not the heavens but heaven’s +blessing fall on the just man, this is a truth to be independently +established. Duty first, consequences after! + +No theory of the moral _ought_ can escape a recognition of a +categorical command; but we must choose between the end and the act as +that to which the _ought_ applies. If we are sometimes doubtful whether +Kant abides at all points by the decision he first makes in this +matter, there can be no doubt that he comes to a decision at once in +favor of the view that the moral ought applies to a type of act, not to +an end this type of act might be calculated to bring about. We should +still know our duty if we knew of no such end, we ought still to follow +duty if there were no such end. It is in trying to carry through this +idea, which we may call the Decalogue idea, of the categorical _ought_, +that Kant meets his most serious difficulties. Yet the motives which +made him accept and cling to such an interpretation are such as the +simplest may grasp--yes, the simpler one is of heart, the more easily +may one sympathize with them. + +In the first place a scientific insight into the means best calculated +to bring about an end is obtainable only by study and thought. Even the +simple device by which a line may be bisected is not at every one’s +disposal, while the highest science has but imperfect means to suggest +for accomplishing the ends we most crave. But it seemed to Kant that +duty must make a universal appeal, to the poor understanding as clearly +as to the richly endowed; morality must be no privilege of the high, +but a treasure of the humble. “Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be +clever,” is a word of homely counsel that has crept into our language +to show how good a Kantian the plain man may be. + +Or again--but really it is the same thought differently expressed--duty +ought to make no hesitating uncertain appeal. No one should have a +chance to excuse himself on the ground that he was ignorant of the +law. But ignorance of scientific law is the portion of all of us. +Alas, if we should have to grope after goodness as we do after wisdom! +The intellectuality of pagan Greece might and did contemplate such a +state of affairs with equanimity or even with favor. The spirit of +Christianity expressed the deep desire of the unintellectual that at +least virtue might be theirs for the willing. + +Kant had a name for any law that was thus universal (that is, applying +to everybody) and necessary (that is, free from uncertainty). He +called such laws _a priori_; that is, not dependent for their authority +upon the slow uncertain gathering of experimental evidence. To him +then, the one chance of possessing a moral law _a priori_ lay in the +recognition that such a law must in decalogue fashion prescribe a +type of act, not an end which might be uncertainly tried for now by +truth-telling, now by lying--not an end in short which justified the +means so dubiously that it might be taken to justify any means. + + * * * * * + +To us mortals wandering in the mazes of life and perplexed--we think +honestly perplexed--by the way issues of right and wrong present +themselves, the possession of an indubitable law of duty whose +authority was higher than any consideration of consequences would be a +godsend. Yet because such a thing is desirable, it does not follow that +it is possible, and we are quite prepared to find Kant at this point +setting up as the deepest problem of ethics the question, “How is a +categorical imperative possible?” That is, what sort of a world would +it be in which men recognized the authority of such an _ought_ and were +free and willing to obey it? + +An image of one such world is the common possession of our race. +God created this world, and the beings that dwell in it. On these +beings he lays certain commands in the form of a decalogue, and their +authority rests on the will of God regarded now as King. If God had +purpose in laying these commands on his subjects, their duty to +God’s will must not wait on their insight into his purpose and their +acceptance of it as theirs. Man has been created free to obey or not to +obey God’s commands, and is told that happiness will be meted out to +him in the measure of his obedience, unhappiness in the measure of his +disobedience. But to deserve reward, he must not only obey God’s law, +but do it uniquely because it is God’s will. He must conceive himself +as prepared to obey without promise of reward or threat of punishment. +Moreover, it is not pretended that this justice will accomplish itself +within the limits of human life on this earth, but in a future life and +in another world whose existence must be taken on faith. Here then we +have an image of a world in which a categorical imperative in the form +of a decalogue is possible, and not only is possible, but has exactly +the relations to purpose and to happiness that Kant required of such an +imperative. Duty may serve a purpose; but the assurance we have of this +is no part of the authority duty has for us. The performance of duty +may bring happiness; but duty would remain authoritative if we knew +nothing of any happiness it would bring.[4] + +This world, we might call it the Old Testament World, is then exactly +the kind of a world in which morality as Kant defines morality could +and would exist. Moreover Kant is prepared to show that it is the +only kind of a world in which true morality could exist. If we are to +have such a thing as a command of duty, we must have the three things +characteristic of our Old Testament world-image: the freedom of man, +the immortality of the soul, the ruling power of God. If we take these, +as well we may, to be the essential beliefs of religion, then it +appears that for Kant morality is inseparable from religion. + +I say that Kant is prepared to prove that without these three +assumptions, God, freedom and immortality, no categorical imperative +is possible; but I am far from asserting that a conscientious thinker +will be prepared to follow Kant in every step of this proof. It is in +most parts a tortured process of reasoning at once over subtle and over +simple, and back of it all, one feels that Kant’s deepest motives for +arriving at his conclusions are the instinctive demands of his heart, +which demands a marvelous intellect is made to serve as best it may. + +However, the first step is obvious enough: unless there is a sense in +which the being on whom a duty is laid is free to follow or not to +follow its command, there is no sense in which duty is possible. This +ought ye to do; but alas you cannot! This ought ye to do, and besides +you can’t help doing it! These expressions equally rob the ought of +meaning. We can quite see that without freedom, duty is meaningless. +Yet the beings on whom the commands of duty are laid are men like +you and me, and in such beings we notice that what freedom they have +is limited in a peculiar way. We are in the habit of attributing to +each a certain nature or character that we try to regard as working +itself out--if not in all--yet in many and various situations. But +in this attempt to explain conduct in terms of character and its +expression, we are constantly baffled by what seems to us a duality or +even multiplicity of characters in the same individual. In this man +we explain a certain part of his conduct as the outcome of a strong +imperious animality; but another part shows his passion restrained by +motives of honor, kindness, sympathy. Two natures are at war in him, +and as we are likely to think of one of these as more really his than +the other, we represent him as struggling to conquer himself. + +Well, this warfare of a man with himself is one of the commonest things +in life, and life itself shows that a higher or better self may often +enough win the victory over and free itself from a baser and lower +disposition. But life shows too that the struggle is long and bitter, +so long that a lifetime is too short a span in which to secure a +complete victory. Just in proportion as the higher self is high, does +the struggle grow hard and lengthen itself out. If we conceive the self +whose struggles we are watching to be the moral self as Kant describes +it, all the love and lust of life seem to be arrayed against it. If it +is to free itself, that is if we are to become completely moral agents, +not a lifetime, nor a century, nor a million years, but the whole of +eternity must be allowed us for our battling. But this means that the +actor must be immortal, and so it is that for Kant the possibility of a +completely moral being, free to act out his moral nature, presupposes +immortality. + +The existence of a moral being then involves the acceptance of him as +a free immortal being. But though these are important traits of the +Old Testament world image which Kant is trying to show to be the only +image that makes morality possible, yet the recognition of a man’s +freedom and immortality is not peculiar to it, but may be found in +many philosophies. Both, for example, have a place in Spinoza’s system +which is as far as possible from giving us an Old Testament account of +reality. + +When we add a third condition, the ruling power of God, we have +a difference indeed, but also a difficulty in understanding the +necessity of the assumption. To be sure, if we add the idea of justice +to that of moral worth, if we require that worth should be rewarded +with proportional happiness, then indeed we should have to go beyond +experience to convince ourselves that such justice obtains, and we +might very well identify the ideal of justice with the idea of a +God-governed world. But Kant has insisted throughout that the idea of +right and the idea of reward are independent, why then are they not +separable? Why in order that there may be a thing that we ought to +do, must there be an assurance that we shall be happy in the doing or +because of the doing of it? + +It is easy to give Kant’s answer to this question--it is difficult to +make sure that one has understood it. His answer is simply that while +morality may be the _highest_ desire of the human heart, it cannot be +its _whole_ desire. It _must_ desire happiness as well as virtue. + +Kant defines the happy man as one whose desires are satisfied. But if +we think of this desire as being directed toward a _type_ of object, +any attempt to interpret Kant’s motives for introducing a God into his +system must meet the obvious difficulty that since morality is the +highest type of desire and since it is admitted that all are free to +be moral, then the Stoic happiness in virtue is assured quite without +reference to a divine government of the world. + +The only way we can hope to explain in what sense the will to do one’s +duty cannot be a complete definition of the object of human desire is +to understand that happiness depends upon our obtaining, not a type +of thing,--morality or wealth or power or science--but an individual +thing. Our demand for moral satisfaction may be realized in one +situation as well as another. “To tell the truth,” if that be all we +want, lays no conditions on the particular circumstances under which +we tell the truth. We want to follow a principle, and principles are +abstract enough. But is it not true that the kind of desire of which +finite beings have the deepest experience is bent on just those things +that cannot be generalized nor made abstract? What we want in them, and +that on which our happiness depends, seems to be offered but this once +in all possible life, and nothing like it could be imagined that would +meet our desires just as well. + +For example, when desire is for the love of a woman, it is for the +love of _this_ woman, not of _some_ woman. Ask such love what it sees +to love in this individual that could not just as well be found in +another, and the lover will laugh you out. You are not speaking his +language. You are looking for qualities, types, principles--what he +wants with all his soul is not a kind of a woman but just _his_ woman. +And to her he sings, + + Who is it says the most? which can say more + Than this rich praise,--that you alone are you? + +Or do you ask as the thing on which all your happiness hangs that death +keep his hands off just this child? Then what meaning would it have for +you if a condoling friend were to point out that you had other children +far more remarkable? It was not for his qualities you cared when +you cared for him, nor yet for his value as a unit in counting your +offspring. + +I don’t pretend to explain why this is, or what it all means;[5] +but when Kant maintains that to will a principle and nothing but a +principle is not what we mean by willing, these instances of objects +of desire that are purely individual and can not be reduced to +principle naturally present themselves as facts of experience that may +help us to catch Kant’s meaning. + +Of all principles of willing, the moral principle is the highest; but +the willing of individual human beings cannot from its very nature be +completely defined by principle. The only world in which will can have +an object; _i.e._, the only world in which there can be such a thing +as will, must be a world of individual things. If it is to be a moral +world, it must be possible to struggle for these individual things +without disobeying the law of duty. + +Happiness, defined as getting the individual thing you want, must +be guaranteed, or else, since you can only want something that is +individual, willing is objectless. Who or what is to guarantee that +the world in which we willers of concrete things may will consistently +with moral principle exists? Not experience, surely; that has a way of +arranging things so that the woman one wants is just the one principle +denies one; the child one has set one’s heart on is just the one death +has set his seal on. The chapter of “life’s little ironies” is a full +one. Then does it not require the guarantee of a world maker or a world +ruler that life’s indifference or irony have not the last word? Does +not the possibility of a moral will hang upon the assurance of God? So +at least for Kant, God makes goodness possible. + + * * * * * + +“God, freedom and immortality,” these three are traits inseparable +from a world in which duty can speak and be obeyed; the Old Testament +world is not only _a_ moral world, it is _the only_ moral world. And +if, so far, Kant has clung very closely to the Old Testament, we should +find him in his later writing--his “Religion within the Domain of Pure +Reason”--clinging just as closely to the spirit of the New Testament. +Those who find his reasoning obscure and faulty, would explain all this +in terms of his personal psychology and his early environment, for +Kant was a child of that deep Pietism, one might say Quakerism, that +characterizes the Germany of the eighteenth century. + +But if we look upon him as the child of his age in his devotion to +Christianity, he was no less profoundly influenced by that other +and equally characteristic movement of his day and generation--the +inheritance of Rationalism. The Old Testament and even the New +Testament world images may have deep truth hidden in their +symbolism--so the child of pietism would be likely to think--but the +authority of this truth was not to be sought in revelation. It must be +established, if at all, by one’s reason--so the disciple of rationalism +was bound to maintain. Now Kant is not only a rationalist, rejecting +revelation as a source of authority. He is also a critic, to whom the +arguments of rationalism for the existence of God appear flimsy and +irrational. Neither in reason nor in experience can we find grounds +for accepting the existence of God as a scientific fact. Hume could be +no more convinced than Kant that no aspect of the world with which our +experience acquaints us justifies a belief in divine purpose. Kant went +further--no extension of experience in future ages could give us the +assurance we now lack. God is unknown to our science and unknowable. + +Well then, if neither the necessities of thought nor the facts of +experience, however we conceive our knowledge of them extended, can +force upon us a belief in God and all that hangs on him, what is left +of religion and of morality that cannot be separated from religion? +Kant’s answer to this question is so confusing that it is little wonder +the interpreters of Kant are confused, in disagreement with each +other and each doubtful of himself. I am obliged then, since we have +not the time to try out all the ifs and buts of the case, to present +dogmatically one line of thought that is to be found in Kant, the one +along which post-Kantian thought developed. If anyone tell me that he +fails to find this thought in his edition of Kant, or that he finds +others that do not run parallel with it, we shall not quarrel about a +matter commentators have always quarreled about. + +If Kant as a critic has been keen to point out the inadequacy of any +proof of God, he has been no less earnest in his purpose of showing +that no disproof can come to us. This world is one that for aught we +know _may_ be God’s world, and if we choose to live as though it were +God’s world and we were of his kingdom, we need fear to meet no facts +that would block our way and deny us. + +Doesn’t it lie near to hand to say--You can make this God’s world if +you want to? You can make yourself free, immortal and blest of heaven +if that is the deepest desire in you, for in all its moral aspects this +world of yours is a plastic world and will respond delicately to your +touch. Live then as though there were a God, and there will indeed be +one; the world will be divine. + +I have called Kant’s world the Old Testament world and you have seen +in what sense it may be called so; but if you try to think of this +world as the mediaeval writers are supposed to have thought of it, +then Kant’s religion must be in flat contradiction with itself. If +God is such a God, if his creative act is such a gesture as a Michael +Angelo might paint, if life after death is such a life and spent in +such places as a Dante might describe, then all Kant’s religion is +but a leap in the dark. The thing reduces to something like Pascal’s +wager--bet on God, and if you lose you lose nothing; if you win you +win everything. If God, freedom, and immortality are facts hid behind +a curtain that we may never tear aside, we can only take a chance with +such facts. I have already made my bow to those who find other things +in Kant than the religion I pretend to have drawn from him--and I had +particularly in mind such as understand Kant throughout to be thinking +of the truths of religion as just such facts hid behind the curtain. +I have refused to quarrel with those interpreters because Kant does +think, because Kant can not cure himself of thinking in such terms +through many pages. But this I take to be obvious--if this fashion of +thinking were the only one possible in view of the situation in which +science and religion find themselves, if it is not merely a peculiarity +of the man Kant and his personal psychology, then those who followed on +him, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, were deeply deceived in supposing that +Kant was their inspiration; the post-Kantian development was not a +development but a new creation. + + * * * * * + +Viewing Kant then in the light of the appeal which he made to his own +times, we may see that for him religion is not a matter of what one +decides to believe, but of what one decides to do. And the religious +consciousness may express the law of its doing in the determination to +live as though there were a God. But we must ask it of Kant to explain +to us what sort of a life this religious life would be. + +One can quite make it out that the first condition to the living of +such a life is to obey the voice of duty as though it were the voice +of God. That is, to obey it without letting our obedience hang on our +insight into the purpose to be worked out, or on the satisfaction we +are to find in or because of the doing. Just so was the Decalogue +presented for the acceptance of the Children of Israel. But for them +the way of duty was revealed by God himself; for Kant it must be +revealed by the reason which accepts it. What sort of a law does this +“practical reason,” as Kant calls it, reveal? + +Kant’s first formulation is imperfect enough, and seems to be based +on an effort to deduce the content of moral law from the meaning of +law itself--as though to say, the command “Be law-abiding” furnished +one with all needed information respecting the law by which one was +to abide. For, as Kant puts the matter, law must prescribe a type +of action that is possible for everybody--a meaning of law which +is well rendered by the common phrase, “What is right for one is +right for all.” And just as one might try to convince a man of the +iniquity of some particular act of his by putting to him the question, +Suppose everybody were to do that? so Kant at this stage feels that +we could try out the validity of any given type of act by putting +the same question to ourselves. Suppose the right to lie were up for +consideration; if lying is morally right, then it must be possible for +everybody to lie. But if everybody tried to lie, there would be no such +thing as a lie, for a lie requires someone to believe it as well as +someone to utter it. Universal lying would be impossible; the maxim, +“Be a good liar,” could not be generalized into a law. + +“So act that the maxim of your conduct could become a universal +law.”[6] This is the formula that Kant finds first of all for the full +duty of man. But of course on this basis one could not sell a share of +stock, for if everybody were to try it, there would be no market. On +the other hand Kant himself has only a tortured and inadequate account +to give of the reason why one should not commit suicide, for it looks +as though we might all do that much together. + +More interesting is Kant’s second attempt to formulate the law of duty. +Almost against his will, one would say, Kant is forced to consider the +act from the point of view of its purpose. The purpose of a moral act +must be such that everybody may pursue the same purpose.[7] An immoral +world is one in which many want a thing that can not be shared--Kant +recalls with humor the remark of King Francis, that he and his brother +Charles were in perfect accord for both wanted the same thing--namely +the possession of Milan. A moral world is one in which no desires are +contradictory. + +The moment Kant has said this he has made the moral world an ideal, +an image of a world not identical with this present one, but into +which our faith demands that the present one may by our effort evolve. +It is impossible so far as I can see to make Kant’s first impression +of duty square with this account of it. It cannot be that duty is a +simple certain command that the humblest understanding can grasp. +It must be that duty is a more or less vague striving toward this +ideal, a striving to make the world in which we live with one another +approximate more and more closely to this beautiful republic whose +motto might be modeled after Rabelais, “‘Fays ce que vouldras,’ et +ne nuis pas à ton voisin.”[8] Religion then is the determination to +allow nothing to divert us from this struggle which it would not be +out of place to call the struggle after divinity. Immortality would be +a direction, not a condition. Happiness--the religious happiness--the +sense of the progress to which we are contributing. All this seems +to flow naturally from the Kantian conception, but Kant has that in +him which will not let such results follow. He stands divided against +himself. His theory of duty as decalogue law, his less confident but +no less enduring conception of the object of religion as facts behind +a veil, stand in contradiction with his view of duty as a struggle +that must be more or less blind, baffled, and empirical toward a goal +infinitely remote. + + * * * * * + +In this contradiction we must leave him. Religion, as the name for a +search after the kind of reality in which the multiple strivings that +leave us divided each within himself and one from another, was the +deep inspiration of those who followed Kant. They thought they owed +this inspiration to the master, and so indeed they did; but it is +not surprising that Kant himself refused to recognize his immediate +offspring (Fichte) and would probably have been greatly shocked at the +speculations of his more remote progeny. Nor is it surprising to one +accustomed to the disappointments of which the history of thought is +the living chronicle that one of those inspired by Kant to this very +search should have ended his seeking with the tragic finding that the +harmonious will is an illusion and a contradiction. Will is essentially +war, cries Schopenhauer. There is that in the experience of every man +which forces him to give ear to this cry, voicing though it does the +deepest and final denial of all that is religious. + + + + +VI + +ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER + +1788-1860 + + +We live in a room that has a dark corner. The shadows are there and we +know they are there; but we will not look their way. We busy ourselves +with a thousand things that are doubtless important; we sit by the lamp +and are doubtless full of cheerful thoughts. It is held to be wise +to behave in this way, and if the things we busy ourselves with are +really important then it may be admitted that our conduct is really +wise. But back there among the shadows, the darkest of them all, lurks +the spirit of questioning. “What is the use?” it keeps asking, “What +is the use?” If we listen we are lost, yet those who have listened and +lost themselves tell us that there is such peace to be had of knowing +the worst that compared with it the prizes of struggling life are but +children’s toys. + +“To see where the worst problems of life lie,” writes a philosopher of +our own day, “is a very black experience. And yet, so much does human +reason live on insight that I have never met a man who was alive to +those deepest problems and who repented him of his insight.”[9] + +Now the one to whom of all men this insight into the deep abyss has +been vouchsafed was Arthur Schopenhauer. According to the older ideas +of tragedy, the world has at times and in spots seemed sad enough; but +Schopenhauer invented a new conception of tragedy, more ingeniously +painful than any that had gone before, and then he showed that the play +which most completely set forth this idea was just the whole of life. + +The work in which this thought is most systematically developed bears +the double title, “On the World as Will and Idea (Vorstellung),” whose +first edition appeared in 1818. We may safely confine ourselves to this +single work in our present study of Schopenhauer, for his life was one +of those lives that move rapidly to a moment of maturity then subside +into a ruminating reflection on their achievement. + +To have reached at thirty a life-view from which one never afterwards +departs might be taken to argue either a certain shallowness of mind +or an unusual depth of conviction. One recalls the sixty-year-old +Kant, painfully struggling with a bare theory of method, and then for +some twenty years more laboring to apply this method to the problems +of life with results so vigorously reacting on the method itself as +to have created a suspicion of change of view. It is certain that in +contrast with Kant, Schopenhauer leaves an impression of facility in +thought and style. This effect is no doubt partly to be accounted for +by a difference in upbringing and in the circumstances surrounding +production. Kant was the very complete university professor; +Schopenhauer, a man of the world whose one early experiment in academic +life was a most convincing failure. He alone of all the great names +that recognize Kant as master--Fichte, Schelling, Hegel--had the +assured position and material means to spare himself the laborious +training of one who would enter the academic lists. Free then to live +as he would, he develops the tastes and the methods of the private +scholar of means, reflecting the experience of an easy bachelor +existence of inns, and travel, and wide unsystematic reading. + +It is the early training doubtless of one intended for a higher social +stratum, that imposes on Schopenhauer a sense of obligation to be +lordly; a style that is free, rather grand, perhaps a bit overdressed; +a certain insolence of tone from which even his friends suffer at +times, and which when it is question of his enemies sinks to a level of +abuse whose epithets must be shadowed forth with initial and dash. + +But apart from these external conditions, one recognizes in +Schopenhauer the spirit of the fighter rather than that of the critic. +He is a man of one idea, embraced as soon as encountered, then defended +with boldness and eloquence and wit. Such a character hardly develops +the great thinker; but it may well be possessed of a great thought. The +thought of Schopenhauer is none the less great for being gloomy and +repellant. + + * * * * * + +The double title, “The World as Will and Idea,” hints at a double +aspect that experience presents, the one to the eye of the observer, +the other to the mind of the thinker. To the observing eye, it is a +spread of bodies in space and time, obeying the laws of mechanical +necessity; just such a world as Kant has described in his “Kritik der +reinen Vernunft.” Schopenhauer, following Kant, calls this the world of +appearance, the phenomenal world. + +But when we say “a world of appearances” we seem to hint at a something +that appears, and appears not to the eye that follows the mechanical +behavior of bodies in space and time but as revealed to the thought of +one who asks: Wherefore this agitated phenomenon? Just as, watching my +neighbor move and gesticulate, I ask myself: What is it all about? so, +seeing Nature a-quiver, I ask myself: What does she mean? And just as +my neighbor’s conduct is understood when I have caught the purpose, +the motive that inspires it, so I may be expected to have reached the +“real nature” of the fleeting world if I can but find the _will_ which +it expresses. + +It is then the World as Will that profoundly interests Schopenhauer, as +it has profoundly interested all men, from the most primitive that have +implored the gods, to the most cautiously reflective who, like Kant, +have felt confident of at least this much, that no definition of a good +life was possible that did not postulate a world-purpose. + +Now the plainest man can assure himself that there are enough--alas, +too many--purposes to be found in nature for the looking. There are +mine and yours, that of our country, of our human race, of other races +too, for the lower animals have disputed the world with us, as the +vegetables have disputed it with them. But when one asks oneself: +What ultimate purpose is served by all this disputing for a foothold? +then indeed one’s imagination is put to the test. There are too many +purposes, there is too little purpose, to let this search for nature’s +will with us end in a quick and happy finding. + +All this is matter of common knowledge and common experience, yet how +few have had the courage to give up hope in an ultimate happy finding, +and how easily is this hope deceived with dreams, how willingly does +it dispense with proof. Here indeed is the region in which “the heart +has its reasons that the reason does not understand.” Well, it is +Schopenhauer’s great act of courage that the purpose he was unable +to find he refused to hope for; the reason that the reason could not +understand he closed his heart to. Resolutely, he searched the dark +corner and finally stared at the shadow. + +“Everywhere in nature we see strife, conflict and alternation of +victory.” + +“Every kind of being fights for the matter, the space, and the time +of the others. This strife may be followed throughout the whole of +nature, but most distinctly in the animal kingdom. For the animals have +the whole of the vegetable kingdom for their food, while within the +animal kingdom every beast is the prey and food of another. So does +the will to live everywhere prey upon itself till finally we come to +the human race. This, because it subdues all others, regards nature as +a manufactory of things for its use. Yet even the human race reveals +within itself with terrible distinctness the same conflict; the same +variance with itself of the will to live, and we cry _homo homini +lupus_.”[10] + +This picture of universal warfare is the first scene in Schopenhauer’s +world-tragedy; but it is far from the climax. It is in itself not even +tragic, for is it not an aspect of nature that however much it may +suggest of defeat and suffering it must reveal just as much of triumph +and glory? For every victim a victor, and may we not suppose that some +principle of justice awards the pains and pleasures of it all? + +But no, Schopenhauer goes relentlessly on. The conqueror is crowned +with vanity and his spoils are illusions: + +“The inner being of nature is a striving without rest and without +respite.... a willing and striving that may very well be compared +to an unquenchable thirst. But since the basis of all willing is +need, deficiency and thus pain, the nature of brute and man alike +is originally and of its very essence subject to pain. If on the +other hand, it is deprived of objects of desire through too easy +satisfaction, such void and ennui fills the heart that existence +becomes an unbearable burden to it. Thus life swings like a pendulum +from pain to ennui, from ennui to pain.” And Schopenhauer finds an +odd unconscious recognition of this truth in the popular imaginings +concerning heaven and hell. “After man had transferred all pain and +torments to hell,” he notes with an amused cynicism, “there then +remained nothing but ennui to furnish heaven with.” + +The survivor of the struggle for existence is on these terms hardly +a being to be envied, and the “_terque quaterque beati_” must often +come to his lips as he recalls those who have fallen. Indeed, it is +exactly that place in the scale of existence which gives advantage in +the struggle, that brings with it a consciousness of the vanity of this +same struggle. It is exactly to man, who in his moment of pride has +thought nature a “manufactory of things for his use,” that is given +the most poignant sense of alternating hunger and satiety. This most +necessitous of all beings “stands upon the earth, left to himself, +uncertain about everything except his own lack and misery. Consequently +the care for the maintenance of that existence under exacting demands +which are renewed every day occupies as a rule the whole of human life. +To this is directly related a second claim, the propagation of the +species. Here he is threatened from all sides by the most different +kinds of danger, from which it requires constant watchfulness to +escape. With cautious steps and casting anxious glances around he +pursues his path--thus he went as a savage, thus he goes in civilized +life; and there is no security for him. + + “Qualibus in tenebris vitae, quantisque periclis + Degitur hoc oevi, quodcumquest. + +“Life is a sea full of rocks and whirlpools which man avoids with +the greatest care and solicitude, although he knows that even if he +succeeds in getting through with all his efforts and skill, he comes +thus but the nearer at every tack to the greatest, the total, the +inevitable shipwreck, death.” + +And Schopenhauer rounds off the whole with these lines, “Thus, between +desiring and attaining all human life flows on. The wish is in its +nature pain, the attainment ... satiety: the end is an illusion and +possession takes away charm. The wish, the need, presents itself under +a new form, or when it does not, follows desolateness, emptiness, +ennui against which the conflict is just as painful as against want.” +And just as the superior animal is the most suffering of all animals, +so the superior man is the most suffering of all men. The calm joy of +science, the pleasure of the beautiful, the delight in art--“these +things demanding rare talents are granted to very few, and to those few +only as a passing dream. And then even these few on account of their +higher intellectual power are made susceptible of far greater suffering +than duller minds can ever feel. Moreover such men are placed in lonely +isolation by a nature obviously different from that of others, so that +here too accounts are squared.” + +As for the ordinary man, his being “is a weary longing and +complaining, a dreamlike staggering through the four ages of life to +death--accompanied by a series of trivial thoughts.” + +“Every human being and his course of life is but another short dream +of the endless spirit of nature, the persistent will to live; is +only another fleeting form which [nature] carelessly sketches in its +infinite pages ... allows to remain for a time so short it vanishes +into nothing ... and then obliterates to make new room.” + + * * * * * + +From a previous passage touching on the life and character of +Schopenhauer it may have been gathered that his was no very lovable +personality. And being unlovable, it is not surprising that he was +little loved; neither by wife nor child, which he had not; neither by +mother nor sister, which he had and offended; nor yet by close friends +which if he had for a moment he usually managed to estrange. It is +true, perhaps, that his dog loved him, the inseparable poodle whom the +children of the neighborhood used to call der junge Schopenhauer, for +the tenderest side of Schopenhauer’s make-up was turned toward dumb +animals. But the love of a dog is a poor substitute for all other +loves, and it is not surprising that certain minds to whom optimism +is a foregone conclusion should have dismissed Schopenhauer with the +observation that to him who looks through clouded glasses the world +must needs be dark. + +If we are tempted to make this easy comment, we should remember the +note that Schopenhauer is never tired of appending to his pages, the +reminder that he stands not alone but is the expression of whole races +and civilizations. He is heir to the deep pessimism of the East, +of Brahminism, of Buddhism, that called life a “veil of illusion,” +and figured one attached to its purposeless turning as “tied to the +wheel of things.” He is the voice of that Christianity that fled to +the desert, and hid itself in monasteries. He could repeat after the +“Imitation of Christ,” “Truly it is misery even to live upon the earth. +The more spiritual a man desires to be, the more bitter does this life +become to him; because he sees more clearly and perceives more sensibly +the defects of human corruption. For to eat and to drink, to sleep and +to watch, to labor and to rest, to be subject to the necessities of +nature is a great misery and affliction to a religious man, who would +gladly be set loose.” + +No, Schopenhauer did not stand alone--the past was behind him, and +as it proved the future ready for his message. Not merely among the +technical philosophers is his influence to be traced, but in that +sensitive expression of what is passing in the heart of his age--the +artist. Never has art had the courage it now displays to conceive the +tragedy of life as Schopenhauer thought it out--not indeed the drama +of guilt and its punishment, the ideal of justice working itself +out at the cost of individual pain. This is the older conception of +tragedy--Schopenhauer would say it is not tragedy at all. To the modern +conception tragedy lies in the perception that there _is_ no justice +in the world--only indifference, only chance, only stupidity. One +might cite works of Flaubert, tales of Maupassant, pages of Anatole +France; but most notable of all, pretty much the whole literary output +of Thomas Hardy, that tireless recorder of “Life’s Little Ironies,” +that bold acknowledger of crass casualty as the only god of things. +Schopenhauer does not stand alone against a background of forgotten +gloom if one may still hear the voice of nature questioning as Hardy +heard it: + + “When I look forth at dawning, pool, + Field, flock, and lonely tree + All seem to look at me + Like chastened children sitting silent in a school. + + “Their faces dulled, constrained and worn, + As though the master’s ways + Through the long teaching days + Their first terrestrial zest had chilled and overborne. + + “And on them stirs, in lippings mere + (As if once in clear call, + But now scarce breathed at all) + ‘We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here. + + “‘Has some vast Imbecility + Mighty to build and blend + But impotent to tend + Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardy?’ + + “Thus things around. No answer I ...” + +It is time we come to the question: What then? Life is a misery, and +then what? + +“The door is open,” said Marcus Aurelius. “The door is open, if the +house is smoky, leave it.” It is the solution of antiquity, and +Schopenhauer himself finds it much more reasonable than most of the +reasons that have been urged against it. Yet it is not through this +easily opened door that he sees a way of escape from the ironic will +to live. If that will had a date and a local habitation, then indeed +to kill the body in which it dwelt would put an end to the monster. +But such is not the case. Among the accidents of time and space you +happen to be one; but had you not been one, or were you no longer one, +the game would play itself out by the same rules, only another pawn +would be on the spot that was yours. Now the evil of the game is not +that _you_ happen to be one of the pieces, but rather that it should +be played at all. Not the pawn, but the player must be killed, and +the player is always that brutal Will to Live, pitted against itself, +winning as it loses and losing as it wins. Step out of it if you will, +what does he care? But stay in it, and by doing your part not with but +against him you may not only emancipate yourself but have your share in +putting an end to the game itself. What is this part to be played by +each against the Will to Live? We shall come to Schopenhauer’s account +of it in due time, meanwhile it is certainly _not_ the impatient +gesture of self-destruction. + +From the past again comes another answer to the question: What then? +It takes the form of a wine song, and we catch its refrain from the +lips of singer after singer. “Another and another cup,” cries Omar, “to +drown the memory of this insolence.” + +Well, for this solution too Schopenhauer has his sympathy. Not for +the wine that is red, to be sure,--its intoxication is too brief, the +awakening too bitter--but for the wine of beauty wherever it is to be +found in nature or in art. It is most natural that Schopenhauer--for +whom the woe of life springs from the possession of an aggressive, +fighting selfhood--should have looked for solace to that beauty in +which, we say, we forget ourselves, before which we stand rapt. The +effect every one knows--the cause? That was Schopenhauer’s peculiar +contribution to the theory of the beautiful. In a word his explanation +is this. We forget our own individuality with all its torment, because +we are seduced by the beauty of the thing we look at to forget _its_ +individuality. + +There is in the Louvre a somewhat dirty piece of marble whose size and +weight with the story of how it came to be where it is, may be found +in the guide books. This at least is its individual description. But +to the many human beings who have stood rapt before the Venus de Milo +there has appeared not this dirt, nor yet this marble, nor yet the +effigy of a woman; but just the vision of womanhood. And therewith, +Schopenhauer would suggest, we have taken a step out of the contentious +world. It is no longer a human being but human nature we are in +presence of, and to lose oneself in nature is, while the vision lasts, +to have forgotten the will to live in its troublesome individuality. + +While the vision lasts! But the trouble here is that such visions will +_not_ last. In the contemplation of beauty we have the foretaste of +peace; but not the peace eternal. And the question comes back upon us: +What is to be done? + +The answer now in progressive completeness comes from three sources. +The first suggestion, imperfect though it is, we catch from the +institution of civil law. Now law, and the penalties it provides, is a +conscious effort to restrain the individual from doing wrong. “Wrong,” +meanwhile, Schopenhauer defines as “that quality of the conduct of an +individual in which he extends the assertion of the will appearing in +his own body so far that it becomes the denial of the will appearing in +the bodies of others.” It is then the province of law to fix as best it +can the boundaries that enclose a man’s rights to the exercise of his +individual will and to prevent his trespassing or being trespassed upon. + +But this rough and partial method of restraining the will to live +from multiplying the misery which it creates in proportion as it is +untrammeled is but palliative. A deeper suggestion than that offered +by formal law comes from an examination of the moral sense. For the +distinction between right and wrong as drawn by temporal justice is +by no means identical with that between good and bad as intuited by +the conscience of man. For wrong, as we have seen, means merely +aggression, and right, the exercise of will that commits none of the +aggressions law recognizes. But it is by no means enough to keep within +one’s rights to possess moral worth. “For example,” our philosopher +points out, “the refusal of help to another in great need, the quiet +contemplation of the death of another from starvation while we +ourselves have more than enough, is certainly cruel and fiendish, but +it is not a wrong.” + +What then constitutes goodness? The quality of goodness consists in an +infinite sympathy, such an intuition of the misery of others as gives +us a horror of inflicting pain, a delicate skill in alleviating it. Now +all the misery of life comes from the assertion of the individual will, +which if justice may indeed feebly hold in check, goodness alone can +effectively still by destroying the distinction between soul and soul. +“To the noble man,” we find Schopenhauer writing, “this distinction +is not significant.... The suffering which he sees in others touches +him quite as his own. He therefore tries to strike a balance between +them, denies himself pleasures, practices renunciation, in order to +mitigate the sufferings of others. He sees that the distinction between +himself and others, which to the wicked man is so great a gulf, only +belongs to a fleeting and illusive phenomenon. He recognizes directly +and without reasoning that the in-itself of his own manifestation +is also that of others, the will to live which constitutes the inner +nature of everything and lives in all; indeed, that this applies also +to the brutes and the whole of nature, and therefore he will not cause +suffering even to a brute.” And yet this conception of the good life, +this living in sympathy and doing works of love, beautiful as the ideal +of it is, is not the final cure for the world’s misery. The will to +live, even so chastened, has not lost all of its genius for harm. + +“If the veil of Maya,” our thinker has it, “is lifted from the eyes +of a man to such an extent that he no longer makes the egotistical +distinction between his person and that of another, ... then it clearly +follows that such a man, who recognizes all beings as his own inmost +and true self, must also regard the infinite suffering of all suffering +beings as his own, and take on himself the pain of the whole world.... +All the miseries of others which he sees and is so seldom able to +alleviate, all the miseries he knows directly, and even those which he +only knows as possible, work upon his mind as his own.... Why should +he now, with such knowledge of the world assert this very life through +constant acts of will, and thereby bind himself ever more closely to +it, hug it ever more closely to himself?” Should not rather, we ask, +this bitter world-knowledge become a permanent and final _quieter_ of +all and of every volition? Should not the will now turn away from life, +shuddering at the pleasures it once craved, but in which it has come to +recognize that assertion of life which is the fountain of misery? + +And Schopenhauer expounds his meaning in a parable. “If we compare life +to a course which we must unceasingly run--a path of glowing coals, +with a few cool places here and there; then he who is entangled in +illusion is consoled by the cool places, on which he now stands or +which he sees near him, and sets out to run the course. But he who sees +through the [illusion that separates the ‘here’ and ‘there’] and thus +recognizes the whole, is no longer susceptible of such consolation; he +sees himself at all places at once--and withdraws.” + + * * * * * + +This is the transition from virtue to asceticism and here we have the +last word of Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the cure. Suicide is a mistake; +enjoyment of beauty a true solace, but a momentary one. Restrictions +devised by society are a corrective, but the misery they can prevent is +as a drop to an ocean; morality which is at bottom a charity born of +sympathy is the best the world has dreamed, it destroys more and more +the individual will and makes all things one, but though men in the +ideal state morality might produce would suffer together, they would +still suffer, for from Schopenhauer’s point of view the disjunction is +final; “Either desire unsatisfied, which is pain, or satisfied desire, +which is ennui.” + +Well, this infinite wretchedness of the man who has made the round +of experience in seeking relief, who has rejected suicide, who has +awakened from the dream of beauty to find the old pain still there, +who has tried, then lost faith in, the devices of law, who has become +at last a “Beautiful Soul,” to find himself then the sharer of all the +world’s misery,--the infinite wretchedness of such a man is a disease, +not of the wrong kind of will, but of will itself. All will is evil +will, and if one would have an end of pain one must refuse to will at +all; is not this, the asceticism of Indian sage and Christian saint, +the oldest and the ultimate wisdom? + +Schopenhauer takes his word “asceticism” quite seriously. To this +last expression of human insight it no longer suffices that a man +should love others as himself and do as much for them as for himself; +“but there arises within him a horror of the nature of which his own +(phenomenal) existence is an expression, the will to live, the kernel +and inner being of that world which is recognized as full of misery. +He therefore disowns his own nature which appears in him and is already +expressed through his body. His body, healthy and strong, expresses the +sexual impulse; but he denies the will and gives the lie to the body. +It thereby denies the assertion of the will which extends beyond the +individual life, and gives the assurance that with the life of this +body, the will, whose manifestation it is, ceases. + +“Asceticism shows itself further in voluntary poverty, which not +only arises _per accidens_ because the possessions are given away +to mitigate the sufferings of others, but is here an end in itself, +is meant to serve as a constant mortification of will, so that the +satisfaction of the wishes, the sweet of life shall not again arouse +the will against which self-knowledge has conceived a horror. He who +has attained to this point compels himself to refrain from doing all +that he would like to do, and to do all that he would not like to do, +even if this has no further end than that of serving as a mortification +of will.”[11] + +And Schopenhauer becomes the exponent of that aspect of Christianity, +as of other ascetic creeds, which is so unintelligible to the pagan +ideals of manhood,--the doctrine of meekness. Since the ascetic +“himself denies the will which appears in his own person, he will +not resist if another does the same, _i.e._ inflicts wrongs upon him. +Therefore, every suffering coming to him from without, through chance +or the wickedness of others, is welcome, every injury, ignominy, and +insult; he receives them gladly as the opportunity of learning with +certainty that he no longer asserts the will, but gladly sides with +every enemy of the manifestation of will which is his own person.” + +In his manner of life the Schopenhauerian ascetic is in every detail a +copy of the Eastern and Western monk. His body he nourishes sparingly, +lest its excessive vigor should animate the will. When at last death +comes, it is most welcome, and is gladly received as a longed-for +deliverance. “For him who thus ends, the world has ended also.” + + * * * * * + +“For him who thus ends, the world has ended also.” The seriousness with +which this statement is taken marks the difference between the two +great philosophies of asceticism, the Buddhistic and the Christian. +Whatever the Master may himself have taught, the Christianity of the +Church, say of Augustine, is a pessimism respecting the world we know, +backed by an optimism respecting the world we know not, in which +however the meaning of the whole plot is made clear. The _nothingness +of the world_ as it appears to the eyes of the Christian ascetic +is then the nothingness of _this_ world, but for him who leaves it +there awaits a much richer life in another. For the Buddhist saint, +no optimism of this kind supplements his pessimism, no other world is +called upon to explain this one, and when he leaves this one through +the door of asceticism it is into the eternal peace of Nirvana, of +nothingness, that he sinks. + +It is the latter understanding of the outcome that Schopenhauer accepts +at the hands of the mystic East. “We have recognized,” he writes, “the +inmost nature of the world to be will, and all its phenomena to be but +embodiments of the will, and we have followed this embodiment from the +unconscious working of the obscure forms of nature up to the completely +conscious action of man. Therefore we shall by no means evade the +consequence that with the free denial, the surrender of the will, all +these phenomena are also abolished; that constant strain and effort +without end and without rest at all the grades of objectivity in which +and through which the world consists; the multifarious forms succeeding +each other in gradation; the whole manifestation of the will and +finally the universal forms of this manifestation, time and space, and +also its last fundamental form, subject and object, all are abolished. +No will: no idea, no world.” + +“Before us there is certainly only nothingness,” Schopenhauer +concludes, but if this prospect be anything but grateful to a man, +it must be because he has not really seen or accepted the truth +that Schopenhauer would demonstrate and impart. “That we abhor +annihilation,” he insists, “is simply another expression of the fact +that we so strenuously will life.” Of that folly and the pain of it +enough has been said. “But if we turn our glances from our own needy +and embarrassed condition to those who have overcome the world ... then +instead of the useless striving and effort, ... instead of the never +satisfied and never dying hope which constitutes the life of the man +who wills, we shall see that peace which passeth understanding, that +perfect calm of the spirit, that deep rest, that inviolable confidence +and serenity, the mere reflection of which in the countenance as +Raphael or Correggio has represented it is an entire and certain +gospel; only knowledge remains, the will has vanished.” + +And it is exactly in this way “by contemplation of the life and conduct +of saints, whom it is certainly rarely granted us to meet with in our +own experience, but who are brought before our eyes by their written +history, and, with the stamp of entire truth, by art, that we may +banish the dark impression of that nothingness which we discern behind +all virtue and holiness as their final goal, and which we fear as +children fear the dark ... What remains after the abolition of the +will is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing; +but conversely to those in whom the will has denied itself, this world +which is so real, with all its suns and milky-ways--is nothing.” + + + + +VII + +FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE + +1844-1900 + + +“God is dead. God is dead: He died of pity”--the phrase runs +refrain-like through the “Sayings of Zarathustra.” It is the bright +news that Nietzsche brings as his peculiar contribution to the cause of +human hope. These are the glad tidings for whose bringing he expects +that his feet shall be called beautiful upon the mountain. Therefore +they dance, these feet, and bear toward us one who laughs and sings. +At least Nietzsche would have us believe that truth--his truth--“comes +on light feet” and that it steps to music. “Let the day be counted +lost,” he cries, “in which we have not somewhat danced, and let us know +that truth to be false which brings no laughter with it.” Yet, whether +it was that truth--Nietzsche’s truth--had somehow not the quality of +joyousness in it, or whether the poor messenger of these “glad tidings” +was the victim of ironical chance, certain it is that his dance brought +him to the doors of the mad-house, and that behind these melancholy +doors he died. + +There is however nothing but a certain strangeness of phrase that would +lead one to associate this particular message of Nietzsche with his +later insanity. It is no new idea that God is dead, no new expectation +that the news will be grateful to all who understand its import. +Xenophanes near the beginning, Epicurus and Lucretius toward the end +of pagan thought had brought the same intelligence. Only, according +to Xenophanes the Gods had died not of pity but of vice. “Liars, +adulterers, cheats are the vaunted Lords of Olympus.” And according to +Lucretius it was again not of pity but of their cruelty the Gods were +dead, the gods of that religion + + Quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat + horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans. + +Nor are the ancients the only ones to whom the world has appeared +godless. If for Hume God was only suspiciously silent, for Schopenhauer +he was conspicuously absent. Still, it was far enough from +Schopenhauer’s thought that a God could die of pity. Pity was for him +the one divine thing left to a Godforsaken world; it at least might +soften, even if it could not cure the fundamental cruelty of life. It +was rather the unreason of the world that forbade us to see in its +course a divine guidance. For Schopenhauer, God had died quite mad. + +Vice, cruelty, reticence, irrationality--these had been variously +recognized as ills of which a God might die. It remained for Nietzsche +to suggest that the most fatal of all disorders, whether in God or man, +was just that gentlest of all Christian virtues--Pity or, as the German +tongue has it, Mitleid: fellow-suffering. In the understanding of the +motives that led Nietzsche to this utterance lies the key to his whole +philosophy--if the “lightning flashes” of his thought may, somewhat +against his will, be called a “philosophy.” + + * * * * * + +Virtues like races--perhaps I should say _with_ races--have their +ascendancy and their decline. The quality of pity is not greatly +admired of strong young peoples. The virtues of triumphant pagandom +were made of sterner stuff: one hears much of temperance, of courage, +of wisdom, of justice; little indeed of compassion. It is with +Christianity that faith, hope, and charity are introduced into our +culture, and throughout Christendom the greatest of these remains +charity. Thus it is that Nietzsche always refers to these virtues as +the “modern idea,” and since modernity is to his mind desperately sick, +he seeks the cause of its disease in its “fixed idea.” + +Now in imagining that charity or pity might well be a symptom of +weakness, Nietzsche does not stand alone even among modern thinkers. +Spinoza for one is inclined to be critical of the excellence of pity. +Why pity one’s neighbor more than oneself? And Why pity oneself at all? +Is not such self-pity a form of repining? But the cure for repining is +understanding--the understanding that all things are of God. One might +as well regret that the area of one’s field is not greater than the +product of its base and side, as that the length of one’s days does +not exceed three-score years and ten. And Kant again is no sympathetic +witness to the virtue of pity. “There is but one thing good,” he has +said, “and that is a good will”--the will, namely, to obey the command +of duty. If one have this one cannot need pity; if one have it not one +cannot deserve pity. + +But Spinoza and Kant are in this, as in other respects, exceptions +to the soft mood of modern sentiment. With Schopenhauer, the very +embodiment of modernity, we have seen pity once more set on high as the +unselfish virtue. It is the self-less man that becomes the holy man; +it is the holy man that becomes the sage, denying the world with its +pitiless Will-to-live. + +Now it is against this very philosophy of Schopenhauer, against this +conception of the beauty and wisdom of self-surrender that Nietzsche +reacts. If to Spinoza pity is a folly, if to Kant it is a superfluity, +to Nietzsche it is a vice--more than a vice, a disease, that deep +sickness of modernity which spells decadence. Schopenhauer, and all +that older wisdom which Schopenhauer loved, of Jesus and of Buddha, +these were Nietzsche’s great denials, these were the false physicians +of the soul that had made the soul sick in making it sad. + +If Nietzsche reacts so violently against the teaching of Schopenhauer, +it is not because he is by nature precluded from appreciating its +seduction. It is rather because he had at one time in his life too +deeply understood and too completely yielded to its soothing counsel of +surrender that he later bends all his energies to its destruction. This +complete revulsion of feeling was not a unique episode in Nietzsche’s +experience. On the contrary his intellectual life is largely a history +of such accepting and rejecting. Born into a clergyman’s family, +passing his childhood in quiet Naumburg, Nietzsche in his last years +claims the name of Antichrist. Eagerly connecting himself in his +student days at Bonn with one of those corps that treasured the +republican ideals of ’48, he advocates in his later years a social +organization modeled on the caste-system of the East. An ardent patriot +in ’70, he becomes the contemner of the organized state in general, a +contemptuous critic of Germanism in particular. A trained student of +history, a distinguished professor of philology at Basel, some of his +most cunning and cutting analyses expose the weakness of the learned +temperament. In his first important work, “The Birth of Tragedy,” we +find him an apostle of Wagner; his later “Case of Wagner” is perhaps +the cruelest polemic against a man and his art of which modern letters +give example. + +The bare enumeration of these changes is bound to leave an impression +of waywardness. Yet this impression would be in so far false that it +is clear each accepting was a matter of deep feeling with Nietzsche, +each rejecting cost its price. At times, to be sure, he would put on +a brave front before the spectacle of his thought’s inconstancy. Only +those that can change can grow: “I love those that change,” he writes. +But at other times there is more of melancholy in his recalling of +abandoned ideals. “If thinking be thy destiny, then honor that destiny +with divine honors; sacrifice to it thy best and thy dearest.” It +is not without reason that he calls the progress of his thoughts a +“Selbstüberwindung” and one may best understand the fierce bitterness +of his attack upon those he has put behind him if one remember that +nothing less than hatred could replace an old love in this too +tenacious heart. + +It is then of a piece with the rest, if a philosophy which in the end +represented the dearest foe of his thought should have been the friend +and guide of Nietzsche’s youth. How deep a meaning Schopenhauer had +once possessed for him may be judged from the following extracts. The +first is from a letter written in 1867 to his friend the Baron von +Gersdorff on the occasion of the death of von Gersdorff’s brother: + +“Perhaps this death is the greatest grief that could have come to you. +And now, dear friend, you have experienced for yourself--I gather from +the tenor of your letter--why our Schopenhauer esteems pain and trouble +a great gift of fate, the δεύτερος πλοῦς to the resigning of the will. +You too have felt and lived through the enlightening, deeply quieting +and settling power of pain. It is a time in which you can yourself try +out the teaching of Schopenhauer. If the fourth book of his masterpiece +now make on you an ugly disturbing downweighing impression, if it have +not the power to uplift you, to carry you through outer violent grief +to that chastened yet serene mood that comes over us as we listen to +noble music, to that mood in which one feels the earthy shell to have +dropped from one,--then I too will have no more of this philosophy. +Only the deeply suffering can and may speak the final word on such +matters. The rest of us standing in the current of things, only +longing for that denial of the will as for the blessed isles, can not +judge whether the solace of such philosophy is adequate to times of +deep sorrow.”[12] + +And some three years later, Nietzsche invalided home from the hospital +corps of the Prussian army writes to this same friend at the front: +“This morning brought me the happiest surprise and a relief from much +inquietude and anxiety--your letter.... Everything that you write +affects me deeply, above all the sincere earnest tone with which you +speak of this test by fire of our common philosophy of life. I too have +been through a like experience, for me too these months have proved a +time in which my beliefs have shown themselves deep-rooted. One can die +with them; that means much more than saying, one can live by them.”[13] + +One may die by the light of Schopenhauerian principles! To die by +them--the taunt comes from an older Nietzsche--is all that one can +do with them. But by this later time, dying, voluntary dying, dying +with the breath still left in the body--all this has lost its charm +for Nietzsche. He is now all for living; for more than living, for +fighting; for conquering; for, if need be, killing. + +“One who like me,” he writes in these later days, “has long busied +himself with curious interest in thinking out pessimism to its bitter +end ... has probably in this very pursuit--without precisely having +willed it--turned his eyes toward the opposite ideal: toward the ideal +of the most domineering, the most living, the most aggressive of men, +toward him who has not merely reconciled and adjusted himself to things +as they are and have been; but who wants more of them, just as they are +and have been--more in all eternity, crying insatiably _da capo_ not to +his own life only, but to the whole scene and all the play.” + +The passage is not without a hint of Nietzsche’s personal psychology. +No doubt he loved contrast for the sake of contrast; no doubt he +loved drama--particularly the dramatic conflict of ideas--for the +play’s sake; no doubt he loved paradox not a little for its noise. Yet +it is not hard for the student to make out motives deeper than the +personal, and more general, that impelled Nietzsche to turn his eyes +from the ethics of self-sacrifice to the opposite ideal, to the ideal +of “the most living, the most aggressive of men,” to the ideal of the +“Caesarian Conqueror.” + + * * * * * + +No understanding of these motives can leave out of account the great +scientific idea that had made its appearance in the nineteenth +century--the idea of organic evolution. It is difficult to overestimate +the suggestion that would lie in such an idea for one imbued with the +thought of Schopenhauer. In its Darwinian form, the essential mechanism +of evolution is seen to be a struggle, a war between race and race, +between individual and individual. That such warfare is the necessary +expression of the will to live, the most universal principle of that +troubled phenomenon we call nature, Schopenhauer had indeed grasped, +had insisted upon, had made the cornerstone of his theory of life. But +then Schopenhauer had dwelt with equal insistence on the uselessness, +the irrationality of the struggle. It was all cruel, then, nowhere +benign, because nowhere directed toward an end. But now a purpose in +the struggle is just what the evolutionary hypothesis seems to suggest. +What if life’s pitiless cruelty were justified as the indispensable +means to a supreme end--the end namely of producing a being higher than +any of those that take part in it? By the selection of the fittest, +would not this warfare result in the production of the superior? And +if the superior could be produced only at the cost of the inferior, is +there not in this sacrifice something more than wanton and irrational +cruelty? + +It is little wonder that one already impressed with the +“self-contradiction” involved in a will not to live should seize upon +this suggestion. “I bring you a goal,” cries Zarathustra. And this goal +he calls the “Uebermensch.” + +“I preach to you the Superman. Man is something to be overcome. What +have you done to overcome him? + +“All things before you have produced something beyond themselves, and +would you be the ebb of this great flood? Would you rather go back to +the animal than overcome man? + +“What is the ape to man? A jest or a bitter shame. And just that shall +man be to the Superman, a jest or a bitter shame. + +“You have traveled the way from worm to man, and much in you is still +worm.... + +“Lo, I preach to you the Superman. + +“The Superman is the meaning of the earth.” + + * * * * * + +To produce the higher race! that is “the meaning of the earth,” the +meaning that Schopenhauer had missed, that only one coming after Darwin +could have seized; a meaning that does not mask the cruelty of life, +yet takes from it its tragedy--the tragedy of senseless casual pain. + +But now that we have found the goal, we may also define the worth of +life and its duties. In deducing these we meet the most astonishing +“Umwerthung aller Werthe,” the complete inversion of those notions of +worth which we dwellers in Christendom have inherited. “I sit,” says +Zarathustra, “with old shattered tables of the law around me--and +with new tables, too, half made out.” We approach an understanding of +Nietzsche’s meaning when he wrote that God and man dies of pity. For +if with him we make whatever promotes progress toward the superman +our good, whatever retards it our evil, then must it not be that a +pity which spares the weak for pity’s sake is the very vice, the moral +disease, which makes for decadence? Is not pity the anodyne of those +who despair of life, and is not hope in the future necessarily cruel? + +Before we who are of necessity touched with modernity react against a +doctrine so little in accord with our profession of self-sacrifice, +it would be well to ask ourselves how seriously we take this our +profession. Is the quality of mercy indeed never strained for us? +For example, are we citizens of a young and prosperous country eager +to throw open its doors to the unhappy dregs of outworn lands and +exhausted civilizations? For this would be the charitable thing to do. +How many are prepared to encourage the mentally unsound or physically +diseased to propagate? Yet pity must deny itself something if it would +condemn misfortune to wed loneliness. + +To be sure one expects at this point to hear of “the deeper pity”; to +be told that such deeper pity must let some perish in their misery +that more may not be made wretched. Even so, we have passed from the +doctrine of the supremacy of charity to the theory of “the greatest +happiness to the greatest number.” Already we must occasionally cry +with Nietzsche, “Be hard!” and must at moments understand his phrase, +“The will not-to-help may be higher than the sympathy that springs to +aid.” + +And we might carry our criticism of sympathy a step further. What +sanction has the formula “the greatest happiness to the greatest +number”? Obviously, the sanction of the approval of the greatest +number; it is the complete expression of the egoism of the mob. But +egoism for egoism, is there anything to recommend the ideal of the +mob as against that of the exceptional being? Surely, if we make +progress our guide, those who have done the most to bring about modern +conditions are just those whom the mob has condemned and suppressed as +working against its welfare. Socrates was poisoned, Jesus crucified, +Caesar assassinated, Bruno burned, Napoleon isolated, for their crimes. +It makes little difference whether the crime was against the state, +the priestly tradition, the republic, the church, the nations; the +power to punish in each case came from the masses. Each of these +conquerors was and had to be a pitiless egoist, hesitating not at all +to overturn the world of his day for the sake of his own ideal. Looking +back on these historic figures, one is tempted to say that the glory of +the world abides in its criminals, those lonely men, those egoists. + +If I have included the gentle figure of Jesus in a list of the +conquerors, it is not because Nietzsche would regard him as one who had +made for the world’s progress, however much he may have contributed +to its history. Nietzsche would, however, include the founder of the +gospel of love among the master egoists. Of course, modernity will cry +paradox! “Granted,” it will say, “granted he brought a sword into the +world, was it not an enormous pity for the humanity that was to be that +moved him to destroy the world that was, and with it, himself?” + +Nietzsche’s handling of this paradox is one of the significant +movements of his thought. To understand it we must go back a little. +It is not the question of the personality of Jesus, of the motives +that were clearly present to his own consciousness that Nietzsche +would discuss. In general, he is completely indifferent to the kind of +evidence furnished by self-analysis respecting the motives of conduct +and the ground of opinion. Even those whose powers of analysis might +be supposed to give them a right to speak--the great philosophers +and lovers of truth--are to Nietzsche deceivers or self-deceived. +“What tempts me to look upon all philosophers half with mistrust, +half with amusement is not that one discovers again and again what +innocents they are, how often and how easily mistaken and misled, +not, in a word, their prattle and childishness. It is rather that, in +spite of the great and virtuous noise made by the whole company the +moment the question of truth is even remotely touched on, they do not +deal ingenuously with us. They all pose as believing that they have +arrived at their own opinions by the self-development of a cool pure +and divinely impassible dialectic (in contrast with the mystics of all +shades, who, honest fools, _will_ speak of Inspiration). At bottom, +however, it is some idea loved at first sight, most frequently some +heart’s desire made abstract and well refined that they defend with +reasons found for the purpose. Advocates denying the name, cunning +special pleaders for their prejudices, they christen these _The Truth_.” + +If then the lover of truth cannot tell the truth about himself, if the +cool thinker is unable to reveal the grounds of his thought, how much +less can the man of heart tell what is at the bottom of his heart, the +man of passion tell where his deepest passion lies? It remains for +Nietzsche to make good these short-comings. + +And Nietzsche makes them good in a way that lacks neither simplicity +nor decision. He lays it down that there is one motive to which all +others reduce, and to which everything that lives instinctively reacts. +This motive is not the mere desire to preserve oneself, the desire +that many have supposed sufficient to explain even the phenomenon of +evolution. It goes beyond self-defense to strive after the maximum +of aggression. Nietzsche calls it “der Wille zur Macht”--the Lust of +Power. It is this that makes the world dance, that makes the brute +prepare the way for man, that drives man to produce the superman. It is +consequently this that compels the thinker to his thought, the meek to +his resignation, the crucified to his cross. + +“I am not of those of whom one asks ‘why?’” Nietzsche has once written. +If you cannot accept his assurance that the deepest spring of conduct +is the will to conquer, then accept the contrary doctrine: Nietzsche +is prepared to trust his insight that you do this because the contrary +doctrine is just the one _you_ need to work out your own scheme of +conquest,--as a wolf may on occasion sincerely prefer the pelt of a +lamb to his own natural coat. + +It is to the lust of power in men’s hearts that the gospel of the +crucified one appeals! The paradox is perhaps most completely worked +out in Nietzsche’s “Genealogie der Moral.” Here history is made to +reveal a long conflict between two contradictory estimates of worth. +For the one standard a contrast exists between high morals and low; +for the other, between holiness and sin. The code of ethics based on +the first of these contrasts embodies, as the etymology of its terms +indicates, the aristocratic conception of worth. “High morals” are +simply the manners of the upper, the ruling class; “low morals,” the +habits of the underlings. This standard of valuation is accepted by +the high and low alike of a race in its youth and strength. The second +standard defining the opposition between good and evil is an invention +of the miserable and oppressed; it is their reaction against their +conquerors, the expression of their resentment. It can only become +dominant in decadent races; its triumph in Christianity is evidence +that the modern world has sunk to the ideals of the lowly--that is to +say, of the low. + +If we place these two codes side by side, we realize how completely +the acceptance of either demands the “Umwerthung aller Werthe” +acknowledged by the other. The highest worth in the aristocratic +morality is the pride of strength; the great wickedness to the lowly +moralist is just this same pride of strength. The great virtue of the +slave-morality is humility; to the aristocratic taste this humility is +abject. Of the history of the warfare between the two, Nietzsche gives +a sufficiently dramatic account. Characteristic is his picture of the +triumph of the slaves: + +“All that has been accomplished on the earth against the higher orders +is as nothing compared with what the Jews have done: the Jews, that +priest-led people that finally contrived to have satisfaction of its +enemies by a complete upsetting of all their ethical standards, in +other words, by an act of intellectual revenge. It was the Jews who +with inexorable logic dared to deny the aristocratic equation (good = +lofty = powerful = beautiful = fortunate = god-favored) and who with +bottomless hatred--the hatred born of impotence--set their teeth in a +formula: to wit, ‘only the wretched are the good; only the poor, the +weak, the lowly are the good; the suffering, the sick, the unlovely are +indeed the only servants of God and the only ones blessed of God--while +you, O ye high and mighty, you are in all eternity the men of sin, of +violence, of lust, the insatiable, the Godless, and you shall be in +all eternity the unblessed, the accursed, the damned!’... With the +Jews begins the slave-morality, that morality which has a struggle of +two thousand years behind it, one which we fail to note to-day, just +because--it is victorious.” + +The master is made to accept the slave-morality, the tyrant is +made afraid! Our English poet Browning has given a picture of this +moment in history which surpasses even Nietzsche’s in vividness. The +man-forsaken, cowering yonder in his selfless humility--tempts the +tyrant to wring from him one gesture of rebellion, one word that +suggests pride of self. In vain! The slave’s arm of defense is just +non-resistance, just a mimicry of non-entity. + + When sudden ... how think ye the end? + Did I say “without friend”? + Say rather, from marge to blue marge + The whole sky grew his targe + With the sun’s self for visible boss, + While an Arm ran across + Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast + Where the wretch was safe prest! + Do you see? Just my vengeance complete, + The man sprang to his feet, + Stood erect, caught at God’s skirts, and prayed! + --So, _I_ was afraid! + +But the psychology of this fear of the Lord that is the beginning of +decadence? How is the tyrant to be made to accept the “Sklavenmoral,” +to respect, even to imitate humility and to call it holy? Well, the +slave has on his side two things that make for success: superior +numbers and superior cunning. For “only those who have need of +cunning,” Nietzsche writes, “acquire it.” And the strong has one +vulnerable point--his superstition. It is this point that the instinct +of slave-hatred has found; with cunning and with numbers it has managed +to inculcate a belief in the God of Pity, to overthrow the aristocratic +appreciation of high and low, to substitute for it a morality of the +miserable that sets up the distinction between holiness and sin. It is +the denial of the will to conquer implied by such a standard of conduct +that makes modernity decadent, that unfits it to produce the superman. +No wonder Nietzsche should have claimed the gratitude of higher men for +his glad tidings, the God of Pity is dead! + + * * * * * + +In passing beyond the morality of decadence, every suggestion of a plan +of life that might be substituted for it, must come from the past: the +young races not yet fallen into decrepitude give us our models of the +heroic. We cannot however turn the clock back, we cannot repeat their +acts today without becoming such anachronisms as a Cervantes could make +laughter of. It may be however that our own institutions, foremost of +which is the well-organized state, leave ample room for the heroism +that prepares the way for the superman. + +“Where the state ends--there begins the man who is not superfluous.... + +“Where the state ends--Look, my brothers! Do you not see the rainbow +and the bridges that lead to the Superman?” + +Where the state ends! only there does Nietzsche’s interest begin. But +would he have the state end much nearer its beginning; yes, before +its beginning; would he return to the condition that has no social, +no political organization? Perhaps--it is hard to say; but it is not +necessary that one advocate anarchy in order that one should prepare a +field for that great struggle of man against man out of which are to +emerge the victors, the fathers of the superman. + +Huxley suggests another solution. For him too where the state ends +a new struggle begins. The state assures security of life, and of +this security is born a new desire--the _aviditas vitae_, let us say +the desire for the maximum of life measured in terms of power and +enjoyment. With this struggle born of the _aviditas vitae_, begins +Nietzsche’s theory of ethical values. Here indeed there can be no +question of unselfishness, of self-sacrifice for another. Within this +domain the meaning of good and bad stands out with perfect clearness. + +“What is good?” Nietzsche asks. “All that heightens in man the feeling +of power, the desire for power, power itself. + +“What is bad? All that comes from weakness. + +“What is happiness? The feeling that our strength grows, that an +obstacle is overcome. + +“Not contentment, but more power; not universal peace, but war; not +virtue, but forcefulness. + +“The weak and ineffective must go under; first principle of _our_ love +of humanity. And one should even lend one’s hand to this end. + +“What is more harmful than any vice? Pity for the condition of the +ineffectives and weak--Christianity.” + +Yet one must not imagine that this pitiless struggle of which is to be +born the man of tomorrow is gloomy and hate-inspired. On the contrary +it is joyous, and gives scope for a much nobler love than that which +is pitiful. I know of no institution of modern life that so nearly +realizes Nietzsche’s idea of this struggle together with the virtues +it engenders, as does that of sport among gentlemen. Here one plays +to win, and to spare one’s opponent or to be spared by him merely mars +sport. Yet one does not hate one’s opponent, but loves him for his good +sportsmanship. Only, this love, this friendship among strong men must +not weaken the arm, must not soften the will; if it do, it destroys +itself and is returned with contempt. We do not hate men because we +fear them, Nietzsche makes it out, but just because we do not fear +them. The hatred that leads one to shun one’s kind is born of disdain. +Life that has for its joy the joy of battle, for its reward the sense +of strength that grows with its exercise, for its delight the love of +brother warriors, a brother that can give and take death generously! It +is only the many too many, weakly looking on and trembling before the +spectacle of a strength they fear and hate, that have no joy of life +and cry, “Let there be peace.” + + * * * * * + +I would willingly describe this Homeric scene more in detail, consider +the part that certain heroes, the warrior, the artist, the philosopher, +play in it. But we must sweep on to larger issues, for there is a +question that must have occurred to everyone as our description of the +Nietzschian battle has advanced. It is the old question, Cui bono! We +fight, suppose we win? Little Peterkin, who was surely brought up on +Schopenhauer, is there to ask, What good has come of it? A little power +more or less, what does it matter? Our brief hour is still a brief +hour, our atomic selves cannot greatly swell, what after all is the use +of fighting when we cannot befool ourselves as to the nature of the +spoils? + +For answer, we might point once more to the Superman. For him we kill +pity in our hearts; for him, and not for spoils, is the battle fought. +Surely the conqueror is conquered and his winnings cannot warm a grave. +It is for the sake of them that come after that the costly struggle is +maintained. Every fighter should know this; it should fire his heart +and give him courage to be hard. “Higher than the love of thy nearest +stands the love of those most remote from thee, thine offspring, the +far future man. Higher than the love of thy kind is for me the love +of a Shadow. This Shadow that runs before thee is more beautiful than +thou; why dost thou not give him thy flesh and thy bones?” + +But this Superman? Can things stop with him? Is he really a goal? Or +only a transition, a bridge to the super-superman? Has evolution really +changed the situation that Schopenhauer depicts? In the endless flux +can one find a purpose that abides? + +This phrase--the endless flux--brings us to one of the strangest phases +of Nietzsche’s doctrine. One who, with Schopenhauer, has deeply +questioned the evidence of purpose, the harmony of purposes in this +world of ours, one who has groped in the night of things for that which +might inspire one’s will to live has perhaps been caught by the great +idea of evolution, has perhaps cried with Nietzsche, “I will live and +struggle for to-morrow.” Then, to such an one, the old questioning +spirit returns as it is bound to return to men who think. The morrow of +to-morrow looms up before him; the eternal flux of to-morrows stretches +itself out and loses itself in a vague “Whither?” + +If now this one turn to Nietzsche for an answer, he receives one +certainly; but, surely, a mocking one! + +“I preach,” cries Nietzsche, “the Wiederkunft.” + +One day Zarathustra and his Dwarf come to a certain portal. + +“Look on this portal, Dwarf. It has two faces; two ways come together +here which no man has traveled to the end. + +“This long road back of us measures an eternity. And that long road +before us--that is another eternity. + +“They are opposed, these two ways; they meet each other head-on and it +is here at this portal that they come together. The name of this portal +is written over it; it is the _‘Now.’_ + +“But if one were to follow one of these roads further, and always +further,--thinkest thou, Dwarf, they would always be opposed? + +“Look upon this _‘Now’!_ From this portal there runs a long way back; +behind us lies an eternity. + +“Must not all things that can come to pass already have passed along +this road? Must not everything that can happen already have happened +and run its course? + +“And if all things already have come to pass, what thinkest thou, +Dwarf, of this _‘Now’?_ Must not this portal have been here before? And +are not all things in such wise fast knotted together that this _‘Now’_ +drags with it all things to come? That, consequently, it drags itself +back again? + +“For what of all things can come to pass, must they not again pass +along this endless road that stretches before us? + +“And this slow spider crawling in the moonlight; aye, and this +moonlight, and I and thou in the portal whispering together, whispering +of eternal things, must we not all of us have been before? + +“And must we not return again and again along that long road--must we +not eternally return? + +“So spake he, and always lower and lower; for he was afraid of his +thoughts--and afterthoughts!” + +Surely Nietzsche is mocking us with his Wiederkunft,--with his doctrine +of the eternal returning of things! What! he teaches that the struggle +has a goal, and that goal is just--tomorrow? Then, when bewildered by +the vision of the infinite stretch of tomorrows we turn to him for +explanation, he tells us that the stream is not even infinite but like +ancient Ocean “flows in upon itself.” + +“Tied to the wheel of things,” India said we were, “therefore, let us +give up.” + +“Tied to the wheel of things,” Nietzsche agrees we are, “therefore, let +us keep on.” + +“Courage is the best of them that kill. Courage kills even pity. Now, +pity is the deep abyss: deep as one sees into life, just so deep does +one see into pain. + +“But courage is the best of them that kill; courage that lays hold on +things; courage puts even Death to death, for it says to life: ‘War das +das Leben? Wohlan! Noch einmal!’” + + * * * * * + +Noch einmal! To make one ready to cry _da capo_ to life, that is the +test of a philosophy! Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Wiederkunft has no +scientific importance, but this fact is itself unimportant. It makes +little difference whether the River Ocean flows in upon itself, or +flows endlessly on, or falls at last into Hades. The important thing is +that worth and happiness lie in playing the game of life as experience +reveals it to us, no matter what that game may be. + +“Thy will be my will, O Nature,” cried the Stoic Emperor. Is this +will the will to conquer, is it the will to produce the higher type, +is it the will to flow, is it the will wheel-like to turn in saecula +saeculorum--the word of life is “That also will I”; the word of +sickness and death is, “That will I not.” + +There is enough of the dramatic for such as have a taste that way +in the circumstance that just this lonely, pain-wracked, finally +brain-sick man should have begun his philosophy with the phrase: “God +is dead of pity for men,” and should have concluded it with that other: +“War das das Leben? Wohlan! Noch einmal!” + + + + +VIII + +PRAGMATISM + + +Nothing could be easier, you would say, than to distinguish the things +man has made from those he has merely stumbled upon and found. The suns +and their satellites, with the laws of their turning; the earth, with +its seas and continents and the ways of its winds and weather--surely +no man took thought on these things to make them. Whereas, from the +first bit of flint chipped to serve a human need to all our world has +now to show of instruments of power and works of art we have a record +of human ideals wrought in material, while man, surrounded by his +handiwork, has come to live more and more under laws of his own making. + +Aristotle thought the difference between products of nature and works +of art so plain that he need not pause to explain it. The years that +have passed since then have developed no better mind than Aristotle’s, +no keener wit than Plato’s, but they have brought us a wealth of +experience--of an experience at once enlightening and disillusioning, +until + + Jetzt sind wir so klug und witzig + Es verblutet uns das Herz. + +We are no longer sure of very much, and among the things we are most +doubtful about is just this distinction between what man has made and +what he has found. To prove this, no one need go further afield than +just to consider himself. Surely I may say of myself, my character, my +private life that it is man-made, for am not I the man that made it? +It expresses all my ideals so far as I could realize them, and never +would it have been just what it is had I not moulded it that way. And +yet, who among us has not sat up of nights with that strange being he +calls himself, and wondered however he came to bring so uncompanionable +a companion home with him and where the devil he found him? Ernst +Mach tells an amusing anecdote at his own expense. One day he was +mounting the steps of a bus when he noticed at the other end of the +aisle a man’s face peering into his. He had no more than asked himself +“Where have I seen that degenerate looking pedagogue before?”--when he +discovered he was looking into a mirror. + +And who, wearying of this sorry companion, has not tried to change +him for a better, only to find himself after a longer or shorter +while with the same old fellow at his elbow--a trifle more set in his +ways, perhaps, but otherwise little altered? Of the sadder sort of +autobiographies I should put the Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric +Amiel easily first. Not from pain or poverty, not from the malice of +other men nor any disgrace of outer fortune did he suffer, but just +from the being that was himself. “From the beginning,” he writes in +1858, “I have been a dreamer fearing to act--in love with perfection +and as incapable of renouncing her demands as of meeting them. In +short, a mind of wide vision and a character of no strength; curious to +feel all that is to be felt, unfit for any action.” “Here,” comments +his friend, Edmond Scherer, “we have Amiel’s cross. He wanted--he +wanted to want--to will, and will-power was wanting in him. He cursed +the inner spell that was on him, but he could not shake it off. +After each attempt to break it he fell back into himself again, more +bewildered, more weary and bruised than ever. In the waging of these +combats the years wore on, until the moment was near when Amiel would +have to acknowledge to himself that the circle was definitely closed +behind him.” Would you say that Amiel had made his destiny or found it? +Would you say that any of us is of his own workmanship, or does our +life slowly unfold itself to us as to Oedipus his fate? + +What is thus suggested by self-examination is confirmed by the study of +other lives. The friend whose wayward course has made your affection +anxious for him--can you, with the best will in the world, change him +from himself? Some, out of bitterness of their experience, have said +it would be easier to repeal the law of gravitation than in any way to +alter human destiny. Others to be sure are more sanguine, and will not +give up seeking a way so long as there is a will to save. But whether, +even when they appear to succeed, it is not rather their patience that +is rewarded by being allowed to live long enough to witness what would +have come about without any of their doing, or whether character is +more truly a thing made by human effort than a thing found and unfolded +to our observation--respecting these matters there is divergence of +opinion. + +Now, confidence in our ability to tell what we have made from what we +have found once shaken, there is no saying how far our questioning mind +may carry us. No saying, I mean, in the case of any individual man--for +it is easy enough to tell the general history of this doubt and +uncertainty. It reaches all the way from those who think that back of +all apparent creating by finite beings there is a Nature with its laws +that was never made, but can only little by little be made out. Let +us call those who think in this way “Realists.” Historic uncertainty +then reaches all the way from the realists to those who think that +heaven, the earth, and all that in them is, have no reality save as +they are the thought and work of finite minds. We will call these +thinkers “Idealists.” From realist to idealist and back again, through +all intermediate phases, the dialectic of history swings; but it does +not merely mark time therefore, it also measures progress. It is of one +moment--I think a rather interesting moment--of this progress that I +would speak in due order. Let this, then, be my prologue--and so to the +tale. + + * * * * * + +In 1907, William James wrote of the philosophy to which he had devoted +the last ten or twelve years: “I fully expect to see the pragmatist +view,” so he called this philosophy, “run through the classic stages +of a theory’s career. First, you know, a new theory is attacked as +absurd; then, it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; +finally, it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim they +themselves discovered it. Our doctrine of truth is at present in the +first of these three stages, with symptoms of the second stage having +begun in certain quarters.” + +Looking back over the years that have lapsed since this was written, +I cannot say that James’s prophecy as to the future of pragmatism +has been fulfilled; but that the world, at least the world in which I +have lived, has lost its first sense of the absurdity of pragmatism +is undoubtedly true. No one was more bitten than I with this first +feeling of the absurd, unless it was some other of my kind among those +who gathered of an evening in 1896 to listen to a reading of James’s +now famous little essay on “The Will to Believe”--the essay which, so +far as James was concerned, opened the campaign for pragmatism. James +had written the paper that winter as a lecture to be delivered before +the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown Universities, and I cannot +recall what the occasion was that brought a small number of us graduate +students at Harvard together to hear it re-read; but I do recall that +we were very much bewildered and not a little shocked by the reading. + +Not all, I dare say, who afterwards read this “Will to Believe” will +have experienced any such shock and bewilderment, nor will many have +felt what we found so upsetting in a bit of writing that was, as +writing, certainly, altogether delightful. But you must know that this +particular gathering was made up of students who had been brought up +in that theory of truth which I have called the realistic, and their +habitual attitude toward truth was such that they held their truth the +truer the more they were its discoverers and the less they had had to +do with the making of it. + +There were, to begin with, the laboratory men. Now, a laboratory is a +school of the most rigid discipline--a discipline whose first principle +is “keep yourself out of your experiment.” I think you will understand +what I mean by this when I say that a scrupulous experimenter about +to take conclusive readings in a matter that promises to be of some +value to science will, if possible, get another observer ignorant of +their import to take these readings for him, lest something of his own +excitement and anxiety corrupt his very touch, sight and hearing, and +warp his result to his will. And, what was this James was defending--a +“Will to Believe”? No wonder some wag of the lot dubbed it “The Will to +Make Believe”! And what was this again James was saying--“For purposes +of discovery ... indifference is to be less highly recommended, and +science would be far less advanced than she is if the passionate +desires of individuals to get their own faiths confirmed had been kept +out of the game.... On the other hand, if you want an absolute duffer +in an investigation, you must, after all, take the man who has no +interest whatever in its results: he is the warranted incapable, the +positive fool.” Had James addressed a gathering of the Sons of St. +Patrick, in the sense of demonstrating to them that the Pope of Rome +was the Beast mentioned in Revelations, he might have called forth a +noisier response, but none less sympathetic than ours. + +One who would invite a man to bring his enthusiasms, his likings and +dislikings, in short, any will of his other than the will to persevere, +into a laboratory with him would naturally not forbid him to keep all +this equipment by him in whatever pursuit of truth he might engage, +whether of history, economics, morals or religion. And just as James +shocked the realist spirit of that little Harvard gathering of a score +of years ago, so have his writings fallen afoul of realism wherever +they have been read--and perhaps few writers on philosophy have been +more widely read than William James. This is to have made enemies +indeed, for the genius of realism, the spirit of the seeker who would +find what he might find and call it truth, naked, unclothed upon with +garments of human interpretation, has sometime breathed in every +science and every art. + + * * * * * + +Take the realistic historian now--but you will doubtless know this +character better if I show him to you, and the effect he produces upon +other temperaments, than if I merely describe him as a type. Among the +most entertaining of the reviews that Anatole France contributed to “Le +Temps,” in the late 80’s and early 90’s, is one that he devotes to a +work “tout à fait solide et puissant” of Louis Bourdeau, “L’Histoire et +les Historiens, essai critique”--a critical essay on history considered +as an objective science--“in which,” as France remarks, “M. Bourdeau +puts works on history in a class with fables and Mother Goose tales. + +“‘History,’ says M. Bourdeau, ‘is not and cannot be a science.’ The +reasons he gives for this have not failed to make an impression on my +mind, and perhaps there is a special reason why they should impress +me--the sum of which is that I had tried to point out these reasons +before he did. I had thrown out suggestions of them flippantly and in +a spirit of badinage ten years ago in a little book of mine called the +‘Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard.’ I set no store by them then, but, now +that I see they are worth something, I am in haste to claim them. + +“‘In the first place,’ I said in this little book,--‘In the first +place, what is history? History is the written presentation of past +events. But what is an event? Is it any fact whatever? No, sir. It +is a noteworthy fact. Now, how is the historian to judge whether +a fact is noteworthy or not? He judges according to his taste and +caprice, follows his own idea, in short, proceeds after the manner +of an artist. For facts do not of their own accord divide themselves +into historical facts and non-historical facts. Again, a fact is +something extremely complex. Does the historian represent facts in +all their complexity? No, that is impossible. He will represent them +stripped of the greater part of their detail, consequently truncated, +mutilated, different from what they were. As to the interrelation of +these facts, the less said of that the better. If a so-called historic +fact is brought about (which is possible) by one or more non-historic +facts--and for that very reason unknown--how can the historian +establish a relation between these facts?’ + +“These, if I am not mistaken, are the fundamental ideas upon which M. +Louis Bourdeau rests his right to refuse to history any scientific +value.... + +“Indulgent minds find a way to get along with the treacheries of +history. This muse is false, they think, but she no longer deceives us +when we have found out that she is deceiving us. Constant doubt shall +be our kind of certitude, they say. Prudently, we will go our way from +error to error toward a relative kind of truth, for even a lie is some +kind of a truth.... + +“But as for M. Bourdeau, he does not wish to be deceived even +knowingly, and he absolutely repudiates history. He drives her from +his door as deceitful, shameless, dissolute, having sold herself to +the powerful, a courtesan in the pay of kings, an enemy of the people, +wanton and false.” + +So far, the picture of non-objective history in all its +ugliness--history as it has been written in the past. But now the +history of the future, objective history, realistic history--ah, that +will be quite another story. It is Bourdeau who speaks: “The historians +of the future will have for their first task the gathering and +interpreting of statistical data concerning the common events of life. +The activity of thought always expresses itself in acts, and the only +way to take account of these is, after having classified them under +definite functions, to set them down at the moment of their happening, +to count them under given conditions of population, of time and place, +then to compare these results whether simultaneous or successive, to +note the variations of the function and to make the inductions that +they warrant. Thus, and only thus, may we some day know what the +multitudes that make up humanity are doing. + +“This is the way we must write history from now on, not only in the +young countries which, like Australia, Canada, La Plata, are founded +under new conditions, but even in the old societies of Europe that, +like the others, hope to work out for themselves an ideal order of +labor, of peace and of liberty. For one who has reached our point +of advancement, any other way of studying history is inexact and +childish. A reform is coming, and will either be made by the historians +or in spite of them. The age of literary historiography is about to +close; that of scientific history about to open. When it shall be +able to reconstruct for us the life of a people in the way we have +indicated, we shall see that no story can offer so much of interest, of +instruction and of grandeur.” + +I do not know that every one is bound to share Bourdeau’s enthusiasm +for statistical history. Perhaps some will hope with France that they +may not be spared to read history written in this way, and will solace +themselves the meanwhile with their Thucydides and Herodotus. But at +least, all will have caught the martial tread of realism resounding +through these passages. + + * * * * * + +In the laboratory sciences the objective spirit sits as a strong man +in his castle, impregnable, unattackable. There we see him dreaming +dreams of conquest, the fair domain of history, in which we may include +economics, seems ready to fall to his bow and spear for the world’s +endless betterment. And what lies beyond? Lands that are the fairest, +richest, most desired of all; and yet which will take all his daring, +all his courage, all his steadfastness and an undying enthusiasm to +make his own. They are the lands of morals and religion. + +I like those chapters of history that tell how the spirit of the +experimenter sets out to conquer the realms that have so long been +ruled by masters with whom he can have no sympathy--tradition, coming +out of the vague mists of the past; superstition, born of human +ignorance; mysticism, inarticulate, ecstatic, offering reasons for +itself that are reasons only to those who ask for none. To win all this +for objectivity, for the kingdom of the kind of truth that believes +only because the experiment says so, the experiment that any unbeliever +may repeat for himself and abide by the result--this is surely a brave +adventure, and whether they meet victory or defeat one cannot refuse +one’s enthusiasm to those who have had courage to make it. + +Of those who set forth in this way, I should call David Hume the +father. Would you, for example, know what is right and what is wrong? +Then turn not to inspired writings, but travel widely through the +civilizations of different countries and different times and seek +as you would seek any other historical fact, first, what people +_called_ good and what they _called_ bad. Then, if underlying the vast +contradictions of historic precept you find nevertheless an agreement +in the purpose these precepts, set in their native settings, served, +why, then, you will have arrived at the only meaning good and bad can +have. + +Or, would you know whether this is God’s world or no? Turn not to +reputed miracles, and indulge not in idle dreams of another world in +which the faulty humanity and utter finiteness of this one will have +found its supplement and correction; but, take just the order and +purpose of this world as your best experience reveals it to you. It +may be that this seeking will leave you dark, puzzled, uncertain; but +better the unrest of judgment suspended than the dream-like peace of +faith unfounded. + + It fortifies my soul to know + That, though I perish, truth is so. + +wrote Arthur Clough. And, again, he has written: + + To spend uncounted years of pain, + Again, again and yet again, + In working out in heart and brain + The problem of our being here; + To gather facts from far and near, + Upon the mind to hold them clear, + And, knowing more may yet appear, + Unto one’s latest breath to fear + The premature result to draw-- + Is this the object, end and law, + And purpose of our being here? + +Over these verses Clough has written: “Perchè pensa? Pensando +s’invecchia.” + + * * * * * + +Why think, indeed, when thinking leaves one old--so old, so cold, so +sadly wise? That thinking--the realist’s way of thinking--does leave +one in melancholy mood may be no objection to thinking in this way; +but it may not be ignored as a fact of history. Realism’s hymn of +triumph is written by the best of its poets and the most sincere of +its prophets--Leconte de Lisle. One does not attempt to translate a +Leconte de Lisle, but the thought of the final verses of his poem on +the Southland may be put in some such way as this-- + + Man, if with heart full of joy or bitterness + Thou go at noonday through these radiant fields-- + Flee! Nature is empty and the sun consumes; + Nothing here is alive, nothing sad, nothing joyous. + + But if having put tears behind thee and laughter + Thou be turned to forgetfulness of this troubled world, + No longer knowing how to pardon nor how to curse, + And would taste a last sad volupté-- + + Come! The sun speaks to thee a glorious language; + Lose thyself in its implacable flame + And return slow-footed to the vile city of men, + Thy soul seven times steeped in divine nothingness. + +It is like that. This wondering in a world we did not make and cannot +change, in which all our creating is illusory--a chance trivial +expression of what the world has made us--with no other purpose in our +wandering but + + For to admire and for to see, + For to be’old this world so wide. + +--why yes, the fulness of such experience comes as near as can be to +bringing us to a seven-fold sense of the _néant divin_. + +Well, when a man’s philosophy has turned bitter to his tongue and hangs +heavy on his heart, there are three things he may do. He may abide by +the consequences of his philosophy, and seeing no fault in the premises +accept the conclusion with all valiance. Or, he may rebel against +all logic and reason and trust that sympathies and antipathies are +safer guides to truth than any evidence could be. Or, finally, he may +examine the premises anew. It is, I must confess, only to the last--to +the reasoners and critics who go patiently to work to re-examine old +beliefs--that I lend a respectful ear. But I do not know that I can +begin an account of the backward swing from such extreme realism as +I have pictured to such extreme idealism as I can tell only part of +before I close, better than by letting the mere spirit of unreasoning +revolt against this selfless objectivity express itself. + + * * * * * + +With an exquisite insight into the psychology of those he calls “Wir +Gelehrten,” and with no care for the truth or error of the ways of +the objective spirit, Nietzsche registers his revolt against all +this spirit stands for. “However gratefully we may still welcome the +objective spirit,” he writes in his “Jenseits von Gut und Böse,” +“in the end we must learn to put some caution into our gratitude +and some restraint on the enthusiasm with which selflessness and +impersonality of mind have come to be extolled as ends in themselves, +as an emancipation and an enlightenment. The objective man who no +longer curses or upbraids, the ideal scholar in whom the scientific +instinct after a thousand whole or half failures has at last come to +full growth and blossoming, is surely the most precious tool there is; +but his proper place is in the hands of a stronger man than he is. We +say he is an instrument--he is a mirror, he is no end in himself. The +objective man is indeed a mirror. Accustomed to subject himself to +all that is to be known, without any other pleasure than such as the +knowing, the mirroring gives, he waits till something comes his way, +then spreads himself delicately before it so that the light foot-steps +and ghostly passing of spirit things may not be lost to his surface +and integument. What there is of a person still left in him seems to +him accidental, often arbitrary, oftener still disturbing; so much +has what was his very self become a medium through which pass and in +which are reflected foreign forms and happenings. If he tries to think +about himself at all, it is an effort for him and more often than not a +failure. He changes easily; he tries to grasp his own needs, and only +then is he clumsy and awkward. Perhaps it is his health that bothers +him, or the petty pent-up character of wife or friend, or the lack +of companions and companionship. Oh, yes, he tries to think out what +is the matter with him. No use! Already his thought has swept on to +the more general case, and tomorrow he will know as little as he did +yesterday what’s to be done about it. He has lost serious interest in +himself, time spent on himself is wasted. He is cheerful, not for want +of things to worry about, but for want of fingers and hands to lay +hold on his trouble. His way of taking whatever turns up, his sunny +unconstrained hospitality to anything that comes along, his way of +wishing everybody well, his dangerous indifference to the difference +between yes and no--ah, how often he has to pay for these his virtues! +And, as just a man, he is too often taken for the caput mortuum of +these virtues. Would you have him love or hate--I mean love or hate as +God, women and brutes understand love and hate--why, he will do the +best he can and give what he can. But no one should be disappointed if +this is not much; if just here he shows himself ungenuine, unattached, +unreliable--rotten. His love is thought out, his hates are trumped up +and rather a _tour de force_, little side issues and exaggerations. +He is only genuine when nothing prevents him from being objective. +His mirroring and everlastingly even soul can no longer say ‘yes,’ no +longer say ‘no.’ It imposes nothing on anything, neither does it upset +anything. It says with Leibnitz, ‘Je ne méprise presque rien.’” + +If in this passage Nietzsche reveals his delicate antipathy for a +character we had all been taught to worship, in others he shows himself +a pragmatist before that word had been heard of. The philosopher for +him is no wanderer of the seas, accepting what shores he comes upon +whether they smile on him or frown. For Nietzsche, the philosopher is +a Caesarian conqueror who has his way with truth, and truth is such a +thing as a strong man may have his way with. + + * * * * * + +But, “I am not of those of whom one asks ‘why?’” Nietzsche has +somewhere written, and this is so true that I can use him for no more +than a vehement example of spleen. If I am to enter upon the path of +a more or less reasoned reaction against that objectivity we have all +sometime held sacred, I must turn to those of whom one can ask “why?” +And, notably, to William James. + +Now, if I do turn to James to ask him “why?”--Why is not the realist, +with all his sad heroism and resigned courage, the noblest and best +that man has imagined?--he answers, or I take him to, Because realism +is a philosophy of little faith! Faith it is that makes worlds, +realistic science has only the wit to acknowledge and the strength to +suffer what faith has wrought. Bold to endure, it is timid to change, +and a world in the making needs its makers, needs its poets and +actors more than it needs audience or spectator. At the bottom of the +realist’s brave heart lurks an abiding fear--the fear of making a fool +of himself. But a world in the making like a battle in the fighting +cries out for fools and the foolhardy. Faith risks to the point of +folly, and because all making anew is a colossal risk, let us have +colossal faith. + +Here, if I am not mistaken, you have the principal difference between +the realism that went before and the pragmatism that came after. The +faith which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner. +For there are such things, the pragmatist contends, as faiths that +realize themselves, beliefs that come true only because they are +firmly held and courageously acted upon, hopes that would never have +been fulfilled had not he who held them gone ahead in the confident +expectation that they would be fulfilled. Take, James would have you, +just that familiar class of questions of fact, “questions concerning +personal relations, states of mind between one man and another. _Do +you like me or not?_--for example. Whether you do or not depends, in +countless instances, on whether I meet you half way, am willing to +assume that you must like me, and show you trust and expectation. +The previous faith on my part in your liking’s existence is in such +cases what makes your liking come. But if I stand aloof, and refuse to +budge an inch until I have objective evidence, until you shall have +done something apt [as the realists say] _ad extorquendum assensum +meum_, ten to one your liking never comes. How many women’s hearts are +vanquished by the mere sanguine insistence of some man that they _must_ +love him! He will not consent to the hypothesis that they cannot. The +desire for a certain kind of truth here brings about that special +truth’s existence, and so it is in innumerable cases of other sorts. +Who gains promotions, boons, appointments, but the man in whose life +they are seen to play the part of live hypotheses, who discounts them, +sacrifices other things for their sake before they have come, and takes +risks for them in advance? His faith acts on the powers above him as a +claim, and creates its own verification.” + +These be but trifling affairs of commonplace life if you will, +but the imagination sweeps easily on from the relation of man and +man to all that man’s work which is done shoulder to shoulder. “A +social organism,” James goes on, “of any sort whatever, large or +small, is what it is because each member proceeds to his own duty +with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs. +Wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of many +independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of +the precursive faith in one another of those immediately concerned. +A government, an army, a commercial system, a ship, a college, an +athletic team, all exist on this condition, without which not only +is nothing achieved, but nothing is even attempted. A whole train +of passengers (individually brave enough) will be looted by a few +highwaymen, simply because the latter can count on one another, while +each passenger fears that if he makes a movement of resistance, he will +be shot before anyone else backs him up. If we believed that the whole +car-full would rise at once with us, we should each severally rise, and +train robbing would never even be attempted.” + +Have you ever, O patient reader, in the heat of a political campaign +for what you thought were better things met with that cool chilling +intelligence that hastens to warn you against trying to change human +nature? As it was in the beginning it is now and ever shall be, +gangs without end. Amen! And he is right, this unduped and undupable +intelligence is right--but on one condition only: The world will always +be as it was at the beginning if it is exclusively inhabited by unduped +and undupable intelligences--by realists, in short. Or, have you ever +tried to refresh your tired soul with what the Germans have written +of Realpolitik? If so, you will already know a great deal of what +pragmatism is _not_. It is not a philosophy of the “what never has been +never can be” temper of mind. + +“There are cases,” James puts it, “where a fact cannot come at all +unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming. _And where faith in +a fact can help create the fact_, that would be an insane logic which +would say [with Huxley] that faith running ahead of scientific evidence +is the ‘lowest kind of immorality into which a thinking being may +fall.’...” + +I am afraid there is about the pragmatist something of that dangerous +citizen who will not hesitate on occasion to grasp this sorry scheme of +things entire and shatter it to bits, full of the faith that it can be +remoulded closer to the heart’s desire. + + * * * * * + +“But now,” James returns to his argument, “these are all childish human +cases, and have nothing to do with the great cosmical matters, like the +question of religious faith. Let us then pass on to that.... + +“To most of us religion comes in a way that makes a veto on our +active faith illogical. The more perfect and more eternal aspect of +the universe is represented in our religions as having a personal +form. The universe is no longer a mere _It_ to us, but a _Thou_, if +we are religious; and any relation that may be possible from person +to person might be possible here. For instance, although in one sense +we are passive portions of the universe, in another we show a curious +autonomy, as if we were small active centers on our own account. We +feel, too, as if the appeal of religion to us were made to our own +active good-will, as if evidence might be forever withheld unless we +met the hypothesis half way. To take a trivial illustration: just as a +man who, in a company of gentlemen made no advances, asked a warrant +for every concession, and believed no one’s word without proof, would +cut himself off by such churlishness from all the social rewards that +a more trusting spirit would earn,--so here, one who should shut +himself up in snarling logicality and try to make the gods extort his +recognition willy-nilly, or not get it at all, might cut himself off +forever from his only opportunity of making the gods’ acquaintance. +This feeling ... that by obstinately believing that there are gods ... +we are doing the universe the deepest service we can, seems part of the +being and essence of the religious hypothesis.” + +I do not lay this passage before you as an example of clear thinking +and cogent reasoning. Who does not find it baffling, elusive, leading +to no kind of action, must have a mind differently constituted from +mine or from any with which I am more intimately acquainted. It is, +if you please, the groping of a faith that feels it has a right to +exist, but does not know as yet what is right for it to do. All of +which is most unpragmatic--not at all practical. But perhaps this very +quality, this manner of James’s of feeling his way through the dark _en +tâtonnant_, with his heart’s courage for his only light, is what most +endears him to our age. We sit with Zarathustra midst shattered tables +of the law, and our awkward fingers cannot grave new ones hurriedly. We +fumble, we hesitate, we begin again. We fumble, we hesitate, but we +_do_, if we are idealists, begin again. + +Now, one of the new things we have tried is just this manner of meeting +the universe half way in the matter of religious faith. And this trial +has been no interchange of philosophical abstractions; but a struggle +of very living men. To tell about it will perhaps illustrate better +than anything else the appeal pragmatism made to some and the offense +it gave to others. + + * * * * * + +We have all known, though doubtless our fathers knew him better, that +studious theologian who, as proof of a devout life’s industry, left +behind him a Testament worn to something like its elemental dust. He +was a realist in temperament, and sought God and God’s meaning in +documents as an historian might seek to reconstruct some character +of the past from the archives. He was supplemented in his labors by +learned indefatigable searchers of other remains of the past from +whose ruins they sought to bring corroborative testimony. He was +opposed only by other students who had pored over their Testaments with +equal devotion, if to opposite purpose, and by other archaeologists +who had searched the ruins with equal pains, if with other result. +But protagonist and antagonist alike of the Christianity into which +we were born were realists. Neither dreamt that the existence or +non-existence, the benevolence or cruelty, the oneness or manyness of +God were matters with which his personal wishes and strivings, his +finite wantings and not wantings could have anything to do. If you had +suggested to either that perhaps God was still in the making and that +those who would know Him must strain their eyes toward the future, not +keep them fixed on the past--it is a question which would have been +first to put you down as an impious fellow and a blasphemer. + +How different from all this is the spirit of that recent movement +within the Christian church that is generally called Modernism! +“Defined and condemned in the encyclical _Pascendi_,” writes J. +Bourdeau, in 1907, “modernism continues to fill the reviews and the +periodicals, even those that ordinarily treat of matters profane. This +internal crisis of Catholicism, this new attempt to reconcile the +church with the times, aimed at internal reform, not at schism. It was +destined to end in the excommunication or interdiction of some of its +more refractory spirits and in the submission of almost all. And yet, +by those who shared its hopes, modernism is not looked upon as the bed +of a torrent from now on to be dry; it runs like an underground river, +and some day, perhaps, will come to the surface again with sufficient +force to sweep away the dikes.” + +Well, this modernism which M. Bourdeau, in his little volume, +“Pragmatisme et Modernisme,” brackets with pragmatism as being of the +same temper, is, like all other modernities, not very new. We associate +it with such names as Father Tyrrel, in England; l’Abbé Loisy, in +France; the senator and novelist Fogazzaro, in Italy, and if the matter +has interested us, with a host of other writers no less distinguished. +But it is really of the essence of Newman, and goes back to Pascal. For +“The heart,” Pascal has said, “has its reasons that the reason does not +understand.” It was to these reasons that Newman listened, and offers +us again in his “Grammar of Assent,” and it is these reasons that +modernism would have to be the only ones on which Christianity can be +safely founded. + +But what are they, these reasons, and what does this voice of the +heart say? Its first clear utterance is negative. It does not care +who wrote the various books of the Scriptures, or what corroborative +or contradictory evidence those who study the documents and monuments +of the past may come upon. “Higher critics,” so far from being its +enemies, are welcome participants in its cause. As little does it cling +to the literal sense of the various dogmatic interpretations the +Church has from time to time put upon the sacred writings. Would you +know, for example, whether there is a Real Presence? Modernism would +answer: The Eucharist is indeed meaningless unless there be a Real +Presence; but whether Christ is really there for you or not depends on +you alone. And the like of other dogmas. + +Yet it would appear that history, sacred, ecclesiastical, or profane, +is no dead letter to the modernist. He is intensely conscious and +amply studious of the past. Nor will he, if I make him out, permit its +episodes to be treated as symbols, parables and allegories. No, the +past tells the story of a great religious truth in the making. If you +ask him what Christianity is, he will tell you it isn’t, it never has +been, it never will be any definitely finished thing; but for him it +is the best guide to living that he with all his devotion and all his +thought can make it. The modernists are Christians because they are +heirs to, and imbued with the spirit of Christianity, as they are not +inspired of the Buddha or of Confucius. Yes, they are devout Catholics +because they can work better at the making of a religion in the +atmosphere of their ancestral church than in any other air. Religion +to them is to aid in the way best suited to their temperaments and +traditions in the evolution of religion; for them Christianity is in +process, and we are the potters that mould it, not the explorers that +discover it. + +Well, J. Bourdeau is not wrong; modernism and pragmatism are indeed +of like temper and children of the same age--an age of troubled +outlook, but of brave if chastened hope. The contrast between the +realistic theologian with his ancient texts, documents, monuments, +and the idealistic theologian who turns to the past not for authority +but for guidance, not for facts but for a sense of tendency and +direction--this contrast is not unlike that other one pragmatism has +brought about between “Natural Religion” and what I may call “Human +Religion.” Natural religion sought in the order of nature evidence of +its designer, of a thoughtful purpose back of or in it, the same spirit +that a naturalist might hunt for the tracks of a mastodon or follow the +wanderings of a glacier. For the humanist, the purpose of nature is a +thing in the making, and we are here to help make it. It will turn out +as our finite efforts form it--good or bad, as we are good or bad; wise +or not, as we are. The practical message of “Human Religion” is pretty +much that with which James closes his little essay, “Is Life Worth +Living?” “Be not afraid of life. Believe that life _is_ worth living +and your belief helps create the fact. The ‘scientific proof’ that you +are right may not be clear before the day of judgment (or some stage +of being which that expression may serve to symbolize) is reached. +But the faithful fighters of this hour, or the beings that then and +there will represent them, may then turn to the faint-hearted who here +decline to go on with words like those with which Henry IV. greeted the +tardy Crillon after a great victory had been gained: ‘Hang yourself, +brave Crillon! we fought at Arques, and you were not there.’” + + * * * * * + +I have tried to show pragmatism as a moment in the swing of thought +from realism to idealism, and how for it the most vital, that is to +say, the moral and religious aspects of our world are things to work +and fight for, to make and to mould, not just to find and come across. +Its god is indeed a god of battles, and we are his soldiers on whom his +victory depends. But as I view this battle, it is not to be fought out +in heart throes and outpourings of sentiment. These may indeed change +and better human relationships; but it must not be forgotten that human +relationships exist in a physical universe that is older than they, +and promises to outlast them. Now, just the physics of things show a +strong tendency to be amoral and atheistic. “You all know the picture +of the last state of the universe which evolutionary science foresees. +I cannot state it better than in Mr. Balfour’s words: ‘The energies of +our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the +earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has +for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit +and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness which in +this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence +of the universe will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. +“Imperishable monuments” and “immortal deeds,” death itself, and love +stronger than death, will be as if they had not been. Nor will anything +that is be better or worse for all that the labor, genius, devotion, +and suffering of man have striven through countless ages to effect.’ + +“That,” comments James, “is the sting of it, that in the vast drifting +of the cosmic weather, though many a jeweled shore appears, and +many an enchanted cloud-bank floats away, long lingering ere it be +dissolved--even as ours now lingers for our joy--yet, when these +transient products are gone, nothing, absolutely _nothing_ remains to +represent those particular qualities, those elements of preciousness +which they may have enshrined. Dead and gone are they, gone utterly +from the very sphere and room of being. Without an echo; without a +memory; without an influence on aught that they may come after to make +it care for similar ideals.”[14] + +Has not, then, realism the last word in this argument and does not the +rolling mechanism of things have its way with us in the end--since it +compasses not only our death, but the collapse of the very theatre in +which our little lives have played themselves out? + +No, I should say, this is not the moral of the tale, though there is +a moral to the tale. “Knowledge,” writes Francis Bacon, in his “Novum +Organum,” “knowledge and human power are synonymous.” So are human +impotence and human ignorance synonymous. The child that dips a cup of +water from the fountain is subduing nature’s mechanism to its needs. It +is only a question of how great is our knowledge if we would know how +great is our power. + +We die, our world dies, only because we know no better, have thought +of no way of preventing; but knowledge and human power are indeed +synonymous, and I know of no end to either. But, as for those of us +bound to die before we have learned how not to, and as for our children +whose world may well vanish before they have thought of a way of +saving it, we have always this solace--that we know we are facing the +only way salvation can come from when our face is toward science. “For +nature,” says Bacon, with his queer crooked smile,--“nature is only +subdued by submission.” + + + + +IX + +PROGRESS + + +We little realize, until we have met them socially, how engaging the +manners of cannibals can be. It is unfortunate that so many obstacles +lie in the way of our making their better acquaintance,--they live +so far out of town for one thing, and for another are so clannish a +set that only occasionally is one of our sort welcomed to their inner +circles. Yet when one who has had this fortune returns to tell about +it,--which happens too rarely--we can see it has been a revelation to +him and an enlightenment. There is that friend of our youth, Herman +Melville, who about the year 1840 was entertained by the Merquesan +Islanders--I swear that as I read him I find something very winning +about the ways of these people. It is true they were what Melville +calls “occasional cannibals”; but although cannibalism, however +occasional, cannot win our entire approval (perhaps because, as +Montaigne suggests, we have learned how much better it is to torment +our enemies alive than to consume them dead) yet it is not wise or just +to allow our prejudice against an odd local custom to blind us to so +much that is fair in their lives. + +For much there is that is fair in the lives of the Typees. Dwelling +on that enchanted island of the Pacific, their lines are cast in +pleasant places. The asperities which civilization seems rather to have +aggravated than smoothed do not roughen their way. Their existence is +passed in the midst of tropical plenty, on which their numbers, few +and hot on the increase, make light demand. They toil not to cover +what nature has conceived in innocence, and spin but lightly to adorn +what nature has fashioned fair. Little thought do they take on their +housing. “There are few villages,” Melville tells us, “the houses +stand here and there in the shadow of groves or are scattered along +the banks of the winding stream; their bamboo sides and their gleaming +white thatch forming a beautiful contrast to the perpetual verdure +in which they are embowered. There are no roads of any kind in the +valley; nothing but a labyrinth of foot paths twisting and turning +without end.” Yet the morals of these people do not seem to have been +so far below our standards as their benighted condition might lead us +to expect. “There seemed,” says Melville, “to be no rogues of any sort +in Typee. In the darkest nights the natives slept securely with all +their worldly wealth around them, in houses the doors of which were +never fastened. The disquieting thought of theft and assassination +never disturbed them. Each islander reposed beneath his own palmetto +thatching, or sat under his own breadfruit tree, with none to molest or +alarm him. There was not a padlock in the valley.” + +I had gone so far in one of my readings of Melville, and was beginning +to wonder in the back of my head what a Typee introduced into +our civilization could find to say of us half as pleasant as the +things their guest had noted of them, when I recalled that another +had long ago put the like question to himself when he was in much +better position to answer it. It was when the New World was very +much newer than it is now, that Villegaignon landed in a country he +surnamed Antarctic France, where dwelt a people of cannibals the very +counterpart (as I judge) of our friends the Typees. “Three of these +people,” the Sieur de Montaigne records, “were at Rouen in the reign +of our late King, Charles the Ninth, who talked with them a great +while. They were showed our fashions, our pomp, and the form of a fair +city; afterwards some demanded their advice, and would needs know of +them what things of note and admirable they had observed amongst us. +They answered three things,” ... of which Montaigne seems particularly +impressed with this one: “They had perceived [they said] there were men +among us full gorged with all sorts of commodities, and others which +hunger-starved and bare with need and poverty begged at their gates: +and found it strange these moieties [they have a phrase whereby they +call men but a moiety one of another]--strange these moieties so needy +could endure such an injustice, and that they took not the others by +the throat, or set fire to their houses.” + +I do not suppose Montaigne approved, any more than we can, the touch +of savagery that concludes these observations; but on the whole they +seem to have confirmed him in certain opinions he had already formed +on the pretended advantages of civilized over barbarous life. For this +occasion on which he actually met and conversed with the cannibals was +not the first acquaintance he had with them. There had long been with +him a certain serving-man who had spent some ten or twelve years in +their country, and seems to have given his master much the same account +of them as Melville has given us of the Typees. I cannot refrain +from recalling in Montaigne’s own words his reflections on the whole +spectacle of savagery and civilization: + +“Now I find,” he says, “as far as I have been informed, there is +nothing in that nation that is either barbarous or savage,--unless men +call that barbarism which is not common to them.... They are even +savage as we call those fruits wild which nature of herself and of +her ordinary progress hath produced,--whereas, indeed, they are those +which ourselves have ordered by our artificial devices and diverted +from their common order we should rather term savage. In those are the +true and most profitable virtues, and natural properties most lively +and vigorous, which in these we have bastardized, applying them to the +pleasure of our corrupted taste.... And if notwithstanding, in diverse +fruits of those countries that were never tilled, we shall find that +in respect of ours they are most excellent and as delicate to the +taste, there is no reason art should gain the point of honor over our +puissant mother Nature. We have so much by our invention surcharged +the beauties and riches of her works, that we have altogether choked +her; yet wherever her purity shineth, she maketh our vain and frivolous +enterprises wonderfully ashamed. + + “Et veniunt hederae sponte sua melius, + Surgit et in solis formosior arbutus antris, + Et volucres nulla dulcius arte canunt. + +“All our endeavor or wit cannot so much as reach to represent the nest +of the least birdlet, ... no, nor the web of a silly spider.... + +“Those nations seem therefore so barbarous unto me because they have +received very little fashion from human wit, and are yet near their +original naturality. The laws of nature do yet command them which are +but little bastardized by ours, and that with such purity as I am +sometimes grieved the knowledge of it came not sooner to light, what +time there were men that, better than we, could have judged of it. I am +sorry Lycurgus and Plato had it not; for me seemeth that what in these +nations we see by experience doth not only exceed all the pictures +wherewith licentious poesy hath proudly embellished the Golden Age, but +also the conception and desire of philosophy.... It is a nation, would +I answer Plato, that hath no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, +no name of magistrate nor of politic priority, no use of service, of +riches or of poverty, no occupation but idle, no respect of kindred but +common, no apparel but natural, no measuring of lands, no use of wine, +corn or metal.... The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, +dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction and pardon were never +heard of amongst them. How dissonant would Plato find his imaginary +commonwealth from this perfection? + + “Hos natura modos primum dedit.” + +I had thought to begin a sound philosophical account of the nature +of progress with a picture, not, if I could help it, unsympathetic, +of man’s condition before he had felt its benefits. The plan would +recommend itself to any philosopher as suitable and convenient to its +purpose, yet here am I well beyond the beginning of my discourse, +still lingering with the cannibals, and, what is worse, sensible +that I have not been diligent to uncover the many causes there must +be for rejoicing that we are not as they were. Not that there is any +difficulty in pointing to the host of things we can do which they could +not. We have only to mount in one of our winged ships and look down on +the simple Typee rubbing two sticks together for their spark, to see +in all the distance that lies between us the like of what Prometheus +scaled Heaven for. But what in all this is there to rejoice over? + +It is singular how many have asked this question and found no answer, +or have answered--Nothing. I do not cite the licentious poets Montaigne +refers to as having invented a Golden Age and feigned a happy condition +of man before progress had spoiled the world for him; although these +are many, and if their wisdom is not of the philosopher’s kind, yet is +it all the closer to that “ancient wisdom of childhood” a wise man does +well to keep near him. But even learned academies have thought the +question not beyond their interest and study. In 1749, the Academy of +Dijon set for the prize competition of the following year the question, +“Whether the progress of the arts and sciences had contributed to the +purification of life?” The prize was won by J.-J. Rousseau. His little +essay, generally known as the “Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts,” +worked on the thought of its time as seldom so casual a thing. “One +cannot,” Jean-Jacques wrote then, “one cannot reflect on the ways of +life without finding pleasure in recalling the image of its first +simplicity. That was a fair shore, bedecked by only Nature’s hand, +toward which our eyes are ever turning back regretfully as we watch it +fade in the distance.” + +There may be, nay, I think there must be, a meaning and a moral to +this disgust of the enlightened here and now, this longing for a +life not all “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.” But the +interpretations of this feeling we most commonly meet with are not I +hope to be taken very seriously, for if they are, there is no counsel +for us but one of despair. Thus, whatever could come of the lament for +the good old days, the golden days, before science had done this or +that to cloud our first innocence? No history written in such ancient +times but that it can recall times still more ancient when things went +better with the sons of the gods because then they knew less. And it +is still open to any one--traveler, philosopher, poet--to draw what +picture he will of far away lands wherein, for that nobody wanted very +much, everybody found all he wanted. The subject of this sketch may +vary from Diogenes snarling in his tub to a Typee girl dancing in her +flowers; from the desert to which the Christian cenobites withdrew to +Tasso’s bosky places, where, before that vain word Onore had mingled +its grief with love, + + Sedean pastori e ninfe, + Meschiando alle parole + Vezzi e susurri, ed ai susurri i baci + Strettamente tenaci ... + +But of all this, nothing is serious, nothing sincere,--of all those +who lament the past not one would take the first step toward it, so +little is it in man’s nature to retreat. Or if anyone would, yet what +could he do, save drag his own sadness into the desert with him? As for +the world, it must even go on with its science, though it be but the +science of hurting itself. + +Wherefore, no less futile than regret for a past we cannot recover, +is fear for a future we cannot avert. It is natural that certain +conditions arising out of the progress of science should make gentle +souls anxious for what is to come. Science is power, and as no man can +commit the sins he is impotent to commit, there is a certain safeguard +for innocence in ignorance. Only after having eaten of the Tree of +Knowledge did our first parents come to mourn outside the gates. No +shepherds and shepherdesses conceived the iniquity of Babel’s tower, +and Egypt and great Babylon were of no children’s dreaming. Yet must +man go on gathering unto himself knowledge with all its power for harm +and no warning gesture of the fearful can stay him. Our only comfort +can be that however great a power for harm science may bring, it ought +to enhance in equal measure the power for good,--did we but know what +good and evil were. + +Did we but know good and evil! In the suggestion that perhaps we +do not, in the suspicion that this is just the knowledge to which +science does not help us,--yes, in the fear that it is science itself +which throws doubt on ethical standards--is, I conceive, a motive for +deprecating the progress of science more serious than the others, and +more sincere. Science is, indeed, endlessly critical; no authority +of tradition or of general acceptance imposes upon it; nothing for +it is finished, nothing fixed; and to those to whom all goodness is +in danger the moment one asks, What is good? science may well seem a +dangerous growth,--unhallowed in its origin, curiosity; damnable in its +outcome, unrest. And yet if as we assume science must progress, stayed +neither by regret for the past nor by fear for the future, then must +its questioning spirit invade every realm of opinion, examine the most +sacred of beliefs, look into the very meaning of good and evil. + +For this reason we did well, I conceive, to begin a consideration of +progress with some account of the skeptics. Science itself cannot +quarrel with those who meet its advances with the question, What is the +good of you? But it can only begin its answer by asking another, What +do you take to be good? + + * * * * * + +What do you take to be good? Evidently there cannot be two minds, one +of which points to the advance of civilization with every confidence +that it means the world’s betterment, the other conceiving that men +may grow wiser and none the better for that, unless _the good_ is +understood by them in different senses. What are these two meanings +tangled in the single word,--_the good_? + +It is this question that Immanuel Kant has studied with peculiar +care and thoughtfulness in his ethical writings, and there he has +made a distinction between two such meanings that seems very much +to our purpose. The first, in his stiff academic way, he calls the +_hypothetical_ use. Thus, if you were to enquire what would be the best +thing to do in order to attain a certain object, your answer would +recommend a certain procedure as “good,” certainly, but good only on +the hypothesis that such and such is your end. Your hypothetical good +washes its hands of any responsibility for what, if anything, of some +other kind of good or evil may attach to your purpose; it only places +its wits at your disposal in devising the best means to this end. Is +your purpose to rob a bank?--Then will science set itself to think +out for you the best way of robbing a bank. After that, let who will +complain that bank-robbing is not a good thing to set about, he cannot +deny that you have set about it in a good way. + +But it seemed to Kant, as I suppose it would to anyone, that we do not +restrict ourselves to this hypothetical use of the term good. There +seems to us to be a distinction between a good way of thieving and a +way of being good. If so, must there not be a good that is sought for +its own sake and not merely for the sake of what it may lead to? Is +there not a _categorical_, an _absolute_ good? And surely Kant was not +very far from the thought of all of us when he sought to identify +this absolute good with the moral good and with the object of virtue. +Plainly we see that however good a thief a man may become, he does not +increase in virtue as he advances in science. And have we not here come +upon the ultimate meaning of those who contend that, let the world +advance never so in its science, it grows no whit better? Its increase +is altogether measured in those hypothetical goods thanks to which the +thieves of today are indeed better thieves than the crude ones that +used to be; but as little as ever do they know, and still less do they +care, for that absolute good, that moral world, to have progressed away +from which is to have gone backward indeed. + +What, we asked of the critics of civilization, do you take to be good? +And setting aside those who have idly answered, It was good when the +world was young, before Onor “bound in nets the tresses Zephyr used to +scatter,”--setting aside “licentious poesy” we have found the answer +of serious men to be, The world will only be good when it has become +moral. Not the growth of science, but the increase in morality is real +progress, progress toward the absolute good. We have then only to make +plain morality’s meaning to have found what progress is. + +Morality no doubt first presents itself to most of us as a set of laws +or maxims of conduct to follow which is virtue. These laws we may think +of as delivered unto man in God’s own voice, and carved upon tables +of stone. Or, if our image of their origin and authority be not so +definite, we may still find moral peace in the thought that what words +the still small voice of conscience whispers to us are no less God’s +words. They are what Antigone took them to be-- + + The immutable unwritten law of Heaven. + They were not born today or yesterday; + They die not, and none knoweth whence they sprang. + +If many have been unable to keep the sweet moral confidence of +childhood until the end, it is because riper experience has not +confirmed to them Antigone’s premises, nor mature reflection born out +her conclusions. Do they _not_ die, these unwritten laws: are new ones, +indeed, never born? For a little searching we may find that not a +precept marks a virtue for one people at one time, but that elsewhere +or elsewhen its ordinance is taken to be vicious. And conversely, we do +not have to travel far to find vice turning into virtue. Antigone’s own +people are not so remote from us as the Mingrelians and Topinamboues; +we owe them much that we prize most in our culture, and would be proud +to match them in more ways than one. And yet, consider their admiration +in the way of a man, which, if it was any one, was surely the Wise +Ulysses. Now, if there are any two principles of Christian morals +more firmly planted in our souls than others, they are the maxims, Be +truthful, and, Be kind. But was Ulysses truthful? was Ulysses kind? +To leave for one’s unconquered enemies a wooden horse as it were a +parting token may be an innocent enough thing to do, however pagan. But +to make of this wooden horse a disguised troop ship is not within the +strict letter of truthfulness; and to sally forth therefrom to slay +your quondam foes while they sleep in the security of your peace does +not show a kindly spirit. Yet it does not appear that the Greek gods +resented any more than did the Greek people Ulysses’ cruel craft: all +of which would lead one to suspect that the unwritten law of peoples, +if indeed it come from Heaven, must come from only that part of it +which is directly overhead at the time. + +But let time and place be never so circumscribed, and men never so in +accord as to their moral maxims, are these maxims at least consistent +with one another? Does one bid us be truthful?--then another bids us +be kind! But how in this vale of perplexities is one always to be +truthful yet never unkind? “Yes I know,” writes an old gossip of mine +and fellow philosopher, “I know. Morality; Duty. But how hard it is to +discover what is duty! I assure you that for three quarters of my time +I do not know where duty lies. It is like the hedgehog that belonged +to our English governess at Joinville. We used to spend the evening +looking for it under the furniture, and when we had found it, it was +time to go to bed.”[15] + +For these reasons, most have abandoned the attempt to define the moral +good in terms of maxims, which they take rather to be hypothetical +goods in disguise. They are rules indeed, but only rules of thumb +holding “for the most part.” If they vary with the time and place, if +within the most circumscribed communities they contradict one another, +this is because they cannot pretend to be good in themselves, but +are only the means which the community accepting them has found by +experience to be best fitted for attaining a certain end. It is indeed +the end that justifies the means, it alone is the categorical good, and +the whole meaning of morality is to be sought in its purpose. + +But those who, like David Hume, have sought the purpose common to all +the discordant moral maxims of history, have found it not in some +quality this purpose might be assumed to have, without question of him +whose purpose it was. No, the moral purpose founds its right to have +all other purposes bow to it on nothing but the authoritative position +of the one that has chosen this purpose as his. Suppose, with Hume, +we found no harmony in the moral ordinances of all the many peoples +of history save that each maxim at the time and under the conditions +of its acceptance was held to serve the well-being of the community. +Now communities are not so different from particular men but that they +must, like men, hold their well-being to lie in having the objects +of their desire accorded to them. From which it follows that to act +virtuously is to make your will conform to the will of the community to +which you belong. Descartes has somewhere said that God did not choose +this world because it was good, but the world is good because God chose +it. Just so, a community does not choose its purpose because it is +good, but that purpose is good which the community chooses. We might +say that, not the good will, but the Good Willer is morality’s last +word on the subject of the categorical good. + +Thus it would seem that all virtues melt into one, and that one is what +the late Professor Royce was fond of calling “loyalty,” the devotion +of my will to the will of another. I am aware that not just _any_ +other-will, whosesoever it may be, is contemplated by moralists as a +fit object of loyalty’s devotion. The Other to whom my will should bow, +if I would be moral, is generally conceived to be more numerous than +I (_e.g._ the majority), or more inclusive (the family, the state, +the cause), or in some sense higher (God). In short, the Other-will +is taken to be, in one way or another, an Over-will, and moralists +may differ widely as to which one of several conceivable Over-wills +should be recognized as the Absolute. But for the purpose of this +discussion, one illustration of moral loyalty is as good as another, +for the difficulty that morality has found in making good its claim to +have laid hold on the absolute good lies not, I conceive, in deciding +_which_ Other-will is sovereign, but in convincing a man that he ought +to acknowledge as sovereign _any_ other will than his own. One who is +told that it is not good for him to remain captain of his soul is bound +to ask, Why not? It is morality’s way of dealing with this _why_ that +I would consider in an example which, for being simple, loses nothing +that I can think essential to the issue. + + * * * * * + +In Thomas Hobbes’s “Leviathan,” one finds an account, clear, +legalistic, unsentimental, of the meaning of duty interpreted as the +obligation of your will and mine to bow to a Sovereign-will. The +title-page of the first edition (1651) of this work bears the image of +a man of heroic size whose body is made up of little men. The little +men stand for you and me, the big man is Leviathan. The story of the +generation of the living giant made up of living men is in this wise: + +“Nature it seems hath made men so equal ... as though there be found +one man manifestly stronger in body or quicker in mind than another, +yet when all is reckoned together the difference between man and man +is not so considerable as that one man can therefore claim to himself +any benefit to which another man may not pretend as well as he.... From +this equality of ability arises equality of hope in attaining of our +ends. And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, they become +enemies, and in the way to their end ... endeavor to destroy or subdue +one another.... From this diffidence of one another, there is no way +for any man to secure himself so reasonable as anticipation; that is, +by force or wiles to master the persons of all the men he can, so long +till he see no other power great enough to endanger him.... + +“Hereby is manifest that during the time men live without a common +power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is +called war, and such a war as is of all against all.... In such +condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is +uncertain, ... no arts, no letters, no society, and, what is worst of +all, continued fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man +solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.... + +“And consequently, it is a precept, or general rule of reason, _that +every man ought to endeavor peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining +it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps +and advantages of war_.... From this fundamental law of nature, by +which men are commended to endeavor peace, is derived this second law; +_that a man be willing when others are so too, as far forth as for +peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down +this right to all things, and be contented with so much liberty against +other men as he would allow other men against himself._” + +Thus “the final cause, end, or design of men, who naturally love +liberty and dominion over others, in the introduction of restraint upon +themselves in which we see them live in commonwealths, is the foresight +of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that +is to say, of getting themselves out from the condition of war, which +is necessarily consequent to the natural passions of men when there is +no visible power to keep them in awe and tie them by fear of punishment +to the performance of their covenants.” + +Now “the only way to erect such a common power ... is to confer all +their power and strength upon one man or upon an assembly of men that +may reduce all their wills ... unto one will, ... which is as much as +to say, to appoint one man or an assembly of men to bear their person, +and every one to own and acknowledge himself to be author of whatsoever +he that so beareth their person shall act ... in those things which +concern the common peace and safety; and therein submit their wills +every one to his will, and their judgments to his judgment.... This +done, the multitude so united in one person is called a Commonwealth, +in Latin, Civitas. This is the generation of that great Leviathan, or +rather, to speak more reverently, of that _mortal god_ to which we owe +under immortal God our peace and defence.” + +Seldom has the “generation” of an Absolute been so clearly set forth. +We do not suppose, any more than Hobbes himself did, that this word +“generation” has any historical significance. Men never lived in the +state of nature here defined, they never foregathered to reason out in +this way the advisability of organizing themselves into commonwealths. +Instead of “generation,” read, if you will, “justification,” _i.e._, +the justification in reason for the commonwealth’s existence and +dominion. Then observe that not only does this great loyalist (the +whole Leviathan is one of the loyalist documents of the Civil +Wars)--not only does he demand a reason for the loyal faith that +is in him, but in the development of this reason it turns out that +the absolute _is not another will at all_, but only one’s own will +thoughtfully dealing with others to win for itself a “more contented +life.” + +Now of course it is an absurdity to try to give a reason why any will +whatever should be taken for absolute and expect to keep it so; for +the very function of this reason is to show what more ultimate end +is served by acknowledging this will as master. But if we do follow +Hobbes’s reason for bowing as deep as we do bow to Leviathan, this +reason is that our own deepest desire--or what Hobbes takes to be +such--is thereby best served. “For it is,” says he, “a voluntary act; +and of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to +himself.” + +Why then, that morality which promised to give us a meaning of the good +that would enable us to understand how the progress of science with +its hypothetical goods might let us stray from or even lead us away +from _the_ good, has turned out to be itself offering us a hypothetical +good, _to be itself an effort of science_,--the science of many wills +meeting in presence of but a single world. And this I take to be the +fate, not only of Hobbes’s but of all moralities: differ as they may +respecting that Other-will they take to be absolute, they all alike +recommend a sacrifice of my will to another will, not indeed for the +sacrifice’ sake, nor yet for that other will’s sake when all is said, +but that my own will may find “a more contented life thereby.” + + * * * * * + +Most of us have let our thoughts respecting the good of life stop +with the acceptance of those moral goods that the opinion of our time +takes to be absolute. These standard objects of loyalty, the state, +the hearth, the cause, we serve with devotion and to them make our +sacrifice. It is natural we should look with distrust, even with +hostility, upon those who have let their thought go further and have +asked, How in serving these Other-wills is our own deeper desire the +better fulfilled? And yet, if our analysis is so far correct, this is +the most intelligent, the most dignified of questions; for no historic +morality has really meant to present itself as a system of sacrifices +with no corresponding satisfactions. + +But if we ask of the current morality of loyalty, What is the greater +contentment bought by each of us at the price of the sacrifices we make +in loyalty’s name? we come upon serious matters for reflection. There +have been those who maintain that current morality cannot meet the +demands of intelligence, and as there are two ways in which in buying a +thing for a price one may drive an unprofitable bargain, so there are +two critics of current morality. The one thinks the price morality asks +too high; the other esteems the thing bought of no value. Let me call +the one the _Reforming Moralist_; the other the _Amoralist_. + +Now the reward morality holds out to all who make sacrifice to it +is some ideal of peace, whether it be peace on earth and good will +among men, or that peace which passeth understanding. Our reforming +moralist then holds fast to the ideal of peace as the deepest of human +desires, but questions whether current morality in its uncritical +acceptance of traditional loyalties has found the most intelligent, +_i.e._, the least sacrificial way of peace. Thus if he is not blind +to the citizen-peace that comes from living in Commonwealths to whose +Over-will we particular men make our loyal sacrifices, neither will he +accept such nationalism as refuses to sanction covenants of nation with +nation to the establishment of their more peaceful, if less autonomous, +relations. He sees in that group-will we call the national-will but an +historic device for improving the conditions of private life. He sees +nothing but unreformed, that is, atavistic and stupid morality in such +nationalism as would make the autonomy of the state an end in itself to +which private life must forever yield its contentment. There is a sense +in which he would say with Remy de Gourmont-- + +“The life of nations, of groups, of individuals is one struggle +against morality. Man pushes on toward liberty, and can accept only +such discipline as assures him at the cost of temporary subjection a +more agreeable and more complete exercise of this supreme good. All +discipline that is not founded in liberty is caduque, and it is for +this reason that civilization has always succeeded in surmounting +systems of morals.”[16] + +But if our reforming moralist acknowledges the supreme value of peace +and would only make the pursuit of it more intelligent, our amoralist +denies that the human heart can ever rest in peace or even really wants +to. Peace, if it were complete, would mean stagnation, will-less +apathy, that ennui of life Schopenhauer judges to be worse than any +misery the war of aggressive wills can engender. In the Nietzschian +man-of-might our amoralist sees his ideal, a will that knows no +Over-will, acknowledges no loyalty, but whose motto is “Weltmacht oder +Untergang.” For him, life shall at least know nothing of ennui, no +static stagnant peace, no Nirvana. + +Thus if we approach in an historian’s spirit the attempt to think out +the world-desirable to make for which is to progress in the only sense +the word can have, we find humanity divided between those who desire +peace and those who want war. + +On behalf of peace the moralist points not alone to the misery war +brings to the vanquished, not alone to its cost to the victor and to +the vanity of his ephemeral winnings; but to that utter loneliness +which the war of all upon all makes the only lasting portion of each. A +solitude of struggle, without one to cheer the effort, without one to +share the joy (if joy it can then be called) of triumph--can any human +heart endure, let alone desire war? + +But the amoralist, full of the _certaminis gaudia_, turns in disgust +from the hopeless state of the peaceful who having nothing more to +fear can have nothing left to hope for. Our longing for peace is an +illusion of certain moments of war-weariness, but a picture of eternal +peace, stagnant, ambitionless, dead--and yet not dead enough--who could +endure it, who could really desire peace? + +Lonely ambition--peaceful acquiescence in a common lot! The history of +human relations is a struggle, more often than not a compromise between +these ideals. There is enough inspiring in each to make any man of +understanding long for it, there is enough repulsive in each to turn +any thoughtful soul against it. Wherefore the gruesome spectacle of +world war is but the outer and visible sign of the struggle that goes +on every silent moment within the heart of each, as the volcano is but +the overt violence of long sullen rumblings that have gone before. And +so things must last if and so long as we really want two irreconcilable +ideals: compromise must follow makeshift, war must punctuate peace, +world without end. + + * * * * * + +Into a world so distraught comes that child of God, that messenger of +heaven, the modest philosopher. His cheerful gospel is that all men’s +ills are curable by taking thought, that men suffer only for their +false philosophy. Now, of all philosophies none is so false as that +which pretends one cannot have his penny and his cake. True it may +be in the letter that I cannot keep a certain copper in my pocket +and honestly entice a sweet-meat out of the baker’s window. But I +must be a sorry philosopher if I cannot keep all the potentiality of +future enjoyment the penny stands for, and yet have all the actual +satisfaction I happen for the moment to visualize in the form of cake. +Or to put the thought in less poetic and more general terms, the heart +that thinks itself torn by conflicting desires owes its plight to the +failure of its imagination to realize that only the formulas in which +it has so far expressed its desires are in contradiction; the desires +themselves may well enough be reconciled in a larger world-view. + +Take our present problem for example. It is impossible, you say, that +I should deny the ambition to conquer for the sake of the love of +my neighbor without killing what is most vital in myself. And it is +equally impossible that I should give play to my ambition to conquer +without losing my neighbor’s love and living a lonely struggle. These +things are indeed impossible in the world to which the imagination +of the past has been fettered,--this little finite earth the fulness +whereof is so easily emptied. If to have all that I can win of such +meagre fulness is the only meaning I can give to ambition, either I +must kill ambition and love my neighbor across a fence, or I must +tear down the fence and kill my neighbor. But what if the fault of +all this lay not with the darkness of reality, but with the blindness +of untrained imagination? What if we could set before ambition a +boundless prospect, so that never, far as conquest might reach, could +it find cause to weep for lack of more to conquer? What if, in the +very conquering of such a world, the gain of one, so far from being +another’s loss, were the equal spoil of all, yes, and a weapon forged +to the hand of all for new victories? Wherefore _then_ should ambition +yield or love be denied? + +But perhaps you will say, this _is_ but an imagining and a dream. Our +humdrum world, the only real one, offers no such object of ambition; +and if it did, our nature, just human nature, is not such as could +understand, still less be fascinated and inspired by it. + +Does it sound ridiculous to say that our world _is_ one that holds out +just such a prospect to all who will but see? Aye, and that many a +human eye has seen, and having seen remained single to this vision? I +will call the promised land the Kingdom of Nature Subdued: I will call +the vision the Vision of Science. + + * * * * * + +In the beginning, Man was Nature’s creature and her plaything. +Sometimes she seems to have fondled her toy and been good to it, given +it pleasant places to dwell in and let the light of her countenance +shine upon it. Those who think only of these rare moments may sing, O +bella età dell’ oro! O Paradise; O Paradise! They forget how rare were +these moments and how capriciously bestowed. Elsewhere were many griefs +of which man could not so much as guess the reason, and if he dared +raise his questioning gaze to God he was mocked for his impotence and +nothingness: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the earth? +declare, if thou hast understanding.” + +But need makes for perspicuity. Time passed, and some few caught a +glimpse of the vision of science; caught it, widened it, brightened +it and passed it on. Perhaps their lives were not very happy in a +world where they were much alone; but it is easier to tell of their +ostensible hardships than of their enthusiasms--who knows but that even +they found here their compt? Time went on, and that Nature which had +begun by being so cruel and capricious a mistress became through man’s +science more and more his slave. Human eyes were not so often turned to +the gods in supplication. A Greek slave rang out to his fellows, “Why +call ye upon the gods? Ye have hands? Wipe your own nose.” + +The earth yields; step by step death itself gives ground; and shall +we think of the stars only to fear them and to read our fate in them? +Shall they forever whisper to us their old taunting questions: “Canst +thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of +Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazaroth in his season? or canst thou +guide Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? +canst thou set the dominion thereof on the earth?”--And shall we always +answer, Alas! + +But I am dreaming a dream. Is it though so ill a thing to dream, if +one does not forget how to laugh the while? Yes, I know, the stars +are rather big for our frail hands to play with even as all Nature +once played with us. But how else am I to say that there is nothing in +Nature that can forever resist the onward march of science? What else +am I to say when the same master equations hold in heaven as on the +earth, and Arcturus with all his sons is but a falling pebble painted +large? + +Let us dream then and laugh with Aesop at his frog. It is certain that +neither our laughter nor our dreams can hurt our wise neighbor very +much, and if we go the toilsome way toward the conquest we dream of, +he or one that comes after may sometime look back on us and say, Yes, +that was Progress. _The measure of man’s coöperation with man in the +conquest of nature measures progress._ + + + + +X + +ROYCE ON LOVE AND LOYALTY + +A Footnote in Illustration + + +[Something we had to say, in clarifying the thought of Kant, of a +quality of human _love_ that holds its object single and unique. And +again, in estimating the part played by morality in the ideal of +progress, we had occasion to remark the unwillingness of some to admit +the finality of those sacrifices _loyalty_ calls for. + +These matters are not so simple but that history, in dealing with them, +shows sharp discord where it does not uncover sheer confusion. The love +that sets its heart on _one_ has been held the highest; it has also +been put the lowest of all loves. Loyalty that lives on sacrifice has +been prized as an enduring condition of all worth; it has not escaped +disparagement as a human makeshift. Above all, “love” and “loyalty” are +so mixed in men’s minds that, although any pair of lovers could tell a +service of love from a servitude to loyalty, philosophers cannot always. + +The brief discussion that follows seemed to the writer to illustrate +a difficulty it may not have removed. He considered that it could not +lack point for those who in foregoing passages on love and loyalty +have found themselves more involved than enlightened. For the rest, it +has seemed best to leave this “footnote” in the form and wording its +original occasion inspired.[17]] + + * * * * * + +One who like me has gone to Royce for wisdom now this long time and +never come away empty, may yet live to know that some of his receivings +are more his belongings than others. Thus, if it ever happen to me that +I find my hold on the ‘Absolute’ slackening and the thing slipping from +me, I cannot think that even in that day I shall have forgotten two +words I have heard. Love and loyalty, loyalty and love: this pair I +expect will still be singing its burden in my soul after other things +have left off singing there. But I hope that when this day comes I +shall know better than I do now whether love and loyalty are two names +for the same thing; or whether they are not the same, yet brothers +and friends; or whether in the end they are not rather enemies, of +which one can survive only if the other doesn’t. Nor do I know, though +I should very much like to, how Royce himself would answer these +questions. Sometimes the words fall in such close juxtaposition in his +writings that I wonder whether they do not express a single idea whose +peculiar quality is just unselfishness. But again I bethink me that to +be just unselfish is not enough for an absolutist, if for anyone; that +giving up can only be justified when it is a means of acquiring; and I +wonder what loyalty can have to say for itself half as convincing as +the things love could point to. Until at last I find myself speculating +whether if love had its perfect way with us there would be any place +left for loyalty in our lives, and whether we could not look back on it +then as on a virtue happily outlived. + +And this may be my matter in a nutshell--is not loyalty a thing to be +outlived, and is not that which alone can enable us to live it down a +love so perfect it calls for no sacrifices? Some such thought has long +been with me, but if I am to lay my troubles before you, it is time +I put aside a language too rich in sentimental associations and took +up the idiom I love best, that of cold and, if may be, mathematical +definition. + +Any definition of loyalty that could have meaning for me must assume +the existence of something many deny to have either existence or +meaning, and which I shall call in my own way the mind of a group, +or a group mind. The conception of a mind belonging to a group of +beings each one of which has a mind of its own, yet such that the +mind of the group is no more to be known from a study of its parts +than is the mentality of Peter from the psychology of Paul, is a +very old conception and perhaps for that reason supposed by some to +be old-fashioned and out-worn. It is a mere analogy, they say, and +a very thin one at that, to speak of a group of organisms as itself +an organism; it is Plato, it is Cusanus, if you will, but it is not +modern. Benedetto Croce even goes so far as to be polite about the +matter. “The State,” he writes, “is not an entity, but a fluid complex +of various relations among individuals. It may be convenient to delimit +this complex and to entify it for the sake of contrasting it with other +complexes. No doubt this is so; but let us leave to the jurist the +excogitation of this and the like distinctions--fictions, but opportune +fictions--being careful not to call his work absurd. It is enough for +us to be sure we do not forget that a fiction is a fiction.” + +To Royce the group mind is far from being a fiction, though he may +prefer to call it by some other name than group mind--maybe universal +mind or universal will. But if to him it seems natural, as it does +to me, to recognize group minds, while to Croce the entity is but a +polite fiction to be pleasantly dismissed, there must be some lack of +definition befogging our issue. Nor can I think of any way in which old +issues can better be made clear than by recalling old images. + +Aristotle would not have asked when and where do new _entities_ appear, +but where and when must we take account of new _forms_. Now matter was +informed for Aristotle when the behavior of some class of beings was +recognized to be predictable in terms of purpose. Thus earth, water, +air and fire sought their proper places, one below, another above, and +the others in between. But we remember how no sooner had these elements +reached their proper places than, transformed by the sun’s heat, they +were no longer at home where they found themselves, but must needs seek +their new homes anew. Thus homeward bound in opposite directions, they +collided and became entangled, so that mixtures of the four appeared, +which, as it proved, kept their proportions for a longer or shorter +while ere they lost their equilibrium and fell apart again. Among these +mixtures were vegetables and animals and men, but Aristotle is very +far from defining this new class, organisms, in terms of the quantities +of the elements that enter into their bodily composition. No, what they +have in common and all they have in common is a new purpose, that of +self-preservation (and, if we are to follow Aristotle rigorously, that +of type-preservation). But why in this class of beings does a new form +appear when there is nothing in any one of them but so much earth, +so much water and so much of the rest? Because, I take it, in order +that the purpose of the group may be realized, the purpose of each +constituent of that group must be defeated: when the earth in us finds +its way back to earth and our fire to fire, then we are no more. Which +is the fundamental difference between us and them: if we win they lose; +if they win we are done for. The whole has a purpose whose realization +is only possible if the purposes defining the parts are given up for it. + +I suppose Croce would say that nothing better could be offered in +support of a modern fiction than an ancient fable; and I confess that +I can think of nothing better fitted to set forth the complex problem +of how beings of one mind can combine to form groups of another mind, +than Aristotle’s account of the way elements in the form of mechanism +combine to produce a group with that other form, life. Perhaps I +can make out the connection between old and new ideas by a single +example. I know of no fellow easier to get along with than your average +Parisian: many a time have I sat at his board, looked in his eyes, +listened to his amusing wit and wondered how the great-grandfather of +my host could have been part of the Reign of Terror. And yet I suppose +the Parisian of today is not very different from the Parisian of four +generations ago, when groups of these same Parisians were ranging the +streets of Paris crying, “A la lanterne!” However much it was in the +character of the Pierre, Paul, Jean and Jacques Bonhomme of those old +days to steer for home, their distributive tendency was contradicted by +their collective tendency. A new form, a new entity had appeared; it +was the spirit of the mob. It may be pleasant to call such new entities +fictions; but it would be a most dangerous fiction to suppose pleasant +men made pleasant mobs. + +I must let this single illustration take the place of what might at +some other time grow into a systematic account of the varieties of +group minds that history and personal experience reveal to us. For my +world is highly organized--groups within groups and groups within these +in a way one might have learned at the feet of Nicolaus or by gathering +one’s history from Gierke’s “Geschichte des Deutschen Rechts.” But on +this occasion, instead of going into all this literature and all this +philosophy, let me come back to the matter of loyalty’s worth. There +would be no such thing as a demand for loyalty were there no call for +a man to deny his wish for home--whether home be on earth or on high +for him--for the sake of organizing himself into a group; which means, +as we have seen, sacrificing his purpose for the group purpose. Now, +what you think of the value of this sacrifice depends altogether on the +esteem in which you hold group minds. If you can find some principle on +which to estimate their dignity as something worth dying for in part +or altogether, then loyalty may be the last word of virtue. But if +you find that at their very best there is something rather primitive, +sometimes amoeboid, sometimes tigerish about such minds, then you +should seriously consider whether your biped soul owes anything more to +this polypod entity than the entity owes to it. Merging oneself into +something big may not be just the same as reaching for something high. + + * * * * * + +But I am not belittling loyalty. It is a great virtue so long as it +understands itself to be making a virtue of necessity. Just so is it a +great virtue to acquire equanimity in the face of death, in such wise +that not being able to invent a way of getting around the thing one +may accept it for the time being without disturbing oneself or one’s +friends more than the episode calls for. Still, if I had some genius to +spend, I should rather contribute it to the suppression of dying than +to the cultivation of a cheerful manner in dying. So should I rather +spend my time, if it were worth while, in wearing away the conditions +that make loyalty necessary than in developing a spirit of loyalty. +And so, or I mistake him, would Royce; for I can not get over the +impression that for him, too, loyalty is but a half-way house on the +road to something better--which something better is _love_. + +It is with relief I find a definition of love can be effected which +makes no very heavy demands upon one’s sentimental experience; in fact, +requires no more in that way than a fair understanding of the theory of +substitutions. For the peculiar quality Royce finds in the idea of love +is that _love individuates_. This its quality is for him its virtue +also and its excellence, so that the more love individuates the more +is it love. We are far enough from the days when a Plato could hold +the love to be higher that had detached itself from the individual and +attached itself to the quality, had forgotten the beautiful being to +think only of his beauty. For Royce, love is not love unless it has +succeeded in making its object irreplaceable. + +Now I do not know whether this constitutes a complete definition of +love. There is something hopeful about the suggestion that it may +do so; for if no one has been able to say anything very articulate +about love, neither has anyone said much that is intelligible about +individuation. But certain difficulties occur to one. Is love the only +thing that individuates? If there is such a thing as Platonic hate, +which I suppose would be the sort of hate that hates the sin and not +the sinner, why should there not be such a thing as a romantic hate +whose object would be just the sinner and not his fault? Or may not +a process of individuation go on, cold and impassible, untouched by +either hate or love? + + * * * * * + +One day Flaubert took his disciple by the hand and led him into the +secret places of art. The talent of the artist, he said, is a long +patience spent in learning how to portray so that your portrayal leaves +the object it offers just as individual as the thing is found. “When +you pass a grocer sitting at his door, or a concierge smoking his pipe, +or a stand of cabs, show me this grocer and this concierge, their pose, +their physical appearance, suggesting also by the skill of your image +all their moral nature in such wise that I do not confuse them with +any other grocer or with any other concierge. And make me see with +a single stroke in what a certain cab horse is unlike fifty others +following him or going before.” + +Why, then, besides love and hate, art too claims to be that +which individuates--and not because, if we may believe a certain +philosophically minded critic, art has borrowed anything of love or +hate. This disciple of Flaubert, this Maupassant, carried out his +master’s teachings if ever an artist did, but there is that in his +way of doing it which makes one feel that Anatole France’s account +of him is not altogether wanting: “He is the great painter of the +human grimace. He paints without hate and without love, without anger +and without pity--hard-fisted peasants, drunken sailors, lost women, +obscure clerks dried up in the air of the office, and all the humble +folk whose humility is without beauty and without merit. All these +grotesques and all these unfortunates he shows us so distinctly that +we think we see them with our own eyes and find them more real than +reality itself. He is a skillful artist who knows he has done all there +is to do when he has given life to things. His indifference is as +indifferent as nature.” + +I am not so very confident that all these claimants to the right of +individuating--love, hate, art--are equal claimants. As for hate, some +poverty of experience may account for the fact that all I know of this +romantically valued emotion has sometime been directed against persons +unknown, whose manner of conducting themselves on the earth beneath and +in the waters under the earth showed nothing more clearly than that +they had forgotten the human being and were utterly lost in loyalty. A +hate of such poor quality cannot well be said to individuate, and it is +certainly not any experience of my own that would lead me to suppose +romantic hate, as we have imagined it, to be real. Respecting the +impassibility of the creative artist, I am no less skeptical, and so I +think is France at bottom; for of this same artist whose indifference +is as indifferent as nature, he says in another passage of the same +appreciation that his hardened hero “is ashamed of nothing but his +large native kindliness, careful to hide what is most exquisite in his +soul.” + +No, I am not convinced that love has any rivals in the art of +individuating, and if not, then to call it that which individuates +is to define it completely. But whether it is a deduction from this +definition or whether it is an independent element in a fuller +definition of love, it must be set down as an important fact about +it that love wants the will and desire of the beloved to prevail. +It wants the will of another to prevail, and as the easiest and +most obvious way of bringing about this result is to yield its own +will, it has generally been supposed that love was less the art of +individuating than the art of yielding. But this is just the mistake +that has prevented love from taking its place among the more seriously +meant categories of philosophy and realities of life; for this yielding +disposition that might be supposed to make for peace in a republic of +lovers is the very matter introducing trouble and perplexity there. +It is the very matter that has made traditional Christianity less +effective than it might have been, failing where it fails, not because +there is anything better to be conceived than its gospel of love, but +because it has supposed a good heart and convinced will was enough to +bring about its kingdom. + +Our two great experiments at loving--the love of man and woman and the +love of one’s neighbor--have been too much alike in this, that they +both supposed love to be the sort of thing one could fall into and be +done with. But it is clear this is not at all the way of the matter, +and in our poor imaginings about the lovers’ republic we have been too +much guided by our imperfect experience of what our loves have been to +think our way into what the love that individuates ought to be. Oh, +yes, our love has yielded; its great vice has been its contentment in +yielding rather than suffer the labor and unrest of that thinking which +alone could have saved its kingdom. In this dear illogical passion +for yielding, we have been content with a division of the spoils; one +is allowed to give this, the other that; one now, the other then; and +so we have patched up our lovers’ quarrel as best we could without +logic. But logic, which is supposed to have nothing to do with love +and has had little enough to do with the old loves of this world, has +everything to do with the love that individuates. For, the moment love +begins to be a mutual affair, neither lover has the right to usurp +the privilege of giving; else what is left for the other lover to do? +Without logic our lovers are doomed to stand bowing to each other +before the door of promise till time grows gray. + +However, besides logic there is such a thing as bad logic, which is +perhaps nothing more than a well-meant half-thoughtfulness in presence +of puzzling experience. As a result of this half-thoughtfulness there +has sometimes crept a half-reasonableness into the matter we are +considering, which would begin by suggesting that the various and +contradictory desires of lovers, though equally strong, cannot, save by +improbable chance, be equally high and worth while; that, therefore, +the logical thing to do would be to let the lower ideal recognize the +higher and bow to it, while the higher might somehow forget its longing +to give and content its poor heart with being given to. + +There are many difficulties in the way of making such an account of the +affair persuasive, but there are more serious troubles ahead of anyone +who would try to make it meaningful. Chief of these is the hopelessness +of defining high and low in the matter of purposes and ideals. Here, +once more, Royce is quick to analyze the difficulty and remove it; +for, if I read him aright, he sees no way, and no more do I, by which +the value of ultimate objects of desire may be compared. It is easy to +calculate the better means, but how is one to know the better end? Only +this may we do--we may discover that purposes which seem contradictory +are not really so, and that neither need sacrifice itself to the other +if thought be allowed to work its perfect work. No doubt happiness lies +in getting what we want; but this is not the same as getting what we +think we want, as capturing what we go after; for our wants are none +the less hard to make out because they are our own. + +This, then, is thought’s infinitely difficult task in the service of +love, to analyze apparent desires until it has found the real want at +the core of appearance, while the postulate on which alone the advent +of the kingdom becomes possible is that thought may find our real wants +not contradictory. The times are not without sign that Christianity as +an ethics is coming to realize how very intellectual is the task it has +set itself in trying to bring the kingdom of Christ’s vision to be on +earth. What Christianity most needs, writes Tennant, is a philosophy. + + * * * * * + +The brief time we allow ourselves for our utterances ought yet to prove +ample for a person of industry and thrift to make himself thoroughly +misunderstood; and I hope I have used it to no less purpose on this +than on former occasions; but among the misunderstandings I would +prevent, if I could, is that which would sum up the matter of my +discourse as a defense of _individualism_ against _collectivism_. Such +an issue could only be meaningful for one to whom the collectivity was +denied some sort of individuality which the “individual” enjoys. But +I have tried to show that I could conceive no such difference between +the mind of the part and the mind of the group. The group mind may +be loved with the human love that individuates, as well as can the +soul of a fellow-man; and no doubt one may love one’s country as a +mistress. But the difference between the love of equals and the love +of constituents is plain. The latter sort of love can last only so +long as its object endures, and as long as it lasts its sacrifices are +incurable; for in a world that has conquered strife there would no +longer be that contradiction between the will of a group and the will +of its parts, which alone makes the group entity meaningful. Groups +bound in mutual respect of each other and studying to preserve their +parts irreplaceable _have no minds_; the entity born of struggle and +calling for sacrifice has simply disappeared; where we had a group +mind, we have now but an aggregate of minds, “a fluid complex of +relations among individuals.” But the love of equals can push on toward +the ideal without destroying the very object of its devotion; it can go +on searching the core of concord in the stupid appearance of discord +until love has found a way to make loyalty a lost virtue and a group +mind a thing that is no more. + + + + +XI + +RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT + + +When I had gathered together the pages in which for a time I had been +living with these men whose thought had been so real a thing to me, who +one by one had said their word and left it to live or die according as +men’s hearts received it, I was as though suddenly and newly aware of +the great modern city without pressing on my window-panes. Little by +little its vast insistent presence seemed to push my whilom companions +out of the room of being back to their places among the many silent +dead. For indeed, I reflected, how few, how vanishingly small a number +of those who are out there will be better, worse or different for +anything these lives had spent themselves to gain and to give. + +If such thoughts came to me, as to any one they might, must they not +have come often and often to those of whom I have been telling? and +must not these men have been seized at times with a wistful sense of +the humor of their situation? If so, what gave them courage to keep on +and to endure until the end? Was it that by some fatality they were +bond-slaves to the remote, from whose dominance they could not, even +if they would, have freed themselves? For one may suppose that all men, +even philosophers, are human enough sometimes to crave the response of +their fellows to the effort of their lives; the recognition not merely +of some few initiated ones, but of the many or of those who represent +the many by the simplicity of their thought. Must not many a one whose +labor was with the stars have stopped on his way to envy some singer at +the street-corner whose trivial melody had caught the ear and held the +steps of passers-by? What reasoning then, or what destiny carried our +star-gazer on to his lonely vigil? + +You may say, the psychology of the man who thinks of cosmic things is +simple and that his steadfastness is due to his inability to realize or +his ability to forget the homely intimate things of life that to the +rest of us are, if not important, yet all the more indispensable. To +this I answer: ’tis unlikely! But whether true or not of any of those +whose thoughts must seem (if I have not entirely failed to render them) +so much our own, let it not be true of us! + +I mean, that no one can think of himself as likely to enrich the world +so greatly by his thought and labor that he may count himself to be or +encourage himself to become a soul solitary to its toil. Which, being +so of our lives as a whole, we frequently feel and wholesomely feel +that it is not very well for us to indulge even moments of these lives +in studies and reflections so detached from all the give and take of +our other time as to leave no trace of influence there. + +Perhaps indeed it cannot be said of any of our momentary flights away +from familiar things that we come back from them with no star-dust on +our wings, and so these spirit holidays may be excused as may any other +holiday on the ground of their quickening and refreshment. But little +as I would quarrel with holidays of any kind, and satisfied as I should +be had any one found these pages opening to him a door to some fourth +dimension where momentary exhilaration or passing forgetfulness might +be found, yet I have the feeling that holidays are but a poor imperfect +device for making other days more livable. + +In these last reflections, I am sensible that I have been clumsily +feeling my way to the asking of a question. It is this: May we not +bring the experience of the most thoughtful men of the centuries +that have gone before so to bear in our daily living that it will no +longer be noble, because no longer necessary, to scorn delights and +live laborious days (save holidays)? May not these men have been the +prophets of that mediation which will make labor and delight one thing? +May it not be possible for us after their leading so to live and strive +in the moment that more and more of the whole toward which it tends may +be felt in it? And this whole, the while, will it not come so to be +conceived that its real presence in the crumb of bread and drop of wine +may make of our daily partaking a sacrament as bright as it is enduring? + +If so, and, as it seems to me, only if so, will these thinkers about +the whole have found that for which they seemed to waste their +being--the response of the man living the moment, which is everyman. +Then will we the studious have brought back from our wanderings with +these “souls of men outworn” something more than ineffable things and +memories of dreams dreamt with them. To men bound for the most part to +live the moment, that moment would not have lost its throbbing intimacy +because it had lost its solitude. + +Now of all desirable things, one may feel and in a poor fashion of +words try to tell how desirable they are, without having much hope of +securing them for himself or of being able to offer them to others. +But it cannot be a bad way to begin winning something for oneself at +least by enriching one’s reflection with all the stored experience of +history. And as history is not always easy to gather, it is at least +a generous impulse to tell of what is to be found there a little more +simply and compendiously than others have cared to tell it. Which +done--and the doing of it has that peculiar quality of giving to the +labor of the moment its sense of participation--it is time to look +about one with one’s own eyes. + +What under such circumstances the private eye, turning from the past +and peering into the future, thinks it sees there, might well be kept +private for all the authority it can have and for all the interest it +may have for another. Each will have his own vision of the horizon. But +it has never been found that the truth is in the end better made out by +each holding his own counsel as to what he timidly thinks he descries +there. No, out of the confusion of many witnesses comes what little we +have guessed or can hope to guess of truth, and no less of that truth +which, because it deals with the tie that binds the least with the +greatest of things, I venture to call religious. + + * * * * * + +In these pages, little or no mention has been made of those great +historic religions in whose name temples and cathedrals have been +built, and throngs have been moved to worship and to war. This neglect +has not been due to indifference: it will perhaps have been felt that +these matters were present to the writer as the background against +which the thought of the philosophers had to be portrayed if we were +to gain insight into their motives and meanings. But our study was to +be of those who had given reasons for the faith that was in them, or +it might be for their lack of faith. This, the great swaying mass of +humanity cannot be expected to do, and if the learned and thoughtful +of its various communions have constantly tried to do it for their +fellows, these studious devout minds are led by the very diligence of +their reflection to interpret the formulas of the throng in a way the +throng could not understand. Thus they too become philosophers, and for +the depth and learning of their thought are as interesting as any of +those here presented. It would be hard to find in history a clearer and +more judicious mind than Thomas Aquinas. + +But because these theologians are in modern times the exponents of +religious views that are widely spread in some manifest form or other, +we may assume that they are familiar figures in the thoughts of men of +our day and civilization. Wherefore it is of others, churchless and +alone, with nothing but their personal writings to make their views +known, yet religious in the object of their inquiry and in the conduct +of their thought, that I have chosen to speak. + +The immense dialectic of the thought of these men has presented so many +aspects of the religious problem that it must have left in the reader a +sense of confusion if not of bewilderment. Such a baffled mood comes on +every thoughtful student, not once, but again and again, as he reviews +the past and tries to estimate the value of its gain; to consider what +has definitely perished with its time, what perhaps marks development +and points somewhither. + +Let me then suggest as well as may be done in a few words some things +these men have put behind them and some things to which, with all their +mutual opposition, they seem resultantly to point. + + * * * * * + +In the first place, their common assumption has been that the way of +arriving at religious truth was by reason or experience, not by what is +commonly called “revelation.” There is nothing new or modern in this +attitude of mind. The earliest critics of popular religion share the +feeling that (as Xenophanes wrote, in the sixth century B.C.): + + By no means at the beginning did the gods reveal all things to mortals, + But mortals themselves, by inquiry, in time have made gradual progress. + +And even among those who did not mean to be critics, we find some +devoutly maintaining that divine revelation brings naught that reason +and experience cannot confirm; naught, then, they could not have +reached: “Non alia est philosophia, _i.e._, sapientiae studium, et alia +religio,” writes John Scotus in the ninth century. “Quid est aliud de +philosophia tractare nisi verae religionis regulas exponere? Conficitur +inde veram esse philosophiam veram religionem conversimque veram +religionem esse veram philosophiam.” (_De praedest. proem._) + +But those who from revelation turn to _reason_ and those who turn to +_experience_ for evidence in all matters, are of two different tempers +of mind and habits of thought. The first we found represented in +Spinoza with his _Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata_; the second in +Hume with his methods of natural history and human history. + +Of these two schools, I think we may regard the first as definitely +closed. That is, to establish the existence of God by logic alone and +as a necessity of thought, would only be dreamed of today by those who +meant by God, by logic, and by thought’s necessity something quite +different from anything the seventeenth century rationalist could have +meant by those terms. + +Yet to say that the _method_ of a Spinoza is dead, is not to say that +his contribution to the spiritual problems with which he dealt is +naught. Nothing could be more important to our whole attitude toward +these problems than Spinoza’s insight: The scientific demand that we +treat nature as an inviolable mechanism and the ethical demand that +the human element in nature remain a free agent _are consistent_. +It can readily be seen that all the rest of one’s thoughts about +the world must hang upon one’s acceptance or non-acceptance of this +reconciliation of mechanical necessity and living freedom. (It must not +be supposed, however, that all later thought was agreed that Spinoza +had effected this reconciliation; perhaps the present writer is without +company in thinking that Spinoza’s indications in this sense may be +followed to a clear and satisfactory issue.) + +If the method of rationalism has lost meaning for us, do we then abide +in the confidence that experimental science must find all that is to be +found of an object for religion to attach itself to? To my thinking, +no! Or rather, the meaning of experience and with it of empirical +science has been so altered by later reflection that the relation +between human desire and human finding is no longer conceived to be +that austere separation which a Hume, a Clifford or a Huxley made the +basis of intellectual honesty and even of moral honor. + +There is nevertheless one result of the empirical philosophy which +it is hard to believe we shall ever set aside. Whatever we may have +come to think experience means, those who have once entered into the +spirit of these clear thinkers will not lightly abandon the idea that +_experience is one_. There is not for most of us one kind of experience +that confirms the law of falling stones and revolving planets, +another unrelated kind that gives us a sympathetic but inarticulate +insight into life and its ways, and yet another which in incomparable +theophanies reveals to us another world. In a word, empiricism has +taught us to accept the postulate that whatever the nature of our +beliefs, their meaning must be communicable, their evidence must be +demonstrable by one to another. + +What has happened to change things since Hume’s day is, first of all, +just a deeper searching into the meaning of experience itself, with +perhaps this finding: that the reality our empirical science reveals +to us is not merely a thing found and received but also _a thing +willed and made_. Kantian criticism it was that suggested the part +played by the knower in the formation of the thing known. This knower +was not merely informed by experience as to the world he had chanced +on, but of himself he informed his world. Imperfect, disconnected +and unconvincing as were Kant’s efforts to state and illustrate this +conception, it is nevertheless to him that one turns for the first +suggestion of that idealism whose more recent expressions have been +illustrated in the chapter on Pragmatism. + +Meanwhile, really unaffected by this development of method are +Schopenhauer’s gloomy findings and Nietzsche’s exaltation of the +might of man. Just as the facts of life as he observed it left Hume +unable to point to anything in experience that could guide life +religiously, so these facts as Schopenhauer more fully took them in +left life irreligious and blind. Again, it was but what he took to be +a broader experience that led Nietzsche to conceive the destiny and +perfectability of life to lie within the control of life itself, and it +is only a still broader view of experience that robs this philosophy +for us of what inspiration it had and leaves it but a gospel of +gritting-the-teeth. + +Yet we may not lay aside these two “findings” regarding life without +noting how deeply each has seen into the human heart. If the insight +of each is directly contradictory to the insight of the other, it is +because the human heart is in contradiction with itself. + +It can listen, this heart of man, to the voice of Schopenhauer crying +for peace. It can understand this voice even to the point of feeling +that the peace of those who have ceased to be is happier than the being +of those who have lost hope of peace. Not indeed for us is the “melius +est ipsum esse quam non esse” of older simpler times. + +But on the other hand, Nietzsche would not make the appeal he does +if man did not shrink from every vision of peace that has ever been +offered to him, as from something worse than nonentity. Indeed we “envy +not the dead that rest.... + + “What peace could ever be to me + The joy that strives with strife?” + + * * * * * + +Thus it would seem that the philosophy which alone can bring to pass +that gladness of the moment which comes not from its content, but from +what there is mixed in it of fulfilment and of promise--that philosophy +must give validity to two theses: + +(1) Reality must in all its aspects be shown to be such a thing as +human effort may make and mould. + +(2) This effort must set before itself an ideal in which are +consistently included all that is genuine in the old ideals calling +themselves Peace and War. + +If the first of these theses was the topic of the chapter on +Pragmatism, the second was that which inspired the conception of +Progress. Only if to each moment of life there is vividly present +the sense that it is a moment of creation, and equally present a +satisfaction in the vision of what is to be created, can the moment be +a joyous one. Not joyous in a way to wring from us a “Verweile doch! du +bist so schön!” But joyous with that quality which would let our _Ave_ +be a welcome to the hoped for, our _Vale_ a benediction on a promise +left behind. + + * * * * * + +If our Modern Thinkers have done aught to help us so to pass a moment, +why, so, let them pass. + + + Finis + + + + +INDEX + + + à Kempis, Schopenhauer and, 167. + + Amiel, 217. + + amoralist, 274, 276. + + Antigone, 264. + + _a posteriori_, 105. + + _a priori_, 105, 137. + + Aquinas, 24, 308. + + Aristotle, 24, 25, 89, 289, 290. + + art, and the universal, 170-172; + individuates, 294-296. + + asceticism, Schopenhauer on, 176-178. + + assent, Newman’s “Grammar of,” 242. + + _aviditas vitae_, Huxley’s, 205. + + + Bacon, Francis, 57, 104, 247, 248. + + Balfour, 246, 247. + + beautiful, Schopenhauer’s theory of the, 170-172. + + Berti, _Vita di Giordano Bruno_, 11. + + body, and mind, 45, 46. + + Bourdeau, J., 241, 242. + + Bourdeau, L., 223-226. + + Bourget, “Le Disciple,” 68-95. + + Brahminism, Schopenhauer and, 167. + + Browning, 203. + + Bruno, iii, + Mocenigo’s denunciation of, 3-8; + trial at Venice, 9-18; + recantation, 18; + new astronomy, 18-21; + ethical and religious consequences, 21-26; + “new philosophy,” pantheism, 29-31; + Schoppius on sentence and execution of, 33-34; + and Spinoza, 39, 40; 197. + + Buddhism, Schopenhauer and, 167, 178, 179, 189. + + + cannibals, Melville on, 251-253; + Montaigne on, 253-256. + + categorical, good, _ought_, see imperative. + + Christianity, Kant and, 146, 147; + Schopenhauer and, 167; + Nietzsche and, 187, 206; + its intellectual task, 300. + + civilization, a decadence, 257, 258. + + Clifford, 312. + + Clough, 228. + + Coleridge, Mary, 314. + + Copernicus, 20, 21. + + Croce, 288, 290. + + Cusanus, Nicolaus, 288, 291. + + + Dante, his world, 22. + + Darwin, influence on Nietzsche, 193-195. + + Decalogue, 137. + + Descartes, and Spinoza, 41-45; 104, 267. + + determinism, Spinoza’s, 40, 45, 46, 53-55, 67, 69-78, 310, 311; + of mechanical ideal, 82-84. + + disciple, Bourget’s “Le Disciple,” 68; + problem and plot in relation to Spinoza, 69-78; + discussion of problem, mechanism, purpose, and freedom, 81-92; + outcome, 92-95. + + + empiricism, 104-107, 311, 312. + + Epictetus, 280. + + Epicurus, “Garden of,” 22; 99, 112. + + Ethica, _ordine geometrico demonstrata_, 39, 310. + + evolution, Nietzsche and doctrine of organic, 193-195. + + + Fichte, 67, 149, 154, 159. + + Flaubert, 168, 294, 295. + + France, Anatole, contrasts ancient and modern worlds, 22, 23, 168; + on realism in history, 223-226; 266, 294, 295. + + freedom, consistent with mechanism, 53-55, 84-92; + Kant on, 140. + + Fourlians, morality of, 120-123. + + + geometry, ethics after manner of, 39; 42, 43, 45, 310. + + Gierke, 291. + + God, ontological proof of, 43, 44; + Kant, 131, 142-146, 148-149; + “is dead,” 185-187. + + Goethe, 315. + + good, the, see imperative; 261-273. + + _Gottrunkener_, Spinoza _ein_, 52. + + Gourmont, Remy de, 275. + + group, mind of, 288-292, 301. + + + Hardy, 168, 169. + + Hegel, 149, 159. + + Heine, 215. + + Hobbes, 104, 268-272. + + humanity, Hume on, 126. + + Hume, personality, 100-104; + inheritance of empiricism, 104-107; + on experience _vs._ miracles, 107-112; + on Providence and Future State, 112-115; + on Natural Religion, reasons for vacillation, 115-119; + on problem of morals and definition of virtue, 119-125; + on virtue and happiness, 125-127; 227, 228, 266, 267, 311, 312. + + Huxley, his “_aviditas vitae_,” 205; 312. + + hypothetical, good, _ought_, see imperative. + + + ideal, mechanical, 82-84; + teleological, 89; + of progress, 281. + + idealism, German, 29; 219. + + immortality, Kant on, 140, 141. + + imperative, Kant on hypothetical and categorical, 131-137; 261-263. + + individuation, effected by love, 143-145, 293, 294, 296-299; + effected by art, 294-296. + + Inquisition, Bruno before the Holy, 3-18, 33. + + + Jesus, Nietzsche’s conception of, 189, 197-200. + + James, see Pragmatism. + + John Scotus, 310. + + + Kant, iv, 67; + attitude toward religion, 131; + on imperatives, 131-137; + on presuppositions of morality, 137-146; + postulates freedom, immortality, God, 146-150; + moral law, first formulation, 151-152; + second formulation, 152, 153; + on harmony of wills, 153, 154; 187, 261-263, 312. + + + law, mechanical and teleological, 86-92, 117-119. + + Leconte de Lisle, 229. + + Leibnitz, 29, 233. + + Leviathan, Hobbes’s, 268-272. + + Locke, 104. + + logic, and ethics, 42, 43; + and love, 297-300. + + Loisy, l’Abbé, 242. + + Louÿs, Pierre, 153. + + love, individuates, 143-145, 293, 294, 296-299; + and logic, 297-300. + + loyalty, defines morality, 268, 274; + defined, 288-290. + + Lucretius, 99, 165, 186. + + + Mach, Ernst, 216. + + Marcus Aurelius, 212. + + Maupassant, 168, 294, 295. + + mechanism, Spinoza on, 40, 45, 46, 53-55, 67, 69-78, 310, 311; + ideal of, 82-84; + consistent with purpose and freedom, 53-55, 84-92. + + Melville, Herman, on Typees, 251-253. + + mind, and body, 45, 46; + group, 288-292, 301. + + miracles, Hume’s treatment in “Enquiry,” 107-110. + + Mocenigo, his denunciation of Bruno, 3-8. + + modernism, and pragmatism, 241-244. + + Montaigne, v, 253-256. + + morality, Kant’s law of, 151-153; + proposed as absolute good, 263-268; + questioned as absolute good, 268-272; + reformed, 274, 275; + discarded, 275, 276. + + + nature, man in state of, 251-258, 269-271; + conquest of, 279-281. + + Newman, 242. + + New Testament, Kant and, 146. + + Nicolaus, of Cusa, 291. + + Nietzsche, iv; + key-note of, 185; + historic comparisons with, 185-188; + and Schopenhauer, 188-193; + and Darwin, 193-195; + on superman as goal, 195; + on transvaluation, 195-199; + on genealogy of morals, 199-204; + on anarchy, 204-205; + on will to power, 205-207; + on eternal returning, 208-211; + vanishing goal, 211, 212; + on courage, 212; + on scientific spirit, 231-233; 276, 313, 314. + + + ought, see imperative. + + Old Testament, world of, 139, 146. + + + parallelism, 45, 46. + + Pascal, 27, 149, 242. + + _Pascendi_, Encyclical, 241. + + philosophers, Nietzsche’s estimate of, 199. + + pietism, influence on Kant, 146. + + pity, a vice, 187-189. + + Plato, 89, 288, 293, 294. + + pragmatism, v; + relation to realism and idealism, 215-219; + James’s first presentation of, 219, 220; + reaction of realists against, 220-230; + Nietzsche and, 231-234; + “Will to Believe,” 234-239; + and modernism, 240-244, and ‘human’ religion, 244-245; + physical science and ideals of, 245, 246, 315. + + progress, v; + skeptics of, 251-261; + conditional and absolute, 261-262; + toward moral good held absolute, 263-268; + morality proves conditional good, 268-273; + as viewed by reformed morality and by amorality, 273-276; + and conflicting ideals of peace and war, 277; + final definition of, 277-281. + + Providence, Hume on “Particular,” 112-115. + + purpose, consistent with mechanism, 53-55, 84-92. + + + quakerism, German, 146. + + + Rabelais, 153. + + rationalism, of Descartes, 41-45, 104. + + realism, 218; + in science, 221; + in history, 222-226; + in ethics, 227; + in religion, 228, 240-242; + in art, 228, 229. + + religion, “Natural History of,” 110; + Kant’s attitude toward, 131; + identified with philosophy, 310. + + Rousseau, 258. + + Royce, 157, 267, 285, 287, 289, 293. + + + Schelling, 149, 159. + + Scherer, on Amiel, 217. + + Schopenhauer, iv, 154; + “World as Will,” 158-161; + on universal strife, 162-167; + forerunners, 167, 168; + followers, 168, 169; + on suicide, 169, 170; + on the beautiful, 170-172; + on civil law, 172-173; + on moral intuition, 173-175; + on denial of will, 175-178; + on Nirvana, 178-181; + and Nietzsche, 186-193; 313, 314. + + Schopp, letter describing Bruno’s trial and execution, 31-34. + + Spinoza, iv; + family, life, death, 39; + and Bruno, 39, 40; + and Descartes, 40-46; + on popular theology, 46-51; + _ein Gottrunkener_, 52; + purpose and freedom, 53-55; + knowledge goodness, happiness, 55-63; 104, 187, 310, 311. + + suicide, Schopenhauer on, 169-170. + + superman, iv, 195, 196, 205, 208. + + super-superman, iv, 208. + + sympathy, Hume on, 126; + Schopenhauer on, 173-175; + Nietzsche on, see pity. + + + Tasso, 259, 263. + + teleology, see purpose. + + Tennant, 300. + + tragedy, Schopenhauer’s conception of, 158, 168, 169. + + Typees, of Melville, 251-253. + + + Ulysses, morality of, 265. + + utility, Hume on, 125; + “Why Pleases,” 126. + + + Van den Ende, Francis, 41. + + Venice, Bruno before tribunal at, 9-18. + + + will, to live, see Schopenhauer; + to power, see Nietzsche; + to believe, see pragmatism. + + + Xenophanes, 186, 309. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +[1] This would be Saturday afternoon. + +[2] A curious ignorance of the content of the “Spaccio!” There are +numerous other faults of detail in this account. + +[3] Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, XII. + +[4] This image of the Old Testament World is not of course supposed to +be that of the ancient Hebrews. Rather does it represent this world as +reflected in the thought of a modern Christian community. + +[5] The individuating quality of love is again discussed in Chap. X, on +“Love and Loyalty.” + +[6] The exact wording: “Handle so, dass die Maxime deines Willens +jederzeit zugleich als Princip einer allgemeinen Gesetzgebung gelten +könne.” K. d. p. V., 1, 1, 1. + +[7] Cf: “In der ganzen Schöpfung kann alles was man will, und vorüber +man etwas vermag, auch _bloss als Mittel_ gebraucht werden; nur der +Mensch ... _Ist Zweck an sich selbst_.... Eben um dieser willen ist +jeder Wille ... auf die Bedingung der Einstimmung mit der _Autonomie_ +des vernünftigen Wesens eingeschränkt, es nämlich keiner Absicht zu +unterwerfen, die nicht nach einem Gesetze, welches aus dem Willen des +leidenden Subjects selbst entspringen könnte, möglich ist....” K. d. p. +V., 1, 1, 3. + +[8] Pierre Louÿs. + +[9] Royce. + +[10] Abridged. + +[11] Abridged. + +[12] Gesammelte Briefe, p. 61. + +[13] Ibid., p. 170. + +[14] Pragmatism, p. 104. + +[15] Anatole France. + +[16] The meaning and value of “loyalty” is more fully discussed in +Chap. X, on “Love and Loyalty.” + +[17] The paper on “Love and Loyalty” was written for the American +Philosophical Association at its Philadelphia meeting in 1915. The +occasion was peculiarly dedicated to Royce in honor of his sixtieth +birthday. The author’s thanks are due to Professor J. E. Creighton for +his courteous permission to reprint from the Philosophical Review, XXV, +3, and from the volume “Papers in Honor of Josiah Royce, etc.,” 1922. + + +[Transcriber’s note: German, French and Latin text is transcribed as +is, without correction of possible printing errors. Repeated chapter +titles have been removed (those on the same page as the chapter start).] + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78763 *** |