The Christian Faith Under Modern Searchlights Part 8

After all the secret of the Lord, known to Christians in the catacombs at Rome as they sang, "Jesu, Amor Meus," known to medieval Christians as they sang "Jesu, Dulcis Memoria," and known equally to modern Christians who sing "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," is with them that fear Him. It has been well said that Christianity must be known from the inside, if it is to be known at its full worth. In the nature of the case the evidence of Christian experience is not demonstrative to an outsider. It can come to him only in the way of an appeal: "Come and see; taste and see that the Lord is good."

IV

THE CHRISTIAN FAITH AND RECENT PHILOSOPHY

The two systems of philosophy which were dominant at the turn of the century were unfriendly to theistic and Christian belief. Naturalism on the one hand and Absolutism on the other could find no place for a positive faith in G.o.d, freedom and immortality. The opening years of the century witnessed a revolt against these two systems; and the leading characteristic of twentieth century thought, over against an agnostic naturalism and a pantheistic or impersonal absolutism, has been its reaffirmation of spiritual values. There has been a new emphasis upon the rights of personality, as against the enmeshing and enchaining forces of nature on the one hand and an all-engulfing Absolute on the other.

Philosophical readers will remember the moral tonic of James' collection of essays, "The Will to Believe" (1902), with its picturesque style, its originality of standpoint and its moral enthusiasm. Here was a philosopher of medical training and of unquestioned scientific standing, and yet with the insight and earnestness of a prophet, making a valiant defense of spiritual realities, of human freedom, and the rights of the volitional and moral sides of our nature. As an evolutionist he contended that "the strenuous type of character will on the battle-field of human history always outwear the easy-going type, and religion will drive irreligion to the wall."[149] And as a psychologist he found that theism appealed to every energy of our active nature and released the springs of every emotion, and held that "infra-theistic conceptions, materialism and agnosticism, are irrational because they are inadequate stimuli to man's practical nature."[150]

149: "The Will to Believe," p. 213.

150: _Ibid._, p. 134.

Readers who had been breathing the stifling air of naturalism, so fatal to spiritual aspiration, or the too rarified atmosphere of absolutism with its "transcendence" of personality and moral distinctions, will remember also the sense of satisfaction and relief with which they read that other volume of protest, from the other side of the water, "Personal Idealism" (1902). It was refreshing to find that there was a body of brilliant young thinkers, alive to the scientific atmosphere of the time, and trained in the philosophic orthodoxy of the English schools, and yet boldly a.s.serting the rights of personality in G.o.d and man.

This twofold protest against a denial, from whatever side, of the rights of personality was organized into the movement we call Pragmatism, under the leadership of William James, ably a.s.sisted by F. C. S.

Schiller in Oxford and John Dewey in this country.[151] It is not to be wondered at if this reaction went too far, as the pendulum swung from the extreme of Being to that of Becoming. We find Pragmatism, reacting against monism, whether materialistic or idealistic, going over to pluralism; from the extreme of a "block universe" in which time is nothing pa.s.sing to the other extreme of a "strung-along universe" in which time is everything; from pantheism going over to a vaguely indicated polytheism; from an absolute truth and an absolute Being sitting in smiling repose above the strife of time to a "G.o.d in the dirt" and a truth that could be made, or unmade, perhaps too easily.

151: For fuller discussion of this movement, the writer may refer to his article, "Pragmatism, Humanism and Religion," in the _Princeton Theological Review_, October, 1908.

Our discussion will be more concrete if we select leading representatives from the four nations most addicted to philosophy, and examine their att.i.tude towards the Christian Faith and towards its theistic foundations.

I. BERGSON AND CREATIVE EVOLUTION

In close relation to the pragmatic movement, and set forth with a wonderful magic of style, is the philosophy of Henri Bergson which finds its mature expression in his "Creative Evolution." It is a remarkable testimony to the wealth of suggestion and many-sidedness of Bergson's philosophy that its support has been claimed by a number of movements of diverse aim. Modernists in theology, syndicalists in the sphere of social agitation, and even, it is said, cubists in art, appeal to Bergson for philosophical support; and affinities have been pointed out between his _elan vital_ and Schopenhauer's will-to-live, Von Hartmann's philosophy of the unconscious, and Nietzsche's aggressive individualism. We must ask whether his _elan vital_ can be baptized, and his "Creative Evolution" be made the basis for a spiritual philosophy.

It will be useful to notice some features of Bergson's system before attempting to estimate its bearings upon religious problems. The story of evolution as Bergson describes it, certainly in an engaging manner, is a drama in three acts. The _elan vital_, or otherwise consciousness, is the hero, but is imprisoned by matter (the villain), and is striving blindly for release. In the first act, the vital impulse tunnels its way through the opposing element of matter into the vegetable world. The result is only the lethargy and immobility of vegetable forms, and is so far a failure. The next act finds consciousness working its way into the animal world and attaining mobility and becoming in so far free from the entanglements of matter; but here again there is partial failure.

Consciousness is arrested at the stage of instinct, and, resting content with a response to the environment which is patterned after the mechanical action of matter, fails to attain freedom. In the third act, "by a tremendous leap," consciousness, in spite of the efforts of matter to drag it down to the plane of mechanism, reaches at last spontaneity and freedom in man. The drama reaches its _denouement_ in man and his ability not only to move in response to environment, but to control the environment. It is intimated that there may be a sequel, in which life pursues its career in another stage of existence.

1. It is evident at a glance that the view of evolution here set forth in barest outline offers many points of contrast to what has been accepted as evolutionary orthodoxy. The history of life with both Darwin and Bergson is a struggle: but with Darwin it is a struggle for existence, with Bergson a struggle for freedom, for efficiency, for complexity. With Darwin there is a struggle of living beings with one another, conceived after the a.n.a.logy of economic compet.i.tion; with Bergson there is a struggle of life against matter and necessity. The struggle for existence, in a sense, has been moralized. It is a struggle for the existence and higher life of consciousness.

2. Creative evolution is not materialistic evolution, for life is not a development from matter but is an upward tendency opposing the downward current of matter. The increasing complexity of living forms is not the result of the movements of matter, or of chemical-physical laws, but of an opposition, successful in a unique degree in men, to the imprisoning and entangling forces of matter.

3. The later stages in evolution, while connected with the earlier in continuity of development, may contain elements that are essentially new. A living being is "a reservoir of indetermination and unforeseeability."[152] The new species cannot be explained, except by an illegitimate process of thought, by what is presented in the old. The appearance of a new species is something as new as the composition of a symphony of Beethoven. Man, then, in his powers and destinies is not to be judged by his likeness to the brutes, but by what he possesses over and above the qualities of animal life, by those achievements and endowments to which animals have failed to attain. Since man, and man alone, has come so far, and in him alone consciousness has broken the chains of mechanical necessity, "we shall have no repugnance in admitting that in man, though perhaps in man alone, consciousness pursues its path beyond this earthly life."[153]

152: "Life and Consciousness," _Hibbert Journal_, October, 1911, p. 34.

153: _Ibid._, p. 43.

4. Creative evolution is the ant.i.thesis of mechanical evolution. Bergson protests that the conception of mechanism as applied to life is inadequate, because (1) it is artificial, growing out of our habits of controlling matter. It is an instrument of the intelligence, not giving us an insight into life, which we must gain rather in intuition, the higher faculty in Bergson's system. A mechanical representation of nature is always a "representation necessarily artificial and symbolic."[154] (2) Mechanical conceptions are inapplicable to living beings, because of the irreversibility of the movements of living forms; and (3) the mechanical theory is negatived by the facts of the psychophysical connection. "The hypothesis of an equivalence between the psychical state and the cerebral state implies a veritable absurdity, as we tried to prove in a former work."[155] No mechanical theory and no theory of accidental variations, whether insensible or abrupt, can account for the production of so complex an organ as the eye.[156]

154: "L'evolution Creatrice," 7th ed., 1911, p. iv.; E. T., "Creative Evolution," 1911, p. xii.

155: _Ibid._, p. 384; E. T., p. 355.

156: _Ibid._, pp. 82 ff.; E. T., pp. 75 ff.

His critique of other theories prepares the way for Bergson's own view that the forms of living beings are due to an original vital impulsion, not in the single organism, but in life as a whole, seeking, without foresight of the result, to overcome the downward tendency of matter.

Bergson's suggested _via media_ between creationism and evolutionism, his rejection of a theory of chance variations, and his vigorous polemic against mechanism, all seem to prepare the way for a spiritualistic philosophy. It is true that the land of the spirit has not yet been explored, but Bergson, as one writer expresses it, has at least thrown a bridge across the chasm between the material and the spiritual. While his "Creative Evolution" has been placed upon the Index, we must remember that he himself claims that this work and those that preceded it have resulted in the conceptions of liberty, of spirit and of creation. "From all this," as he says, "we derive a clear idea of a free and creating G.o.d, producing matter and life at once, whose creative effort is continued, in a vital direction, by the evolution of species and the construction of human personalities."[157]

157: See Edouard Le Roy: "The New Philosophy of Henri Bergson," E.

T., pp. 224 f.

The point in Bergson's system which seems least in harmony with theistic belief is his criticism and rejection of finalism. Bergson fears that the temporal series will be swallowed up in the "dark backward and abysm of time," or rather of eternity. The finalism of a foreseen end means with him fatalism, fixity, with no play for freedom, and a reality in time only of a secondary order. Again, in opposition to finalism he urges the variety of living forms. Could the end of all the varied history be merely the production of man? This cannot be proved, because everywhere we see in nature contingency and variety, and apparent cross-purposes if purpose at all. There is no single line of evolution leading up to man. Some fossil forms from remote periods show exactly the same structure as living forms to-day. Further, the vital impulse striving towards freedom meets with obstacles, and failure and arrest are manifest in the lethargy of vegetables and the mechanical reflexes of animals, if these are viewed with reference to the a.s.sumed end of the creation of man. The only finalism which Bergson will admit is that of a push towards freedom in virtue of an original vital impulse, blindly and often vainly seeking to overcome the movement of matter towards necessity. It is a _vis a tergo_ happening at last to issue, without any foresight of the result, in the appearance of man.

It is not clear, however, that Bergson has been able to dispose of finalism, or to find some conception between it and the theory of chance which he rejects. The disc of a talking machine, to one not familiar with it, with its spiral lines broken in a haphazard way, would seem to exclude purpose; but when it is properly adjusted the voice of a Melba or a Caruso can be heard. So there may be some standpoint from which the bewildering variety of nature will reveal some unitary purpose. It may be, to use the figure of the artist, that the purpose is not solely the production of man, but that the variety and beauty of the natural world is an expression of the joy of the Creative Artist in his work. The purpose may be more comprehensive, and the fact that all natural history does not plainly lead to the production of man is not in itself a proof that man was not the intended consummation of the process.

It is noteworthy that Bergson, a master in the use of ill.u.s.tration, cannot find any exact ill.u.s.tration of the kind of evolution he wishes to describe. He compares the course of evolution to a road, leading to a city, but hastens to add that, for evolution, the end of the road is not seen.[158] He says again that "if one wished to express himself in terms of finality, it must be said that consciousness ... has sought an issue in the double direction of instinct and intelligence. It has not found it in instinct and it has not obtained it upon the side of intelligence, except by a sudden leap from animal to man. So that, in the last a.n.a.lysis, man would be the _raison d' etre_ of the entire organization of life upon our planet."[159] He adds again, however, that this would be but a manner of speaking, and that there is nothing in reality but a certain current of existence and an antagonistic current, whence all the evolution of life. Once more it will be asked, how is this sudden leap, so tremendous in its consequences, to be conceived? Is it a leap in the dark, like the leap of a fish from the water into a rowboat? Is man thus only a happy accident? Or must we see in the vital impulse, or behind it, some real instrumentality of guidance? If the original current of life is wholly blind and purposeless, it would arrive nowhere, or else its arrival at humanity would be as much the result of chance as if it were due to a fortuitous collocation of atoms.

158: "L'evolution Creatrice," p. 112; E. T., p. 102.

159: _Ibid._, pp. 200 f.; E. T., pp. 184 f.

But let us return to Bergson's favourite and beautiful figure of the artist. The effort to objectify the ideal, and to put it in concrete form in words or upon canvas, is said to be precious though painful. It is precious and more precious than the work it results in, "because, thanks to it, we have drawn from ourselves not only all there was there, but more than was there: we have raised ourselves above ourselves."[160]

160: _Hibbert Journal_, October, 1911, p. 41.

Is the Divine Artist subject to this kind of evolution? In moments of creative activity does He thus avail Himself of a "plus-power" in the universe, to use Emerson's expression, and does He thus, like the human artist, raise Himself above Himself? If so, we must think of G.o.d as altogether such a one as we are, rather than as the source and ground of being and the life and light of men. Such a deity is rather to be identified with the stream of life than with the Ultimate lying behind both life and matter. The Divine Artist, so conceived, would lack the clearness of human prevision of ends, and would be of a relatively lower order of endowment. The striving of the vital impulse without foresight of an end is of an infra-human rather than a super-human kind; for even a "complete and perfect humanity," Bergson says, "would be that in which these two forms of conscious activity [intuition and intelligence]

attain their full development."[161]

161: "L'evolution Creatrice," p. 289; E. T., p. 267.

A recent critic has said that while Bergson has removed the mechanical obstacles to liberty he has not discovered the spiritual conditions requisite for it, and that "he has, most unintentionally, brought us back, in this anti-Finalism, to that Naturalism which he has so successfully resisted when it masqueraded as a sheer Mechanism."[162]

There can be no doubt that the spirit of his philosophy is one of progress, and that the tendency of his thought is spiritualistic; his _elan vital_ is an _elan en avant_, and his G.o.d (if one be admitted in his system) is a G.o.d of hope. But the questions will still arise whether the vital impulse means for society a destructive radicalism or a constructive renewal; whether, in its ethical aspect, it means a will-to-live no matter what happens to any one else, or a will-to-live-better; and whether it will eventually be transformed into a pessimistic resignation or trans.m.u.ted into spiritual aspiration.

162: F. von Hugel: "Eternal Life," p. 301.

In the religious aspect of his philosophy, Bergson stands at the parting of the ways. He must a.s.sociate with creation not merely an impulse vaguely psychical, but the personal attributes of will, intelligence and purpose, and so advance towards theism; or else he must be content to rest in naturalism, albeit of a glorified type.

II. EUCKEN AND THE TRUTH OF RELIGION

Since the death of William James, the brightest stars in the philosophical firmament have been Henri Bergson of Paris and Rudolf Eucken of Jena. One reason for the popularity of both is that the centre of interest in their best-known works is not in epistemology. They do not approach the problem of existence as beholders, merely asking how they can see, and whether what they see is real, but their standpoint is that of intimate, vital human experience. Both writers place themselves in the stream of life, and find that the moments of deepest insight into reality are those of creative activity in art or other constructions of the mind, or else, with Eucken, of moral achievement and victory.

Eucken has been called the German Emerson, and his message to his time is that of a seer rather than of a systematizer. He is the prophet of a spiritual life, protesting against materialism and secularism, and vindicating the sovereign rights of the spiritual aspects of existence.

In the term "Activism," which he applies to his philosophy, he intimates that there must be an activity of the soul upon its material and social environment, before the insights of philosophy and the achievements of art and the experiences of religion can be attained. There must be an a.s.sertion by the soul of its own spiritual nature. The conviction that man is not merely the product of nature, but in his spiritual life is independent and supreme, is not the result of a revelation to a pa.s.sive recipient. It is an achievement, a venture of faith, a self-a.s.sertion of the soul in the face of hostile forces which would confine it within the trivial and the phenomenal.

Eucken's relation to Christianity will appear if we notice briefly (1) his critique of other philosophical theories; (2) his own constructive theory of religion; and (3) his answer to the question, Can we still be Christians?

1. As an exponent of the "monistic trinity" of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, Eucken is brought into comparison with his famous colleague, Haeckel, with whose "brand-new monism" he has little sympathy. Against Naturalism, Eucken holds that the life of man in its ideal constructions such as science, art, morality and religion, cannot be explained from below, but only from the Higher in him and above him.

From the material supplied to it by nature the soul, out of its own activity, builds the more stately mansions of science, philosophy, art, social organization and religion. "A consistent naturalism," he contends, "is not able to permit science of any kind. Science is constructed through the activity of the human mind alone."[163]

163: "Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion," 3d ed., 1912, p. 36; E. T., "The Truth of Religion," 1913, p. 52.