Ro ! : Pa shee : Ra SRE a eeastce i Ss, Ss Racin ASS. . : ~ erate os : . C eth: - - arent NN mis Es SS Loree = Soy SSotetee Paton RRS sh = SS SS oS SSR s : SERS 3. mats matatate} cat Sos ON ty ate SEK AS eee eke Desk anes Gearon as ct as cere es Tee 2 te % "gree ; : : gto tecese sretere : sey ie cpatys Tetras : : was Kad a - s bd nak et . eemarnacs eae a : 5 : : : sec - ak cia re. “ » . f : re : . Seaiert 2 Setete ea Saietsie eatet an JAN 13 1927 : By, ae Cr oaieni sew BOU51: S87 WS2Z6 Streeter, Burnett Hillman, 1874-1937. Reality Yo tw ye a ay RE Aw | Tey By the same Author The Four Gospels; A Study of Origins Restatement and Reunion In part by the same Author Oxford Studies in the Synoptic Problem Foundations Concerning Prayer Immortahty The Spirit God and the Struggle for Existence The Sadhu REALITY A NEW CORRELATION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION hee ANT2 1927 “‘y °y “OL ogien > BY BURNETT HILLMAN STREETER FELLOW OF QUEEN’S COLLEGE, OXFORD; CANON OF HEREFORD FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY HON. D.D. EDIN, jew Bork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 1926 All rights reserved Truth is the ground of science, the centre wherein all things repose, and is the type of eternity. Sir Pumir SIpNey. CoPpyrRiIGHT, 1926, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1926, PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE CORNWALL PRESS CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE PE ETAL TRAE \00 N08. Ue ALU eetvC ern ean Se gE MO 1 CHAP RE TUALL SciencE, ART, AND RELIGION ... 23 Additional Note—CHRISTIANITY AND ont thowe GEOR Pe) LAIN Or nee Ma rain iee Lanes SERS eg, CHAPTER III An ANCIENT SToRY. . : : : RCS I peas ag: S| CHAPTER IV Two Ways oF KNOWLEDGE . : : ( ‘ Banal | Additional Notes—A. ee Re B. Kanrt’s THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE ! : i 5 sian is fa CHART BR iv. Tue Lire-Forcr, THE ABSOLUTE, OR Gop. . . . 115 CHAPTER: VI CREATIVE STRIFE .. : , RY Ne TOD CREP aria ful aa O39 vl REALITY CHAPTER VII Tue CHRIST CHAPTER VIII Tue DEFEAT oF Evin CHAPTER Ix RELIGION AND THE New PsycHoLocy . CHAPTER X IMMORTALITY APPENDICES I DREAM PSYCHOLOGY AND THE Mystic VISION II Instinct AND MoRALITY INDEX or NAMES INDEX OF SUBJECTS . PAGE 175 217 265 305 319 338 345 347 INTRODUCTION THE purpose of this book is to outline, in the simplest and clearest language I can command, a position in which my own mind has found rest after thirty years of search. But in order that the point of view from which it is written may be the more easily apprehended I have, after some hesitation, thought it well to preface it with a few details of an autobiographical nature. I came up to Oxford with a scholarship in Classics in 1893, fully determined to follow my father in the profession of the Law. But about the end of my second year—I was reading ‘Greats—I realised quite suddenly that the religious beliefs in which I had been brought up rested on a very slender intellectual foundation; and I awoke one day to find myself an agnostic. After a year or so of thought and reading, and discussion with older friends, I reached, through the gateway of T. H. Green’s philosophy, what at the time seemed to me an adequate intellectual basis of religion—largely taken over, in a not too well-digested form, from the earlier writings of Illingworth and Gore. The conviction was then borne in upon me that it was my duty to give my life to the task of further working out, and passing on to others, the truth which I had seen; and I decided to seek ordination. After taking my Degree I read Theology, and there opened up a possibility, which had not previously occurred to me, that my work might be in Vil vill REALITY Oxford; but it was not till some little time after I had been elected to a Fellowship that I realised how very far from being intellectually water-tight was the position which I had reached. The restraining advice of a senior friend kept me from relinquishing my Orders; but I think that I should ultimately have taken this step but for the reinvigorating inspiration of the Summer Conferences of the Student Christian Movement, which I began to attend in 1905. Here I gained a renewed confidence that in Religion man can attain to a genuine apprehension of Reality, of that ‘Beyond which is also Within’, in a way and of a kind which any intellectual theory of the Universe must account for or confess itself bankrupt. I startea again on my quest with a new courage, but with no weakening of my old conviction that religion in its mystical, emotional or practical expression was, to me at any rate, of little value if divorced from intellectual integrity. I endeavoured to work on in the spirit of the philosopher who, in Samuel Butler’s famous phrase, ‘should have given up all, even Christ Himself, for Christ’s sake’. It has been my peculiar good fortune to have come into a personal contact, which admitted of long and repeated discussion of large problems, with an excep- tional number of fellow-seekers after truth—philosophers, scientists, and others whose interest was mainly in art, literature or practical life, as well as theologians of many Christian denominations, and students or adherents of the great religions of the East. Looking back over my life, I feel that I have learnt more in this way than from the books which I have read. I owe a special debt to those friends who were associated with me in the series of ‘group-books’-—Foundations, Concerning INTRODUCTION 1x Prayer, Immortality, and The Spirit. The method of systematic group discussion employed in the preparation of these was an invaluable intellectual discipline, besides suggesting to me avenues of further investigation which otherwise I might never have explored. Before the last of these symposia was published, I had set to work on a scheme, long-ago projected but often interrupted, for a book which would clear up my own mind by presenting in a reasonable compass a synthetic summary of the position which I had reached up to date. A good deal of what is here printed is a re-writing of material put together then (1919-21). Towards the end of 1921 I laid this work aside in order to gather up the results of investigations, started at a much earlier date, into the origins of the Gospels; these were published under the title The Four Gospels, late in 1924. The interruption was fortunate, since it enabled me, by sitting at the feet of scientific friends, to get some inkling (if only at second hand) of the general trend of some of the modern developments in Physics, and to read some of the more recent literature - bearing on that new conception of the nature of scientific knowledge which is being put forward by workers in that field. This has led to a considerable re-orientation of much that I had previously drafted. It is now many years since it first began to dawn upon me that, during the earlier years of my search, I had been doing—what, so far as I see, most other searchers after truth in the sphere of Religion have done —I had been asking the wrong question. I will explain my meaning. Instinctively anyone brought up in the Christian tradition—provided always he does not belong to the number of those who would prefer to think it false—frames his question in the form, Is Christianity x REALITY true? But merely to state the question thus precludes a satisfactory answer; for the very form of the question implies that Religion is itself the problem, whereas the truth of Religion is a matter worth inquiring about only if, and in so far as, it offers a solution of the problems which are posed oe life—of which the problem of evil is the chief. Is there not wrong too bitter for atoning? What are these desperate and hideous years? Hast Thou not heard Thy whole creation groaning, Sighs of the bondsmen, and a woman’s tears? It is the Universe itself that compels us to ask questions. First there are theoretical questions. Are we to think of It as alive or dead? If alive, what is It after? Or, in more formal words, must Reality be thought of only in terms of quantity, or is quality (or value) also real? Then comes the fact of evil ever forcing us to face the practical question, Is there any way in which I personally can overcome, and help others to overcome, the suffering and the wrong? By those who first heard it the Christian message was called ‘Gospel’, that is, ‘good news’. It was so named because to them it did seem to give an answer both to the theoretical and to the practical questions. Life posed the riddle; Religion had found an answer. Life has not ceased to pose its riddle; but who to-day has an answer which to the majority seems to have the authentic ring? Those who are without Religion admit they have no answer. The Christian theologian stands on the defensive. Having once begun by asking the wrong question, he finds himself ‘defending the faith’; in effect, he has got himself into the position of being anxious to save Religion, instead of expecting Religion to save him. INTRODUCTION i This book, then, is not a ‘Defence of Christianity’ ; indeed, in Christianity as traditionally presented there are some things which (if I had any taste for theological controversy) I should be more inclined to attack than to defend. It is an endeavour to discover Truth. Accordingly I start off to interrogate the Universe afresh. I ask whether Quality as well as Quantity is of the essence of Reality. When I go on to inquire whence and how we may get light on the Quality, I cannot but see that much of the evidence to be studied consists in the phenomena—social, historical, psycho- logical—of human religion, of which the most important is the fact that Christ once lived and taught and died. From a consideration of this evidence there seems to me to emerge a new way of approaching certain old ideas. This, unless I am mistaken, enables one to see that there is an answer to the riddle set by life in a Religion which has the quality of Vision and Power—the vision of truth and the power to overcome. The questions I discuss—whatever be the value of answers which I seem to myself to have found—are living questions to every human being; and I shall have failed in my object if this book is intelligible only to philosophers, scientists and theologians. It is addressed in the first instance to the man who has no special training in any of these subjects. That the book as a whole will prove easy reading, I am fairly confident. In the earlier chapters, while the general position set out is in itself simple and straightforward, it has, in order to expound this, been necessary to criticise certain features in Materialism, Absolutism and other theories; and some of the sections in which this is attempted naturally make a more serious claim on the reader’s attention. I believe, however, that even here I have xil REALITY succeeded in so writing that the main draft of the argument will be clear to any person of ordinary educa- tion, even if he has no technical knowledge of the subject. Moreover, the Synopses at the head of each chapter will enable the reader, if he finds any particular section difficult or uninteresting, to skip it without losing sight of the general purport of the chapter. Nevertheless, although this book is not primarily intended for philosophers and theologians, it is my hope that some of these will deign to read it. For, apart from certain sections, it is in no sense a popularisation of currently accepted views. It is an attempt to limn out a position which, taken as a whole, is a new one. My debt, of course, to the thought and writings of others will be obvious on every page; but if regard be had, not so much to detailed considerations, as to the mode of co-ordinating the essential data and to the trend of the argument as a whole, I believe that I am justified in speaking of it as a new correlation of Science and Religion. _ In Chapters II. and IV. I sketch out what is, in effect, a new Theory of Knowledge. To this, if it were worked out into a formal system, I should be inclined to give the name Bi-Representationism. But to have worked out such a system with an elaborate apparatus of technical terminology might have resulted in a wrong impression of the main conception of the book. For, if I am right in maintaining that the language natural to Religion is more closely akin to Art than to Science, then a Philosophy of Religion is likely the better to reflect the spirit of that which it endeavours to inter- pret, the more its exposition avoids technicalities and is expressed in a way that can be imaginatively, as well as conceptually, realised. At any rate, so far as this INTRODUCTION xiii theory is concerned, I shall be more than satisfied if I have suggested an outline which others more competent than myself may develop or amend. To various friends who have read the whole or part of the book in MS. or proof I owe a debt of gratitude, more especially to Miss Chilcott of Lady Margaret Hall, Mr. Will Spens of Corpus Christi, Cambridge, Mr. A. 8. L. Farquharson of University College, Oxford, Arch- deacon Lilley of Hereford, Mr. W. Force Stead, and Mr. Norman Ault; and to Miss Earp of Cumnor, both for this and also for the preparation of the Indexes. B. H. STREETER. Oxrorp, Sept. 1926. MATERIALISM SYNOPSIS NEWTON AND Darwin By discovering a mechanism in the movements of the heavenly bodies, Newton made Materialism a plausible explanation of the Uni- verse—apart from living beings. Darwin, by his theory of Natural Selection, seemed to have found a mechanism capable of explaining the origin of living beings as well. All questions became reducible to problems of molecular physics. From this it would follow that consciousness in any of its forms— whether thought, feeling, or will—can initiate nothing; it is merely an ‘epiphenomenon’, 7.e. a functionless shadow cast by the material process. But the view that consciousness is no more than a passive shadow entails certain paradoxical conclusions—among others that Science itself is an illusion. Tup Power or MrrapHor The human mind naturally thinks in pictures; when it thinks of the Totality of things this is inevitable. But it is important to choose the picture, metaphor or myth which is most illuminating. Theism pictures the Power behind the Universe as in some way resembling human personality; this is decried as anthropomorphism, 2.e. as a making of God in the image of man. Materialism pictures the Universe as an Infinite Machine; this by analogy may be called mech- anomorphism. Mechanomorphism is essentially myth; but the dazzling triumphs of machinery in the nineteenth century made it imaginatively an attractive myth. Yet every machine is an instrument designed to effect a defi- nitely realised purpose, and is itself the expression of the concentrated intelligence of an inventor. It is fallacious to overlook this, and then apply the metaphor of a machine to the Universe as if the oversight made no difference. Tur Conceprion of MrcHANISM In origin Mechanism is an abstract quality corresponding to the con- crete thing machine; that is to say, it is a quality, not of any object existing in Nature, but of certain artificial constructions made by man. Hence to apply the conception to Nature in anything like its original sense is to be guilty of anthropomorphism in a double degree. As employed by Science the conception of Mechanism definitely 2 I MATERIALISM excludes certain of the most essential elements in the original meaning. That being so, it is no longer an abstract term corresponding to an actu- ally existing object; it has become a pure symbol. It ceases, therefore, to be an explanation of anything. Still less can the Universe be explained in terms of something which never has existed, nor could exist, but is a symbol of an abstract relationship. (An objection to this argument from the standpoint of the science of Mechanics is discussed in a footnote.) Recent Science rejects the old conceptions of Matter, Force and Causation, making it hard to frame a ‘model’ of how the Mechanism works. Moreover, the apparent inconsistency between the laws seeming to apply to the behaviour of the atom has done away with the clear-cut simplicity which made Mechanism an attractive explanation. Professor Whitehead’s view that the atom should be regarded rather as an organ- ism than as a mechanism. Matrer The resolution of the atom into proton and electrons, though its importance from the philosophical standpoint is probably not great, strikes at the imaginative basis of popular Materialism. It has also served to call the attention of scientific workers to the philosophical problems raised by the fact of knowledge. Force Recent physicists object that the old conception of Force as ‘some- thing which pulls or pushes’ is anthropomorphic, and would substitute the conception of Energy Potential and Kinetic. (Is not potentiality an explanation in terms of expectation and therefore equally anthropo- morphic?) But, if the old conception of Force is surrendered, the meaning of Mechanism becomes still more attenuated. Cause AND EFrrecr The meaning of Causation is a highly debatable question. Unless, however, we are prepared to follow the lead of the Philosophical Idealists, we must admit that it is a symbolic representation of an element in Ultimate Reality as to the real nature of which we know nothing. In either case the old mechanistic materialism is ruled out. RELATIVITY The resolution of space and time into ‘space-time’ raises in an acute form the question, What is matter? and Materialism loses its prima facie plausibility in proportion as matter ceases to be a simple, solid, permanent reality. I MATERIALISM NEWTON AND DARWIN MATERIALISM as a system goes back past Epicurus to Democritus, four hundred years B.c. and more. It did not become plausible till after Newton. I had rather [wrote Bacon, the apostle of the inductive methods of modern science] believe all the fables in the Legend and the Talmud and the Alcoran than that this universal frame is without a mind. And such is still the commonsense verdict of ordinary humanity. The discoveries of Newton unveiled a mechanism. It was this that woke the scepticism of the thinking few. Before that, men instinctively looked to the heavens and there saw declared the glory of God and a firmament that showed His handiwork. Newton explained the working of it all on a few simple mechanical principles. It was left to others to draw the moral to which Laplace gave classical expression—when asked why, in a treatise on Astronomy, God was nowhere mentioned—‘Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis’. But that hypothesis still seemed to be needed in the domain of Natural History, and it seemed indispensable to account for the origin of Man. In the delicate adjust- ment of each and every one of the bodily organs to the function it subserves—the eye for seeing, the fin for 4 CHAP. I MATERIALISM DB swimming, the wing for flight—and still more in the fact of Reason manifest in the mind of man, there still appeared to be evidence unmistakable of the conscious purpose and intelligent design of a wise Creator. Then came Darwin, indicating a mechanism, auto- matic in its working, which might explain this too. Darwin started from two facts of familiar observation. (1) The several offspring of any living organism, plant or animal, are never all exactly alike; they ‘vary’ slightly both from the parent and from one another. (2) Variations from the type form appearing in an individual may be inherited by its descendants. Upon his creative imagination flashed the idea of applying to these facts the conception of ‘Natural Selection’. He argued that a variation from the standard type might often be of such a character as to make it easier for the individual to procure food, to escape its enemies, or in some other way have a better chance in the struggle for existence. Whenever this happened, the individual so equipped would survive longer than the rest and would leave behind it more descendants. If its descendants inherited the useful variation, they, too, would do the same. On the other hand, the descendants of those individuals of the stock which lacked this new equipment would in every genera- tion die sooner, or leave behind them less offspring, than their more fortunate cousins. Hence the new type would gradually, at least in certain areas, replace the old. A stock-farmer deliberately ‘selects’ for parentage such individuals as display some quality he most desires. According as his aim is milk or meat, he breeds from one or another set of cattle. Thus by selective breeding from individuals which exhibit some measure of variation in the direction he desires, gradually in the course of 6 REALITY CHAP. several generations he, so to speak, piles up small variations into great, and produces a herd which, with some degree of exaggeration, might be styled a new sub- species. Darwin conceived of Natural Selection as a mechanism capable of producing new species by a simi- lar piling up of small variations spread over an immense period of time. And it was'a mechanism which could function automatically. For the mere fact that a par- ticular variation happens to give an individual an advantage in the struggle for existence means that that individual has a chance above the average of propagating its kind. The discrimination which the stock-farmer effects by selective breeding, in Nature results from the earlier death of the less well-equipped. Automatically, therefore, in every generation those best adapted to their environment increase and multiply, the rest diminish and may ultimately become extinct. So long as the crop of variation is sufficiently abundant, individuals will constantly occur which are in some ways. better adapted to their environment than any heretofore exist- ent, and Nature will automatically select and breed from these. The human eye is an instrument extraor- dinarily elaborate and wonderfully adapted for its pur- pose—so wonderfully, said Paley, that it is conclusive evidence of the conscious design of an intelligent Creator. Darwin replied that Natural Selection would suffice, given only, to start with, a spot of protoplasm specially sensitive to light, and the occurrence of indefinite and minute variations over a sufficiently long period of time. All can be explained in terms of mechanism, automatic and unconscious. Biology since Darwin has not stood still; but it would be outside my present purpose to discuss the question of the bearings of later discovery on his con- I MATERIALISM 7 ception of the mechanism of evolution. I am only con- cerned to point out here how inevitable it was that the work of Darwin should seem to bring to its triumphant climax the long and fruitful effort of Astronomy, Physics and Chemistry to explain the Universe completely in mathematical and mechanical terms. All questions, it was proclaimed, were reducible in the last resort to prob- lems of molecular Physics. Assume—it is a big assump- tion—certain properties as somehow self-existent in the atom, and some great initial ‘push’, and everything else would automatically evolve, as a necessary consequence rigidly determined by the structure of matter and the original direction of primal energy. There follows by inexorable logic the ineluctable conclusion that thought, feeling, will, can initiate noth- ing, change nothing, do nothing. Consciousness is only an ‘epiphenomenon’, a functionless shadow cast by auto- matic changes in that material process which is the sole reality. | This last conclusion, however—and without doubt it is the only conclusion which the premises admit—lands us in a difficulty, and one that appears the greater the more closely it is examined. The ‘shadow’ has the curious property that it is conscious of itself. Moreover, though it is alleged to be impotent to do, it is certainly potent to think and to know—otherwise the whole structure of the sciences is illusion, and so the case for regarding con- sciousness as a epiphenomenon is illusion too. Again, reasoning, the psychologists insist, is a function of ‘conation’ or will; and in the course of biological evolution thought certainly appears as secondary to desire (cf. p. 77), unless, then, it be a ‘variation’ useful to the individual in the struggle for existence, why has Natural Selection so enormously developed it. Yet 8 REALITY CHAP. again, if thought is a product of the Will to live, it is odd that it should discover that life itself is a process mechanically determined and therefore destitute of will. It is odd, too, that a Universe which is itself an autom- aton should give birth to little automata alive enough to know that their life is an illusion. 1 Yet again, if he starts with the assumption that mat- ter alone is real, and that all that happens is the result of its mechanically determined movements, the Mate- rialist must deny to consciousness any independent activity. How then can he allow any validity to Science itself? Science is a system of knowledge built up by the concentrated thought of generations of acute inquirers, and thought is an act of consciousness. If consciousness is a passive shadow, Science is just a fainter shadow cast upon the first by the Unknown. Tue Power or METAPHOR The attractiveness of Materialism depends, to an extent which is not commonly recognised, on its appeal to the imagination. The human mind, even when highly trained, thinks to a great extent in pictures. Indeed, it is one purpose of this book to suggest that when the human mind tries to envisage the Universe as a whole, it can do no other, and that therefore true wisdom lies in frankly accepting this necessary limitation, and con- centrating our efforts on finding the right picture. In studying ordinary objects we begin by noticing their resemblance to things already known, and so assigning them to this class or to that. But the Universe is like nothing but itself; classification, which is the very basis of all ordinary knowledge, is here meaningless, for the thing to be studied can be classed with nothing else. The best we can do is to find the illuminating metaphor, the i MATERIALISM 9 picturesque analogy, the symbol or the myth, which will help us to apprehend some aspects of the truth. The Materialism of the last century I regard as a metaphor of this kind. It pictured the Universe as an Infinite Machine. A belief in God which ascribes to the Ultimate Reality qualities quite essentially human, like reason or love, is often decried as anthropomorphism, as an attempt to fashion the Infinite after man’s own image. But if Theism is anthropomorphism, Materialism is mechano- morphism, an attempt to fashion the Infinite in the image of a machine. Mechanomorphism is essentially myth—and, up to a point, useful and illuminating myth. And it was a myth specially attractive in the later Victorian age, when the world was still dazzled by that unending procession of fresh mechanical inventions which our sated imagina- tions take as a matter of course. Fabrics with a delicacy of pattern rivalling the finest wrought by the alert brain and skilful fingers of living human agents, were being produced by dead machinery working in rigid unalter- able planes and circles, impelled by impersonal forces like electricity or steam. And the pattern of the Universe that Science was revealing seemed to be the result of some all-pervading energy working in accord with rigid unalterable laws. How easy so to think of It! Go into a printing-house: see, at one end of the machine, a great blank roll of paper; at the other, neatly folded up and counted, copies of a journal pouring out, replete with information, argument and rhetoric. Why may we not picture the Universe as a similar machine—at one end the formless nebule wafted through the inane; at the other the mind of man, capable of poetry, heroism and love? Press the analogy and it reads a very different lesson. 10 REALITY CHAP. The machine, I grant, by purely mechanical processes turns blank paper into speaking literature; but what guides it and what finds expression in the written words is living intelligence. I grant, too, that it has reached its present perfection as a result of a long, slow evolution through simpler stages; but to that evolution—to the designing, to the co-ordinating, to the intricate adapta-_ tion of those mechanic forces themselves—have gone centuries of conscious thought and invention, ever devel- oping, improving, elaborating the rhythmic harmony of inter-related parts; and every modification at every stage was inspired by conscious purpose striving for the attainment of some clearly envisaged end. A machine as it stands is a dead and rigid thing, and the force which drives it is an unconscious force; but, for all that, the simplest machine is the epitome and distillation of long- concentrated conscious purpose linked with keen intel- ligence. It has taken centuries of conscious and intelligent effort to produce the machine which prints our morning paper, and has this Universe,—a machine | the complexity and intricacy of which baffles the intel- lect and bewilders the imagination,—come into existence of itself, the result of blind unconscious force? Is the ‘Universe one gigantic accident consequent upon an ‘ infinite succession of happy flukes? Of all the strange beliefs that man has cherished, none flaunts a paradox so staggering as this. Tuer CoNcEPTION OF MECHANISM At this point I am compelled to touch on some questions of a more technical character. The reader who is conversant, even to a small extent, with scientific or with philosophic discussion will, I hope, find no difficulty in following my argument, whether he agrees u MATERIALISM 11 with it or not. But any one who has no special interest either in Science or in Philosophy would do well, at any rate on a first reading of this book, to omit the remainder of the present chapter. The conception of the Universe as an Infinite Machine is obviously metaphor; and though metaphors of this kind may be taken literally by the unreflective, thinkers recognise them as myth. It is otherwise with abstract terms. Of such terms Mechanism has proved one of the most delusive. Mechanism is the abstract conception which corresponds to the concrete thing machine; in origin it Js a generalisation arrived at from the con- templation of actual machines. But every actual machine is a thing made by man for the attainment of some purely human end. Hence to use the term mechanism at all for the description of natural phenomena is to be guilty of anthropomorphism—if that be a matter of guilt—in a double degree. The anthropomorphism of religion interprets the Universe in terms of human personality—that is to say, in terms of the most remark- able natural product of that Universe. But mechanism is a conception doubly anthropomorphic, for it is derived from artificial constructions devised by human personali- ties for their own private uses. The conception of Mechanism has been the master key of scientific discovery. Since, however, in origin it is a metaphor drawn from observation of machinery, it is of the first importance to beware lest illegitimate associations derived from its original non-scientific sense be allowed to creep unawares into its scientific usage. Otherwise an element of mythology will make its way into the citadel of Science. Now a machine is essentially an instrument; it is not in itself a creative power. It is a method by which creative thought seeks 12 REALITY CHAR: to attain ends clearly foreseen. It is something initiated by intelligence, controlled by a living agent and directed by purpose. Since then, the abstract idea of mechanism is reached by way of generalisation from actual machines, it ought properly to include all this. As a matter of fact, it is employed by Science expressly in order to exclude everything of the sort. If this were merely a question of the use of words, it would not matter. The scientist—provided he is careful always to define his terms—has a right, like Alice's’ Humpty Dumpty, to make words mean what he chooses. But it is not legiti- mate to employ a word in an attenuated meaning and to expect at the same time to retain the ‘good-will’, so to speak, of its old ‘connection’. My point is this: an actual machine is a ‘going concern’; but it is that only because it was designed and is controlled by intelligence and purpose; leave out these and it is noth- ing at all. If then you explain Nature—which is also a ‘going concern’—in terms of mechanism while expressly excluding from the connotation of that word all reference to intelligence and purpose, you are explaining it in terms of something that never has existed and never could. Mechanism so conceived is pure symbol, it is simply a name for an abstract relation which has not corresponding to it any concrete object of which we have actual experience. Now mathematicians constantly reach valuable results by making use of symbols, such as Y — l, to which nothing in human experience is known to corre- spond. Physical Science is entitled to do the same; and it has done so, with conspicuous success, in the case of this conception of mechanism. Indeed it has been this conception more than any other that has thrown wide open to the human race the door of knowledge. But it is zi MATERIALISM 13 quite another matter to interpret the Universe as a whole in terms of mechanism, without asking for what the concept mechanism as used by Science really stands. Science uses the concept of mechanism as a principle by means of which it is possible to co-ordinate in- numerable observations dealing with moving bodies. In so far as any concept which reduces chaos to system may properly be called an explanation, it may be said to ‘explain’ them. But it is not explanation in the same sense as when we find that some unknown thing is a member of a class of things already known, or when the unfamiliar is ‘explained’ by its likeness to the familiar (cf. p. 80). If mechanism in scientific usage were really the equivalent in abstract thought of the con- crete thing machine, then to discover mechanism in Nature would be to ‘explain’ Nature in this sense. It would mean to discover that the obscure working of Nature has the closest resemblance to that familiar object of everyday life, a machine, that is to say, to something initiated by intelligence, controlled by a living agent and directed by purpose. Whereas, in fact, the mechanism of which the scientist speaks is an abstract idea which cor- responds to the concrete object machine only if these essential characteristics of every actual machine are left out; that is to say, it resembles something that nowhere exists outside the mind of the scientist. Clearly this is not explaining the obscure working of Nature in terms of a familiar object of daily life, the unknown in terms of the known, but the contrary. It is explaining con- crete observed fact by the aid of a conception which in the last resort is purely symbolic. In other words, mechanism, in its scientific use, is a mode of thinking; it is not a mode of being." 1 A friend who had read the preceding paragraphs raised the objection 14 REALITY CHAP. There is a further point. In the past the concept of mechanism has been specially fruitful for scientific discovery in relation to what Clerk-Maxwell called ‘the model’, that is, the imaginative picture of ‘how it works’ which precedes, and may also control, the formulation of a new hypothesis. But in so far’ as ‘the model’ is a mental picture, it is extremely difficult to keep out of the picture the idea of Matter as solid substance, of Force as something which pushes or pulls, and of Causation as a kind of mechanical link between the motive force and the matter which it moves—much as the piston is the link between the steam that supplies the power and the wheel which the crank turns. Granted the adequacy of these conceptions of Matter, Force and Causation, the word ‘mechanism’, even with all its orig- inal associations with the word machine, is an illuminat- ing metaphor. But to the modern scientist, as I shall show later, these conceptions are all impossibly naive. A friend engaged in advanced research in Physics, that, while my argument holds good in regard to popular thinking, it is not quite fair if applied to strictly scientific thought. ‘I do not think’, he writes, ‘that the associations of the word mechanism have as much to do with machines as you suggest. Mechanics is the word which mechan- ism suggests to the scientist; and for the ordinary scientist, as opposed to the engineer, mechanics does not suggest machines so much as a deter- minate system of matter and motion’. To this I would reply that, if and in so far as the objection is a sound one, it only adds weight to my main contention that the conception of mechanism as used by Science is a symbol—of course an absolutely necessary symbol—for an abstract rela- tion, and that it isa mode of thinking rather than a mode of being. The diagrams and equations with whicn the science of mechanics operates are highly abstract entities. Like machines they are man-made, but they are much further removed from concrete reality. Moreover, unless I entirely misconceive the matter, a diagram (whether actually drawn on paper or implied in an equation) is really only a convenient way of making in the most generalised form a statement to the effect that, supposing there existed a mechanical contrivance by which certain forces of given extent could be made to operate along given directions, the result would be as shewn. Again, conceptions like ‘equilibrium’ or ‘mechanical system’ are general abstractions ultimately derived from concrete mechanical con- trivances. I hold, therefore, that whenever the word ‘mechanism’ is used without conscious realisation that it is symbolic, the user is always haunted by the ghost of its original association with the word ‘mbchine’. t MATERIALISM 15 to whom I showed the above paragraph in typescript, writes to me as follows: I don’t know whether it matters for your purpose (since popular materialism is of course not based on the most modern science), but the ‘model’ is rather discredited nowadays. If it happens to be useful, any suggestions it can make are always welcome, but the ideal of ‘explaining’ everything so that the mechanism of the processes shall be evident is no longer com- mon, and the desire to understand things, in this sense, is being found to be nearly as often harmful as helpful. The majority, I think, of the brilliant advances in physics which this century has seen have been made by methods which ignore, or in some cases even defy, the canons of successful explanation which were accepted in Maxwell’s time. We are getting quite used to theories which are ‘right’ in the sense that they predict all sorts of unexpected things correctly, but which remain them- selves unintelligible, or even self-contradictory, when one tries to ‘understand’ them. With this I would ask the reader to compare this excerpt from the latest work of that distinguished scientific thinker, Professor Whitehead.* It is orthodox to hold that there is nothing in biology but what is physical mechanism under somewhat complex circum- stances. One difficulty in this position is the present confusion as to the foundational concepts of physical science. ... Ié cannot be too clearly understood [italics not in original] that the various physical laws which appear to apply to the behaviour of atoms are not mutually consistent as at present formulated. The appeal to mechanism on behalf of biology was in its origin an appeal to the well-attested self-consistent physical concepts as expressing the basis of all natural phe- nomena. But at present there is no such system of concepts. Science is taking on a new aspect which is neither purely physical, nor purely biological. It is becoming the study of organisms. Biology is the study of the larger organisms; whereas physics is the study of the smaller organisms. 1 Science and the Modern World, p. 145. (Cambridge University Press, 1926.) LOU, REALITY CHAP. That beautiful, clear-cut simplicity which was once the main attraction of mechanistic Materialism has to- day completely disappeared. MATTER The atom—once supposed to be the ultimate unit of matter and to be a solid substance comparable to an infinitesimal pellet of shot—has now been analysed by Physics into a kind of solar system, consisting of one or more ‘electrons’ revolving round a centre known as a ‘proton’. It is believed that, relatively to the size of these infinitesimal ‘planets’, their orbits are larger than those of the Solar System. Thus the amount of ‘solid substance’ as compared with the extent of empty space within the atom is actually less than the amount of solid matter in the planets as compared with the empty space in the Solar System—in which the orbit of Neptune is 5000 million miles across. Further, it seems more probable than not that the electron should be regarded not as ‘a solid substance’ at all but as a unit of electric force. Philosophers say that this discovery makes no difference at all to any conclusion they had previously held. I think they are right. But it does make a dif- ference to popular materialism. To the popular mind —and all of us at times fall back to the level of popular thinking—the attractiveness of the theory that Matter is the prime reality, depends on the fact that life and thought are invisible, impalpable and evanescent, while material objects are not. If I thump on the ground with my stick, there is a solid reality which will outlast me and all my hopes or theories. But if matter is not solid at all, if in the last resort it can be resolved into in- finitesimal points of electric foree—it no longer strikes I MATERIALISM 17 the imagination as being so much more real than invisibilities like life or thought. Again it is no longer possible to laugh at the meta- physician who questions the ultimate validity of the hard-and-fast distinction which ordinary common-sense would make between mind and matter. Long before the physicist has reached the analysis of the atom into protons and electrons, he has gone beyond the limits of ‘observation’ in the simple and direct sense in which I feel something as ‘hard’ or see it as ‘red’—even with a microscope to extend my visual powers. The simple data of impressions received through the five senses,— which after all are the basis of the whole of our knowledge of the external world,—have been worked up into highly elaborate systems by means of hypotheses framed on mathematical and_ scientific principles, before the atom itself, much less the electron, comes upon the stage. The atom, the electron and the like, are not things directly observed, they are hypothetical constructions, elaborated by human minds to account for actual data of sense; and for the most part these data themselves consist of records on delicate measur- ing instruments, photographic plates, ete., which are ‘representations’ of phenomena which do not admit of being directly observed. Thus in advanced Physics it is more obvious (though not less true) than in every- day experience that sense data and interpretative inference are inextricably blended; and therefore the difficulty of saying whereabouts (if anywhere) in the act of knowing, the mental ends and the material begins —a, difficulty long ago discerned by philosophers—has become a live issue for scientists as well. Mind and matter [writes Mr. Bertrand Russell] are for certain purposes convenient terms, but are not ultimate 18 REALITY CHAP. realities. Electrons and protons, like the soul, are logical fictions.* I should not myself have dared to speak so disrespect- fully of an electron. But if I were to accept, ‘without prejudice’, as lawyers say, the conclusion that electrons, protons and the soul are all three ‘logical fictions’, I should venture to suggest that the reality—whatever it is—to which the fiction ‘soul’ corresponds, differs in one important respect from the reality to which the fictions ‘electron’ and ‘proton’ correspond. ‘The ‘soul’ stands for an element in Reality which can frame theories about electrons and protons. Force The old-fashioned conception of Force, the second of the fundamental entities taken for granted in the popular idea of Mechanism, is being assailed to-day almost as vigorously as the old conception of Matter. The very idea of Force is what would be termed an anthro- pomorphism, that is to say, it ascribes the behaviour of inani- mate objects to causes derived from the behaviour of human beings. We have come to associate the motion of matter with somebody or something pulling or pushing it.* What Prof. Soddy is here objecting to is, not the use of the term ‘forces’ in Mechanics (where force may be defined as that which accelerates, retards or deflects massive bodies); but ‘the attempt even to imagine forces to exist . .. as the causes of changes of energy’ .... It is better to try to grasp the meaning of energy as a fundamental fact of experience than to begin, with totally 1 What I believe, p. 17. (Kegan Paul, 1925.) °F. Soddy, Matter and Energy, p. 20. (Home University Library.) L MATERIALISM 19 inadequate knowledge, to derive from the actions of living beings a shallow analogy. He bids us, therefore—when we are considering ulti- mates, not merely particular problems of mechanics—to discard altogether the idea of Force, and fall back on the conceptions of Potential and Kinetic Energy. This conclusion, coming from so high an authority, I am bound to accept. I would, however, venture to point out that potential and kinetic energy are abstract intellectual concepts arrived at by generalisation from the study of the behaviour of physical bodies—so abstract that it is hard for a layman like myself to feel certain he apprehends their true meaning. But though an abstract conception of this kind may be of far more value to the physicist than the conception of ‘force’, I must confess that it seems to me to be equally anthropomorphic, only in a different way. ‘Potentiality’ 1s not a thing that can be observed; it is a conception framed by a human mind in order to state in the most highly generalised form an expectation that, if such and such observable change is made in the existing situation, certain other observable changes will take place. I cannot see that an inter- pretation in terms of ‘expectation’ is less anthropo- morphic than one in terms of ‘pushing’. To me it appears to be the replacing of an anthropomorphism which has been found to be misleading by one which for the purpose in view is of a more useful and illuminat- ing character. Be that as it may, the point I would press is that, if we are no longer allowed to think of Force as some- thing which pushes or pulls, the old conception of ‘mechanism’ has had another hard blow. ‘Mechanism’, unless treated as pure symbol, implies Matter as a solid substance, Force as that which pulls or pushes, and 20 REALITY CHAP, motion as that which is ‘caused’ by their conjunction. Matter and Force have turned into something else. There remains to consider Causation. CAausE AND EFFECT After two hundred years of discussion there is still hot debate as to the precise significance of the concept of Causation. A couple of pages is all that I can spare to the subject without disturbing the proportion of this book. I cannot, therefore, hope either to initiate into its mysteries a reader unfamiliar with the literature or to contribute anything of value to one who has digested it. I can merely state my own view as briefly and simply as possible, but without any attempt to justify it. Hume long ago pointed out that causation is not a thing that can be observed, and Huxley revived and reiterated his arguments. All we can actually observe is that B habitually follows A. The assertion then that A is the ‘cause’ of B must be based on inference of some sort; and this is equally true whether the inference is legitimate or not. Kant took up his parable from Hume, and went on to maintain that the human mind is so constituted that it cannot help making this kind of inference. On his view such phenomena can be grasped by the mind only if they are related to one another, or at least. conceived as capable of being related, as cause and effect. I cannot experience a pinprick without taking it for granted that it has some cause, though I may quite well infer the wrong one. This taking for granted that for every event there must be some cause, Kant explains by saying that the peculiar quality of the relation we call causation is one which is read into experience by the experiencing mind. To this particular contention I MATERIALISM 21 of Kant there has never, so far as I know, been given any satisfactory answer. We seem, then, to be shut up to one of two conclusions. (1) There is the conclusion which was drawn by the school of thinkers known as Philosophic Idealists. In Kant’s own view the conception of causation is essentially anthropomorphic; it does not hold good in the sphere of Ultimate Reality. The Idealists, on the contrary, maintain that the relation of cause and effect, though contributed by our minds in the act of knowing, is a relation which must also hold good of Reality Itself. Largely on this ground, they argue that Reality must be conceived as rational—in the sense that Its structure must be thought of as similar to what we know as Reason. The Universe, then, must be viewed as the expression of Mind; and our minds partake of the nature of the Universal Mind, and see things—of course, ‘through a glass darkly’—as It or He sees them. (2) But on the other hand, suppose we think that Kant was right—apart, I mean, from details in the way in which he worked out his views—in holding the conception of causation to be a purely anthropomorphic principle of interpretation. Causation then becomes a symbolic representation of something behind phenomena, of the real nature of which we cannot be aware. In that case the last thread has snapped between the conception of Mechanism as Science uses it and what we call a machine. Even the notion of activity has disappeared from it. It is a way of saying that a ‘working drawing’ of Reality may be made which, zf Matter, Force and Causation were what apparently they are not, would represent the way it works. In other words, the ae REALITY CHAP. I conception of mechanism is definitely misleading unless it is treated as a pure diagram; but, recognised for what it is, it remains a necessary instrument of scientific thought. To sum up. If we affirm the ultimate validity of the category of causation, we seem to land ourselves in some form of Philosophie Idealism. If we refuse to do so, we put the last nail in the coffin of mechanomorphic Materialism. RELATIVITY I am not sufficiently versed in the higher mathe- matics and in the theory of electro-magnetism to profess to understand the case for Ejinstein’s theory. Much less am I entitled to pronounce what bearing, if any, it has upon the question of Materialism. But persons who are better qualified than myself to judge, and who cannot be suspected of any theological bias, think that it has a bearing. Let Mr. Bertrand Russell speak: * The theory of relativity, by merging time into space-time, has damaged the traditional notion of substance more than all the arguments of the philosophers. Matter, for common-sense, is something which persists in time and moves in space. But for modern relativity-physics this view is no longer tenable. A piece of matter has become, not a persistent thing with varying states, but a system of inter-related events. The old solidity is gone, and with it the characteristics that, to the materialist, made matter seem more real than fleeting thoughts. 'Tntroduction to new edition of Lange’s History of Materialism, p. 11. (Kegan Paul, 1925.) IT SCIENCE, ART AND RELIGION SCIENCE, ART AND RELIGION SYNOPSIS SCIENCE Pure Science conceives Reality in terms of Quantity. Quality (or Value) is the special province of Art and Religion. The recent revolution, led by eminent scientists, in accepted views as to the nature of scientific knowledge. Quotations to illustrate this. Scientific knowledge, it would appear, is a Representation of Reality which may be compared to a diagram. The main contention of this chapter is that Religion is similarly a Representation of Reality, only it is one comparable, not to a diagram, but to a picture. The religious apprehension of Reality may be likened to Turner’s picture, ‘Sunrise in Venice’, the scientific to a ground plan of the canals and streets. For comprehensive knowledge of Reality, Representations of both kinds are requisite. ArT Whatever else Art may be—and no general theory of Asthetics is here attempted—it is a method of externalising something of the inner quality of life. Two essential differences between Science and Art. (1) Science states; art suggests. (2) Science explains observed data by bringing individual cases under a general Jaw; Art reveals an inner spirit by embodying it in a con- crete instance. By thus making visible the invisible, Art may convey information; for an inner spirit once objectified can be used as a datum for a scientific purpose, but such use is alien to the artist’s own intention. Life is something which can only be known from within. But the knowledge of its inward quality derived from one’s own personal experi- ence can be enriched by various means. Of these means Art is among the most important. The apprehension of quality is an essential element in all conscious life. Two reflections suggest themselves. (1) Quality is nothing artificial, but an element in the totality of things which any theory of the Universe must seek to explain. (2) While Art objectifies life in its apprehension of esthetic value, Religion is concerned with moral value also. 24 RELIGION If Religion is to be accepted as a valid Representation of Reality in terms of quality, comparable to the Representation given by Science in terms of quantity, it must be shewn that a two-fold path to knowledge is necessitated by the constitution of the human goings Proof of this postponed to Chapter Ly: Religion zs the inner spirit of the religious man; and of this conduct is the primary objectification. But when we think of Religion as a Representation of Reality parallel to that given by Science, we must study its secondary objectifications, such as myth, creed and rite. We then notice that, while Religion is akin to Art in that it is con- cerned with Quality, it resembles Science (1) in its claim to represent Truth, (2) in conceiving the Universe as a consistent Whole. Mono- theism, the most mature type of Religion, makes the qualitative affirma- tion that the Whole is good. TRUTH Reality is too large and too rich for finite minds to grasp in its completeness. Truth, then, is the best attainable Representation of Reality in certain of its aspects. ~ Quality can only be known by being felt; but by means of Art we can feel quality beyond the limits of our own experience. Religion, using methods of Art,—such as myth, drama, parable, hymn—‘represents’ Reality by making men feel the quality which it ascribes to It. Hence to test the ‘truth’ of any Religion we must cross-examine its myths, etc., and find their inner meaning before looking at the intel- lectual constructions of its theologians. ADDITIONAL NOTE CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER RELIGIONS 25 IT SCIENCH, ART AND RELIGION SCIENCE Aut things that can be measured, and all things, just so far as they can be measured, come within the purview of Science. The realm of Science is Quantity. Quality can be appraised, but it cannot be measured. ‘This holds, even though for practical purposes we may try to correlate our estimate of quality with some scale of quantity. One picture is not two and three-quarter times as beautiful as another, nor is one crime three and a half times as heinous as another, even if the price paid for two pictures, or the terms of imprisonment awarded for two crimes, may be in those proportions. Again, you can measure the chemical constituents of two wines, but not the corresponding flavours; you cannot measure the differences of quality in the notes of a har- monic scale, although a mathematical formula will exactly describe the relative lengths of the vibrating strings. The pure sciences, of which Physics and Chemistry are the type forms, conceive of Reality only in terms of quantity. But in Art and Religion we have activities of the human mind which appear to conceive no less exclusively in terms of quality. They weigh not, neither do they mete; they aim only at the recognition, the expression or the creation of Value. Further, the 26 ; CHAP. II SCIENCE 27 methods by which quality is apprehended, estimated or expressed are different in kind from those which are applicable to quantity. If provisionally we assume that quantity and quality are two diverse aspects of Reality, they cannot be known in the same way.’ There are, however, certain sciences primarily concerned with the phenomena of human activity, such as Psychology or History, which would stultify themselves if they kept strictly to the quantitative methods and mechanical concepts of pure science of which Physics is the type. Psychology and History, as I shall argue later (p. 103 ff.), are compelled to supplement and interpret the results so reached by a sympathetic appreciation of the qualitative character of the inner life of the objects which they study. They are successful in exact proportion as they know how to employ at the right time and in the right way, in addition to methods employed by pure science, a kind of imaginative insight into the finer nuances of character akin to that of a great novelist. That is to say, Psychology and History operate by a combination of the method of Science with the method of Art. These, then, should be styled ‘mixed sciences’. They occupy a position intermediate between the ‘pure’ sciences of Physics and Chemistry * on the one side and Art and Religion on the other. I have mentioned these ‘mixed sciences’ because, as it will appear later, their existence has an important bearing on the provisional assumption which I am here making that quality as well as quantity is characteristic of 1‘T venture to say that the division of the external world into a material world and a spiritual world is superficial, and that the deep line of cleavage is between the metrical and the non-metrical aspects of the world’ (A. S. Eddington, F.R.S., in Science, Religion and Belief. Ed. J. Needham. (Sheldon Press, 1925.) * On question whether the Biological Sciences are ‘pure’ sciences in this sense, see pp. 95-102. 28 REALITY CTTAP. Reality itself. But for the rest of this chapter they may be ignored. An immense advance has been made during the last few years by a group of thinkers trained in pure science and mathematics towards a clearer understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge. The change of outlook may without exaggeration be styled revolutionary. Since, however, it is one for the exposition of which my personal competency might reasonably be called in question, I prefer to let experts in these fields of know!- edge speak for themselves. The doors through which Nature imposes her presence on us are the senses. ... Older physics was subdivided into mechanics, acoustics, optics and theory of heat. We see the connections with organs of sense—the perceptions of motion, impressions of sound, light and heat. Here the qualities of the (perceiving) subject are still decisive for the formation of con- ceptions. The development of the exact sciences leads along a definite path from this stage to a goal which, even if far from being attained, yet lies clearly exposed before us: it is that of creating a picture of Nature which, confined within no limits of possible perception or intuition, represents a pure structure of conception, conceived for the purpose of depicting the sum of all experiences uniformly and without inconsistencies. Nowadays mechanical force is an abstraction which has only its name in common with the subjective feeling of force. Mechanical mass is no longer an attribute of tangible bodies, but is also possessed by empty spaces filled only by ether radiation. Inaudible tones, invisible light, imperceptible heat, these constitute the world of physics—cold and dead for him who wishes to experience living Nature, to grasp its relationships as a harmony, to marvel at her greatness in reverential awe.* So the German mathematician and physicist Max Born. Similarly Mr. Eddington, Professor of Astronomy 1 Hinstein’s Theory of Relativity, by Max Born (Prof. of Theoretical Physics, Gottingen). E. T. (Methuen, 1924), p. 2f. ui SCIENCE 29 at Cambridge, in the essay already quoted (p. 27) in a footnote. Leaving out all esthetic, ethical, or spiritual aspects of our environment, we are faced with qualities such as massive- ness, substantiality, extension, duration, which are supposed to belong to the domain of physics. In a sense they do belong; but physics is not in a position to handle them directly. The essence of their nature is inscrutable; we may use mental pic- tures to aid calculations, but no image in the mind can be a replica of that which is not in the mind. And so in its actual procedure physics studies not these inscrutable qualities, but pointer-readings which we can observe. The readings, it is true, reflect the fluctuations of the world-qualities; but our exact knowledge is of the readings, not of the qualities. The former have as much resemblance to the latter as a telephone number has to a subscriber. Until recently physicists took it for granted that they had knowledge of the entities dealt with, which was of a more inti- mate character; and the difficulty which many find even now in accepting the theory of relativity arises from an unwilling- ness to give up these intuitions or traditions as to the intrinsic nature of space, time, matter and force, and substitute for them a knowledge expressible in terms of the readings of measuring instruments. In considering the relations of science and religion it is a very relevant fact that physics is now in course of abandoning all claim to a type of knowledge which it formerly asserted without hesitation. Moreover, these con- siderations indicate the limits to the sphere of exact science. The conclusion of the matter is summed up in popular language by Mr. Bertrand Russell: * What we know about the physical world, I repeat, is much more abstract than was formerly supposed. Between bodies there are occurrences, such as light-waves; of the laws of these occurrences we know something—just so much as can be expressed in mathematical formule—but of their nature we know nothing. . . . Wenaturally interpret the world pictorially ; * The A.B.C. of Relativity (Kegan Paul, 1925), p. 226 ff. 30 REALITY CHAP. that is to say, we imagine that what goes on is more or less like whatwesee. But in fact this likeness can only extend to certain formal logical properties expressing structure, so that all we can know is certain general characteristics of its changes. Perhaps an illustration may make the matter clear. Between a piece of orchestral music as played, and the same piece of music as printed in the score, there is a certain resemblance, which may be described as a resemblance of structure. The resemblance is of such a sort that, when you know the rules, you can infer the music from the score or the score from the music. But suppose you had been stone-deaf from birth, but had lived among musical people. You could understand, if you had learned to speak and to do lip-reading, that the musical scores repre- sented something quite different from themselves in intrinsic quality, though similar in structure. The value of music would be completely unimaginable to you, but you could infer all its mathematical characteristics, since they are the same as those of the score. Now our knowledge of nature is something like this. We can read the scores, and infer just so much as our stone-deaf person could have inferred about music. But we have not the advantages which he derived from association with musical people. We cannot know whether the music rep- resented by the scores is beautiful or hideous. My own fundamental disagreement with Mr. Russell would lie in the contention that, although we may (to adopt his own illustration) be hard of hearing, we are not stone-deaf; and that therefore, more especially through Art and Religion at their greatest and best, we become capable of hearing the music and appreciating its value. To make my position quite clear, I will state it in another way. The main conclusion of the school of thought I have referred to may be summed up by saying that what Science gives us is a Representation of Ultimate Reality, and that this Representation is one that may be likened, not so much to a picture, as to a diagram. On that way of putting it, the position IT am maintaining is the counterpart of this conception. It SCIENCE 31 I suggest that what Religion gives is also a Representa- tion of Ultimate Reality, but one that is of the nature not of a diagram but of a picture. If the case is so, it follows that Science and Religion each give a Representation which without the other is incomplete. An analogy will illustrate my meaning. I wish to explain something about Venice to a friend who has never been there, and there are readily accessible both the plan of the city in Baedeker’s guide and Turner’s famous picture. Which will be the most useful? It depends entirely upon the immediate purpose of our conversation. If my sole object is to show him the exact position of an hotel which I recommend, the plan is what I want, the picture is worthless. If I wish to prove that Venice is well worth a visit, or if my aim is to suggest to him an attitude of mind which will enable him to get the most profit from a visit, the picture is the thing. But if I want to convey to him the best idea I can of the place as a whole, I shall use both plan and picture. Just so, I shall endeavour to show, the no less contrasted Representations given by Science and Religion are both required for the fullest possible apprehension of Reality. It is, however, of little use to say that Science and Religion stand for two complementary, and not for two opposed, methods by which man apprehends—and thereby is enabled the better to adapt himself to—the nature of Reality, unless both the contrast and the mutual relation of these methods is made clear. This is a necessary preliminary to any real correlation of Science and Religion. ‘Towards such a clearing up issues the representatives of Science have made their con- tribution. ‘They have thought out and proclaimed to the world a new theory of the nature and limitations 32 REATATY CHAP. of knowledge in the sphere of pure Science. It is time that the same thing should be attempted from the standpoint of Religion. To match the new philosophy of Science a new philosophy of Religion must be found. I claim no special competency to propound such a phil- osophy; what I think I do see is a line of next advance. About one thing, however, I feel clear. The point from which enquiry should set out is a consideration, not of esthetic theory in general, but of certain aspects, of the nature and function of Art. ART To the average Britisher the very word Art rings ‘highbrow’; it never occurs to him that from it can be learnt anything touching the depths of Reality or Life. This, I believe, is mainly the fault of the people who talk and write about Art, in that they so often start off from arts like sculpture and painting, and not from those in which the esthetic genius of this country finds its most abundant and characteristic expression. These are—next after the plays of Shakespeare—the novel, the lyric and the jest. A good song and a really good joke may be perfect works of art. Tell the plain man this, and he will at once see that Life is in Art trying to bring into clear consciousness the interest it takes in itself. A work of art is the embodiment of a feeling, a mood, or a point of view not purely ethical or intellectual. It is thus an externalisation, in one or other of its aspects, of the inner quality of life. That a Scottish song-book is, as it were, a distillation of the spirit of Scotland, and is also a collection of sesthetic gems, no one would be disposed to deny. But there are certain points about the nature of Art which it is really easier to bring out if one takes one’s illustrations from the sphere of u ART 33 humour, Among these points are two essential differ- ences between Science and Art which are vital to the argument of this chapter. (1) The method of Science is to state, of Art to sug- gest. The scientist confronts the intellect with definite facts and clear-cut theories—as definite and as clear as he can make them. The artist is not trying to com- municate facts or theories, but to elicit an appreciative spiritual response. If he is successful the response will qualitatively be that which he intends; according to that intention it may be instinct with merriment or sadness, mockery or awe. All of us at times try to make jokes; when they come off, we are all to that extent artists. That is why, in that sphere, we all know something of this peculiarity of Art. In illustration I quote a story which some one told me once. A magnificent individual sumptuously attired sol- emnly descends the steps of a London club, ignores with an Olympian aloofness the ‘Cab, Sir,’ which greets him from the kerb, and swings slowly down the street. ‘I say, Bill’, says the cabman to a friend, ‘Ever ’eard of Gawd?’ ‘Well, wot abart ’im? ‘That’s 71s brother Archibald’ ... Taken as statement, the last sentence is just nonsense; as suggestion, it is replete with meaning. As a further illustration—at the opposite end of the scale of feeling—I may quote from Macbeth’s soliloquy on the futility of existence. To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. How little is stated here, how much conveyed! 34 REALITY CHAP. Once more; were the last words in St. John’s account of Judas leaving the Supper intended merely as a statement giving information about the time of day? ‘He then having received the sop went immediately out; and 2t was night’. (2) Science explains; that is, it aims at understanc- ing phenomena by seeing them as particular cases of a general law. Art is not concerned with explanations; but it makes manifest the inner quality of life in some one special phase by embodying it in a concrete instance. Art is the apt externalisation of an inward spirit. In the attack at Cambrai in 1917 high hopes were entertained that, rightly used, a recent brilliant invention might end the war. The commander’s signal ran, ‘England expects that every tank will do its damn’dest’. It was believed that the destiny of Europe would that day, and by that corps, be decided. In our national history the classical expression of patriotism in its heroic mood is Nelson’s signal at Trafalgar; yet throughout the British Empire no one doubted that in a ribald parody, so signalled at such a moment, the spirit of England had found true expression. With knowledge in the scientific sense, Art has nothing to do whatever. Nor is it ever, I think, the intention of the artist, gua artist, to convey knowledge. as such—nevertheless he does so. For, whatever else Art is——and I am not going to betray myself into propounding a complete theory of Aisthetics in half a dozen pages,—it is certainly life becoming conscious of its own inner quality. Accordingly, from the work of Art in which this consciousness has found expression, a person other than the artist may derive information— as well, of course, as purely esthetic enjoyment. Thus II ART 30 to a future historian the tank signal I have quoted will be invaluable evidence both as to the idiosyncrasy of the English national character—in no other country in Europe would such a signal have been even tolerated— and also as to the state of mind of the British Army at a particular date. Every work of art is, like that signal, the outward objectification of an invisible spirit; and just in so far as the invisible is thereby made visible, or a fleeting experience is made permanent, the work of art can be used as a datum for a scientific purpose— though such use is alien to the artist’s own intention. A professor writing a treatise on national characteristics might find in a Russian ballet some valuable material— but it is not to supply this that the dancers dance. Life—to anticipate a point I shall expand later on in this book (p. 99 ff.)—is something which I know from within. And in the last resort I can only know it from within. When I say that animals or other persons are alive, that is because from their movements, gestures, speech, etc., I infer there 1s a motive power behind those movements resembling that in myself which would in similar circumstances express itself in similar movements. My knowledge of the nature and inner quality of life and of its manifold potentialities is derived, in the first place, from my own personal interpretation of my own personal experience. But I should be in a poor way if I could never get outside this narrow circle. I am forced into some apprehension of a wider circle of experience by the fact that no small part of the concentrated experience of my race is embodied in the very language I must use, and in the institutions—family, city, school, ete——-which mould me from youth up. Further glimpses into the inner nature of life, other than my own, come from con- verse and contact with other mind in daily social inter- 36 REALITY CHAP. course. Thus what a man knows of the inner quality of life depends primarily upon three things: first, the depth . and the range of his own personal experience; secondly, how far he has the imaginative sympathy to penetrate into the inner experience of others; thirdly, the extent to which he has reflected on the material so presented. Of these, personal experience is the first requisite, but alone it is not enough. For ‘most -beople’, it has been said, ‘are ignorant, in spite of experience’. Wisdom and insight come, not from the number of things done, or the poignancy of things felt, but from depth and quality of after-reflection on them." After this the great source of enrichment to individual personal experience is Art. In the drama, the novel and the lyric this function is self-evident. Obviously these great interpreters of human mood and character ‘hold, as ’t were, the mirror up to nature’ and in objective form portray in full variety the inner quality of life. But the case is not otherwise with other arts. A Greek statue is not a replica of some featherless biped of Greek race; it is the expression in marble of a Greek ideal. A landscape is not a photographic reproduction of a scene in nature; it is also the embodiment of the impression made by that scene upon the artist’s mind; and its merit depends mainly on the value (judged by an esthetic standard) of that impression—in other words upon his quality of mind. Even in a portrait, where at first sight the alm in view might seem to be merely exact repro- duction of an original, it is still the impression made on the artist’s mind of the inner spirit of the sitter that matters most; if we say that the artist has ‘caught’ *Cf. R. L. Nettleship, Lectures on the Republic of Plato, p. 129: ‘Genius is the power of getting knowledge with the least possible experience, and one of the greatest differences between men is in the amount of experience they need of anything in order to understand it’. Tl ART 37, the likeness, we mean that the picture embodies the impression made by the sitter’s personality upon a mind of insight delicate or profound. All Art is thus an objectification, qualitative in char- acter, of the inner spirit of man. But all Art is not equally significant. Much of course depends on the degree of mastery by the artist of the technique and media of representation. But besides this there are some activities in the human spirit which are qualitatively less important than others. From the point of view of technical perfection a novel of Jane Austen might per- haps be deemed superior to a tragedy of Shakespeare; they are not equally significant as embodiments of the depth and range of the human spirit. Again, from the purely technical point of view it would be hard to improve upon Sheridan’s drinking song, ‘Here’s to the maiden of bashful fifteen’; but we do not rank it with Milton’s sonnet On his Blindness—there is less behind it. Each perfectly reveals an experiencing spirit; but the experiences are not equally profound. I have harped upon the idea of quality—intention- ally. I have been leading up to the point that quality is something essentially bound up with life, or rather with conscious life. In the evolution of life, as soon as sensation emerges, quality begins to be discerned. To feel at all, is to feel liking or dislike. Very low in the scale of life the stage is reached when one morsel of food is absorbed with avidity, another rejected with distaste. At the advanced level of self-consciousness found in humanity there is still the same two-sided response: © this is good, that is bad. Note, however, that good and bad are adjectives that can equally well be applied to a drink, to a picture, to an action. Yet while so applying them, we recognise that within the idea of quality good 38 REALITY CHAP. or bad there is a further differentiation, itself also quali- tative. An action is good morally, a picture esthetically, a drink sensuously. But if the qualitative character of these distinctions has been missed by some philoso- phers it is largely, I think, because those who have urged it have often failed to notice, or at least to emphasise, the fact that these distinctions are never absolute. A noble action has a certain esthetic, as well as a moral, quality—we call it ‘fine’; it also gives a certain pleasure in the doing, and this can not wholly be differentiated from sensuous pleasure. So, too, the appreciation of a good drink has an esthetic, as well as a purely sensuous, quality; * while the act of drinking—like all other acts —must necessarily have an ethical character determined by its context. This suggests two reflections, both of which will have some bearing on our philosophy of Religion. (1) Quality is something coterminous with Life, or at any rate with conscious life; indeed, consciousness is primarily the capacity to distinguish qualitatively. Accordingly quality must not be thought of as some- thing artificial or man-made; it 1s bound up with the intrinsic nature of life. Since then any one who seeks to frame a theory of the Universe must recognise life, he must also recognise quality, as an element in that totality of things which his system must attempt satis- factorily to explain. (2) Art is specifically the objectification and inter- pretation of quality in life, with the limitation that the quality it expresses is of the particular character we call esthetic. In so far as this limitation holds, Art is departmental; it does not profess to cover the whole of 1 Cf. the praise of famous wines by Dr. Middleton in Meredith’s Egoist, chap. xx. IL RELIGION og life. And this limitation is for practical purposes valid even if we accept (as I personally am inclined to do) the view of those who maintain that no conscious activity is entirely without «esthetic quality (positive or nega- tive); and that therefore there is no side of life to which Art in the broadest sense is wholly extraneous. Religion differs from Art in that it is concerned with quality or ‘value’ in its moral as well as in its esthetic aspect. RELIGION Scientific knowledge, we have seen, (p. 26), is a Representation * of Reality in terms of quantity. But if quality as well as quantity is an ultimate constituent of Reality, then Reality in Its qualitative aspect can only be known if this can be expressed in some adequate Representation. Any such qualitative repre- sentation must be capable of being correlated with the quantitative representation given by Science, but we should antecedently expect it to be of an entirely different order. The preceding examination of the way in which quality finds expression in Art would suggest that the methods of such representation will be analogous to those employed in Art. after this ‘Choice of Hercules’ was He—if we must accept the Gospel record—wholly free. ‘The devil departed from him for a season’, says Luke; and again ‘Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations’. And why, otherwise, in Gethsemane, face to face with the final conflict, did he crave the prayers of friends? Christ, we read, was ‘in all points tempted like as we are’; and the fight was not ended in a single round. If we conclude that, unlike us, He was enabled on each several occasion to overcome, we draw an inference in vir THE CHRIST 193 accordance with the general impression produced by the records of His life. But an avoidance of moral error, even if it could be demonstrated to be complete, would be a merely negative achievement which would throw little light on the main problem of this chapter. The question whether Christ is the Ideal Man is one the answer to which practically decides the further question whether or no the Divine Creative Principle reveals Itself in the life of Christ in some unique sense. Now, whatever else it is, the Creative Principle must be something positive and active; Its trend and character cannot therefore be displayed by any mere negation. But it is just the positive, active, creative righteousness in the life and teaching of Christ which strikes us first and last. No doubt, could we detect any obvious and conspicuous fault in His character or actions, this impression would be to that extent weakened and impaired. But the defects which have been alleged to exist are so trifling and superficial that, even if they could be substantiated as such (personally I believe they cannot be’), they would relatively to the positive. good be, like the spots on the sun’s disk, practically negligible. Goodness is positive and creative; Divinity also must be something essentially positive and always creative. ‘My father worketh hitherto and I work, It is not on account of a negative sinlessness which, even if actual, is unprovable, but because of the positive quality in His life and words, and because in history Christ has been uniquely creative, that no discussion of the nature either of goodness or of God can afford to leave Him out. *See the admirable discussion by the late Dean Rashdall, Conscience and Christ, p. 169 ff. (Duckworth, 1916.) 194 REALITY CHAP. A MISGIVING And yet, with all its commanding appeal, may it not be said that the moral ideal set forth in the life and teaching of Christ is in one sense negative? Is it not at least a little unpractical? Does it not under-estimate the value of self-assertion under proper circumstances? ‘A beautiful character, but just a little soft, is a comment one sometimes hears. Hectically as he over- states it, has not Nietzsche something of a case? It should be admitted—rather it ought to be shouted from the housetops—that, as most often inter- preted in Christian art or Christian teaching, Christ’s ideal is not the highest. The portrait of the Christ which has been impressed on the general mind of Europe vs defective in certain positive moral qualities. It is worth while, then, to point out that precisely in regard to those qualities it differs from the portrait of the historic Jesus which we find in the first three Gospels. (1) ‘Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.’ In their original context * these wonderful words are the wail of Jerusalem desolated by the Babylonian con- queror; written beneath a crucifix, as if spoken by Christ Himself, they are misleading. The best men do not make pitiful appeals of this kind for themselves; they incline to be silent about, or to understate, their personal sufferings. And that was the attitude of the historic Jesus, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me’. Christ drank to the dregs the cup of disappoint- ment and despair; Isaiah’s words ‘a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief’ appropriately describe Him; * Lamentations, i. 12. vil THE CHRIST 195 but He did not pathetically call attention to the fact. He wore, but did not advertise, a crown of thorns. (2) The argument from prophecy played a large part in early Christian apologetic. Diligently were the Scriptures searched for passages which by any possibility might be read as a forecast of some incident in the Messiah’s life. Christ had kept silence before Caiaphas and Pilate; in Isaiah were found the words, ‘He humbled himself and opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb. The too literal application of this text has permanently discoloured the accepted portrait of the Christ. What was the real reason why Christ was silent before the High Priest? To plead one’s cause before a tribunal is to acknowledge it as one which at any rate desires to do justice; it is morally to bind oneself to respect the verdict. Christ knew that the tribunal before which He stood was not a court of justice, but a conspiracy. Had there been among His judges any desire at all to do justice, it might have been worth while to state a case; to beg for mercy merely He could not stoop. Before Pilate He kept silence for another reason. Pilate had a real, if luke- warm, wish to see justice done; but for the Messiah, condemned by His own people, to make any effort to escape with bare life, through the intervention of the magistrate of an alien and oppressive power, was morally impossible. Socrates, unjustly sentenced by what was, similarly, the supreme court of his people, felt that he could not worthily allow his friends to bribe the jailor to let him escape: and could Jesus, publicly condemned by God’s High Priest, speak a single word which might induce the pagan Roman to grant Him life? The silence of Christ before His + 3 196 REALITY CHAP. judges was not that of the sheep before the shearers; its was the silence, not of meek submission, but of self- respect. (3) The submissiveness, which is an outstanding feature in the conventional picture of the Christ, is sheer parody of the historic Jesus. True, He taught and lived in practice a life of complete surrender to the will of God. But by Him the will of God was thought of, not as an arbitrary decree, but as the expression of the absolutely good. Surrender to the will of God meant to Him unwavering devotion to the Absolute Ideal, coupled with the recognition that both the path towards it and the price of its attainment is known to God but often veiled from man. Christ did not teach surrender to the will of man: least of all a docile submission to those men who claimed to be the guardians of a special revelation of the will of God for man. In His attitude to the religious authorities of the day Christ was a revolu- tionary. The notion that it is the duty of a religious man to accept uncriticised anything that the past has held venerable and sacred, finds no support in Him. Christ was conspicuously a critic of tradition. He was constantly condemning accepted conceptions of God, accepted canons of morality, and above all that eccle- siastical tradition by which the word of God, then as so often since, was made of none effect. Christ assuredly was not the mere iconoclast who loves destruction for its own sake; if He was a revolu- tionary He was a ‘Constructive Revolutionary’.» He realised fully the value of the religious heritage of a mighty past. He came not to destroy but to fulfil. He * In my essay under that title in The Spirvé (Macmillan, 1919) I have tried to explain on historical grounds the paradoxical fact that in Europe generally the Church, which professes to incarnate the spirit of Christ, has come to be associated with resistance to all change. Ee VII THE CHRIST 197 brought out of His treasury things old as well as new. Yet in the main His eye was less on the past than on the present and the future; and He saw that for the sake of righteousness law must be sometimes broken, and for the sake of Religion the Temple might have to be destroyed. He had a passionate affection for the Church of His fathers, ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I’. . ”; but He saw that when the fig tree had ceased to bear fruit it ought not, and would not much longer be permitted, to cumber the ground. His ‘churchmanship’ consisted in an effort at all costs to reform and vitalise existing thought and usage, not in the endeavour to per- petuate and defend the status quo. Where no principle was involved He counselled the keeping of the Law. ‘Go show thyself to the priest and offer for thy cleans- ing... . ‘Leave there thy gift before the altar.’ But if Law or commentary stood in the way of humanity or freedom, He brushed them aside with the revolu- tionary dictum—‘the Sabbath was made for man’. In the Jewish theory Church and State were one; and in this State, organised as a Church, He was no anarchist. He did recognise, and ordinarily He obeyed, the legiti- mate authority of scribe and priest. But it is not for this obedience that He is known to history, but.because He also recognised that occasion may arise when the duty of rebellion has the higher claim. In the face of glaring abuses, He was not content merely to criticise in words. In driving out of the Temple the vendors of sacrificial animals, He committed an outrage on a trade sanctioned by public opinion and by the author- ities of both Church and State—that was why they crucified Him. He stirred up a hornets’ nest, and the hornets stung. (4) Christ was crucified. He had divined that 198 REALITY CHAP. fate; and to all who would follow Him He promised— ‘threatened’ would be the better word—a cross. He knew that humanity has. always persecuted its prophets and stoned those who have been sent unto it. But He had none of the ascetic’s passion for suffering for its own sake. John the Baptist was an ascetic; and Christ respected John. But He did not imitate John’s way; He claimed to better it. He came eating and drinking—He enjoyed life to an extent that scandalised His critics. He was inclined to laugh at the grave and solemn Pharisees; and they did not like it.’ Not only the progress, the very existence, of our race has daily to be bought with blood and tears; and suffer- ing necessary for the work’s sake, if bravely faced and cheerfully endured, ennobles and uplifts. But history shows that austerities, studiously devised as a means of spiritual self-culture, tend to produce a capacity for self-sacrifice only at the price of a fanatic limitation of the moral vision. The power of the ascetic ideal to make noble minds indifferent or even hostile to the highest moral and intellectual movements of their day has been the tragedy of religion in East and West alike. But it falsely claims the prestige of Christ’s example. Not for its own sake did He take up the cross, but only because there was no other way to the triumph of His cause. Even to the last He prayed ‘if it be possible, let this cup pass—though with absolute readiness to drink it if the cause required. (5) But, perhaps, at the back of our mind there still remains the haunting query, Is not Christ all, said and done, a dreamer of dreams, the very type of the unprac- tical idealist? We want our morality for every day foe the humour of Christ, cf. T. R. Glover, The Jesus of History, p. 49 f. vit THE CHRIST 199 use. A moral ideal to be of real service must be com- patible with common sense; it must be one which, if put in practice, will work. The Greek used the same word (t6x«Aév) for the beautiful and for the good; and perhaps the deepest of all instincts in the human heart is the conviction that goodness, like beauty, has an intrinsic value. A heroic deed, a noble character, exacts our admiration. A fine action, like a fine picture, needs not to justify itself before the tribunal of common sense. But there is a lower and there is a higher common sense; and this latter is not a matter unworthy of the moralist’s con- sideration. It is necessary, then, to consider the morality of Christ from the standpoint of the higher common sense, that is, of practical effectiveness in the interests of human progress. The essence of common sense is to know exactly what you want to achieve, to make sure that your object is to you worth the price which must be paid for it, to estimate accurately the assets you possess and how best to utilise them. It is not common sense at all to strive after things which other people value, but which you yourself do not, or to strive after things which you do desire, but without counting the probable cost, and being willing, if necessary, to pay it. Christ knew what He wanted to achieve, He knew the price, and He was prepared to pay it. The resources available for the accomplishment of His aims, in the way of wealth, learning, position, or the support of those who had these things, were simply nil. He had His own clear insight, sincerity of purpose and unflinching courage; He had an absolute trust in God, and He had the devotion of a group of uneducated and not con- spicuously intelligent working men. Those were all His 200 REALITY CHAP. assets. Yet as the result of What He said and did during a space of time—possibly four, more probably a little more than two, years in length ‘—He has left a deeper mark on the history of the world than any other one individual that ever lived. If to produce a maximum of results with a minimum of resources and opportunities is a test of practical sagacity, Christ affords a supreme example of that gift, that is, of that kind of com- mon ,sense which realises that for the sake of great ends great sacrifices must be made and great risks taken. There were times when the odds against Him seemed too great. There were moments when the stupidities and iniquities of His contemporaries seemed too gross for remedy and He almost despaired of men—‘Neverthe- less, when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?’ (Lk. xvii. 8). There was a moment (I like to think) when He despaired of God, when to Him—as to so many since—it seemed that the Power which determines all things is in the last resort indifferent to the triumph of right or wrong—‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? From one who trusted God as Christ had done, who had staked all for a cause so obviously God’s cause, this ery attests the lowest depths of failure and despair. It is just because the Christ did so despair, did so, to use a slang phrase, ‘touch absolute bottom’, that we feel His fellowship with us ordinary men. But had He failed? Grant, if you will, His belief in God, in immortality, in His own unique mission, to be an empty dream; grant, if you must, that everything He lived and died for was delusion. Yet to have succeeded during twenty centuries in imposing that delusion upon half the world is at least a practical success—and * T have discussed this point in The Four Gospels, p. 421. VII THE CHRIST 201 is, perhaps, presumptive evidence that it was_ not delusion after all. 7 Jesus, whose lot with us was cast, Who saw it out, from first to last: Patient and fearless, tender, true, Carpenter, vagabond, felon, Jew: Whose humorous eye took in each phase Of full rich life this world displays, Yet evermore kept fast in view The far-off goal it leads us to: Who, as your hour neared, did not fail— The world’s fate trembling in the scale— With your half-hearted band to dine, And chat across the bread and wine: Then went out firm to face the end, Alone, without a single friend: Who felt, as your last words confessed, Wrung from a proud unflinching breast By hours of dull ignoble pain, Your whole life’s fight was fought in vain: Would I could win and keep and feel That heart of love, that spirit of steel.’ Tue IppAL or Man The intellectual and esthetic tradition of Europe looks back to Athens, not to Galilee; and no amount of special pleading will make it plausible to maintain that Science, Philosophy or Art owe as much to Jesus as to Hippocrates, Plato or Praxiteles. Nor on the other hand can it be maintained, as some Christians have done, that because the stimulus to such activities is not derived from Jesus, they are of little worth. Again, reflection soon compels us to face the ques- tion whether, in view of the necessary limitations of individual personality, the conception of an Ideal Man has really any meaning. The inspiration to progress * Lines published anonymously in, and reprinted by permission from, the Spectator. 202 REALITY CHAP, has usually come from individuals who, without being narrow specialists, have yet been eminent in some particular department. Like Plato and like Praxiteles, Christ was a supreme discoverer and creator—but only in one field. But can a specialist in some one depart- ment be regarded as the ideal for all humanity? Or must anyone who wants to realise the highest possi- bilities of human nature be one who, in a famous phrase, ‘left no subject untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn’? Must the Ideal Man be a kind of ‘Admirable Crichton’? The point here raised is one which has far reaching consequences for any theory of conduct. Quite obviously any practicable ideal for man must involve a certain element of specialisation. The things that are do-able are infinite, and no one can do them all; indeed no one can do more than a very few of them really well. The quality of a man’s life or character must be judged, not by the number of different things he does, but by the nature of the particular things he elects to do, and by the way in which he does these. It follows that the ideal must be, not to do every conceivable thing, but for each one to do the things which he personally can and ought to do—in the best way possible. But—and this I would urge is essential—the best way possible is a way which is intellectually and esthetically, as well as morally, adequate to the circumstances of the case. Christ was not an Admirable Crichton; He was a specialist in Ethics and Religion. It is worth while, then, to enquire how far everything which He said or did appears, if we scrutinise it carefully, to be intellectually and eesthetically, as well as morally, the ideally suitable reaction to the actual circumstances. (1) Intelligence is often confused with extent and I Celano, pt. 1, xiii. E.T. by A. G. Ferrers Howell. (Methuen.) I APPENDICES 327 for in the cases you mention there is a problem in the patient’s mind and one that is solved by the dream. This last point is well illustrated in the well-known vision of St. Francis of the house full of arms ‘for him and his knights’,» which was a turning-point in his spiritual career. This is the more certainly historical since his biographer Celano half misses its real point, for it was clearly a step forward towards the solution of an inner conflict not solved as yet in conscious thought. The symbolism in which it found expression was sug- gested by the recent invitation of a local noble to take part in a warlike expedition to Apulia; but, as the subsequent refusal of that invitation shows, it was really the moment of crystallisation, so to speak, of his resolve to accept the alternative call to be a knight- errant of Christ—the creator of a brotherhood of spiritual ‘Knights of the Round Table’.’ By a series of easy transitions I have now bridged the gulf between a quite ordinary dream of my own and the vision which signalised the conversion of St. Francis. This illustrates the importance of the principle I have already stated, that, in any spiritual experience, it is vital to distinguish the content from the mere form. The vision which converts a saint or illuminates a prophet has a value and quality quite different from a casual dream; but the psychological mechanism in accordance with which the mind of the saint or prophet functions does not seem to differ fundamentally from that of the ordinary man in an ordinary dream. In the light of these principles I proceed to examine two Biblical visions—the Vision of Zechariah, ch. iv., of the seven-branch candlestick and the two olive trees; and the Vision of St. Peter, Acts x. 9 ff. 1T Celano, pt. 1, i. 5. * Speculum Perfectionis, 72. 328 REALITY APPEN. In the Vision of Zechariah there are three stages: (1) The vision itself—a golden candlestick (strictly a ‘lampstand’) with seven lamps, fed by pipes from the two olive trees on either side. (2) The message, ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit saith the Lord of Hosts’. (8) The interpretation of the sym- bolism by the angel. (An angelus interpretans frequently occurs in Apocalyptic.) This last corresponds psycho- logically to that recognition on waking of some part of the meaning of a dream which does sometimes occur, especially if the dreamer has any knowledge of modern theories of dream interpretation; though more often only the feeling-tone—which is frequently the significant element in a dream—lasts on after waking. It so happens that we know enough of the historical situation to see the relation of this vision to the circum- stances of the prophet. To Zechariah the hope of the nation lies in the rebuilding of the Temple which he and Haggai had roused the people to attempt. But obstacles, humanly speaking insurmountable, inter- vene. The vision expresses to the prophet’s mind two things: first, success is assured, in spite of the apparent feebleness of the human effort, by the fact that the enterprise has the Divine support; secondly, in Zerubbabel (the Governor of Davidie descent) and Joshua (the High Priest) adequate human agents are provided. The symbolism is clear. The seven-branch candlestick fittingly stands for the Temple; the two olive trees are the two anointed persons (Heb. ‘sons of oil’); the oil which passes through pipes to the lamps symbolises their joint activity in promoting the rebuild- ing, and also the fact that as sacred anointed persons they are marked out as ‘channels’ of the Divine power on whom the people can rely. I APPENDICES 329 Let us now consider the Vision of St. Peter before he went to see Cornelius, recorded in Acts x. 9ff. Critics have raised doubts as to its historicity—but Psychology points the other way.’ The problem of the admission of Gentiles to the Church which Peter had soon to face was one created by the Jewish Law which made the Gentile unclean. It is entirely in accordance with the laws of dream symbolism that the problem of Peter, hungering for souls but held back by the Law which spoke of unclean men, should present itself in a vision as the problem of Peter, hungering for supper but hesitating to kill and eat on account of the Law which spoke of unclean meats. Psychologists believe that there is always a reason —frequently a discernible reason—in the history of the subject’s mind why one symbol should suggest itself rather than another; and why in a dream any one detail occurs rather than another. In this case we can detect a reason for certain of the details: (1) Before the trance, Peter, we are told, was actually waiting for his dinner to be cooked. (2) In Mark vii. 18 ff—that is, in the Gospel which is largely based on Peter’s reminis- cences—a principle which might be applied in deter- mining the obligation of the Law in such cases is laid down by Christ; only the particular case in regard to which it is actually applied in the text is that of unclean meats. There were thus reasons, both past and present, physical and intellectual, why the symbol chosen should be connected with eating meats. (3) There is, moreover, another curious little detail for which, if we look for it, we can find a psychological explanation. The ‘vessel’ in which the animals are let down is described as a 1In my opinion historical considerations also strongly favour the authenticity of the incident. Cf. The Four Gospels, p. 546. 330 REALITY APPEN. ‘mainsail’ (60@6vy). The word ‘vessel’ in the English version is a mistranslation—I suppose because ‘main- | sail’ seemed to make no sense. But in a dream there are generally incongruous details; moreover, a dream nearly always reflects something the subject has recently seen or heard. Here we have the desired explanation. Peter had fallen asleep on the top of a house which, as we are told in another context (x. 6), was by the seaside; the last thing, then, he would have seen before falling into the trance would have been ships with mainsails hoisted coming from distant lands—a ready symbol for the Gentile world. We ask, had Peter been previously brooding over the question of the conversion of Gentiles? Probably; it was a problem harder to ignore in a half-Gentile seaport like Joppa than in Jerusalem. I think it possible that, in addition to his own reflections, some telepathic wave from Cornelius or his messenger may have reached his mind in the quiescence of the trance. There is some evidence that telepathic influences may affect the form of a dream;* but I do not stress this. It is, however, © worth while to point out that the vision as recorded in the Acts fits in so exactly with what is now known of dream symbolism that the burden of proof lies with the © critics who would deny its historicity. Visions, in ages when they are regarded as the principal channel of direct revelations from the Divine, are naturally taken very seriously. And that means that they are quoted in con- troversy as evidence of the Divine approval of a certain line of conduct; as such, they are likely to be recorded in writing sooner than events which a modern historian would regard as more interesting or important. And if the disciples of St. Francis put on record his visions, *Cf. The Spirit, p. 46. a. : APPENDICES 331 surely those of St. Peter would think it worth while to record a vision which he, and they, regarded as a Divine injunction to admit Gentiles to the Church. DiIscovERY AND REVELATION The question must now be raised, What degree, if any, of validity are we to ascribe to such visionary experiences? In the modern world the mental balance of a seer of vision is suspect—and, in general, not without good reason. The primitive mind thinks in pictures, and in pictures it reasons and resolves; but the intellectual tradition of Europe for the last four centuries has trained the race in conceptual thinking. In the half-waking life of dreams, symbolic thinking is still universal; but in full waking consciousness it is usually only the less vigorous minds, or vigorous minds when temporarily unstrung, that reach important conclusions along this route. But at earlier stages of human culture, this rule did not hold; visions were often the moments of supreme illumination for the most vigorous intellects and the most creative wills. We must then push our analysis a stage further. The vision form may be natural at one stage of culture, or to one type of temperament, but unnatural to. another. The psychological fact, however, for which the vision stands is the sudden emergence into consciousness of an idea or resolve reached in the subconscious. And to this there are parallels in modern scientific discovery which have an important bearing, mutatis mutandis, on our view of the validity to be ascribed to vision experiences in ages when to do one’s thinking in that way was not a sign of arrested develop- ment or of remoteness from the world’s culture. 332 REALITY APPEN. The famous mathematician, Henri Poincaré, gave the world an illuminating study from his own first-hand experience of the psychology of the flash of discovery in the quest for scientific knowledge. Familiar as his conclusions are, I venture to quote certain passages— italicising words which have a special bearing on the subject of this Appendix. At this moment I left Caen, where I was then living, to take part in a geological conference arranged by the School of Mines. The incidents of the journey made me forget my mathematical work. When we arrived at Coutances we got into a brake to go for a drive, and just as I put my foot on the step, the idea came to me, though nothing in my former thoughts seemed to have prepared me for it, that the trans- formations I had used to define Fuchsian functions were identical with those of non-Euclidian geometry. I made no verification, and had no time to do so, since I took up the conversation again as soon as I had sat down in the brake, but I felt absolute certainty at once. When I got to Caen I verified the result at my leisure to satisfy my conscience. I then began to study arithmetical questions without any ereat apparent result, and without suspecting that they could have the least connection with my previous researches. Dis- eusted at my want of success, I went away to spend a few days at the seaside, and thought of entirely different things. One day, as I was walking on the cliff, the idea came to me again with the same characteristics of conciseness, suddenness and ummediate certainty, that arithmetical transformations of indefinite ternary quadratic forms are identical with those of non-Euclidian geometry.* A close parallel to this experience is to be found in the realm of religious and philosophical speculation in the Preface to Anselm’s Proslogion, in which he tells how, after abandoning in despair the quest for a succinct and convincing argument for the existence of God, there * Science and Method, trans. by F. Maitland (Nelson), p. 53f. The above is followed by other examples of similar experiences. : APPENDICES 333 suddenly came into his mind the famous Ontological argument. The difference between the flash of intellectual understanding chronicled by Poincaré (or Anselm) and the crisis of a sudden conversion would appear to be that the problem which has been solved in the sub- conscious mind is, in the one case, an intellectual, in the other, a practical and emotional one. But the cases are alike in that it would appear that a solution reached below the level of clear consciousness invades the con- scious mind with overwhelming force, producing, in the case of the intellectual proposition a feeling of certainty, in the case of the practical crisis a feeling that by some supernatural force the whole life has been changed. In the case of Sadhu Sundar Singh it is notable that problems of both kinds are solved in visions. ‘The original vision which led to his conversion followed, and solved, an intense emotional and practical conflict. But his subsequent visions—when he is carried, so he feels, into the Third Heaven, where he gazes on Christ and communes with Spiritual Beings—solve, I gathered from him, not vractical difficulties but theoretical points of doctrine or exegesis. In this respect they are analogous to the class of dream or vision last mentioned. That is to say, they are not the expression in symbolic form of an idea already clearly grasped in conscious experience; they are rather the means by which a baffling problem attains.a clear solution. They correspond to the flash of illumination, the ‘bright idea’ which springs unbidden from the depths of the mind (often when one is thinking of quite different matters), and gives the answer to some standing perplexity. The distinction between a conviction that suddenly ~ invades the conscious mind and a voice or a vision 334 REALITY APPEN. apparently proceeding from outside the self, is, I con- ceive, largely a matter of a difference in psychological make-up and in the environment or education of the subject. In this country, at any rate, and in the present age, conversion is not often the result of visions, and conviction rarely comes to a head with the accompani- ment of supernatural-seeming auditions. So far, I have been concerned to emphasise the fact that it is the quality, not the manner, of the illumination that matters. I proceed to argue that (a) the quality of an apprehension—whether of scientific truth, or of ethical and religious values—which is reached as the result of an unconscious process is conditioned by the intensity of previous effort on the part of the conscious mind; but (b) nevertheless, the feeling-tone of the experience is not a safe index of its objective validity. These points also are brought out by Poincaré in the chapter from which I have already quoted. There is another remark to be made regarding the condi-_ tions of this unconscious work, which is, that it is not possible, or in any case not fruitful, unless it is first preceded and then followed by a period of conscious work. These sudden inspira- tions are never produced (and this is sufficiently proved already by the examples I have quoted) except after some days of voluntary efforts which appeared absolutely fruitless, in which one thought one had accomplished nothing, and seemed to be on a totally wrong track. These efforts, however, were not as barren as one thought; they set the unconscious machine in motion, and without them it would not have worked at all, and would not have produced anything. The necessity for the second period of conscious work can be even more readily understood. Jt is necessary to work out the results of the insmration, to deduce the immediate conse- quences and put them in order, and to set out the demonstra- tions; but, above all, it 1s necessary to verify them. I have A, |: he t APPENDICES 330 spoken of the feeling of absolute certainty which accompanies the inspiration; and in the cases quoted this feeling was not deceptive, and more often than not this will be the case. But we must beware of thinking that this is a rule without excep- tions. Often the feeling deceives us without being any less dis- tinct on that account, and we only detect it when we attempt to establish the demonstration. I have observed this fact most notably with regard to ideas that have come to me in the morning or at night when I have been in bed in a semi- - somnolent condition. In the above quotation two points are strikingly brought out: (1) The problems which the subconscious solves are problems in regard to which the conscious mind is specially interested, and to deal with which it has been specially trained. (2) False conclusions may at times be accompanied with a feeling of absolute con- viction that they are true. The second point clearly gives us the key to the psychology of the false prophet; I would venture the inference that the former does the same by the true prophet. Only to him who has trained himself in high thinking and noble living will ethical or religious illumi- nation come; and it was because the Hebrews as a race had specially associated righteousness with Religion that conditions favourable to the production of a line of prophets existed among them in a unique degree. Again, just as conclusions reached by the mathematician in the mood of inspiration need the verification of the cold daylight of rational thought, so those reached by the prophet must be tested in real life. ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’. If we attempt to apply this to the particular case of the voiee and the vision in which the ‘call’ of Jesus found expression, two points stand out. (1) We are entitled to assume that the moment of 336 REALITY APPEN. illumination was preceded by long reflection on large issues. And this holds good, whatever may be thought in detail of the conclusions that I have myself drawn (p. 184) from the use of the words ‘Beloved Son’. The Messianic expectation, as current among the Jews of our Lord’s time, had various forms; but amid all variations two things are constant. (a) The Christ was to be the culminating point in the history of a people selected by God from all the nations of the earth for a unique purpose; (b) His coming was to be a final vindication to the world of the righteousness of God. If the validity of a ‘revelation’ is to be judged by its ‘fruits, the question arises, Was Jesus right or wrong in thinking that a Divine purpose of this character would find fulfilment in Him? In the nineteen centuries that have since elapsed reasons have accumulated for believing that He was right; nothing, I submit, has happened to suggest that He was wrong. As originally drafted this Appendix was intended to illustrate certain points in my book, The Four Gospels; * but consideration of space forbade its insertion there. Subsequently, an account of its relevancy to the discus- sion (p. 181 ff.) of the Messianic consciousness of Jesus, I decided to print it in this volume. But as I was reading through the proofs it occurred to me that it had a further appropriateness to its present place which I had not at first suspected. Looking back over the book as a whole, I see that what I have really done has been to start off from what —but for the unfortunate associations of the word—I should have called ‘The Myth’. I have then asked, How far is the sublime intuition which it expresses * See footnotes in that book, pp. 392 and 546. I APPENDICES 337 capable of verification? Using the word ‘inspiration’ ' In much the same sense as it is used by Poincaré in the last quotation, it is clear that ‘The Myth’ came by ‘Inspiration’. It represents something that came in this way to the Master, as interpreted by further ‘inspira- tion’—more especially by St. Paul and St. John. We note that Poincaré’s first condition for the validity of an inspiration is obviously fulfilled; for this particular inspi- ration was in point of fact preceded by a concentration on the religious quest (p. 62 f.)—on the part not only of Christ and the Apostles but of a nation—of an intensity not elsewhere paralleled in human history. ‘It is neces- sary, says Poincaré, formulating his second condition, to work out the results of the inspiration, to deduce the immediate consequences and put them in order, and to set out the demonstration’. That sentence would aptly describe the method I have followed in this book; it also, I submit, justifies my attempt to apply verification of a scientific character to what was originally reached by ‘inspiration’. What Science calls ‘discovery’, and what Religion names ‘revelation’, alike depend on ‘inspiration’; but these differ in two respects. (1) The knowledge of Reality with which Religion is primarily concerned is of Its qualitative aspect. If the most significant element in Reality is Conscious Life and the very essence of such Life is its quality (p. 211 f.), qualitative knowledge will be the more profound. (2) God operates at no further remove from a Poincaré than from an Isaiah. But by the prophet, used to conscious communion with the Divine, His presence is realised; such realisation is irrelevant to the subject matter investigated by Science, but is vital where the knowledge sought concerns the quality of the Divine Life. APPENDIX II INSTINCT AND MORALITY BIOLOGICALLY man is one of the higher mammals. This kinship between man and animal is recognisable, not only in regard to physical structure, but also in the nature of certain fundamental instincts. The importance of this fact for the theory of Ethics was first clearly recognised by Prof. W. M‘Dougall.* M‘Dougall shows how the recognition of instinctive tendencies to certain types of action as part of man’s inherited make-up renders obsolete the assumption of all Hedonist philos- ophies that a conscious choice of pleasure (or avoidance of pain) is the sole motivation of human conduct. He refrains from pointing out its bearing on that theory of ‘original sin’ worked out by St. Augustine, which has dominated Calvinistic and Lutheran no less than Medieval Theology. The old theologians, I would hasten to add, were right in seeing in moral evil the hardest and most vital problem of the race; it is not their assertion of its importance, but their account of its origin and nature, that is shown to be gravely misleading. But if modern Psychology is opening up the way to a more scientific diagnosis of the origin and nature of moral evil, there dawns a gleam of hope for human betterment. Christianity has done much to raise the / moral standard of Europe, but surely in nineteen *In his Social Psychology. (Methuen, 1908.) 338 APPEN. II APPENDICES 339 centuries it ought to have effected more. But if it should appear that its failure to cope with human sin was in any large measure due to its crude theory of the cause and nature of sin, there is room for hope. Improved diagnosis may suggest an improved treat- ment; and improved treatment may do much towards cure. The instincts, like the physical body, are in them- selves good; and in the primitive forest man’s instincts, we may conjecture, were adapted to his environment as harmoniously as those of other animals in their native haunts. They are very far from harmonious adaptations to the artificial environment of an elaborate civilisation. Man’s greatest problem is so to discipline, educate, and on occasion redirect them, that in the far richer but more testing environment of civilised society they may become creative, not destructive, of the highest values. But the key-word of such training is ‘sublima- tion’,» not repression. Instincts are the raw material out of which—for better or for worse—character can be formed. But character is related to instinct much as is form to matter in Art. For a statue marble is essential, but whether this matter becomes a sublime work of art or a hideous failure depends on the form imparted by the artist. So im the development of character the instincts constitute the raw material; but whether man rises high above, or falls far beneath, the animal, depends on the kind of organisation and ‘education’ imparted to this material, and whether this re-forma- tion takes place: in accord with higher or lower ethical ideals. If, then, I am told that Psychology has shown that altruism is nothing more than the primitive herd- 1Cf, J. A. Hadfield, op. cit., p. 152 ff. 340 REALITY APPEN, instinct,’ what I dissent from is, not the reference to the herd-instinct, but the qualification ‘nothmg more’. | am inclined to reply that, on the same showing, egoism in ‘nothing more’ than the even more primitive instinct of self-assertion. At the animal level one instinct is neither better nor worse than another. Man is so constituted that his instincts sometimes move him towards action primarily in the interest of the herd, at other times towards action primarily self-centred. The fact is one of immense importance; but in itself it throws no light upon what line of action he should take, zf and when these instincts prompt to contra- dictory courses. In real life the problem of conduct is only acute when I have to make a choice between the plain interests of myself and of my herd; or between the interests of a smaller and a dearer herd—my family, class, or party— and those of a remoter herd, my country or humanity. Why, then,.is it that I sometimes do actually prefer— and oftener perhaps feel that I ought to have preferred— to myself my herd, or to my own herd one more remote, or even an abstraction like Humanity? That question is one the right answer to which may be hard to find; but there is one answer which must be wrong. The decision between such alternatives of con- duct cannot be pictured as the result of a kind of tug-of- war between opposing instincts whereof the issue depends simply on a mechanical preponderance of forees on the one side or the other. Were that so, the ego instinct would ‘have it’ every time against the herd, and the nearer herd would win every time against. the more remote; for those instincts are strongest which appeared * The existence of a specific ‘herd’ instinct is questioned by some psychologists. But this does not affect my argument as to the relation of instinct and morality in its general aspect. . ee a iL APPENDICES 341 earliest in the course of biological evolution, so that types of instinctive reaction which have been imherited for many generations will prevail over those more lately acquired. Biologically the will to live is older than the will to serve the herd; and while the instinct to benefit one’s own herd is ancient, the desire to serve Humanity is the last triumph of the higher ethics. If, then, we find that an instinct, though it be one later developed or artificially modified by education, sometimes conquers, it can only be because in some way—certain, though hard to- analyse or define—an ego, which is something more than a bundle of instincts, makes the choice. My ego is no mere spectator of the process, awaiting the automatic establishment of an equilibrium between opposing instincts; somehow or other (though why or how no man knows) I have power to weight the balance on the one side or the other; I can identify myself with this impulse rather than with that. And I can do this in reference to some criterion of value, which I call ‘good’ as distinct from ‘evil’, or ‘right’? as opposed to ‘wrong’. As a matter of fact, however, the picture of a tug-of- war between opposing instincts belongs rather to popular than to scientific psychology. A psychologist would prefer to describe the situation as one of conflict between two conceptions of the ego. I may, for example envisage myself as enjoying some triumphant success, but at the same time be aware that to identify myself with the self so envisaged would be to forfeit my right to regard myself as a man of honour. But it is still the case that the choice which means identifying myself with the one or the other of these conceptions of myself, is one that I feel to be a choice between a higher and lower; that is to say, I think of it in terms of value. 342 REALITY APPEN. But can Psychology of itself supply a criterion of value? I submit that it cannot do this; but that nevertheless it is a study closely concerned with value in two ways. (1) It is often possible to show that there is a rela- tion psychologically conditioned between the moral ideals which appeal to an adult and his desire as a child to ‘identify’ himself with a parent or other domi- nant personality. But I doubt whether an appreciation of quality can ever be more than partially explained in terms of the mechanical causation of the process by which it was reached. Certainly that holds good of intellectual appreciation. My understanding of the Binomial Theorem was only partially ‘caused’ by the books and the instructors I came across at school. There was also involved the capacity to follow an argument and to see the point of an intellectual con- struction; and this capacity, though capable of being either developed or depressed by training and circum- stance, at (at the human level) an intrinsic element in. consciousness as such. There are those who would draw a hard-and-fast line between the faculty of intellectual and that of qualitative discernment—but the notion that there exist within consciousness any such things as ‘faculties’, which are, in any sense at all fundamental, distinct, is not one that is encouraged by modern psychology. If in the matter of intellectual appre- hension it is admitted that a teacher (or an event) may turn the eyes of a pupil towards the light, but cannot give him the capacity of sight, the burden of proof lies with those who affirm that it is completely otherwise with the apprehension of value, whether moral or esthetic. And those who do so affirm, do so, I think, in the last resort because they have already made the Bs APPENDICES 343 tacit assumption—not scientific, but metaphysical, in character—that quality is not a property of Reality, and that only what can be measured is real and the rest illusion. (2) Psychology can determine the conditions of mental health; and mental health is a thing which has value for its own sake. I have already alluded to Dr. Hadfield’s argument that ‘the urge to completeness’ of the psyche can only attain satisfaction as the result of the build- ing up of an ethical personality, and that therefore, mental health is to some extent dependent on moral- ity—and indeed may be still further promoted by Religion (p. 280). But though the possession of a Religion may be a condition psychologically favourable to health, no one can believe in a Religion simply on that account; I ean only believe a thing if I conceive it to be true. Similarly, although for perfect mental health an ethic may be necessary, the categorical imperative which impels me to live up to it does not bid me do so merely on grounds of health. No doubt the soundness of any ethical code which in practice did not in the long run favour mental health would be open to suspicion. Yet it is when circumstances are such that there is conflict between an ethical ideal and the health (or the material interests) of the individual, that the distinctively ethical quality of an action comes clearly into sight. A familiar tag will serve to illustrate this essential difference between Ethics and Health, He who fights and runs away May live to fight another day. But he who is in battle slain, Can never rise to fight again. As a bald statement of scientific fact this is irrefutable. 344 REALITY APPEN. It From a strictly medical point of view the advice implied is good advice; considered from the standpoint of Ethics, it has another aspect. Every psychotherapist is from time to time called upon to give his patients advice on the conduct of their life which involves some moral issue; he is therefore bound, whether he likes it or not, to take upon himself something of the office of a moral guide.” But, when he does this, it 1s not from his psychology that he derives the moral principles implicit in his advice. Psy- chology shows why men tend to act or feel in certain ways, and how they tend to act in certain circumstances. It can tell what effect on health or nerves certain conduct is likely to produce. These questions are strictly within the domain of Science. But Psychology does not decide what kind of conduct is morally the best. That is a question for Ethics, and ultimately for Religion. It is often stated that in the light of the New Psychology, our traditional moral code, especially in regard to matters of sex, requires to be drastically revised. But if such revision is needed, mankind will insist that considerations — other than purely psychological shall be determinant. The end of man is not just to live, but to live as nobly as. he can. a psychologist who tries to get a patient to substitute the ‘reality~’ for the ‘pleasure-principle’ is clearly doing this, whatever views he may entertain on moral questions in general. INDEX OF NAMES AspRAHAM, 185 Adler, 276 Alexander, S., 44 Amos, 182, and footnote Anselm, 226-7, 229, 231, 332-3 Antigone, 310 Appasamy, 3197. Aristotle, 125, 131 Arnold, Thomas, 47 Austen, Jane, 37 Bacon, Francis, 4, 53 Baedeker, 31, 46, 102 Baudouin, 284, 287-8 Bergson, 94, 118, 125, 132 Booth, General, 278 Born, Max, 28 Brigden, T. E., 321 n. Brown, William, 279 n. Browning, 221 Buddha, The, 48, 60, 142, 154, 172, 180 n., 207 Caiaphas, 195 Celano, 325-6, 327 Cicero, 228 Clerk-Maxwell, J., 14 Clutton-Brock, A., 209, 301 n., 311 Confucius, 48, 142, 207 Cornelius, 329-30 Coué, 284-8, 290 Croce, 65-6 Curnock, N., 320 n. Darwin, C., 5, 119, 154, 171, 270 Democritus, 4 Descartes, 100 Don Juan, 178, 179 Dougall, Lily, 61 n., 322 Driesch, Hans, 96 n. Du Bose, 323 Eddington, A. S., 27 n., 28-9 Einstein, 22, 28, 97, 131 Elijah, 48 Emmet, C. W., 230 n., 320 Epicurus, 4, 211 Ezekiel, 61, 181, 186 Freud, 57, 76, 320, 326 Glover, T. R., 198 n. Gray, G. B., 181 n. Green, T. H., 141 Hadfield, J. A., 280, 283 7., 285 n., 339 n., 343 Haeckel, 142 Haggai, 328 Haldane, J. B. S., 111 Hegel, 142 Hippocrates, 201 Homer, 69 Hiigel, F. von, 64 Hume, D., 20 Huxley, T. H., 7, 20 Innocent ITT., 325 Isaiah, 637n., 181, 194, 195, 337 James, William, 275, 278 Jeremiah, 61 Job, 61, 180 n., 221 Joshua, 328 Judas, 34 Kant, 20-21, 112-114 Keyserling, Count H., 55-6, 148 Krishna, 178 Kropotkin, 158 345 346 Laplace, 4 Lilley, A. L., 288 n. Lloyd Morgan, 89 Lysaght, S. R., 577. M‘Dougall, W., 284, 320 n., 338 Machiavelli, 173 Mary Magdalene, 240 Mary, Mother of Jesus, 240, 284 Mary of Bethany, 48 Mendel, 119 Meredith, G., 38 7. Milton, 37, 42 Moberly, W. H., 231 n. Mohammed, 48 Moses, 47-8 Mott, J. R., 279 Napoleon, 165-6, 178 Needham, J., 27 n. Nelson, 34 Nettleship, R. L., 367. Newman, 280 _ Newton, Isaac, 4, 80, 119, 270 Nicoll, Maurice, 320 n. Nietzsche, 43, 146-8, 150, 151, 165, 173, 178, 194, 207 Paley, W., 6 Pheidias, 69 n. Plato, 52, 126, 180 n., 201, 202, 240, 276 Poincaré, Henri, 332, 333, 334, 337 Pontius Pilate, 52, 195 Praxiteles, 201, 202 Rashdall, H., 193 n. Rodin, A., 69 n. Russell, Bertrand, 17, 22, 29-30, 118, 151-2, 272 n. REALITY Sadhu Sundar Singh, 2957n., 319, 324, 333 Schopenhauer, 114 n. Scott, Sir W., 223 Shakespeare, 32, 33, 37, 41, 42, 53, 69, 89 Sheridan, 37 Sherington, Sir C. §., 57 n. ‘Socrates, 173, 195, 207 Soddy, F., 18-9 Spencer, Herbert, 142 St. Augustine, 281, 338 St. Francis of Assisi, 278, 286, 325, 327, 330 . John, 63, 136, 337. See Subject Index St. John the Baptist, 181, 198 St. Paul, 63, 138, 1807n., 182, 186, 215, 239-40, 245, 278, 337 St. Perpetua, 310 St. Peter, 180 n., 183, 327, 329-31 St. Peter of Alcantara, 288 St. Stephen, 239: Starbuck, 278 8 - Temple, W., 127 n. Tennyson, 65 Thomson, J. A., 78, 86n”., 91, 119, 154 n. Turner, 31, 46, 102 Wallas, Graham, 303-4 Wells, H. G., 223, 313-14 Wesley, John, 278, 3207. Whitehead, A. F., 15 Zechariah, 327-8 Zeno, 142 Zerubbabel, 328 Zoroaster, 142 INDEX OF AxssoLutr, The, 126-32 Ant, The, 154 n. Anthropomorphism, 9, 101-2, 105-6, 110-11, 125-6, 133-4, 137-8, 141, 212 The Higher, 134, 141 Aphrodite, 42 Art, 32-9 Christ and, 204-6 compared with Religion, 26, 39- 43, 45-7, 65-9, 108-9 contrasted with science, 41-2 Asceticism, 198 Atom, The, 16-17 Atonement, The, 226-33 See also Cross, The Auto-suggestion, 238, 261-2, 284-8 33-4, Basilisk, The, 153 ‘Behaviour’, 98-9 Behaviourism, 106 Biological Sciences, The, 95-102 Brahma, 43, 128 Causation, 14, 20-2, 97, 342 Christ, Ch. VII., passim. Refer to Synopsis and other teachers, 47-8, 142, 207 anthropomorphism of, 142 evidence for life of, 1807. and Nietzsche, 43, 146-50, 194 and Psychology, 181-3, 243, 258, 335-7 the image of God, 138, 174, 212, - 214, 244, 263, 301, 314 See also Cross, The Christianity— and other religions, 47-8 and ‘life’s nettle,’ 64 SUBJECTS Civilisation, its moral bases, 159-71 Classification, 79, 82-7, 273 ‘Complex’, 239 n., 254, 283 Concerning Prayer, 138 n., 321 Conversion, 251, 278, 334 Co-operation as basis of civilisa- tion, 162-71 Creative Evolution, 118-19, 125, 133, 179, 224, 226, 228 Creative Love, 170-74 embodiment in Christ, 209 inherent in Reality, 210-13 condition of its action, 230-1 Creed, The, 47, 52-4, 67 n. Cross, The, 63, 65-6, 174, 188-9, 221, 232-3, 262, 304 See also Atonement. Determinism. See Freewill Discovery, psychology of, 331-7 Dogma, as symbol, 213-5 Dreams, 55 n., 320-27 Elan vital, see Life-Force Electrons, 16-18, 89 Emergent Evolution, 89, 98 Entelechy, 96 Epiphenomenon, consciousness as, 7, 134 Eternity, 130-32 Ethics, 206-9, 338-44, also Ch. VI., passim Evil, problem of, 57-64, 126, Ch. VIIL., passim Explanation, in science, 13, 80-1, 87, 96-7 Flux of things, 93-5 Force, in Physics, 18-19, 123 Freewill, 58 n., 75-8, 93, 246, 273-4 347 348 Future Life, Ch. X., passim in terms of quality, 312 mythology of, 311 process in, 253 Genius— its essence, 35 7. psycho-neurosis and, 276-7 Gita, The Bhagavad, 48, 178 n. God, as Father, 141, 283, 314 as Judge, 59, 227-31 as personal, 133-41, 218 as ‘projection’, 274-84 as Sultan, 149, cf. 237, 260 as sharing suffering, 63, 130, 149, 174, 231, 243-4, 253, 259 as the Absolute, 129-32 calamity and will of, 245-48 Christ as image of, see Christ idolatry and idea of, 300-1 not a ‘third party’, 297 See also Law, Prayer Good, the problem of, 222 Gospels, as ‘great art’, 67 7. historical value of, 180 n. Hamlet, 85, 109, 209 ‘He’ or ‘It’, 118, 1386, 179, 211-12, 269, 271, 289, 299 Health, Religion and mental, 278- 81, 300, 343 Hebrew, and problem of evil, 60-3 vitality of race, 62 n. Hell, 149, 230 ., 277, 301 n. Herd instinct, 339-41 History, 27, 107-8 Human Nature in Politics, quoted, 303-4 Idealism, see Philosophic Immortality, 230, 311 n., 313-14 Incarnation, Doctrine of, 214 See also Christ Individuality, 85-8, 134, 137, 273, 291-2, 313 Inspiration, 111-12, 320, 334-7 Instinct, and temptation, 191-2 sublimation, 338-41 Tntercession, 252-3, 293-9 REALITY Jesus, the historic,Ch. VII., passim, refer to Synopsis See also Christ Jew, see Hebrew John, Gospel of, 34, 136, 180n., 181 n., 190, 312 Justice, 59-61, 167-9, 221, 227-9 Karma, doctrine of, 59-60 Knowledge, Ch. IV., passim Art, as means of, 34-5, 108-9 Kant’s Theory of, 112-14 Religion as, 108-10 Krishna, 178 n. Law, as basis of Science, 78-9, 96-8 classification and, 82, 87-8, 273 Divine action and, 138-9, 221, 270-1, 288, 297 modern theory of, 272-4 natural and juristic, 224-31 necessity in, 113, 272 See also Explanation Law, reign of, 78-9, 188, 221, 224-6, 230-1, 270-3 Life— and Quality, 37-8, 109, 111, 114, 311-12 | a principle of organisation, 90-1, 120-1, 126, 313 Eternal, 312 its nature, 88-93, 98-101, 311-13 known first hand in personality, 35-6, 99-101, 103-5, 135, 140 matter and, 98 ‘pool’ of, 90, 120, 313 See also Life-Force, Individuality Life, every-day, 107-8 as school of manhood, 222-4 Life-Force, hypothesis, 118-26 as ‘theriomorphism’, 125 contrasted with materialism, 121-5 Lord’s Supper, The, 46 Luke, Gospel of, 180 n., 181 7., 182, 191, 192 Macbeth, quoted, 33 Man, Divinity of, 65, 178 INDEX OF SUBJECTS _ Mark, Gospel of, 180n., 181 7., 188 n., 190, 329 Materialism, Ch. I., passim and Life-Force, 125 as ‘mechanomorphism’, 9 Matthew, Gospel of, 180 n., 181 7., 182 Matter, 16-18, 98, 311. Mind, Materialism Mechanism, 10-16, 19, 21-2, 91, 97-8, 111, 181, 289, 320 Mechanomorphism, 9, 125 Metaphor, power of, 8-9 and future life, 307-8, 311 Mind— and Matter, 17 in the Universe, 21,127, 132; 174 a function of Life or Will, 7, 77-8, 120, 128, 131 ‘Model’, The, 14-15, 97 Moral failure, retrieval of, 233-40, 250 Myth, 40, 46-7, Ch. III., passom, 336-7 of India and Greece, 55-6 psychological theory of, 55 n. the ‘Christ-myth’, 53 See also Natural Selection, 5-6, 153-9. See Struggle for Existence Neo-Vitalism, 96 New Psychology, The. See Psy- chology Pain, problem of, 57-64, 111, 241-63 of animals, 156-7 mental element in, 241-3 physiological centres of, 57 n. Pantheism— fallacy im, 141 Personality, and immortality,313- 16 as creative force, 179 in animals, 135 in God, 133-41, 214 Philosophical Idealism, 21 132 Polytheism, 42-3 Power ‘inferiority-complex’ 147 -2, 127-8, and, 049 Power (continued)— nature of, 150-1, 211-2 Pain and, 263 Religion as, 260, 299-303 the Will to, 146-51, 166, 178 Prayer, 252-3, 258, 260 and Vision of God, 300-3 auto-suggestion and, 284-293 individuality and, 291-2 methods of, 261-3, 291-2 petitionary, 292, 293 See also Intercession Progress, its conditions, 159-71 moral, 260 See Will to Good Proslogion, Anselm’s, 332 Providence, conception of, 246-7 Psychology— a ‘mixed’ science, 27, 103-7 and ‘eall’ of Christ, 181-4, 319, 336 and dreams, 55 n., 320-31 and Morals, Appendix IT. and myth, 55-6 and Religion, Ch. IX., passim and suffering, 241-3, 253-263 and value, 271, 342-4 and Visions, Appendix [. introspection in, 103-5 normal and abnormal, 279 Psychology, International Congress of, 106, 274 n. Psycho-neurosis— and genius, 276-7 and religion, 274 ff. Punishment, 59 n., 228-32, 310 Purpose— mechanism and, 91-2 power and, 150-1, 211 Quantum theory, 95 7. black the and brown, 154 n. ‘Reassociation’, 255 n., 259 Relativity, 22, 29, 97 ‘Representation’, 30-1, 39-41, 44-6, 64-8, 214, 232 Revelation. See Inspiration. Rat, 300 Salvation, 260-3 See also Sin Science, Chs. I. and IL., passim and Civilisation, 160 and sudden inspiration, 337d as cleanser of Religion, 272 its method, Ch. IV., passim idealism of, 160 Shiva, 43, 174 Sin, 58n., 63, 231, 233-41, 246, 250 Spectator, The, 201 n. Struggle for existence, 6, 102, 152-5, 270 Subconscious, The, 260-1, 284 n. Suffering. See Pain 332, Taj Mahal, The, 91 Tank attack, signal for, 34 Telepathy, 252, 295-9 REALITY The Four Gospels, an Appendix to, 336 The Spirit, 196 n., 320 Theologia Germanica, 303 ‘Theriomorphism’, 125 Trinity, doctrine of The, 213-15 Truth, 43-7, 64, 160, 232 | Uniformity of Nature, 224-5. See also Law Venice, 31, 46, 102 Visions and_ auditions, Appendix I., passim See also Dreams Will to Good, Tho— and Ged, 229 as mainspring of progress, 160, 165, 173, 229 Will to Pleasure, 178, 344 n. Will to Power. See Power 181-4, » , — 2 OE Se Pan) y J Bets on es rN Ly ‘ Why uy i sald ! aly Bert i Ea at ‘ ; Ray ‘ a Musee tig a! Sestak Date Due poor ee _ me ee Tt _—— rr soar 8 a 1012 01006 0392 brat a stacey sob bes