Christianity and Ethics Part 9

3. It was inevitable that there should arise a reaction against the extreme Intellectualism of Hegel and his school, and that a conception of existence which lays the emphasis upon the claims of practical life should grow in favour. The pursuit of knowledge tended to become merely a means of promoting human well-being.

The first definite attempt to formulate a specific theory of knowledge with this practical aim in view takes the form of what is known as 'Pragmatism.' The modern use of this term is chiefly connected with the name of the late Professor James, to whose brilliant writings we are largely indebted for the elucidation of its meaning. 'Pragmatism,' says James, 'represents the empiricist att.i.tude both in a more radical and less objectionable form than it has ever yet a.s.sumed.'[17] It agrees with utilitarianism in explaining practical aspects, and with positivism in disdaining useless abstractions. It claims to be a method rather than a system of philosophy. And its method consists in bringing the pursuit of knowledge into close relationship with life. Nothing is to be regarded as true which cannot be justified by its value for man. The hypothesis which on the whole works best, which most aptly fits the circ.u.mstances of a particular case, is true. The emphasis is laid not on absolute principles, but on consequences. We must not consider things as they are in themselves, but in their reference to the good of mankind.

It is useless, for example, to speculate about the existence of G.o.d. If the hypothesis of a deity works satisfactorily, if the best results follow for the moral well-being of humanity by believing in a G.o.d, {115} then the hypothesis may be taken as true. It is true at least for us.

Truth, according to Pragmatism, has no independent existence. It is wholly subjective, relative, instrumental. Its only test is its utility, its workableness.

This view of truth, though supported by much ingenuity and brilliance, would seem to contradict the very idea of truth, and to be subversive of all moral values. If truth has no independent validity, if it is not something to be sought for itself, irrespective of the inclinations and interests of man, then its pursuit can bring no real enrichment to our spiritual being. It remains something alien and external, a mere arbitrary appendix of the self. It is not the essence and standard of human life. If its sole test is what is advantageous or pleasant it sinks into a merely utilitarian opinion or selfish bias. 'Truth,' says Eucken, 'can only exist as an end in itself. Instrumental truth is no truth at all.'[18]

According to this theory, moreover, truth is apt to be broken up into a number of separate fragments without correlation or integrating unity.

There will be as many hypotheses as there are individual interests. The truth that seems to work best for one man or one age may not be the truth that serves another. In the collision of opinions who is to arbitrate?

If it be the inst.i.tutions and customs of to-day, the present state of morals, that is to be the measure of what is good, then we seem to be committed to a condition of stagnancy, and involved in the quest of a doubtful gain.

As might be expected, Professor James's view of truth determines his view of the world. It is pluralistic, not monistic; melioristic, not optimistic. It is characteristic of him that when he discusses the question, Is life worth living? his answer practically is, 'Yes, if you believe it is.' Pragmatism is put forward as the mediator between two opposite tendencies, those of 'tender-mindedness' and 'tough-mindedness.'

'The tendency to rest in the Absolute is the characteristic mark of the tender-minded; the {116} radically tough-minded, on the other hand, needs no religion at all.'[19] There is something to be said for both of these views, James thinks, and a compromise will probably best meet the case.

Hence, against these two ways of accepting the universe, he maintains the pragmatic faith which is at once theistic, pluralistic, and melioristic.

He accepts a personal power as a workable theory of the universe. But G.o.d need not be infinite or all-inclusive, for 'all that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our common selves.'[20] Such a conception of G.o.d, even on James's own admission, is akin to polytheism. And such polytheism implies a pluralistic view of the universe. The invisible order, in which we hope to realise our larger life, is a world which does not grow integrally in accordance with the preconceived plan of a single architect, 'but piecemeal by the contributions of its several parts.'[21] We make the world to our will, and 'add our fiat to the fiat of the creator.' With regard to the supreme question of human destiny Professor James's view is what he calls 'melioristic.' There is a striving for better things, but what the ultimate outcome will be, no one can say. For the world is still in the making. Life is a risk. It has many possibilities. Good and evil are intermingled, and will continue so to be. It is a pluralistic world just because the will of man is free, and predetermination is excluded. If good was a.s.sured as the final goal of ill, and there was no sense of venture, no possibility of loss or failure, then life would lack interest, and moral effort would be shorn of reality and incentive.

In Professor James's philosophy of life there is much that is original and stimulating, and it draws attention to facts of experience and modes of thought which we were in danger of overlooking. It has compelled us to consider the psychological bases of personality, and to lay more stress upon the power of the will and individual choice in the determining of character and destiny. It is pre-eminently {117} a philosophy of action, and it emphasises an aspect of life which intellectualism was p.r.o.ne to neglect--the function of personal endeavour and initiative in the making of the world. It postulates the reality of a living G.o.d who invites our co-operation, and it encourages our belief in a higher spiritual order which it is within our power to achieve.

Pragmatism has. .h.i.therto made headway chiefly in America and Britain, but on its activistic side it is akin to a new philosophical movement which has appeared in France and Germany. The name generally given to this tendency is 'Activism' or 'Vitalism'--a t.i.tle chosen probably in order to emphasise the self-activity of the personal consciousness directed towards a world which it at once conquers and creates. The authors of this latest movement are the Frenchman, Henri Bergson, and the German, Rudolf Eucken. Differing widely in their methods and even in their conclusions, they agree in making a direct attack both upon the realism and the intellectualism of the past, and in their conviction that the world is not a 'strung along universe,' as the late Professor James puts it, but a world that is being made by the creative power and personal freedom of man. While Eucken has for many years occupied a position of commanding influence in the realm of thought, Bergson has only recently come into notice. The publication of his striking work, _Creative Evolution_, marks an epoch in speculation, and is awakening the interest of the philosophical world.[22]

4. With his pa.s.sion for symmetry and completeness Bergson has evolved a whole theory of the universe, {118} resorting, strange to say, to a form of reasoning that implies the validity of logic, the instrument of the intellect which he never wearies of impugning. Without entering upon his merely metaphysical speculations, we fix upon his theory of consciousness--the relation of life to the material world--as involving certain ethical consequences bearing upon our subject. The idea of freedom is the corner-stone of Bergson's system, and his whole philosophy is a powerful vindication of the independence and self-determination of the human will. Life is free, spontaneous, creative and incalculable; determined neither by natural law nor logical sequence. It can break through all causation and a.s.sert its own right. It is not, indeed, unrelated to matter, since it has to find its exercise in a material world. Matter plays at once, as he himself says, the role of obstacle and stimulus.[23] But it is not the world of things which legislates for man; it is man who legislates for it. Bergson's object is to vindicate the autonomy of consciousness, and his entire philosophy is a protest against every claim of determinism to dominate life. By introducing the creative will before all development, he displaces mechanical force, and makes the whole evolution of life dependent upon the 'vital impulse'

which pushes forward against all obstacles to ever higher and higher efficiency. Similarly, by drawing a distinction between intellect and intuition, he shows that the latter is the truly creative power in man which penetrates to the heart of reality and shapes its own world.

Intellect and instinct have been developed along divergent lines. The intellect has merely a practical function. It is related to the needs of action.[24] It is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools.[25] It deals with solids and geometrical figures, and its instrument is logic. But according to Bergson it has an inherent incapacity to deal with life.[26] When we contrast the rigidity and superficiality of intellect with the fluidity, sympathy and intimacy of intuition, we see at once wherein {119} lies the true creative power of man. Development, when carried too exclusively along the lines of intellect, means loss of will-power; and we have seen how, not individuals alone, but entire nations, may be crushed and destroyed by a too rigid devotion to mechanical and stereotyped methods of thought.

Only life is adequate to deal with life. Let us give free expression to the intuitive and sympathetic force within us, 'feel the wild pulsation of life,' if we would conquer the world and come to our own. 'The spectacle,' says Bergson, 'of life from the very beginning down to man suggests to us the image of a current of consciousness which flows down into matter as into a tunnel, most of whose endeavours to advance . . .

are stopped by a rock that is too hard, but which, in one direction at least, prove successful, and break out into the light once more.'[27]

But there life does not stop.

'All tended to mankind, But in completed man begins anew A tendency to G.o.d.'[28]

This creative consciousness still pushes on, giving to matter its own life, and drawing from matter its nutriment and strength. The effort is painful, but in making it we feel that it is precious, more precious perhaps than the particular work it results in, because through it we have been making ourselves, 'raising ourselves above ourselves.' And in this there is the true joy of life--the joy which every creator feels--the joy of achievement and triumph. Thus not only is the self being created, but the world is being made--original and incalculable--not according to a preconceived plan or logical sequence, but by the free spontaneous will of man.

The soul is the creative force--the real productive agent of novelty in the world. The strange thing is that the soul creates not the world only, but itself. Whence comes this mystic power? What is the origin of the soul? Bergson does not say. But in one pa.s.sage he suggests that {120} possibly the world of matter and consciousness have the same origin--the principle of life which is the great prius of all that is and is to be. But Bergson's 'elan vital,' though more satisfactory than the first cause of the naturalist, or the 'great unknown' of the evolutionist, or even than some forms of the absolute, is itself admittedly outside the pale of reason--inexplicable, indefinable, and incalculable.

The new 'vitalism' unfolds a living self-evolving universe, a restless, unfinished and never-to-be-finished development--the scope and goal of which cannot be foreseen or explained. An infinite number of possibilities open out; which the soul will follow no one can tell; why it follows this direction rather than that, no one can see. There seems to be no room here for teleology or purposiveness; and though Bergson has not yet worked out the theological and ethical implications of his theory, as far as we can at present say the personality and imminence of a Divine Being are excluded. Though Bergson never refers to Hegel by name, he seems to be specially concerned in refuting the philosophy of the Absolute, according to which the world is conceived as the evolution of the infinite mind. If 'tout est donne,' says Bergson, if all is given beforehand, 'why do over again what has already been completed, thus reducing life and endeavour to a mere sham.' But even allowing the force of that objection, the idea of a 'world in the making,' though it appeals to the popular mind, is not quite free from ambiguity. In one sense it states a plat.i.tude--a truth, indeed, which is not excluded from an absolute or teleological conception of life. But if it is implied that the world, because it is in process of production, may violate reason and take some capricious form, the idea is absurdly false, so long as we are what we are, and the human mind is what it is. The real must always be the rational. All enterprise and effort are based on the faith that we belong to a rational world. Though we cannot predict what form the world will ultimately take, we can at least be sure that it can a.s.sume no character which will {121} contradict the nature of intelligence. Even in the making of a world, if life has any moral worth and meaning at all, there must be rational purpose. There are creation and initiative in man a.s.suredly, but they must not be interpreted as activities which deviate into paths of grotesque and arbitrary fancy. Our actions and ideas must issue from our world. Even a poem or work of art must make its appeal to the universal mind; any other kind of originality would wholly lack human interest and sever all creation and life from their root in human nature.

But at least we must acknowledge that Bergson has done to the world of thought the great service of liberating us from the bonds of matter and the thraldom of a fatalistic necessity. It is his merit that he has lifted from man the burden of a hard determinism, and vindicated the freedom, choice, and initiative of the human spirit. If he has no distinctly Christian message, he has at least disclosed for the soul the possibility of new beginnings, and has shown that there is room in the spiritual life, as the basis of all upward striving, for change of heart and conversion of life.

5. In the philosophy of Eucken there is much that is in harmony with that of Bergson; but there are also important differences. Common to both is a reaction against formalism and intellectualism. Neither claims that we can gain more than 'the knowledge of a direction' in which the solution of the problem may be sought. It is not a 'given' or finished world with which we have to do. 'The triumph of life is expressed by creation,' says Eucken, 'I mean the creation of self by self.' 'We live in the conviction,' he says again, 'that the possibilities of the universe have not yet been played out,[29] but that our spiritual life still finds itself battling in mid-flood with much of the world's work still before us.' While Bergson confines himself rigidly to the metaphysical side of thought, Eucken is chiefly interested in the ethical and religious aspects of life's problem. Moreover, while there is an absence of a distinctly teleological aim in Bergson, the purpose and ideal {122} of life are prominent elements in Eucken. Notwithstanding his antagonism to intellectualism, the influence of Hegel is evident in the absolutist tendency of his teaching. Life for Eucken is fundamentally spiritual. Self-consciousness is the unifying principle.

Personality is the keynote of his philosophy. But we are not personalities to begin with: we have the potentiality to become such by our own effort. He bids us therefore forget ourselves, and strive for our highest ideal--the realisation of spiritual personality. The more man 'loses his life' in the pursuit of the ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty the more surely will he 'save it.' He realises himself as a personality, who becomes conscious of his unity with the universal spiritual life.

Hence there are two fundamental principles underlying Eucken's philosophy which give to it its distinguishing character. The first is the metaphysical conception of _a realm of Spirit_--an independent spiritual Reality, not the product of the natural man, but communicating itself to him as he strives for, and responds to, it. This spiritual reality underlies and transcends the outward world. It may be regarded as an absolute or universal life--the deeper reality of which all visible things are the expression. The second cardinal principle is the _doctrine of Activism_. Life is action. Human duty lies in a world of strife. We have to contend for a spiritual life-content. Here Eucken has much in common with Fichte.[30] But while Fichte starts with self-a.n.a.lysis, and loses sight of error, care, and sin, Eucken starts with actual conflict, and ever retains a keen sense of these hampering elements. The evil of the world is not to be solved simply by looking down upon the world from some superior optimistic standpoint, and p.r.o.nouncing it very good. The only way to solve it is the practical one, to leave the negative standing, and press on to the deeper affirmative--the positive truth, that beneath the world of nature there exists a deeper reality of spirit, of which we become partic.i.p.ators by the freedom and activity of our lives. We are here to acquire a new spiritual world, but {123} it is a world in which the past is taken up and transfigured. Against naturalism, which acquiesces in the present order of the universe, and against mere intellectualism, which simply investigates it, Eucken never wearies of protesting. He demands, first, a fundamental cleavage in the inmost being of man, and a deliverance from the natural view of things; and he contends, secondly, for a spiritual awakening and an energetic endeavour to realise our spiritual resources.

Not by thought but by action is the problem of life to be solved. Hence his philosophy is not a mere theory about life, but is itself a factor in the great work of spiritual redemption which gives to life its meaning and aim.

That which makes Eucken's positive idealism specially valuable is his application of it to religion. Religion has been in all ages the mighty uplifting power in human life. It stands for a negation of the finite and fleeting, and an affirmation of the spiritual and the eternal. This is specially true of the Christian religion. Christianity is the supreme type of religion because it best answers the question, 'What can religion do for life?' But the old forms of its manifestation do not satisfy us to-day. Christianity of the present fails to win conviction princ.i.p.ally for three reasons: (1) because it does not distinguish the eternal substance of religion from its temporary forms; (2) because it professes to be the final expression of all truth, thus closing the door against progress of thought and life; and (3) while emphasising man's redemption from evil, it forgets the elevation of his nature towards good. There is a tendency to depreciate human nature, and to overlook the joyousness of life. What is needed, therefore, is the expression of Christianity in a new form--a reconstruction which shall emphasise the positiveness, activity, and joy of Christian morality.[31]

While every one must feel the sublimity and inspiration in this conception of a spiritual world, which it is the task of life to realise, most people will be also conscious of a {124} certain vagueness and elusiveness in its presentation. We are constrained to ask what is this independent spiritual life? Is it a personal G.o.d, or is it only an impersonal spirit, which pervades and interpenetrates the universe? The elusive obscurity of the position and function which Eucken a.s.signs to his central conception of the _Geistes-Leben_ must strike every reader.

Even more than Hegel, Eucken seems to deal with an abstraction. The spiritual life, we are told, 'grows,' 'divides,' 'advances'--but it appears to be as much a 'bloodless category' as the Hegelian 'idea,'

having no connection with any living subject. G.o.d, the Spirit, may exist, indeed Eucken says He does, but there is nowhere any indication of how the spiritual life follows from, or is the creation of, the Divine Spirit. Our author speaks with so great appreciation of Christianity that it seems an ungracious thing to find fault with his interpretation of it. Yet with so much that is positive and suggestive, there are also some grave omissions. In a work that professes to deal with the Christian faith--_The Truth of Religion_--and which indeed presents a powerful vindication of historical Christianity, we miss any philosophical interpretation of the nature and power of prayer, adoration, or worship, or any account, indeed, of the intimacies of the soul which belong to the very essence of the Christian faith. While he insists upon the possibility, nay, the necessity, of a new beginning, he fails to reveal the power by which the great decision is made. While he affirms with much enthusiasm and frankness the need of personal decision and surrender, he has nothing to say of the divine authority and power which creates our choice and wins our obedience. Nowhere does he show that the creative redemptive force comes not from man's side, but ultimately from the side of G.o.d. And finally, his teaching with regard to the person and work of Jesus Christ, notwithstanding its tender sympathy and fine discrimination, does less than justice to the uniqueness and historical significance of the Son of Man. With profound appreciation and rare beauty of language he depicts the life of Jesus.

'Seldom,' {125} says a recent writer, 'has the perfect Man been limned with so persuasive a combination of strenuous thought and gracious word.'[32] 'He who makes merely a normal man of Jesus,' he says, 'can never do justice to His greatness.'[33] Yet while he protests rightly against emptying our Lord's life of all real growth and temptation, and the claim of practical omniscience for His humanity (conceptions of Christ's Person surely nowhere entertained by first-cla.s.s theologians), he leaves us in no manner of doubt that he does not attach a divine worth to Jesus, nor regard Him in the scriptural sense as the Supreme revelation and incarnation of G.o.d. And hence, while the peerless position of Jesus as teacher and religious genius is frankly acknowledged, and His purity, power, and permanence are extolled--the mediatorial and redemptive implicates of His personality are overlooked.

But when all is said, no one can study the spiritual philosophy of Eucken without realising that he is in contact with a mind which has a sublime and inspiring message for our age. Probably more than any modern thinker, Eucken reveals in his works deep affinities with the central spirit of Christianity. And perhaps his influence may be all the greater because he maintains an att.i.tude of independence towards dogmatic and organised Christianity. Professor Eucken does not attempt to satisfy us with a facile optimism. Life is a conflict, a task, an adventure. And he who would engage in it must make the break between the higher and the lower nature. For Eucken, as for Dante, there must be 'the penitence, the tears, and the plunge into the river of Lethe before the new transcendent love begins.' There is no evasion of the complexities of life. He has a profound perception of the contradictions of experience and the seeming paradoxes of religion. For him true liberty is only possible through the 'given,' through G.o.d's provenience and grace: genuine self-realisation is only achievable through a continuous self-dedication to, and {126} incorporation within, the great realm of spirits; and the Immanence within our lives of the Transcendent.[34]

In styling the tendencies which we have thus briefly reviewed non-Christian, we have had no intention of disparagement. No earnest effort to discover truth, though it may be inadequate and partial, is ever wholly false. In the light of these theories we are able to see more clearly the relation between the good and the useful, and to acknowledge that, just as in nature the laws of economy and beauty have many intimate correspondences, so in the spiritual realm the good, the beautiful, and the true may be harmonised in a higher category of the spirit. We shall see that the Christian ideal is not so much antagonistic to, as inclusive of, all that is best in the teaching of science and philosophy. The task therefore now before us is to interpret these general conceptions of the highest good in the light of Christian Revelation--to define the chief end of life according to Christianity.

[1] Kasper Schmidt, _Der Einzige und sein Eigentum_.

[2] Haeckel, _op. cit._, chap. xix.

[3] Haeckel, _op. cit._, chap. xix. p. 140.

[4] Hobbes' _Leviathan_, chap. vi.

[5] Cf. Pringle-Pattison, _Philos. Radicals_, and J. Seth's _Eng.

Philosophers_, p. 240.

[6] _Utilitarianism_, chap. ii.

[7] _Idem_, chap. iii.

[8] Cf. Spencer, _Data of Ethics_, p. 275; also _Social Statics_. In the former work an attempt is made to exhibit the biological significance of pleasure and the relation between egoism and altruism.

[9] See _First Principles_, p. 166 ff.

[10] See Kirkup, _An Inquiry into Socialism_, p. 19.

[11] See Lutgert, _Natur und Geist Gottes_, for striking chapter on Goethe's _Ethik_, p. 121 f.

[12] Cf. Eucken, _Main Currents of Modern Thought_, p. 401 f.

[13] Macmillan, _The Crowning Phase of the Critical Philosophy_, p. 28.

[14] Hegel, _Phil. of Right_, p. 45.

[15] Bosanquet, _The Principles of Individuality and Value_.

[16] Bosanquet, _The Principles of Individuality and Value_.

[17] _Pragmatism_, p. 51.

[18] _Main Currents of Thought_, p. 78.

[19] _Pragmatism_, p. 278 f.; also _Varieties of Relig. Experience_, p.

525 f.

[20] _Idem_, p. 299.

[21] _Idem_, p. 290.