BD 431 .K5 1923 King, Henry Churchill, 1934. Seeing life whole \ 1858- t 9 * \ ll Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/seeinglifewholecOOking_O SEEING LIFE WHOLE A Christian Philosophy of Life THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO SEEING LIFE WHOLE A Christian Philosophy of Life s THE DEEMS LECTURES •''' • ’ V Ur / \ ‘'A \ ' 1 FOR 1922 / V NEW YORK UNIVERSITY J A i\i j. ’ 1 1924 V / fimn " BY HENRY CHURCHILL KING PRESIDENT OF OBERLIN COLLEGE j]2«to gotfc THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1923 All rights reserved PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Copyright, 1923, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and printed. Published September, 1923. Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company New York, U. S. A. 1 PREFACE This book had its origin in an invitation from New York University to give the lectures for 1922 on the Deems Foundation. The character of the Lectureship, growing out of “The Institute of Christian Philosophy,” practically determined the scope of the lectures, as indi¬ cated in the secondary title of the book—A Christian Philosophy of Life. At the same time this determination of general subject has made it impossible for me alto¬ gether to avoid traversing ground covered in certain of my other books. But I have sought a fresh treatment throughout in the presentation of material both by the special consideration of questions just now pressing upon many minds, and by applying to the entire discussion the much needed principle of “seeing life whole.” This prin¬ ciple thus constitutes the main title of the book. In a practical application of that principle, it will be seen, I have aimed to give a sixfold approach to the problem of a Christian philosophy of life—the scientific approach, the psychological approach, the value approach, the personal and ethical approach, the philosophical approach, and the Biblical and Christian approach. It has been hoped so to show the close and vital relations of the most signifi¬ cant lines of modern thought to Christian living and think¬ ing. This has compelled in preparation a many-sided review of material, that in so brief a discussion has been v vi Preface reflected perhaps even more in what has been omitted than in what has been said. All that one can do in such an attempt is to say as honestly as he can how these questions best come home to himself. Henry Churchill King Oberlin College, February, 1923. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. Necessity of an Ever Renewed Apologetic II. Constant Endeavor to See Life Whole . III. A Variety of Approaches to Our Problem CHAPTER I THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH I. The Scientific Field, Spirit, and Method .... II. Reasons for Beginning with the Scientific Approach III. The Contributions of Modern Science to the Ideal Interests. IV. The Difficulties for the Religious View Arising from Evolution. CHAPTER II THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH I. The Significant Breadth of the More Modern Psy¬ chology ... II. No Quarrel with Such a Definition of Psychology III, Behaviorism in Psychology. IV. Great Practical Inferences from Modern Psychology V. The Moral and Religious Significance of These Great Inferences. VI. The Psychological Inferences Are Indubitably Chris¬ tian Emphases. VII. Psychology Has Much Help to Give to Practical Religion—The Psychological Conditions of Self- Mastery . VIII. The Christian Mastery of One’s Fears and Anxieties vii PAGE 1 4 6 8 9 11 19 29 30 32 35 37 40 41 46 Contents • • • vm CHAPTER III THE VALUE APPROACH PAGE I. The Importance of the Point of View of Value . . 53 II. We Are Commonly Introduced into the Values of Life Through the Testimony of Others .... 56 III. The Necessity of Absolute Honesty.62 IV. The Necessity of Modesty.65 V. Staying Persistently in the Presence of the Best 67 VI. A Broad Analogy Between the Realms of Value . 72 CHAPTER IV THE PERSONAL AND ETHICAL APPROACH I. The Principle of Reverence for Personality ... 75 II. Our Whole Constitution Looks to Personal Rela¬ tions .78 III. Reverence for Personality Includes Self-Respect . 80 IV. Respect for tile Liberty of Others.88 V. Reverence for the Sanctity of the Other’s Inner Personality.94 CHAPTER V THE PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH I. Tendency to Underrate Philosophy.104 II. Definitions of the Sphere of Philosophy .... 106 III. Fundamental Philosophic Points of View .... 110 1. The Organic View of Truth.110 2. The Tests of Truth or Reality.Ill 3. The Three Spheres of Reality—the Is , the Must , and the Ought .118 4. The Three Great Ideals of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.119 5. The Mission of Mechanism.121 IV. The Problem of the Possible Harmony of Process and Meaning.123 V. Two Further Philosophical Considerations . . . 128 1. One’s Own Self the Best Key for Understanding of the Universe.129 2. The Seeming Unreality of the Spiritual Life . . 130 Contents IX CHAPTER VI THE BIBLICAL AND CHRISTIAN APPROACH PAGE I. The Christian View of the Bible.133 II. Present-Day Obstacles to a Biblical Approach to a Christian Philosophy of Life.137 1. The Doctrine of the Inerrancy of the Scriptures . 137 2. An Extreme Apocalypticism.143 3. Spiritualism .144 4. Christian Science.148 5. A False Type of Mysticism.148 III. The Christian Way of Seeing Life Whole. “By Every Word That Proceedeth Out of the Mouth of God” .151 1. Not by Bread Alone.152 2. Not by Marvel and Ecstasy Alone.155 3. Not by Making Means into Ends.158 SEEING LIFE WHOLE A Christian Philosophy of Life SEEING LIFE WHOLE A Christian Philosophy of Life INTRODUCTION There is always needed a constantly renewed apologetic for the ideal life,—for all our ideals, for truth, goodness and beauty, for religion, for the Christian view of God and the world. All ideals are alike concerned. Persist¬ ently and with every change in knowledge men press the vital questions: Have the world and life abiding meaning and value? Can we, in the midst of an evolving world, keep our faith in the conservation and the progress of values ? This is the problem of this Lectureship, i Such an ever renewed apologetic for the great values of life is needed for several reasons. First of all, such a new apologetic is needed to express the reality and meaning of our ideal interests in the terms of our own times; even though there be no essential change in viewpoints. For each period has its own favorite ways of putting things, and one of the best evidences of the vitality of a man’s ideal or religious convictions is to be found in his desire constantly to re-translate these con¬ victions into immediately current terms. These changing i 2 Seeing Life Whole terms may trouble those who are quite content with the old terms, and they may wish that the changing genera¬ tion were alike content. But in fact such changes in the putting of a man’s beliefs are real causes for congratula¬ tion for all; for they mean genuine independent interest in the great values, and no mere indifferent willingness passively to take over the formulas of others. A changing apologetic for all our ideals is also needed because of constantly growing knowledge, and the con¬ sequent wisdom, if not the necessity, of relating the ex¬ pression of our ideals to this whole of knowledge. One of the best justifications of any ideal interest is its ability to adapt itself to changing conditions. And this needs to be repeatedly shown for our full peace of mind. An ever renewed apologetic is demanded, too, to meet incidentally any special new questions arising ; although these questions are generally new chiefly in form, when we look deeply enough into them. In this discussion, then, we are to seek to meet as clearly and definitely as possible the present-day obstacles to a Christian philosophy of life. These obstacles come both from within and from without the ranks of intentional defenders of the faith. For the worst enemies of a cause are sometimes to be found among its unwise friends. The new present-day questions, too, grow naturally right out of the new inner world of thought—the world of modern science and its evolutionary point of view, of the historical spirit, of the new psychology, of sociology, of comparative religion. A perfectly enormous mass of new knowledge and new points of view—illustrated in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics—has thus poured in upon the men of the last hun¬ dred years; and it is not strange that the ideal interests have even yet not been able wholly to assimilate it. We cannot evade facing this new inner world of thought, Introduction 3 and seeing what it means for our ideal interests, and espe¬ cially for our religious and Christian faiths. An adequate meeting of the questions so raised—it is more and more plain—requires not simply a lean-to for our traditional philosophy and theology, but to some extent a reorganization of the whole architectural plan of our apologetic for the ideal and religious interests. Too largely men tend to keep their ideas, old and new, in water-tight compartments, not introducing them to one another, and so attaining no organic unity in their living and thinking. And this is likely to be particularly true, where many fields of knowledge and questions of faith are concerned. In such a case, certainly, the ideal apologetic cannot be simply an offensive attack; it must be open- minded toward all the facts, and be able to explain the difficulties felt, and to embody the full measure of truth the new knowledge contains. For on both sides, where men have tenaciously insisted on a position taken, we may be sure there is some element of vital truth involved, which needs fully to be taken into account. Moreover, the problem for both theoretical and practi¬ cal faith is constantly a new and critical one; as, for example, both Romanes and Huxley illustrated, from dif¬ ferent points of view, in their moral and religious diffi¬ culties with the evolution theory. Lotze long ago put the matter with precision: “We can never look on indiffer¬ ently when we see cognition undermining the foundations of faith, or faith calmly putting aside as a whole that which scientific zeal has built up in detail.” 1 Either course brings inevitable rupture into a man’s inner life. There are great values to be preserved on both sides. Christian Science gives an almost perfect example of the second danger Lotze names: “Faith calmly putting aside 1 Microcosmus, p. xi. 4 > Seeing Life Whole as a whole that which scientific zeal has built up in detail.” The need of an ever new apologetic for the ideal in¬ terests corresponds , also, to the importance of new vari¬ ations in organic evolution. For as Hoffding suggests: “If new variations can arise, not only in organic but per¬ haps also in inorganic nature, new tasks are placed before the human mind.” Darwin “has shown us forces and tendencies in nature which make absolute systems im¬ possible, at the same time that they give us new objects and problems. There is still a place for what Lessing called ‘the unceasing striving after truth,’ while ‘absolute truth’ (in the sense of a closed system) is unattainable so long as life and experience are going on.” 2 All this quite fits man as himself a growing creature, and as having in each case an individuality which itself may become a “favorable variation.” From this point of view an adequate apologetic for Christianity, for ex¬ ample, should be and can be no mere logically skilful defense of long settled formulas; but should help rather to a constantly enlarging and deepening and progres¬ sively successful putting of the Christian values,—to the constructive task of making clear Christianity’s power of adaptability to changing environments, power to grow as science itself grows. n Now such a conception of a Christian apologetic neces¬ sarily involves a constant endeavor to see life steadily and to see it whole. In one of his early sonnets, addressed to a friend who 2 Evolution in Modern Thought, pp. 211-213; Essay by Hoff ding on The Influence of the Conception of Evolution on Modern Philosophy. Introduction 5 asked him who “prop” his mind, “in these bad days,” Matthew Arnold expresses gratitude to Homer and Epic¬ tetus, but most of all to Sophocles whom he characterizes as one Who saw life steadily and saw it whole. There have been few definitions of rational thinking and living more suggestive or more adequate than this char¬ acterization of Sophocles. For to see life steadily and to see it whole might be called a definition of philosophy in its entirety, and of both the end and the process of edu¬ cation. We are to make sure, then, above all, in any adequate apologetic for life’s greatest values, that we are not ignoring whole spheres of life, or any of its essential facts. It is illustrative of this danger that, when thirty writers recently undertook to discuss “The Civilization of the United States,” and in many lines to point the way for the rest of us, it did not seem to the group worth while to deal independently with religion at all. As the editor said in his preface: “They were not interested in the topic.” Had not Norman Thomas reason for saying, “The omission and the apology for it are a measure of the superficiality of the work as a whole”? The need of seeing life steadily and seeing it whole is both a scientific and an ideal contention. On the one hand, it is a part of science’s insistence on facing the facts (not simply theories) and all the facts, since we cannot be sure a priori which facts may prove themselves most important;—the insistence on making room in one’s hypothesis for all the facts which are to be accounted for. On the other hand, this determination to see life whole is the essence of all ideal views; for these all deal with the unity and meaning of the entire world, and hence 6 Seeing Life Whole cannot leave out of account the whole. All the ideals require somewhere this vision of wholeness. It is a poet who in these troublous days has lost this faith, who thus explains his own present dumbness: “A synthesis of some sort is behind all good verse. Poetry lives in a cosmos. A spiritual order is its soil.” So Professor Irving Babbitt too says: 4 ‘The final test of creative w r ork is the whole¬ ness and centrality of its vision.” In like manner, religion must say with ever renewed emphasis, as Dr. Newman Smyth prophetically put it years ago: “The whole man, in the entirety of his being, is the organ of spiritual, as he is, also, of earthly feelings and experiences.” 3 There can be, thus, no adequate putting of the great values in any narrow provincial fashion. There can be no exclusiveness. For the dangers of breadth are best guarded against by still greater breadth—by wholeness. Men are far more likely to be right in what they affirm than in what they deny. hi In the interests of wholeness, then,—to insure seeing 1 life steadily and seeing it whole,—in this constructive task of putting the great values especially of religion in their full setting, we may well attempt a variety of approaches to our problem. The following approaches to our study of the abiding significance of religion in both thought and life are thus naturally suggested: the general scientific approach; the psychological approach; the value approach; the per¬ sonal and ethical approach; the philosophical approach; the Biblical and Christian approach. The general scientific approach should point out the 8 The Religious Feeling, p. 142. Introduction 7 positive contributions of modern science to the ideal in¬ terests, and face the difficulties felt in the evolution point of view. The psychological approach—as a particularly signifi¬ cant part of the general scientific approach—should sug¬ gest the great practical and ideal inferences from modern psychology, and deal with the questions arising from behavioristic psychology. The value approach should indicate the significant, uni¬ fied way into all the great values of life, bringing out thus the unity of all these values, and the way to constantly enriching life, personal and social. The personal and ethical approach points out the su¬ preme significance both for morals and religion of the principle of reverence for personality, as the basis for both a true individualism and a true socialism. The philosophical approach—for philosophy is the primary interpreter of the facts which science in the broadest sense brings us—attempts to put into brief compass the fundamental philosophical points of view, especially as concerns religion, and to face the philo¬ sophical difficulties for the religious viewpoint, just now most felt. The Biblical and Christian approach takes up the pres¬ ent-day obstacles to a Christian philosophy of life, gath¬ ering especially about the Scriptures and other religious viewpoints, and strives to bring out the wholeness of Christ’s vision of life, and his abiding significance for the CHAPTER I THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH I We need to be clear, to begin with, exactly what the viewpoint of modern science is. In the first place, the growth and triumphs of modern science are due in no small degree to the threefold self¬ restriction of its field: 1 the restriction to phenomena, “the thing as it appears,” abandoning all attempt to reach ultimate reality; the restriction to the tracing of purely immediate causal connections, to the question of the How, not the Why, to process not meaning; the restriction to experience, abandoning all a priori deter¬ mination. These three self-restrictions of modern science, strictly defined, mean that modern science turns over all questions of ultimate reality, all questions of ultimate origins , all questions of final meaning to Philosophy or Theology or some other form of ideal view. This delimitation of the field of modern science illus¬ trates and carries with it also the conception of the scien¬ tific spirit. For the restriction to experience will yield results only in the degree in which one is absolutely true to experience. The scientific spirit so required, therefore, may be said to be the habitual determination to see the facts straight, without bias or prejudice; to report ex¬ actly the phenomena so found; and in the whole experi- J Cf. Lotze, Microcosmus, Vol. II, pp. 342 ff.; Thomson, Outline of Science, pp. 1172-1175. 8 9 The Scientific Approach ence to give an absolutely honest reaction upon the situ¬ ation under examination. It is a rigorous ideal, only partially attainable at best, and we shall need to return to it again. The field and spirit of modern science naturally lead on to the scientific method. Its essence is in accurate observation and directed experiment; but it needs a fuller characterization, if it is to be clearly understood. The scientific method may be said to begin in accurate obser¬ vation of the phenomenon under examination, to get at the raw facts; to go on by sagacious analysis to a pre¬ liminary classification of similar data; to discern the forms of behavior of these classified groups; so to frame an hypothesis that aims to include all the facts; then to verify and to develop this hypothesis by directed experi¬ ment (or to find that the hypothesis must be abandoned) ; to get at, thus, the laws which are found to hold for the phenomenon investigated; to perceive the conditions in¬ volved in these laws; to fulfill these conditions; and so to be able to come to practical mastery of the forces and resources of the field under investigation. It is to be noted that this conception of modern science does not at all confine it to the physical sciences. The whole viewpoint—field, spirit, method—may be applied, as we shall see, to any sphere of human experience—to psychology, to history, to the study of social phenomena, to the history of religions, etc, ii With such a view of modetn science, we naturally begin with the scientific approach to our entire problem, for several reasons. First of all, our age is preeminently a scientific age y and 10 Seeing Life Whole has been particularly influenced by scientific conceptions. Moreover, many of the most difficult questions for the ideal interests, and especially for religion, rise right out of modern science and its evolutionary point of view. Modern science, too, deals with one of the two great all-inclusive problems of understanding the world in its entirety , which we need to have clearly in mind from the start. For there are two questions which may always be asked concerning any phenomenon: First, How did it come to be?—the question of process, of immediate causal connection, of mechanical explanation—the question of science; second, What does it mean?—the question of meaning, of ideal interpretation—the question of philoso¬ phy, and of all the ideal interests. Take, for example, Paulsen’s illustration of a printed page, or Lotze’s illus¬ tration of a drama. Concerning each, two all-inclusive questions may be asked: How did it come to be? What does it mean?—the question of process and the question of meaning. Concerning the printed page we may ask all the questions involved in the process of its production— questions of paper making, of typesetting-machine, of manufacture and working of the printing press, of the mechanical preparation of the “copy” for the page, etc. These are entirely proper and important questions, but after they have all been asked, there is another entirely different question to ask: What does the page mean, what were the ideas w T hich the writer had in mind in the prepa¬ ration of his copy, what meaning did he intend to convey to his readers? The answer to the question of process does not at all answer the question of meaning. In like manner, one may know all the mysteries of stage ma¬ chinery and production from first to last, and have no answer to the question of the meaning of the drama so staged—of the idea or impression the dramatist meant to 11 The Scientific Approach get over the footlights to those who witnessed his play. So everywhere in scientific research—in physics, chem¬ istry, biology, etc.—science, if it truly confines itself to the field of science, is dealing solely with questions of fact and process, leaving the question of meaning to the ideal viewpoints. Philosophy and religion, on the other hand, as such, have nothing to do with these questions of fact and process. All these data they take from science and undertake the interpretation of their meaning. 2 Now both these questions—of process and meaning— are essential, and neither in any way excludes the other; rather are they naturally supplementary, and not con¬ flicting. But the first question—that of process—is much the simpler, is necessarily preliminary, and can be clearly discriminated from the other question—that of meaning. Our whole problem will be helped by sharply distinguish¬ ing from the beginning these two questions and points of view in all our preliminary inquiries; although we may not stop finally with an ultimate dualism here. But the philosophical problem of unifying both points of view plainly belongs more appropriately to the philosophical approach to our entire problem. m In turning now to the contributions of modern science to the ideal interests , it is worth noting, in the first place, how the scientific and the ideal points of view tend to fit into each other; for that will give us hope of a final solu¬ tion of the relations of modern science and the ideal in¬ terests. We may well take for our starting-point Herrmann’s definition of the moral law, as an idealist’s definition of the 9 Cf. Thomson, Outline of Science, pp. 1175-1179, 12 Seeing Life Whole ideal: “Mental and spiritual fellowship among men and mental and spiritual independence on the part of the individual—that is what we can ourselves recognize to be prescribed to us bj the moral law.” 3 But while this definition of the moral law is, as has been said, an ideal¬ ist’s definition of the ideal, it still can be seen to express the essence of the scientific spirit and method. For on the one hand, Herrmann expresses for workers in the ideal realms what is essentially the method of Christ—the method of fellowship and independence, the method of the contagion of the good life, of the life sound at the core, of salt that has not lost its saltness, of light that has not gone out. At the same time he is also expressing the essential method for workers in science, with its demand for the open mind and absolute fidelity to the facts, cor¬ responding to mental and spiritual independence on the one hand; and its use of world-wide cooperation among scientific workers, corresponding to mental and spiritual fellowship on the other hand. Let one think, for example, of the way in which any scientific discovery, like that of the Roentgen rays, is tested and developed. As soon as the discovery was an¬ nounced probably the great majority of laboratories all over the world, which were equipped for this particular investigation, repeated Roentgen’s experiments to test the accuracy of his statements, and to see if further significant facts might be discovered in this new realm. This is the method of cooperative fellowship in the pursuit of the truth. At the same time, if this wide-spread repe¬ tition of the experiments of Roentgen were to be anything more than mere mechanical repetition, it was necessary that the experiments should be performed as critically as by Roentgen himself in his original discovery. Each * Faith and Morals, p. 129. 13 The Scientific Approach investigator must be able honestly to testify out of his own experience to the confirmation of Roentgen’s results. This is the method of independence . The very fact that an idealist’s definition of the ideal can be thus taken as expressing at the same time the essence of the scientific spirit and method, suggests at least the possibility of much closer and more harmonious relations between mod¬ ern science and the ideal interests than men have com¬ monly supposed. Moreover, modern science is perhaps the sphere of man’s completest success in mastering those great ideal tasks which the mind sets itself—the tasks of thinking the world through into unity in various kinds of terms. Modern science has succeeded in solving in unusual degree one of these tasks—that of thinking the world through into unity in mathematico-mechanical terms. And the very fact that men have succeeded at this one point gives hope, as James suggests, 4 of increasing success in those other parallel tasks which the mind sets itself, of thinking the world through into unity, for example, in esthetic and ethical and religious terms. In all this interworking of the scientific and the ideal, what now has modern science definitely to contribute to the ideal interests? First of all, it is to be seen that modern science has enormously increased the resources available for the ideal interests ,—resources of knowledge, of power, and of wealth. It is literally true to say, in the light of the tri¬ umphs of modern science, that one can set no limit to achievements that may still be made in all these three realms,—in knowledge, in power, in wealth. Because of what modern science has here done, possibilities are now reasonably within reach which were hardly dreamed of 4 Psychology, Vol. II, p. 671. 14 Seeing Life Whole earlier. In spite of defective distribution, men can look forward with hope to the abolition of paralyzing ignor¬ ance, of hopeless drudgery, and of inevitable deficit,— to a time when a man’s life shall be possible for every man. But great as the resources are which modern science can make available, we need to remember that what modern science here offers is simply possibilities, not basic as¬ surance. Whether these possibilities are to become actual realities depends on the honest cooperative work of many groups of men. In these possibilities, then, modern science brings a great challenge to the ideal interests , and particularly to education. It confronts our age with questions like these: Can you rise to these possibilities? Are you training men worthy of these stupendous powers and trusts, or have these come too soon? Is discipline keeping pace with democracy? In all this an especial challenge is brought to education and to all the moral and religious forces. For an age preeminent in power and wealth must be also preeminent in self-control or world disaster impends. And this means in turn that it belongs to the ideal forces to make sure that men are filled with interests and enthusi¬ asms great enough and ideal enough to dominate all the resources of knowledge and power and wealth which science makes available. Men caught glimpses, at any rate in the Great War, of the tremendous possibilities of cooperation even in great international projects, and we cannot remain satisfied to have scrapped all such in¬ spiring cooperation. We must not finally fail to carry over into the tasks of peace some, at least, of the great cooperative constructive agencies which the war forced upon us. Moreover, it is not less important to see that modern science has given to the ideal interests the vision of a far The Scientific Approach 15 larger and more significant world ?—a world infinitely enlarged, scientifically unified, constantly evolving, imma nently law-abiding,—a world that constitutes an organic whole. In every one of these ways, the world has become a new and glorified world. It is impossible to overstate the greatness of the opportunity which modern science, in this vision of a new world, has given to men inspired with the ideal spirit. So far is this new world—enlarged, uni¬ fied, evolving, law-abiding, organic—from belittling man, it rather reflects its glory back upon man at every point. For the vision is one of his own creation and every new discernment is at the same time a disclosure of possible power. The vision of such a world means not less than this,—the possibility for all men of entering intelligently and unselfishly into the world-life and into the all-em¬ bracing plans of God. It was this ideal contribution of modern science of which Eucken was thinking, when he wrote of science: “Its effect is not exhausted in the abun¬ dance of particular achievements; by the objectivity of its work it has brought the world much nearer to us, has led our life to greater clearness, has made us more alert, and given us a secure dominion over things. Science, therefore, must also be a factor in the determination of a philosophy of life, and must raise the whole position of man.” 6 Once more, then, in the light of all its conquests over external nature, modern science points the ideal in¬ terests to the one great method of scientific mastery over the forces of nature , now conceived in their widest scope; and so gives hope of constantly enlarging achievements in all the realms of man’s experience and endeavor. The significance of the gift of modern science at this fl Cf. King, Religion as Life, pp. 178-184. • Life's Basis and Life's Ideal, p. 345. 16 Seeing Life Whole point may be seen in the contrast between the oriental and the occidental sense of law. For the Oriental, law means only an all-embracing fate, tending to paralyze all effort; for the Occidental, it means discernment of the laws of the universe, and so a key to the mastery of its forces. For men must bring to the complex problems of individual and social development and progress the same method of scientific mastery which has so splendidly served them in the conquest of the forces of external na¬ ture—so far as it can be here applied. This is the significance of the “social survey” in our attempt to mas¬ ter sociological problems. It is the interpenetration of the scientific spirit and method with the social con¬ sciousness. The social consciousness sets the goal; the scientific spirit and method indicate the indubitable way to the goal. We study the field. We discover the laws which are there at work. We fulfill the conditions in¬ volved in those laws, and so master the situation. It is not strange that men like Wells, and Robinson, 7 and Dewey, 8 have so felt the spell and the urge of what might be accomplished in the betterment of human so¬ ciety by a thoroughgoing application of scientific prin¬ ciples, so victorious in the realm of external nature. Wells’ characterization of scientific men, which Robinson quotes, 9 naturally suggests high possibilities of human progress: “In their field they think and work with an intensity, an integrity, a breadth, boldness, patience, thor¬ oughness, and faithfulness—excepting only a few artists —which puts their work out of all comparison with any other human activity.” Professor H. S. Nash, as long ago as 1899, caught this 1 The Mind in the Making, pp. 12-14, 48 ff. 8 Reconstruction in Philosophy, pp. 72-74, 115, 130, 211. 8 Op. cit., p. 7. The Scientific Approach IT vision and its ideal significance, and wrote prophetically: “The supreme problem beginning to press upon the mind and heart of our own generation, and sure to press with even greater insistence and inspiration upon the mind and heart of the generations following us, is the creation of a higher type of terrestrial society ” “The scientific reason, being enamoured of the visible uni¬ verse, must enter society with entire conviction and a resolute purpose. By all it holds dear, the conclusion that terrestrial society is capable of indefinite betterment is brought home.” “Our typical modern, if he follows his thoughts down into a controlling and coordinating conception, finds himself driven, by all the energy and prestige of the visible universe, to make human history the centre of significance, interest, and worth. Deepening self-knowledge and strengthening self-masterhood are not to be attained except in communion with society in its full breadth and scope.” “My ethics must give me a con¬ ception of duty that shall go to the bottom of the visible universe, and at the same time shall make me intimate with the common life of the great bulk of mankind.” “Ethics, fol¬ lowed along this interior line, leads without fail into religion. To keep the will steady and its temper true, to keep one’s footing in the very thick of a society whose heavy mortgage of brutehood and incapacity we are forced by the broad and careful knowledge of our day to take clear cognizance of, is a task that cannot be discharged in full, except by the aid of religion.” 10 A modern editor, Mr. Herbert Croly of The New Re¬ public , puts most compactly a similar vision of the possi¬ bility of “the creation of a higher type of terrestrial society,” as the pressing problem for the Christian church: “For the first time in human history science is endowing a religion of human brotherhood with the material out of which 10 Ethics and Revelation, pp. 154, 187-8, 48, 50. 18 Seeing Life Whole it may be possible to fashion an art and discipline of humane living.” ‘‘Up to date neither the priests nor the philosophers have realized how much the reenforcement of religious truth by science may mean for human fulfillment. Modern science is using its new knowledge only to increase the control of man over nature and of some men over other men. But some day it will dawn on Christian ministers and on lay evangelists that the new knowledge, just in so far as it penetrates the secrets of human nature, can also be used to increase the con¬ trol of man over society and over his behavior, being and destiny. The larger the knowledge of human nature, the more trustworthy the art and discipline of life which ethical investigators and inventors can place at the disposal of a religious community for the better realization of its conviction of the sacredness and regeneracy of human personality. It will be the business of religious leaders to teach men how really to lead a good life, which is something they now lack the knowledge and the disposition to do.” 10a Other illustrations of this method of scientific mastery may be found in McGiffert’s The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas , and Ellwood’s Reconstruction of Religion , with their rich suggestiveness of lines of intellectual and social and religious progress. Though they are also quite har¬ monious with Robinson’s emphasis on “creative thinking,” in sloughing off false and hindering views, in strenuously cultivating the scientific spirit, and in extending the ap¬ plication of the scientific method to the problems of human progress wherever possible. But modern science has a further significant contri¬ bution to make to the ideal interests in the gift of the scientific spirit itself. That spirit reflects the open- minded humility of the rigorous self-limitation of modern science and, as we have seen, becomes at its best a habitual determination to see straight, to report exactly, to give an absolutely honest reaction on the situation. This 104 The New Republic , Feb. 22, 1922, p. 370. 19 The Scientific Approach means that the scientific spirit embodies a passion for reality and seeks radical intellectual integrity. It is thus a great moral quality coming with the prestige of the enormous achievements of modern science. Now it would be difficult indeed to find a closer parallel for the scientific spirit than the demand of Jesus for utter inner integrity of spirit: “Why even of yourselves,” he says, “judge ye not what is right?” His constant direct ap¬ peal to the reason and conscience of his hearer, rather than to any external authority, even his own, reflects a similar radical loyalty to the truth. For he seeks for his disciples insights, convictions, faiths, and decisions which are veritably their own, and not passively taken over from any other. A close and effective alliance between the scientific and the ideal interests ought then to be possible. When we have thus seen something of the great posi¬ tive contributions which modern science is making and can make to the ideal interests, we perceive how impossible it is to regard their relations as essentially antagonistic; how many difficulties, on the contrary, disappear when we thus see our world problem in the large; how much more unified our world-view becomes; and how real is the light thrown by modern science upon our specifically ideal views. IV So many religious people, however, are feeling just now serious difficulty in harmonizing their religious faith with the scientific view of evolution , that a brief review of that problem seems demanded. The difficulties felt are generally of two quite different kinds: the difficulty of harmonizing the evolution theory with Biblical statements, and the difficulty of harmonizing the scientific presentation of evolution with common re- 20 Seeing Life Whole ligious views of God and man. In the interests of clear¬ ness and accuracy, it is desirable distinctly to separate the two questions; for quite different principles are in¬ volved. The consideration of the first difficulty naturally belongs to the discussion of the Biblical approach to our entire problem of a Christian philosophy of life, and will be dealt with there. The second difficulty should be defi¬ nitely faced at this point. 11 It is natural that many should have found great diffi¬ culty in making the transition from a traditional doctrine of direct divine creation, especially of man, to a view of the gradual development of all the world including plants, animals and men, with no sign of direct intervention by God at any point. Such a presentation seemed to lend itself readily to a denial of all divine purpose in the world and of the special significance of man, and to a material¬ istic interpretation of the universe. It seemed even to such fine minds as those of Romanes and Huxley, for example, that Darwin’s setting forth of evolution meant simply a selfish bloody struggle for existence and drove one, therefore, to the abandonment of any ideal inter¬ pretation of the world. For Romanes it seemed that the universe had “lost its soul of loveliness”; for faith in God had gone. And Huxley felt that any true human ethics must be at perpetual war with the ethics of the universe, as the evolution theory disclosed them. When Darwin added to his Origin of Species his book on The Descent of Man , it seemed to many still more impossible to harmonize the evolution view with any faith in God as Father, or in man, as a child of God and made in his image. Natural, then, the difficulties were. Were they also final and decisive? Or was this to be another case where the 11 Cf. King, Reconstruction in Theology, pp. 48-60, 81-108. 21 The Scientific Approach difficulty was not with the majestic array of the facts, but with a superficial interpretation of the facts? A series of considerations suggests that religion need have no quarrel with the scientific view of evolution . In the first place, we may well remind ourselves again of science's threefold self-restriction to phenomena, to experience, and to the tracing of causal connections. For this means that it is consciously not passing upon any ultimate questions of origin or reality. These questions belong to philosophy. Science as such, thus, can be no enemy of religion; while a materialistic philosophy is in¬ evitably such an enemy. It is a pity that those anxious about religion should not see this fact. In the second place, as we have seen, the two questions of process and meaning cannot well cross each other. In its setting forth of evolution, science is simply dealing with the process. What that process means , what ideal interpretation it will bear, religion and the other ideal interests may themselves decide. And it is just as pos¬ sible (and much more reasonable) to put a religious in¬ terpretation upon the facts of the evolutionary process, as it is to put a materialistic or purely mechanical inter¬ pretation upon that process. This possible ideal inter¬ pretation of evolution has become much clearer, as study of the evolutionary process has gone on, and as men have come to see that that process has not been primarily a selfish bloody struggle for existence even in the lower animal series. From the beginning, as Drummond in¬ sisted, side by side with “the struggle for life” has gone on “the struggle for the life of others.” The evolutionary process becomes thus capable of an ideal, a religious, in¬ terpretation. So much so that Thomson and Geddes con¬ clude their study of evolution with an emphatic idealism: 12 u Evolution, pp. 246-248. 22 Seeing Life Whole “As in plants the species-maintaining functions preponder¬ ate over the individual ones ... so the same preponderance appears in animals. The ‘self-interest’ in which the utili¬ tarian economists found the all-sufficient spring of action, and which naturalists too long and too uncritically adopted from these (whence Huxley’s ‘gladiator’s show’), turns out to be enlightened by family interest, species interest, however sub-conscious. . . . That increase of the reproductive sacrifice which first makes the mammal, and then marks each of its distinctive uplifts of further progress, . . . that increase of parental care, that frequent appearance of sociality and co¬ operation which, even in its rudest forms, so surely secures the success of the species attaining it, be it mammal or bird, insect or even worm—all these survivals of the truly fittest, through love and sacrifice, sociability and co-operation simple to complex—need far other prominence than they can pos¬ sibly receive even by some mildewing attenuation of the classic economic hypothesis of the progress of the species essentially through the internecine struggle among its in¬ dividuals at the margin of subsistence. . . . Most briefly stated, the view of evolution thus reached is that . . . with progress essentially through the subordination of individual struggle and development to species-maintaining ends. The ideal of evolution is thus no gladiator’s show, but an Eden; and though competition can never be wholly eliminated . . . it is much for our pure natural history to see no longer struggle, but love as ‘creation’s final law/ ” Moreover, it should be noted, just because the scien¬ tific question is one of process solely, and because no one thinks of seeing God at work in the changes of nature like a finite creature working upon things from without, that the process would look just the same to the observer, whether he thought it purely mechanical or wholly due to God. It is also true, if simply the questions of process are left to science, that religion has no reason to object to the fvllest freedom of investigation in any field. In any in- 23 The Scientific Approach quiry concerning the facts, religion refuses to settle a priori how God must have acted in any given case in na¬ ture or revelation, but turns over to humble patient scien¬ tific inquiry how he did and does act. As I have else¬ where said: Nor ought this absolutely untrammeled scien¬ tific investigation to give anxiety to any real believer in God. For scientific investigation simply seeks the facts, and can, therefore, so far as it is successful, only make more clear to us exactly how God did proceed. And this, if we are really in earnest in our desire to understand God, we ought to be glad to know. If to-morrow men were able to trace in the laboratory the precise steps by which the living arises from the non-living, no ideal or religious in¬ terest would be in any manner affected, except that we should simply understand a little more fully the method God took in a case in which the mode of his action is to us now quite obscure. We are continually in danger of as¬ suming that vital religious interests are at stake in the decision of questions of mere process; whereas religion is primarily concerned only with meaning. 13 In the whole question of scientific evolution, therefore, just because it is simply a question of process, the re¬ ligious man should see that it becomes, from the religious point of view, only a question of the method of creation which God actually employed—gradual or sudden; by a succession of separate divine acts, or by applying in the universe as a whole such a process as is indubitably seen in the development of the oak from the acorn, or in the growth of an individual human being from the germ. The religious man is not primarily concerned about the method of creation at all. He sees God as the creative source of all in any case, and he is sure with Lotze that “whichever way of creation God may have chosen, in none u Reconstruction in Theology, pp. 49-50. 24 Seeing Life Whole can the dependence of the universe on Him become slacker, in none be drawn closer.” 14 Whatever the method of creation, too, man is just as truly made in “ the image of God” because he is what he is, possessed of spiritual qualities akin to God. Surely the image of God in man does not depend on some par¬ ticular manner of body-building. Indeed, if there is any difference in significance in the place given to man, in the two methods of conceiving creation, it might well be claimed that the facts which have led to the evolution point of view, with its millennia of preparation for man, give the greater glory to man. For the evolution view means that in the age-long development of the world, a creature is finally reached in man who is capable of endless growth in knowledge, in power, in character, in fellowship with the living God—a creature of whom it might most fit¬ tingly be said that he was made in “the image of God”; a creature worthy of the untold ages which have gone to his making. Nor does man’s lowly origin, on the evolution theory, in any way determine man’s value. Science itself had very humble beginnings, but its present achievements are not lessened thereby. In no case does origin determine value. It is shallow reasoning that so supposes. Man is what he is, not what he was. Nor as a matter of fact does the creation of man through a long evolution of life give man a lowlier origin than direct creation from “the dust of the ground.” From the religious point of view, the dig¬ nity and worth of man lie in any case in God’s purpose concerning him, and that purpose is not affected by the particular method of his working. It is also worth careful heeding that in truth there are no other or greater difficulties involved for religion in the 14 Microcosmus, Vol. I, p. 374. 25 The Scientific Approach evolution of the world and of the human race than in the freely recognized development of the individual man from the germ . For the individual human embryo passes through many of the stages from the lowest animal to the highest human stage. There is no sign of external in¬ tervention at any point. No sharp lines can be drawn between the stages passed through, and yet manifestly profound differences do come in, in the development of the individual. In the evolution view, we are simply recognizing the same facts in the development of the race as are well recognized in the case of the individual. Due weight has seldom been given to this parallel between the development of the individual and the evolution of the race; for, as Schmid has clearly pointed out, 15 44 The idea of a development of species, and also of man, does not offer to theistic reasoning any new or any other difficul¬ ties than those which have been long present (in the case of the individual), and which had found their solution in the religious consciousness long before any idea of evolu¬ tion disturbed the mind.’ ” 16 It is important, too, in thinking of the religious bear¬ ings of evolution, to see that evolution means real evolu¬ tion, a succession of stages—in general genuinely pro¬ gressive—with new phenomena and new laws on each stage. This is the heart of the ideal contention concerning evolu¬ tion—the real appearance of the new, as the evolution goes on. It is, therefore, a crude misunderstanding of evolution to suppose that it puts everything on a level, and in particular that it puts man on the level of any lower animals. That is precisely what it does not do. Religion is quite unwilling, too, to admit that increasing knowledge of the methods of God’s working means pro- “ Theories of Darwin, pp. 265 ff. 18 King, Reconstruction in Theology, pp. 86-7. 26 Seeing Life Whole gressive elimination of God from the universe . Religion has no interest in insisting upon “gaps” in the evolution series—the occurrence of chasms that must be bridged by direct divine intervention; as though God were pecu¬ liarly needed at such points in world development and not in the rest. It is, therefore, quite unwilling to base its faith in God upon such gaps in the evolution series, or to base its argument for God on ignorance. It believes in God, upon whom the whole universe, in every least atom of it, and in every humblest spirit of it, is absolutely dependent. Of that dependence it is certain, and no study of the method of it can make it less certain. Moreover, our study of the contributions of modern science to the ideal interests suggests that we need not stop in a mere defense of the evolution point of view, but may expect from evolution positive gains for religion . For the evolution point of view gives a larger view of the method, plan and aim of God in the universe; brings a great extension and strengthening of the old design argument by replacing a multitude of smaller designs testifying to intelligence by one all-embracing purpose; reveals more clearly the harmony between the plan of God in the natural world and his plan in the spiritual world; and tends to an enlarged conception of God in his immanence in the world. Evolution, thus, is not merely consonant with a theistic view of the world; it distinctly strengthens such a view. As Waggett puts it, it brought to theism “a juster method,” “a more scientific temper,” and “a bolder lan¬ guage,” and so made our theism more “sufficiently theis¬ tic.” “For science, the Divine must be constant, operative everywhere and in every quality and power, in environ¬ ment and in organism, in stimulus and in reaction, in variation and in struggle, in hereditary equilibrium, and 27 The Scientific Approach in ‘the unstable state of species’; equally present on both sides of every strain, in all pressures and in all resistances, in short in the general wonder of life and the world. And this is exactly what the Divine Power must be for religious faith. , . . Here again our theism was not sufficiently theistic.” 17 Evolution, moreover, as the study of it has gone on, has made it increasingly evident that we have greater reason than ever to believe in intelligent purpose at work in the world. To this effect Ell wood 18 quotes Conklin as a scientific scholar: “The possibilities are almost infinity to one against the conclusion that the order of nature, the fitness of environment, and the course of progres¬ sive evolution with all its marvellous adaptations are all the results of blind chance. ... In short, science reveals to us a universe of ends as well as of means, of teleology as well as of mechanism, and in this it agrees with the teachings of philosophy and religion. 55 19 To like import Professor J. Arthur Thomson, out of his full knowledge as a biologist, thus closes his Gifford Lectures on A Study of Animate Nature: 20 “The general conclu¬ sion of our study is that a scientific description of Animate Nature and its Evolution is congruent with the view that the whole is the expression of an originative purpose. The scientific formulation is consistent with the conclusion, which must be reached along other lines, that the ‘Nature 5 we know intimately may be interpreted as one of the expressions of the Divine Spirit. No conclusion along our lines of study is likely to be within sight of the truth that does not sound the note of joyous admiration: ‘Prais’d be the fathomless Universe, for life and joy, and for 17 Evolution in Modern Thought, pp. 226-232, 243. 18 The Reconstruction of Religion, p. 134. “ The Direction of Human Evolution, p. 228. 20 Quoted by Davidson in Recent Theistic Discussion, pp. 65, 56. 28 Seeing Life Whole objects and knowledge curious.’ But shall we not rather seek to worship the Author of the Universe—albeit so imperfectly discerned—from whom all comes, by whom all lives, in whom all ends ?” And the poet agrees with the biologist: A fire-mist and a planet A crystal and a cell A jelly-fish and a saurian And caves where cave-men dwell; Then a sense of law and beauty, And a face turned from the clod— Some call it evolution And others call it God. 21 31 W. H. Carruth, Each in His Own Tongue. CHAPTER II THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH In modern psychology, in the broader sense, men are trying to apply the scientific spirit and method to the study of man’s own nature in all its manifestations and relations. Just as in the study of external nature men have sought to discover the laws of that nature and so to master its forces and resources; so in psychology they are seeking to discern the laws of man's own nature , and so to master its forces and resources. That concerns all human endeavor. We naturally turn next, therefore, in our problem of a Christian philosophy of life, to the psychological approach. i The significant breadth of the more modern psychology , including a reasonable emphasis on “behavior,” is clearly indicated by McDougall and can hardly be put more briefly: “Psychologists must cease to be content with the sterile and narrow conception of their science as the science of con¬ sciousness, and must boldly assert its claim to be the positive science of the mind in all its aspects and modes of functioning, or, as I would prefer to say, the positive science of conduct or behaviour. Psychology must not regard the introspective description of the stream of consciousness as its whole task, but only as a preliminary part of its work. Such intro¬ spective description, such ‘pure psychology,’ can never con- 29 30 Seeing Life Whole stitute a science, or at least can never rise to the level of an explanatory science; and it can never in itself be of any great value to the social sciences. The basis required by all of them is a comparative and physiological psychology relying largely on objective methods, the observation of the behaviour of men and of animals of all varieties under all possible con¬ ditions of health and disease. It must take the largest possible view of its scope and functions, and must be an evolutionary natural history of mind. Above all, it must aim at providing a full and accurate account of those most fundamental ele¬ ments of our constitution, the innate tendencies to thought and action that constitute the native basis of the mind. Happily this more generous conception of psychology is beginning to prevail. . . . On every hand we hear it said that the static, descriptive, purely analytic psychology must give place to a dynamic, functional, voluntaristic view of mind. A second very important advance of psychology towards usefulness is due to the increasing recognition of the extent to which the adult human mind is the product of the moulding influence exerted by the social environment, and of the fact that the strictly individual human mind, with which alone the older introspective and descriptive psychology concerned itself, is an abstraction merely and has no real existence.” 1 u Now from the point of view of the ideal interests, I think, we need have no quarrel with such a definition of psychology as this, or with such an attempt as it pre¬ supposes. On the one hand, justice is done to the evolutionary, behavioristic, and social aspects of psychol¬ ogy, and, on the other hand, there is no attempt to identify consciousness with behavior. The change in viewpoint and scope involved does not necessarily carry with it any hostility to ideal interests. Indeed, McDougall, whose definition I am using, has no thought of denying the facts of consciousness, and himself insists at vital points on a a Social Psychology, 11th ed., pp. 15-16. 31 The Psychological Approach teleological interpretation of the psychological facts. 2 It was inevitable that such an attempt as McDougall defines should be made, in trying to show the dawn and growth of mind in a study of the evolution of the animal world and of men. In truth, “behavioristic” psychology, as thus defined, might be said to be simply an attempt to carry to the farthest possible limit the conception of psychology as an empirical science, confining its questions absolutely to questions of process and not of final mean¬ ing. This is an entirely legitimate attempt, if it is only recognized as being just what it is and not something else. It is even desirable to carry this point of view of empirical science —the solution of the question of process —as far as it can be carried. No limitations are to be set upon the inquiry after empirical explanation. This means, for example, that as far as possible we shall express the facts of physics in mathematical form, though we cannot make such propositions cover the entire con¬ crete reality. It means that we must carry the physical and chemical explanations to their utmost possible limit in the study of life in biology. It means that we must go as far as we possibly can in tracing causal connections in the stream of consciousness and in all physical reactions— in all behavior. As Miinsterberg 3 puts it: “Psychology may dissolve our will and our personality and our free¬ dom, and it is constrained by duty to do so, but it must not forget that it speaks only of that will and that per¬ sonality which are by metamorphosis substituted for the personality and the will of real life, and that it is this real personality and its free will which creates psychology in the service of its ends and aims and ideals.” Every * Social Psychology, p. 263. 8 Psychology and Life, pp. 23-28. 32 Seeing Life Whole science is in this sense a “child of duties,” as Miinsterberg cal]s it. The scientific historian in like manner must try to carry his proof of causal relations as far as he possibly can; though he may well conclude in the end, with Har- nack, that biography is both the least scientific, and at the same time the most valuable, history. Inquiry, thus, after an empirical explanation is entirely justified. It will give a part of the facts; and it will even throw more light probably in the end on the question of meaning, if the world is a unity at all. hi But it needs squarely to be said that there is a type of “ behaviorism ” that tends directly to a materialistic philosophy and that therefore cannot be harmonized with an ideal or religious interpretation of the world. Pro¬ fessor Pratt has put this issue so sharply and effectively that I may well leave it with his full statement: 4 “Behaviorism originated as a method in animal psychology. Out of patience with the futile attempt to tell what the animal was thinking about or how it was feeling when put through various experiments, the investigators in this field at length said, Why bother our heads as to this unanswerable question? The important thing for science is to know how the animal reacts in the presence of various stimuli. Let us, therefore, frankly make the object of our study not the animal’s hypo¬ thetical consciousness but its actual behavior. So successful was this reorganization of method in getting results that were truly objective, verifiable, and scientific, that certain of the bolder spirits proposed it should be applied also to human psychology; and applied it has been. The experimenter ob¬ serves the reactions, the behavior, the physiological processes 4 Matter and Spirit, pp. 112-13, 115, 116-17, 118. The Psychological Approach 83 of his subject, makes objective measurements with instru¬ ments of precision, and never asks for his subject’s intro¬ spection nor bothers as to his consciousness. The objectivity of these observations is one of the advantages claimed for the new method by its adherents, but they also enthusiastically recommend it as a welcome means of escaping the age-long psychophysical problem and of putting permanently on the shelf all its traditional solutions. . . . “The word Behaviorism is used in two quite distinct senses. It may, on the one hand, be taken as a method in psychology— the method, namely, which refuses to make any use of intro¬ spection or any reference to consciousness, and which insists that as psychologists we should study only bodily reactions and physiological processes. But secondly it may be taken in more metaphysical fashion; it may, namely, mean that consciousness is behavior, and that in any other sense it simply does not exist. . . . “Let us, then, consider Behaviorism in the first place as merely a method of psychology. . . . We may have our own opinions as to the possibility of giving a complete or even a very intelligent description of human nature by a method that leaves consciousness (in the ordinary sense of the word) entirely out of account; but so long as the behaviorist sticks to his measurements and makes no statements either explicit or implicit concerning consciousness we shall have nothing to say, because his assertions so far forth have no bearing upon the mind-body problem. But as a fact, the behaviorist means his method to have a very definite bearing upon the mind- body problem; it is, as we have often been told, a means of avoiding it altogether. Now so long as Behaviorism re¬ mains merely a method it is plain that there is only one way in which it can enable us to avoid this question of the relation of the psychical to the physical. This is, namely, by insisting that the psychical has no relation to the physical that is of any importance to science. In fact, this is exactly the pre¬ supposition of Behaviorism as a method. Human behavior, it maintains, can be adequately and completely described and explained by the anatomy and physiology of the body and by the nature of the various physical stimuli that play upon it. No reference to consciousness is either needed or in any way helpful. . . . 34 Seeing Life Whole “On the question of the efficiency of consciousness, there¬ fore, Behaviorism, even when understood only as a method, is obliged to take exactly the same position as Materialism. But Behaviorism cannot take the position of Materialism and avoid its difficulties/* But even when a metaphysical behaviorism is entirely avoided, and psychology is kept a truly empirical science, it needs constantly to be remembered that the point of view of empirical science, as we have seen, is only one point of view. Side by side with the question of empirical explanation there must be the question of meaning, the question of ideal interpretation. And—to put the matter with the utmost brevity—the whole of reality, the whole man, registers its inevitable protest against making the mathematico-mechanical view of the world the only view; against making logical consistency the sole test of truth or reality; against ignoring all data except those which come through the intellect alone; that is, against trying to make a part, not the whole of man, the standard; in other words, against ignoring the data which come through feeling and will—emotional, esthetic, ethical, and religious data—as well as those judgments of worth which underlie reason’s theoretical determinations . 5 This is only to say, in the light of the discussion of evolution, that behavioristic psychology brings to the ideal interests no new difficulties. It is still true that origin does not determine value; that it is of the essence of evolution that the new appears with its new stages and new laws; that the prime significance of the psychical, side by side with the physical, cannot be denied; that the psychological cannot be forthwith translated into the philosophical—answers to questions of process into answers to questions of meaning; that especially, as Lipp- 6 Cf. King, Theology and the Social Consciousness, pp. 78-81. 35 The Psychological Approach mann 6 protests, so deterministic a view of human conduct through “interests” is not to be taken as to scout all rational guidance of human progress by first-rate states¬ men, not “second-best statesmen”; that on the contrary, as we have already seen, clear gains for ideal interests are to be expected through the growing mastery of the laws of human nature and of social progress. IV We may, indeed, go farther, and say that when scien¬ tifically guarded against a materialistic behaviorism, the broader conception of the more modern psychology, with its evolution point of view and with its emphasis on the functional and on the social, makes only more important the great practical inferences from modern psychology. So Professor George M. Stratton answers the question— Where has psychology left religion? 7 “In brief it would seem to me proper to say that psychology leaves religion living, with new means for its great work, and with fresh confidence in the naturalness and the need of the religious life.” For at no point does scientific study approach more nearly the problem of moral and religious living than in these great practical inferences from psychology. For from the religious point of view I cannot more adequately define the goal of my life than to say that it is to fulfil the complete purpose with which God called me into being; for the essence of anything is best expressed in terms of purpose. To state the essence of a machine, for example, cannot be done by mechanical enumeration and descrip¬ tion of its parts, but only by indicating what it is for, what it was meant to be. So, if I could know the full °Yale Review, July, 1922, pp. 673 ff. 7 The Journal of Religion , January, 1923. 36 Seeing Life Whole purpose of God in calling me into being—the will of God for me—I should thus know the goal of my life. Now, from the fundamentally Christian point of view the will of God is chiefly revealed in two ways: first, in the laws of man’s nature, which religion must conceive as the creation of God, and so as manifesting something at least of the will of God concerning man; and, second, in the life and teaching of Christ, whom Christianity conceives as the supreme revelation of God. This means, in the first place, that men are to discern and obey the laws involved in their own nature —the laws of life individual and social. Huxley’s famous definition of education takes exactly this point of view: “Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature— under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws.” The point of view is as simple and basic as is the common-sense method of dealing with a fine automobile. As surely as one will get the most out of such a machine by following carefully the directions of the manufacturer, so surely will he get the most out of his own being, by knowing and obeying its laws. Similarly, in the second place, if the Christian point of view is right in finding the supreme revelation of the will of God in history’s supreme personality, then men are also to build on the revelation of the will of God in the life and teaching of Jesus . And if the will of God—the moral and religious goal of life—is to be found in these two ways, the two ways ought fundamentally to agree —the great practical inferences from modern psychology, and the Christian ideals. But the suggestiveness and helpfulness of such agreement The Psychological Approach 37 depend upon an absolutely honest use of each line of thought. We begin with the inferences from psychology. v The moral and religious significance of the great prac¬ tical inferences from modern psychology may be briefly indicated here. 8 9 In my Rational Living 9 I have pointed out that there seem to me to be four great inferences from modern psychology , and each with suggestions for life and char¬ acter—that is, with direct suggestion of the conditions of growth, of character, of happiness, and of influence. And these inferences seem to me to be only further emphasized by later psychological developments. These four great inferences are: life is complex; man is a unity; will and action are of central importance; and the real is concrete. In other words, modern psychology has four great empha¬ ses ; for it may be said to urge upon us the recognition of the multiplicity and intricacy of the relations everywhere confronting us; of the essential unity of the relations involved in our own nature, the unity of the mind and the unity of mind and body; of the fact that this unity demands action and is best expressed in action; and that we are, thus, everywhere shut out from resting in abstrac¬ tions and must find reality only in the concrete. Manifestly these contentions are all closely interwoven , and they may even be regarded as all summed up in the last—as asserting the interrelatedness of all. For if only 8 For a full statement of these inferences see King, Rational Living. For a brief, direct putting of psychological help in the problem of character, see King, “How to Make a Rational Fight for Character,” in Personal and Ideal Elements in Education, pp. 236-272. 9 Pp. 3-4. 33 Seeing Life Whole the concrete is real, then life is, in the first place, no abstraction or series of abstractions, but rich and complex beyond all formulation. In this complexity, secondly, no sharp lines can be drawn, all is interwoven; the life of man, therefore, is a unity—body and mind. But all experiences, bodily and mental, tend to terminate in action, in which alone the whole man is seen; will and action, then, are of central importance. The four propo¬ sitions tend thus to fall together. And they all put emphasis on seeing life whole. A brief summary may be made of the practical sugges¬ tions coming from these four great inferences. From the first inference comes the necessity of a store of permanent and valuable interests—one of the great ends of education and of all growth—and of realizing that life is completely interrelated in all its parts, and cannot be sharply divided off nor summed up in short and simple formulas; but rather has its constant paradoxes which we cannot safely ignore. It is this complexity which Lecky has in mind in his Map of Life , in what he calls “the importance of compromise in practical life.” And it is this upon which James is insisting also, when he urges “the reinstatement of the vague and inarticulate to its proper place in our mental life.” The second great inference contends that we must keep constantly in mind the unity of man’s nature, and recog¬ nizes that we cannot tear ourselves down at one point and leave the rest of our life unaffected, and that real educa¬ tion, on the other hand, anywhere is education everywhere. It demands that all sides of man’s nature are to be taken into account. It suggests, too, the importance of remem¬ bering the mutual influence of body and mind. The third great inference , the central importance of will and action, indicates that work—adequate expressive 39 The Psychological Approach activity—is one of the greatest means to character, in¬ fluence and happiness alike; as the mood of work—the objective, self-forgetful mood—is a prime condition of the finest living. The fourth inference gives a like emphasis to the personal and social everywhere, to personal association as the greatest of all means for largeness of life, and to respect for personality, including self-respect and respect for others, as the supreme condition of all fine personal relations. If I am right in these four great inferences, they directly suggest, as laws of our own natures, the funda¬ mental means and spirit required for education, for growth, for all true living. For the great means required 10 for these all-inclusive ends are, first, a life sufficiently complex to give acquaintance with the great fundamental facts of the world, on the one hand, and to call out the entire man, on the other; second, the com- pletest possible expressive activity on the part of the growing individual; and third, personal association with broad and wise and noble lives. And the corresponding spirit demanded for all true life and growth must be, first, broad and catholic in both senses—as responding to a wide range of interests, on the one hand, and looking to the all-round development of the individual, on the other hand; second, objective rather than self-centred and introspec¬ tive; and third, imbued with the fundamental convictions of the social consciousness. Psychology seems to make clear that these are always the greatest and the alone indispensable means and conditions in training for life, and they contain in themselves the great sources of character, of happiness, and of influence. The supreme opportunity, in other words, that life offers at its best, is opportunity 10 King, Personal and Ideal Elements in Education, pp. 1-70. 40 Seeing Life Whole to use one’s full powers in a wisely chosen, complex environment, in association with the best—and all this in an atmosphere catholic in its interests, objective in spirit and method, and democratic, unselfish, and finely reverent in its personal relations. VI Now these fundamental means and conditions seem to me to be all indubitably Christian emphases , and to fit closely into our moral and religious goal. I do not see that Christianity has any quarrel with these psychological inferences at any point, but may well believe that they come from the same God who revealed himself supremely in Christ. For even the complexity of life and the unity of man's nature are strongly felt, for example, in the extended recognition, by the New Testament, of paradox, especially the paradox of saving the life by losing it,—putting always the relative goods in the relative place,—and the paradox of liberty and law, 11 with which not less than five New Testament books have to do. The unity of man’s spirit, indeed, is one of the four fundamental motives that run right through the Sermon on the Mount. In like manner psychology’s emphasis on expressive activity —on work calling out the whole man as a great means to character, influence, and happiness, is an ac¬ curate echo of the contentions of Jesus: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the king¬ dom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven.” “Every one therefore that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who built his house upon the rock.” 12 u King, Fundamental Questions, Ch. V. 13 Matt. 7 :21, 24. The Psychological Approach 41 So, too, psychology’s emphasis on the concrete facts , on persons, and on personal association as the supreme means to character, influence, and happiness, is paralleled at every point by Christ’s contentions. For Christianity is an historical religion that intends above all not to rest on abstract principles, but to keep close to the concrete reality of the personality of Jesus. Herrmann is inter¬ preting accurately Christ’s own view of life when he says so expressly: “In its commencement and in all its develop¬ ment alike, Christian faith is nothing else than trust in persons and in the powers of personal life.” 18 The great way in which the kingdom of Christ is to come is by the method of the contagion of the good life—the salt of the earth—through personal association. A like parallel could be shown to exist between the spirit fundamentally demanded by modern psychology and the spirit required by Christ—broad, catholic, objective, self- forgetful, permeated by reverence for personality. vn The simple truth is that psychology has much help to give in bringing in the fruits of practical religion; but the help must come chiefly from such sober fundamental psychological principles as those of which we have been speaking, rather than from the magic of “new thought,” of self-hypnotism, and the revelling in the subconscious,— with all of which our time is rife; as a multitude of advertisements in city papers bear witness, which promise in miraculous fashion to furnish power and success to order and over-night. This is not to say that there is no value in certain psychological suggestions particularly stressed just now; u The Communion of the Christian with God, p. 228. 42 Seeing Life Whole in carefully directed selective attention; or in remember¬ ing that we have much to do with determining our own environment and our dominant moods; or, in somewhat abnormal cases, in expert analysis of relatively subcon¬ scious life, in order to discover unwholesome suppressions; or in pointing out how these suppressions of natural in¬ stincts may be replaced by a higher use of them; or in clear recognition of different levels of energy that may be tapped especially by religion or by a great affection. But it is to say that magic formulas cannot take the place of breadth of view, of rational purpose, and of a soundly developed personality; that self-hypnosis is not the normal road to high moral and religious achievement, and is often most deceiving—a kind of intoxication in which discrimination has ceased; that denial of plain scientific facts is a road to inner dishonesty not to reli¬ gious faith; that relying upon the inspiration of the sub¬ conscious in automatic writing does not promise better but poorer results; for the higher faculties of judgment and self-control are in abeyance. In other words, there is a kind of patent-medicine use of supposed principles of psychology to-day that is nauseating and misleading. Professor Dewey’s sober words need to be heeded: 14 “Any critical appraisal of such methods as those of Coueism seems to imply lack of sympathy for those who are relieved. Any relief, it would seem, is at least so much net gain. But all cheap, short cuts which avoid recognition of basic causes have to be paid for at a great cost. The great¬ est cost is that palliative and remedial measures put off the day in which fundamental causal factors are faced and con¬ structive action undertaken. They perpetuate the domination of life by reverie, magic, superficiality and evasion; they perpetuate, that is, the sickness of the world. As long as the mind is set upon curing we shall need to be cured. 14 The New Republic, January 24, 1923. The Psychological Approach 43 Only education and re-education into normal conditions of growth accomplishes anything positive and enduring.” 15 If, then, we are to rely only upon truly fundamental psychological principles and assured results, for signifi¬ cant moral and religious help from psychology, we are perhaps bound to illustrate by suggestion at least in a single problem—that of self-mastery—both the psycho¬ logical and the Christian methods of solution,—in order to see how truly they harmonize and how really they help. We may stop for a moment for a brief consideration of the more general problem of the psychology of power . As James long ago pointed out, men have different levels of energy available, far beyond their normal expenditure; but these levels are not directly to be tapped by mere force of will. Rather is it true that our most important decisions in life are themselves not commonly made by a “slow dead heave” of the will, but in “a sober and stren¬ uous mood,” some of the conditions of which, personal and social, are clear. We can do something to induce this sober and strenuous mood through attention to the great spiritual realities and to the deepest interests of our lives, and often through association with others. The levels of energy are most readily tapped by the great experiences of religion and of other primary instincts. And even these other primary instincts can be made to help the higher life, not by negative suppression, but by giving these instincts a new and significant content and field, just as an uplifting romantic love has in western civilization grown out of the simple sex instinct. As another has said of the primitive instincts of fear and of 15 For a recent sober and helpful discussion of some of these newer topics, from the religious point of view, see “The Psychology of Power,” “The Psychology of Grace,” and “The Psychology of Inspiration,” in The Spirit (edited by Streeter), pp. 68-112, 157-188, 195-219. 44 Seeing Life Whole self-assertion as well as of sex: “Abolish them we cannot; to suppress them is to deprive ourselves of their forces. To convert them and to redirect their forces to higher purposes is the work of beings possessed of intelligence, of will, and of an ideal.” 16 Here religion becomes what James called it,—the great unlocker of the powers of men. We turn now to the closely related and less general problem of self-mastery , for it is worth while to see, even if only by barest suggestion, how large and many-sided the problem is; how impossible it is to solve it by short cuts and formulas; how imperatively, therefore, it de¬ mands a large survey and penetrating discernment of the laws of our being and their involved conditions. The problem of self-mastery is the problem of guiding one’s powers and possessions to their true goal. It is an absolutely fundamental problem , basic to all achievement. It includes the mastery of one’s appetites and passions and powers—not simply by suppression; the mastery of one’s possessions—that one may own his possessions and not be owned by them; the mastery of one’s fears and anxieties. So large is the problem. And we must confine our discussion at this point to the single realm of appe¬ tites and passions and powers. Even so, the problem includes the problem of temperance in all appetites, the problem of personal purity, the problem of the control of temper, the problem of the control of the tongue, and the problem of right habits. First of all, self-mastery needs self-knowledge —knowl¬ edge of one’s own temperament and of one’s elements of strength and weakness; recognition of the kind of memory one has; whether one is prevailingly emotional or intellec¬ tual or volitional; whether one is naturally dramatic, or prone naturally to laziness, etc. 18 The Spirit, edited by Streeter, p. 95. The Psychological Approach 45 Self-mastery, too, needs knowledge of the laws of nature and of human nature —the realm in which one’s fight must be made—and a determined purpose habitually to fulfil the conditions involved in those laws. So only can one be sure that he is not fighting against the laws of the universe, but is enlisting as allies in his struggle the forces of exter¬ nal nature and of his own nature. These laws of human nature and their conditions in¬ clude many suggestions. The chief physical condition of self-mastery is surplus nervous energy. For that is the chief physical condition of power of attention; and power, under the stress of temptation, to keep attention fixed on the larger goods is the secret of victory. Self-mastery needs, too, definitely to call in the power of habit in the right directions, to reinforce the right decision at every point, remembering that there are good habits as well as bad. Self-mastery is not the asceticism of a contempt for the body or for the gifts that come through the body; but it does involve recognition of the true place and aim of these sense elements of our natures as real goods, though only relative goods, and the purpose to keep the relative goods in their relative place. Self-mastery, then, is not negative—the attempt simply to suppress the evil, but positive—replacing the evil with the good. And that requires engrossing interests other than those that tempt to evil. All sane living requires a wide circle of interests to assure freedom from an insistent single interest, and because the man of many interests is much more sure to find the key to any new complex situa¬ tion in which he may find himself. And more than this must be true. The man of self-mastery must have caught the vision of great interests , of great causes , and of great enthusiasms , that bring him deliverance from evil because 46 Seeing Life Whole he has found something else so vastly more worth while to do. One gets still closer to the deep sources of self-mastery when he sees that self-mastery looks also to self-respect and respect for the personality of others. For true self- respect is based on the recognition of one’s own unique individuality, and consequent possible contribution to society. Such self-respect is a distinct element of power and helps directly to self-control. So, too, the growing sense of the value and sacredness of the personality of others directly counterworks that contempt for person¬ ality which underlies all moral outrage, and so is basic to self-mastery. Moreover, we learn to serve by serving; and to render unselfish, reverent, loving service to others itself insures the continuation of such service, and the vital practice of self-mastery. It is the laboratory method in morals. But the one great road to self-mastery, as to all high achievement in character, is personal association with the N best, and primarily—the Christian believes—with Christ. And religion brings one more great motive for self-mastery to bear—the certainty that God’s will in duty, as a Father’s will, is inevitably not hindrance and limitation but a great way to life. These—in barest outline—are some of the chief psycho¬ logical considerations which need to be taken into account in the problem of self-mastery. They may perhaps sug¬ gest, at least, how real, how comprehensive, and how vital is the psychological approach to a Christian philosophy of life. vin We have been surveying that part of the central prob¬ lem of self-masterv which has to do with the control of The Psychological Approach 4 7 appetites and passions and powers, approaching the prob¬ lem from the side of psychology, from the laws especially of human nature. To see now the essential harmony of the revelation of the secrets of self-mastery—whether ex¬ pressed in the laws of human nature, or in Christ’s life and teaching—we may well consider another aspect of self-mastery,— the mastery of one's fears and anxieties , as Christ points the way . Christ means to emancipate his disciples from fear of the natural ills of poverty , suffering, age , failure , and death . These are all very natural subjects of human anxiety, no doubt. Christ, it should be clearly seen, does not deny their existence in the life of men, nor promise his disciples exemption from them. And yet he is profoundly con¬ cerned to deliver his disciples from the weakening fear of any of these natural ills. Let us see what it means to face them squarely in the spirit of Christ. Christ, in the first place, confronts them all with his one unconquerable faith— faith in the invincible love of God . Nothing can replace that. That, he says, you may absolutely rely upon, whatever the seeming; and it is the root of a peace the world can neither give nor take away. This is no religious cant. It is Christ’s profoundest con¬ viction, for which no facts are too hard, and which he wants to share with every disciple. The endless fruitful¬ ness for the life of men of his own baffling crucifixion and death is no small part of his proof. But, in the second place, Christ has to say concerning all these natural ills that anxiety about them is quite misplaced. They are not proper subjects for anxiety at all. He does not say, “Do not be too anxious about them.” He says, “Be not anxious”; “Fear not.” It is as though he were saying, If you want a truly satisfying life, 43 Seeing Life Whole you must get, above all, a different viewpoint. Bo not concentrate your attention on things . “For even in a man’s abundance, his life is not from the things which he possesseth.” You can be perfectly certain of that. You may go through life and never miss a good meal, never lack for ready money, never have an illness, never fail in your plans for material prosperity, and live to a green old age, and still have lived a worthless and contemptible life, deserving the contempt of others and your own self¬ contempt. You have the breadth of your own nature to reckon with, and the fundamental laws of human life, which are laws of God. Supremely regard these, and you cannot fail in what most concerns you. For any satisfy¬ ing life, things are incidental and are best taken inci¬ dentally. Christ’s own life is proof. He knew by experi¬ ence what these natural ills meant. Nevertheless he was the great bearer of life. And he does not deal softly with his disciples. Rather he urges, “It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master.” His appeal is to the heroic in men. “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me.” What, then, is one to say, from Christ’s point of view, to these different natural ills that in some form and degree are likely to come into any life—poverty, suffering, old age, failure, and death? First, so far as they are the natural lot of men, one is not to cringe and play the coward. Just because they have some element of naturalness in them, they are not merely arbitrary and meaningless, but have valuable dis¬ cipline to give. And, moreover, no ill is lessened but only increased by cringing cowardice. One is to make sure, too, in the second place, that these natural ills do not come upon him, or that their terrors are not increased , through his own fault, —through care- The Psychological Approach 49 less or wilful disobedience to the laws of life. That will remove their worst sting. With reference to others, the Christian disciple is also to have his earnest part in forwarding a civilization that shall be so reverent of the person, so emphatic in putting persons above things, so insistent that the standards and ideals of Christ are to prevail in all human relations, that all the human power and resource can do will be done to lessen the unnecessary bitterness of these natural ills . Let the Christian man make it certain to himself, too, that it is necessary for him to be a true man , and to take without a whimper whatever that involves. Even Pompey could rise to the dignity of saying, when warned of the danger of a course he was to take: “It is necessary for me to go. It is not necessary for me to live.” Comfort, and even life, can be had on terms plainly impossible to the true man. One cannot consent to play the despicable part of that member of the arctic exploring party who had to be shot because, to satisfy his own desire, he was stealing from the scanty stock of food that, daily weighed out, alone stood between the whole group and starvation. Suppose he had carried his plan through to the end,— successfully and undetected, and had alone survived, how horrible still his everlasting self-contempt! I was ashamed, I dared not lift my eyes, I could not bear to look upon the skies; What I had done! sure, everybody knew! From everywhere hands pointed where I stood, And scornful eyes were piercing through and through The moody armour of my hardihood. I heard their voices too, each word an asp That buzz’d and stung me sudden as a flame; And all the world was jolting on my name. And now and then there came a wicked rasp Of laughter, jarring me to deeper shame. 60 Seeing Life Whole And then I looked, but there was no one'High, No eyes that stabbed like swords or glinted sly, No laughter creaking on the silent air: And then I found that I was all alone Facing my soul, and next I was aware That this mad mockery was all my own. 17 Moreover, this is God’s world, and the Christian is to believe in His providence; not as guarding him from all discomfort,—Christ expressly denies that; but as always caring, and as finally overruling. The Christian may know that so far as he proves himself a true disciple of Christ, he is “immortal till his work is done,” as old Thomas Fuller insisted. Even death, for the Christian, is not necessarily an evil. And so Jesus urges with his disciples: “Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom ye shall fear: Fear Him who after He hath killed hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say unto you, Fear Him.” That is, fear God; fear for your inner life, and let this nobler fear cast out all meaner fears . Let the disciple of Christ, too, gird up the loins of his soul anew by remembering that if poverty and suffering and outward defeat come to the servant of God in the path of duty, and in spite of fidelity in earnest and loving service, they still cannot deprive him of the far greater riches that money cannot buy —the inner riches of the friendly life, of the love and trust and gratitude of men, of work worth doing, and of the joy of fidelity and of inner victory, of rising to the height of great causes and high enthusiasms, and sharing in God’s own purposes and triumphs. For what else does life exist? You cannot be defeated in the highest but by your own consent. No outward calamities, be it recalled, can carry any "James Stevens. The Psychological Approach 51 such loss as the steady deterioration of selfish , unscrupu¬ lous, parasitic wealth . As Carpenter says: “Like other problems the problem of property is best solved indirectly. That is, not by seeking material wealth directly, but by seeking that of which material wealth is only the symbol. ‘Seek ye first the kingdom . . . and all these things shall be added unto you.’ Vaguely metaphysical as these words sound, yet I believe they express a literal fact. . . . Seeking ease we have found disease; scrambling for wealth, our civilization has become poverty-stricken beyond all ex¬ pression; prizing mere technical knowledge, we have for¬ gotten the existence of wisdom; and setting up material property as our deity, we have dethroned the ruling power in our own natures. Not till this last is restored can we possibly attain to possession of the other things.” 18 And for the life that has been unselfish, genuinely true and friendly, faithful in its following of Christ, the deeper wretchedness of poverty, of suffering, of defeat, of old age , and of death is simply impossible. Is it poverty that threatens? The roots of his life lie deeper than things. Is he in the grip of suffering? He has learned to con¬ vert his sufferings into sacrifices to God and men, and so into an instrument of joy. Has he seemed to fail? In the midst of outer failure, he remembers that he is the disciple of a Master who seemed, too, to be utterly defeated. Is old age coming on? He refuses to be cowed by the thought of age; for ugly and sordid age cannot be the lot of the man who has sowed persistently the seed of purity and love. Is death in store? Death itself, in the thought of the Christian man, is but the gateway to a larger life and a more transcendent service. The true follower of Christ has been set at liberty from the bondage of these natural ills. He is a free man. M England’s Ideal, pp. 159-160, quoted by Moffatt. 52 Seeing Life Whole The great convictions, ideals, and hopes of religion, as expressed by Christ, aim thus to bring to men power and freedom and victory. While these great motives of reli¬ gion transcend in their sweep the simply psychological considerations from man’s nature, they nevertheless fit right into the great psychological laws and naturally supplement them. The psychological and the religious motives are at home with each other; they belong together; they obey essentially the same laws; they are in thorough harmony. There is a real and helpful psychological approach to a Christian philosophy of life. CHAPTER III THE VALUE APPROACH 1 I It is hard to realize the truth of Schiller’s statement: “Value is one of the last of the great philosophic topics to have received recognition. . . . Its discovery was prob¬ ably the greatest philosophic achievement of the nine¬ teenth century.” 2 But even within the comparatively short period which has elapsed, some things have become fairly clear. The discussion of values began with the sense of the oppositions of “fact” and “value,” of the “is” and the “ought ” of the standpoints of “description” and “appreciation”—or, as we have been saying, of the question of process, and the question of meaning. But as the discussion has gone on, as Schiller puts it: 3 “In general it may be concluded that, since values inhere in all the ‘facts’ that are recognized as such, they are them¬ selves facts, and that the antithesis between values and facts cannot be made absolute. Values are not simply fortuitous and gratuitous additions to facts, which are merely subjective and should be eliminated by strict science, but are essential to cognitive process and compatible with any sort and degree 1 1 am seeking in this chapter to make a somewhat complete state¬ ment of a line of thought which I have found very suggestive and helpful in giving religion its setting in the whole realm of the ideal—the close kinship of those values which we count most sig¬ nificant. The discussion here may be regarded as a development of the partial treatment of this subject in Chapter II of Religion as Life. 3 F. C. S. Schiller, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, article “Value,” Vol. XII, p. 584. 8 Op. cit., p. 587. 53 54 Seeing Life Whole of objectivity. ... It would seem to follow from the rela¬ tions between value and fact that values cannot be denied existence in any world that can exist for man, and this in several senses.” It should therefore be said from the beginning of our discussion of values, that value as here used is not intended to be subjective in the sense of denying the reality of the relation of inner experience to objective fact, but only in the sense that “a relation to personality is inherent in aU •values .” The experience in itself, in the first place, is a great fact in the world, as Schleiermacher and Ritschl have both made clear. Indeed, the experience of the beau¬ tiful, for example, in thoughtful minds, may be said to be a real goal of the external world, and in that sense the external world exists for the sake of the enjoying mind. Moreover, the sense of value, as religion uses it, is grounded in a faith that the world actually has meaning and value—a purpose of love at its heart. The ideal view so expresses its basic faith in a world in which are to be found the objective grounds for the conservation and progress of values—faith ultimately in God. To find one’s way into appreciation and conviction of the great values of life is certainly a chief end both of education and of life. The culture of an educated man implies the discovery and appreciation of an increasing store of permanent and valuable interests. And really to live with breadth and intensity requires a vital sense of the great values. Life is fundamentally cheapened wherever we lose the sense of worth out of it. Just be¬ cause, for most of us, as Carlyle says, the miraculous by simple repetition ceases to be miraculous, we need the help of the poet, the artist, and the seer. For it is the very business and mission of poet and artist and seer to keep 55 The Value Approach within themselves the responsiveness of youth to the won¬ der and beauty of life, to preserve the glory of the commonplace, in order that they may help the rest of us to a like vision. So Kipling thanks God that he has seen naught common on His earth. The thesis of this chapter is that the way into apprecia¬ tion and conviction of all the great values of life is essentially the same way, whether they are the esthetic values of the beautiful in music and art and literature; the unifying intellectual values of the scientific spirit and method, or of the historical spirit, or of the philosophic mind; the priceless personal values of friendship; or the values of our great moral and religious ideals,—the all- inclusive values of the true, of the good, and of the beautiful. Now, if the way into all these great values of life is essentially the same way, it is plain that this will bring a sense of unity and simplicity into life that could hardly come otherwise. And just as in modern science the sense of law brings conviction of possible achievement, so in these various realms of value the sense of unity brings a like assurance of reality and hope. For, if there is one way into all the great values of life, that very fact will help us to discern, too, the chief directions of significant living. Each value will help all the other values and in turn cannot spare the help of these others. Religion, thus, decidedly loses where it does not use the value approach or, in particular, the esthetic analogy. So remarkable and so honest a book as Herrmann’s The Communion of the Christian with God y for example, with its emphasis on judgments of worth, would gain much in concrete and vivid putting by a far freer use of the esthetic analogy. Whaty then , is the one great way into the values of lifef 56 Seeing Life Whole n First of all, we are commonly introduced into the values of life through the testimony of others , who have preceded us in appreciation of the value. It is in this way that values of all kinds spread from mind to mind and make their headway in society. For we are all born into a world in which many are already living in the enjoyment of life’s significant values. And this very fact calls our attention to these values. The constant and inevitable factor of imitation, also, that is often unconscious, is always at work in our human relations, and tending to reproduce in one person the sense of value found in another. Both these facts make plain the folly of attempt¬ ing to discover all values anew for ourselves. Before we could set before ourselves any conscious search for valu¬ able interests, we should already be sharing in them, through association with others. What McDougall says of the moral sentiments may be said of all our values: “No man could acquire by means of his own unaided reflections and unguided emotions any considerable array of moral sentiments ; still less could he acquire in that way any consistent and lofty system of them.” 4 It becomes the very business of a teacher, thus, to be an honest and effective witness to such values as he has him¬ self attained in the sphere of his own best study and living. And similarly this is also the precise business of the literary or musical or art critic. Men want from the critic honest testimony concerning his real impression of the art product under discussion,—testimony that is born out of his larger experience, his expert knowledge, and his superior insight. The critic is thus primarily an intro¬ ducer to the great values of which he speaks. And the • Social Psychology, p. 219. 57 The Value Approach traveler prizes his Baedeker in the art galleries of Europe —though he may sometimes scoff at it—just because the selection of pictures with its asterisks and double asterisks is believed to reflect the expert knowledge and superior insight of longer and larger experience than his own. The traveler might be glad, if indefinite time were at his dis¬ posal, to try to make his own discoveries of the best pictures in the collection he is studying, but just because for him “Art is long and Time is fleeting,” he gratefully accepts the help of those who can introduce him to the best. It is in this fashion, indeed, that all values ordi¬ narily come to one. The pictures, the music, the poems; the scientific, historical, and philosophical insights; the friends; the moral and religious ideals which we have and which mean most to us, have all come, for the most part, through the introduction of some other. But even the competent critic can only introduce one to the values of which he speaks. What measure of attainment one is then to make in them depends on oneself. So even religion makes its way among men. “The pro¬ gram of Christianity,” as Professor Bosworth says, “is the conquest of the world by a campaign of testimony through empowered witnesses.” It is not by accident, therefore, that in John’s Gospel, side by side with the great words, Life, Light, Truth, Love, is the other word, Witness. Nor is it by accident that the Gospel sums up the life and message of John the Baptist by saying: “There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for witness, that he might bear witness of the Light, that all might believe through him. He was not the Light, but came that he might bear witness of the Light.” 6 We too seldom appreciate our deep debt to the original Chris¬ tian witnesses. 6 John 1: 6-8. 58 Seeing Life Whole We shall better understand the prime significance of the work of the honest and effective witness if we remember that there are only two supreme services which we can render to one another: the witness of life, on the one hand, and the witness of word, on the other. For the first witness comes through the contagion of a good life, through the unconscious influence of an incarnated ideal. It is one’s greatest gift to another, because it is the gift of oneself. Life comes from life. And the witness by word is the sharing of our own best vision through honest testi¬ mony to the best we know, to what means most to us, to the chief sources of our life. The Christian’s sincere testimony—that in all the higher ranges of his life he lives by Christ, by convictions and motives and ideals that came from him—is a supreme example of the kind of testimony by which all values go forward. And these two witnesses of life and of word are closely interrelated and supple¬ mentary, and we cannot wisely separate them. Now if these two witnesses of life and of word are the two supreme services which men can render to one another, it concerns us to ask what makes a man’s influence and testimony count with us? What are the qualities of an effective witness? For these qualities would be the elements of the highest success in life, the conditions of the richest giving of ourselves in all our personal relations, the quali¬ ties which mark the good seed of the Kingdom, the quali¬ ties of the persons who are to help to insure the progress of the race. What are these qualities ? One direct answer is, that they are the qualities of the Beatitudes; for Christ counted these the characteristics of the citizen of the new kingdom which he came to set up; and they include naturally the personal and social quali¬ ties of high influence. A second answer is to be found in analyzing out the 59 The Value Approach qualities of the effective witness, who, if he is to be a genuinely moral force, must be not dominating but truly persuasive. What, then, makes a man’s testimony to a person, a cause, a great interest or value of any kind, count? What are the qualities of the men who best help us to come with appreciation and conviction into the values of music and art and literature, the values of the scientific and historic and philosophic spirit, the values of friendship, the values of moral and religious ideals—the all-embracing values of the true, the good, and the beau¬ tiful? The answer probably must be, first of all, the man's own conviction. For you must be impressed by the man’s own deep-going belief in what he is bearing witness to,— whether by life or by word. You must be sure that those who bear witness to the true, the good, and the beautiful have themselves indubitably caught the vision. Nothing can replace a man’s own conviction as an element of power. He must demonstrate that he has here something that he believes in with all his soul. His influence will be measured not by the length of his creed, but by the depth of con¬ viction behind it. A solid, enduring fulcrum is necessary to the exercise of influence. Deep convictions form that fulcrum. The man of conviction can be no sophist, though sophistry is a real danger in education. From the very breadth of their outlook, highly educated men sometimes cultivate a fatal facility in finding reasons for doing what they want to do. To have found a specious excuse for not doing one’s duty seems well nigh as satis¬ factory to many as to have accomplished the duty set. We cannot do justice, either, to the necessity of conviction without remembering that breadth is not lack of dis¬ crimination, nor tolerance lack of conviction. The effec¬ tive witness needs, thus, the sense of a vision seen, and 60 Seeing Life Whole hence a sense of mission and a sense of message. Con¬ viction, thus, is the first condition of all for the effective witness; but it bears persuasive testimony, it does no browbeating. The second quality of the effective witness is the man's own character and well-tested judgment in the sphere in which he bears witness. There is no cheap way to solid and enduring influence. In the last analysis we have only ourselves to give. We must speak out of our own experi¬ ence. There is no possible way by which we can separate the influence of our word from the final influence of our personality. There is always a double test in the case of any witness, the test both of character and of judgment. We must be able to trust the character of the witness and his unquestioned competence in the sphere in which he is speaking. He must have earned the right to speak, from long and significant experience. Weighing evidence, in the last analysis, must be weighing witnesses. How large and rich and significant is the personality back of the witness? This is the question that presses. The “forceful man” in the realm of values is necessarily the man of both character and judgment. The third quality of the effective witness is disinterested love. We must be able to believe that the witness who would introduce us to some great value of life has no selfish scheme of his own to work. He must be felt to seek sin¬ cerely the good of others. For there are few conditions of influence which lie deeper than that it can be said of a man that he forgets himself in his cause. Undoubtedly one of the chief reasons why Mr. Roosevelt weighed so much and so long with men of all parties was because men had the feeling that he did so many things which no one could believe it was simply politic to do. On the other hand, influence tends to go when yielding to selfish advan- 61 The Value Approach tage comes in. The public man, above all, who wishes to count profoundly in the life of the nation and not as a demagogue must keep himself above suspicion. He must be no grafter in any sense or degree; he must not cheaply lend his name; he must not profit selfishly by the position held. He is to be no player of politics. The unselfish love of an effective witness, too, must be so disinterested, so sensitive to the deeper conditions of another’s good as sacredly to respect the personality of that other, and so for this reason, too, not to mistake domination for in¬ fluence. These, then, are the three broad qualifications of the effective witness: conviction, character and judgment, dis¬ interested love. If a man has these he can hardly help being effective. But there is a fourth quality not unimportant: power to put one's testimony home, that is, power to make the value to which witness is borne real, rational and vital. This, for example, is what the Christian prophet would wish to do with reference to the great Christian truths: to put his testimony to these truths in such fashion as first of all to make them real —real as the realest things of the daily life, seen to be inevitably related to those realities of which we are most certain. And rational in the true sense—not rationalizing, giving trumped-up reasons for foregone conclusions—but showing that these great Christian truths are knit up with the best thinking one can any¬ where do; that they are part and parcel of a unified rational world, so that one can be sure that, when he turns his face toward God he does not turn his back upon the reason with which God endowed him. And vital —seen to spring up inevitably out of life, in closest relations with life, and having abiding motive, dynamic, and leading for life. 62 Seeing Life Whole In finding our way, then, into the great values of life, we are commonly introduced through the testimony of others, who have preceded us in the appreciation of these values. And those who can best give us this vital help must be those who have the qualities of the effective witness. m In this introduction to the values of life through the witness of others we have been emphasizing one side of the moral law, as we have seen that Herrmann characterizes it: “Mental and spiritual fellowship among men.” We turn now to the other side of the moral law: “Mental and spiritual independence on the part of the individual”— absolute honesty. For if one would find his way into genuine appreciation of any of these great values— esthetic, intellectual, personal, moral or religious—he must have downright inner honesty. He must be honest, first of all, with himself, and not less with others, from whom he receives such values, or to whom he is in turn to bring his introducing witness. Or, in other words, the way into all the great values of life must be marked by reality at every point. One must himself be real, must get at reality in the value which he is seeking, and there must be corresponding reality in his own witness. Unreality is a root peril. On the one hand, then, there must be complete honesty — no pretence of any hind—in our original experience. Whether in art or in religion, whether in the intellectual values of the scientific and philosophical spirit, or in the great fundamental values of friendship, there is to be no pretending to feel, to see, to enjoy, or to know what for us is not really there. We cannot build an honest structure on a sham foundation. Every bit of inbuilt sham only 63 The Value Approach hinders reax growth in an appreciation of one’s own. One of my friends, more honest than most of us, found his way to the Sistine Chapel in Rome, that he might see Michael Angelo’s great frescoes, and admitted his disappointment in them. But he realized nevertheless that the fault might not be wholly Michael Angelo’s; and yet he would not simply take over passively the judgment of the critics. So he came back day after day to see if he could not dis¬ cover for himself something of the greatness of the fres¬ coes. In all this, he was only insisting on an honest experience of his own. We are all in danger of simply taking over passively judgments of others, especially the judgment of experts. This is not to deny that the expert has a great service to render us, but it must be in the direction of our taking time and effort to see for ourselves, not of substituting forthwith the results of the expert’s observation and thinking for the results of our own obser¬ vation and thinking. For example, we shall get most help out of a wise commentary on a Biblical passage by first of all honestly insisting on finding by genuine study what it means to ourselves. Only so can we get the most from others, and especially from those who are deservedly authorities of the first rank. The insight, thus, the grow¬ ing appreciation of the value, must be absolutely one’s own or nothing is accomplished. In Raphael’s great pic¬ ture of The School at Athens , it will be remembered there is at one side of the picture a little group of students of geometry gathered about their teacher following a demon¬ stration through a design on the floor. The first pupil is evidently following the demonstration with full under¬ standing; the second pupil does not catch the point and turns to see whether the other, leaning above him, sees the demonstration. But no seeing by the first or the third will help in any way the seeing of the other. He, too, must 64 * Seeing Life Whole see for himself. Another can only give us introduction. We have to come through it to insights and convictions and ideals of our own. This is the meaning of the two proverbs: “You may lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink,” and “Concerning tastes there is no disputing.” Here, too, is the needed emphasis on inner soundness, which is contained in Christ’s warning against the salt that has lost its saltness, the light that is hid. First of all, then, in meeting the demand of honesty, of true inner integrity, in coming into the great values of life, we must be honest with ourselves, absolutely honest in our original experience. Similarly, there must be absolute honesty in our own witness. Whether for the witness of life or for the witness of word, we must be utterly true to ourselves, to our own vision. And our witness must be honest testi¬ mony, therefore, to real experience. There is to be no careless handing on of what we have not ourselves verified. The first paragraph of John’s first Epistle precisely states the demand which is made upon us here in honest dealing with any of the great values of life: “That which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life (and the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was mani¬ fested unto us) ; that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you also, that ye also may have fellow¬ ship with us.” It is because of failure at this point that unjustified fads in literary and art criticism, or in scientific or philosophical tradition, or in moral or reli¬ gious ideal get started. And it is by this insistence on challenging every such fad or tradition by honest experi¬ ence that such false tendencies are stopped. Some day 65 The Value Approach the unjustified tradition is challenged, out of the honest experience of an honest man, and the false tradition is broken, and thought started on a more fruitful way. The unreal parts of any discourse or writing, that is intended to help men into growing appreciation of any of the great values, whether esthetic or ethical or religious, are pretty certain to be due to the desire to give what is called a “systematic presentation” of the subject, which usually means that considerable parts of the “systematic presen¬ tation” are not real and vital to the speaker or writer himself. They are no real part of his own vivid personal experience and therefore no real part of his genuine heartfelt message. There is a story of a distinguished preacher who got into the midst of his written sermon, to find the dismal feeling coming over him that he was saying nothing and getting nowhere, and closed his manuscript with the remark: “And so on and so on for a good many more pages of the same kind of stuff. Let us pray.” Whether true or not, the story may well illustrate the necessity of rigorously cutting out all that is unreal in our testimony concerning vital things. IV But once more in finding our way into the great values of life, of every kind, honesty must be balanced by modesty . One may try so hard to be honest as to lean over backwards, and to deny getting anything from an¬ other, to deny that possible introduction by others, whose importance we have seen. There is a balancing quality here needed, though it is by no means in the direction of any return to unreality. There is, however, probably some danger of our feeling that reality lies only within the limits of our own original discovery. It is one thing to 66 Seeing Life Whole say: I do not find anything in Shakespeare or in this fine music or in this great ideal; I cannot honestly claim to have reached in this sphere of value what others say they have reached. That may well be true, and because true, worth saying in order to keep the atmosphere of our life honest. It is quite another thing, however, to say: There isn’t anything more in these values—in Shake¬ speare, in this great music, in this moral or religious conviction—than I have already discovered. That, we can be sure, is not true and is certainly not modest. And we should wish to be modest as well as honest, that we may attain those larger measures of appreciation of values which may come to us through honest sharing in the vision of another. Our limited individual experience has not exhausted reality. Much, very much, in the line of all life’s significant values, we may be sure, remains to be achieved. And the much of vital significance that those have experienced, who have given most time and thought to these realms of value, may well encourage us to con¬ tinue our attention and study; though we are absolutely determined to take nothing on the simple say-so of an¬ other, or on any external authority. We are to be both honest and modest. In the light of the experience of others in these great realms of value, we may then reasonably expect much more, even continued growth in these different values. The sensible attitude, which we naturally tend to take in expecting a growing appreciation of literature and music and art and of the scientific and historic and philosophic spirit and interest, may quite as well become us in the realms of morals and religion, though absolute honesty is even more vital at these points. The Bible, thus, it is well to remember, is not primarily an authority at all, but a record of preeminent religious experience, of honest 67 The Value Approach vision and insight. And we may reasonably hope for much more in sharing in the experience of these great spiritual seers who have given most time and thought at this point, just as in the case of other values. We need the testimony of the great seers and prophets, we need their leading, and we may well recognize that fact; though we guard punctiliously against every trace of unreality, of sham. If we are, then, sanely planning for growing apprecia¬ tion of the great values of life, the reason why we are attending thoughtfully to these various realms of value is indeed that we may share, but share honestly and really through our own experience, in the insights of the great souls who have here achieved most. Herrmann’s caution needs constant heeding: “Religious tradition is indis¬ pensable for us. But it helps us only if it leads us on to listen to what God says to ourselves. Real faith consists in obeying this word of God.” 6 We are not, that is, to take passively over on authority, even that of prophets and apostles, the expressions of their experience as our own; but we are to expect to be able to bear similar wit¬ ness of our own out of a like experience. This absolute but modest loyalty to our own experience is imperative for our own life, and it is also the one great contribution which it is possible for us to make to others, v In discussing now the one great way into all the values of life, we have recognized the fact and necessity of in¬ troduction by others, and of honesty and modesty on the part of all seekers after living appreciation of the great realms of worth. We have been assuming some general e Faith and Morals, p. 192. 68 Seeing Life Whole experience of these values on the part of men, and much larger experience by some than by others. We have recognized that there are something like geniuses in each realm of value, who represent the best which the race has so far achieved in that particular realm, both in the creation of values and in the appreciation of them. To these creative genuises and appreciative or interpretative genuises the world owes an immeasurable debt; for they lead men on, not to a static best but to a dynamic best— not to a fixed but to a moving goal. Even these supreme witnesses to value in any realm must be marked by the qualities of the effective witness. We might, therefore, sum up the whole great way into the values of life in the single counsel: Stay persistently in the presence of the best in each great realm of value ,— both of the creative best, and of the appreciative or inter¬ pretative best. This one all-inclusive counsel, of staying persistently in the presence of the best, is precisely that of Paul’s, when he thinks of all the best that life holds: “ Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” As one runs over this great list of values, one expects something much more from Paul than his quiet word “think on these things.” Yet this is the essence of all growth. Whatever the realm of value, from this point of view, the counsel must be practically the same: stay persistently in the presence of the best, in the sphere in which you seek achievement, with honest response; the rest will largely take care of itself. Hear the best in music; see the best in art; read the best in literature; stay with the best creators and interpreters of the scientific and historic and 69 The Value Approach philosophic spirit; stay with the best in friendship; stay with the best in moral and religious insight and achieve¬ ment; and in all with honest response. This is the one great central road to enlargement and enrichment of life. It is natural that Richard Brook should say: “As in the case of music or art we train our perceptions and cultivate our taste by the help of the great musicians and artists, so also we must train our religious perceptions and cultivate our spiritual sense by the help of those who have a special genius for religion. . . . How do we recognize or test genius in art? There is, perhaps, a threefold test. First, the genius is the man who possesses special faculties of insight which enable him to catch some glimpse of truth or beauty which the ordinary man cannot see. . . . And, secondly, he is one who is able through the medium of his work to create, in those who study it, emotions akin to those which in him inspired that work. Not only does he see a vision himself, but he opens our eyes so that we can see it too. . . . And, thirdly, the work of the genius must stand the test of time. . . . If we apply this threefold test in our search for the religious genius—for those by whose help we can train our religious sense—it is, first and most, to the Bible that the facts of history and of experience point us. The Bible is for religion what the great masters are for art. It is, as has been well said, like ‘a picture gallery of the old masters.’ . . . ‘As well imagine a man with a sense for sculpture,’ it has been said, ‘not cultivating it by the help of the remains of Greek art, or a man with a sense of poetry not cultivating it with the help of Homer or Shakespeare, as a man with a sense of conduct’ (or, we may add, with a sense of religion) ‘not cultivating it by the help of the Bible.’ ’’ 7 The best, however, as we have already intimated, is not to he regarded as a static best , but as a moving goal, calling always for the open mind, for growth in every 7 Foundations, pp. 6S-4, 66-7. 70 *Seeing Life Whole value. What McDougall says of moral growth applies in much the same way to growth in all the values: “The moral tradition of any society lives, in its fullest, com- pletest form, only in the strong moral sentiments of a comparatively few individuals, those who are expressively called ‘the salt of the earth.’ ” 8 Nor is the best to be narrowly interpreted. At every point we need to take account of the wide range of man’s being, and to see that the best in every realm must be tested by the whole man and by no mere fraction of him. The best, too, to which we are to give our time and atten¬ tion must be verified by the experience of the race, as the enduring, as what bears the test of time, what wears well, what the generations find men constantly returning to. An able English musical critic has recently insisted that the machines for musical reproduction tend inevitably to sift out the better music, for it is the better music that wears. It is silly to think that we can learn nothing from the experience of the race, and make no progress through that experience in the knowledge of what is truly best. The best in any realm of value, into the appreciation of which we seek to come, includes, then, as we have seen, both the creative best in that realm—the creative artists, music¬ ians, poets, scientists, historians, philosophers, friends, and heroes in morals and religion—and the interpretative or appreciative best—the competent critics in all these realms. The creators of value are not always the best interpreters of value. But both the creators and the critics, if they are absolutely honest in their witness, have much to give. They are the supreme witnesses in all these realms of value. This implies that the great law of all growth into the best of all kinds is the law of personal association*— 9 Social Psychology, p. 220, 71 The Value Approach the giving of time and thought and attention to the best. The law of association becomes thus a supreme law: we become like those with whom we constantly are, to whom we look with admiration and love, and who give themselves unstintedly to us. This applies primarily, of course, in those associations which make for character, but it holds for all values. We cannot cram culture or insight or character or friendship or religion. McDougall points out that among all the persons who surround a child in its growth, “some will impress their abstract sentiments upon him more than others; and, in the main, those that so impress him will be those whose power, or achievements, or position, evoke his admiration. Of all the affective attitudes of one man towards another, admiration is that which renders him most susceptible to the other’s in¬ fluence.” 9 It is important also to see that there is no need in any realm of reality or of genuine value to pretend or to put pressure upon the mind to try to believe. The real, after all, will take care of itself. Our one business concerning all that is best is simply to let the great value make its own legitimate unforced impression upon us. All that is needed on our part, in the last analysis, is an absolutely honest response. Our one attitude, therefore, concerning the great value, the great reality, the great personality, is not to put pressure upon our own minds or upon the minds of others to believe in them; and not primarily either with ourselves or others to defend them or to argue for them, but simply to give them opportunity with us, and to do what we may to help others too to give that opportunity. The best, thus, judges us rather than we it. We need have no anxiety for that best, for Shakespeare or Beethoven or Raphael or Plato or Christ. They 9 Op. cit., p. 222. 72 Seeing Life Whole do not need our defense; they need only opportunity. And we have only to give them this opportunity with us, through time and thought and persistent attention, to insure the enlargement and enrichment of life which only the best can give. We are to stay persistently in the presence of the best with honest response. VI But before we turn from our thesis, that the way into all the great values of life is essentially the same for all these values, it is well clearly to recognize that, in dealing with so wide a range of values, it is inevitable that the way into these values should not mean precisely the same thing for all the values. What is contended for is a broad analogy , not an abstract identity. For example, that “honest response” which we have just said is demanded in the case of all the values means a different thing for the ethical and religious values from what it means for the esthetic values. The ethical and religious call not merely for esthetic admiration but for personal commitment of will. In the case of the ethical and religious there is no honest response otherwise. And yet even so, the analogy for all the values is closer than it may seem at first. There is at least an ethical element in the case of every value, which is insisted on in the demand for the hon¬ est response. For even esthetic appreciation requires honesty and modesty—freedom from sham—as we have seen, and these are inevitably ethical qualities. The scientific spirit, too, in its demand for honest open-mind¬ edness and for an absolutely truthful report upon a situa¬ tion, is in itself a moral demand. And the historic spirit and philosophic spirit carry in like manner moral elements The Value Approach 78 in them. And every friendship worth talking about has a deep ethical basis. Moreover, to go a little deeper, the race has probably been greatly right in habitually associating in its thought the beautiful with the true and the good. We never get, in fact, the ideal embodiment of the ideal in morals without bringing in the note of the beautiful. McDougall, therefore, is surely justified in saying: “It is worth noting in passing that in many persons aesthetic appreciation of the beauty of fine character and conduct may play a large part in the genesis of the ideal of conduct and of the sentiment of love for this ideal. Not all admiration is aesthetic admiration, but, if the object that we admire on account of its strength or excellence of any kind, presents a complex of harmoniously organized and centralised relations and activities, the mere contempla¬ tion of its pleases us, in so far as we are capable of grasp¬ ing the harmony of its complex features; that is to say, it affords us an aesthetic satisfaction, and therefore has a certain value for us and becomes an object of desire.” 10 As I have elsewhere said, the frequent profoundly moving and thrilling power of the beautiful can hardly be under¬ stood at all, except upon such a hypothesis as that of Lotze, that the beautiful thing, so clearly seen in a mere • fragment of the world, where we have no right to expect it, seems to us a kind of divine prophecy and promise of the ultimate harmony of all. And this is an ethical and religious ideal as well as an esthetic. Moreover, it may well be noted that the way into all the great values of life may well be in essence one way, when we remember that all values go bach finally to per¬ sons. All the esthetic values of music and art and literature; all the intellectual values of the scientific, the 10 Op. cit., p. 227. 74 * Seeing Life Whole historic and the philosophic spirit; all the values of friend¬ ship ; and all the values of moral and religious ideal, are, after all, but a partial revelation of the riches of some personal life. So that what Kaftan calls our life task is naturally to enter with appreciation and conviction into the great personalities of history. This would be most of all to share in their experience of values. For the great facts of history are persons, and in all the ranges of value we have to do with the great souls, with the pioneers and spiritual adventurers in all realms, with discoverers, and seers, and heroes, and prophets—and with their great witness by life and word. For we live in large part by them. As James says: “We draw new life from the heroic example. The prophet has drunk more deeply than anyone of the cup of bitterness, but his counte¬ nance is so unshaken and he speaks such mighty words of cheer that his will becomes our will and our life is kindled at his own.” No wonder that Browning makes the aged John say of Christ: Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death, Stand there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread. As though a star should open out, all sides, Grow the world on you, as it is my world. 11 We are to stay persistently in the presence of the best with honest response. u A Death in the Desert. I CHAPTER IV THE PERSONAE AND ETHICAE APPROACH 1 I In the personal and ethical approach to a Christian philosophy of life, I am seeking the suggestions and guidance of what I have come to believe to be a supreme ethical and religious principle —the principle of reverence for personality . I mean by reverence for personality the sense of the priceless value and inviolable sacredness of every person. I mean what Kant meant by his Prac¬ tical Imperative: “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only.” I mean what Hegel meant by his summary of the moral law: “Be a person, and respect the personality of others.” I mean what Royce meant in his contention that an essential contempt for the personality of others underlies all moral outrages. I mean what Christ meant in his conception of every man as a child of God and therefore of priceless value and inviolable sacredness to God. ‘I am attempting here a somewhat complete treatment of the principle of reverence for personality, which has come to seem to me a truly supreme principle and which I have briefly discussed elsewhere, especially in certain sections of the last two chapters of Rational Living, in one section of The Laws of Friendship Human and Divine, in sections XXIII-XXV of The Seeming Unreality of the Spiritual Life, and in the introductory chapter of The Moral and Religious Challenge of Our Times. If the principle is so supreme as I have come to believe it to be, it is particularly needed for the personal and ethical approach to our whole problem of a Christian philosophy of life. 75 76 Seeing Life Whole The principle is a supreme principle as giving a basis equally for both a true individualism and a true socialism . For the principle is one, not two, since respect for per¬ sonality involves both basic respect for one’s own person¬ ality—self-respect, a true individualism, and respect for the personality of others—a true socialism. So far, therefore, from being essentially antagonistic, a true individualism and a true socialism are inseparable, developing together from the beginning, each requiring the other and constantly interworking with the other. Thus McDougall says: “We find that the idea of the self and the self-regarding sentiment are essentially social products; that their development is effected by constant interplay between personalities, between the self and society; that for this reason, the complex conception of self thus attained implies constant reference to others and to society in general, and is, in fact, not merely a concep¬ tion of self, but always of one’s self in relation to other selves. This social genesis of the idea of self lies at the root of morality.” 2 That the principle of reverence for personality is a supreme ethical principle is implied not only in McDou- gall’s account of the development of self-consciousness, but also in the position taken by Kant and Hegel and Royce. It is likewise reflected in the importance given by ethical writers to the development of personality. 3 In his dis¬ cussion of happiness as compared with pleasure and joy, McDougall makes plain how our whole ethical aim gathers about the development of personalities: “Happiness arises from the harmonious operation of all the sentiments of a well-organized and unified personality, 1 Social Psychology, p. 180. *Cf. Miss Calkins, The Good Man and the Good, p. 48; Hobhouse on “The Principle of Harmony,” in The Rational Good, pp. 138 ff. The Personal and Ethical Approach 77 one in which the principal sentiments support one another in a succession of actions all of which tend towards the same or closely allied and harmonious ends. Hence the richer, the more highly developed, the more completely unified or in¬ tegrated is the personality, the more capable is it of sus¬ tained happiness in spite of inter-current pains of all sorbs. ... If this account of happiness is correct, it follows that to add to the sum of happiness is not merely to add to the sum of pleasures, but is rather to contribute to the de¬ velopment of higher forms of personality, personalities capable, not merely of pleasure, as the animals are, but, of happiness. If this conclusion is sound, it is of no small importance to the social sciences; it goes far to reconcile the doctrine of such moralists as T. H. Green with that of the more enlightened utilitarians; for the one party insists that the proper end of moral effort is the development of per¬ sonalities, the other that it is the increase of happiness, and these we now see to be identical ends.” 4 The principle of reverence for personality is a supreme religious principle also, as suggesting the reasons for the way that God takes in his treatment of all men. For the principle throws light on many difficult questions in our understanding of the providence of God, including the seeming unreality of the spiritual life and the constantly recurring problem of evil. The principle of reverence for personality is also the principle that has even unconsciously guided the develop¬ ment of history and given the surest test of any given stage of civilization. We can test a civilization perhaps most surely by its treatment of children and women, just because this indicates its intrinsic respect for personality, since children and women, as the most defenseless groups, cannot compel respect. A delicate sense of the priceless value and inviolable sacredness of every person becomes thus a supreme test of civilization. * Op. cit, pp. 156-7, 78 Seeing Life Whole n We shall best see the fundamental nature of the prin¬ ciple of reverence for personality by noting that our whole constitution looks to personal relations; that in mind and body we seem to be made for them. On the physical side , man’s long infancy—the most remarkable physical difference of man from the lower animals—requires for the human child long parental care, and therefore what Drummond calls the evolution of a mother and the evolution of a father. 5 Man is plainly made in this respect for personal relations. This long infancy is probably connected with two other momentous changes, as John Fiske points out,—with the development of man’s greater brain power and with man’s greater educability. 6 Man’s capacity, as a tool-using animal, for the expression of himself in work, especially in his impress on his surroundings, also suggests how truly he is made for self-revelation, of a kind hardly open to the brute at all, and so for personal relations. The physical basis of his capacity for speech—for there plainly is such a physical as well as psychical basis for speech—also shows that man is made as no other animal, for self-revela- tion and personal relations. On the mental side , the sex and parental instincts and the gregarious instinct, to name no others, look directly to society and to developing personal relations. Even self-consciousness, as we have already seen, is socially 7 developed. An engrossing egoism, therefore, is inevitably self-defeating. It ultimately arrays all against itself. Joy in victory over another, on the other hand, requires the recognition that the other is at least nearly as good * Ascent of Man, pp. 267 ff. • Destiny of Man, pp. 51 ff. The Personal and Ethical Approach T9 as oneself, for there is no glory in a victory over an essen¬ tial inferior. The remarkable effect upon us of the praise and blame of others, of their approval and disapproval, is another illustration of how surely in the very consti¬ tution of our minds we are made, once more, for personal relations. Our satisfaction in praise, on the other hand, is tempered by the fact that the praiser is necessarily recognized as in some sense superior, so that our egoism at that point also is checked. From the lowest to the highest in human society, too, the law seems to hold that we feel the need as human beings of recognition by others. English public school boys know no severer punishment to visit upon a recalcitrant schoolmate than to do what they call “sending him to Coventry”; and to send a boy to Coventry is to condemn him to essential isolation—ignor¬ ing him absolutely, paying no attention to anything that he says or does. And this discipline, it is said, is enough soon to bring the hardest to terms. And at the other end of the social scale, in Browning’s Instans Tyrannus , the old tyrant feels this same imperative need of recognition by others, and cannot be satisfied that even the humblest and most obscure of his subjects, while he bows his body, should not also manifestly bow his will, so he sets his “five wits on the stretch to inveigle the wretch.” In all these mental characteristics man is plainly made for per¬ sonal relations. We may well see also that the whole man, in the full range of his being, comes out onl*y in personal relations. Things call man out but in small part. Only another significant personality can arouse our full response. For this very reason, probably, persons are for us the most certain facts , the most important facts , and the most abiding facts of our world . They are, in the first place, the most certain facts because we find it practically impos- 80 Seeing Life Whole sible to deny their existence, although there ij no such impossibility for our minds in questioning the reality of outward things. They are the most important facts be¬ cause they give us the highest and most significant re¬ lations we know. And they are the most abiding facts, if the poets of all times and lands are right in their asser¬ tion of the immortality of love. For love can exist only in a personal life, and it is not more enduring than the per¬ son whose deepest quality it is. In all these ways, then, we are made most of all for personal relations; and it would seem to follow that the laws of the moral world are social laws, the laws of personal relations. It would then further follow that the supreme condition of living must be the supreme condition of fine personal relations, and that supreme condition I believe to be the spirit of reverence for personality. We need to trace out its sig¬ nificance in some detail. Reverence for personality, as we have already seen, in¬ cludes both self-respect and respect for others. m First of all, reverence for personality includes self- respect. And by self-respect is meant neither self-conceit nor self-exaltation on the one hand nor self-depreciation on the other. These depend, rather, on temperament, and there are plainly two naturally opposing tem¬ peraments here,—one temperament tending strongly to self-exaltation, the other with equal strength to self¬ depreciation ; and both are alike undesirable. But true self-respect is the recognition of oneself as a member of the whole of society, with one’s own individuality and unique contribution to make, side by side with others. The street Arab puts the matter not so unphilosophically The Personal and Ethical Approach 81 when he says to his fellow Arab: “You are not the only pebble on the beach”; for he recognizes, philosophically enough, that the other is a pebble, even as he himself is, but he reminds him that he is not the only pebble. Paul’s organic view of society underlies a true self-respect: “Not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but so to think as to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith.” And this genuine self-respect is kept from conceit by two great considerations: first, by the sense of the large and in¬ dispensable contribution which comes to us steadily from the other members of society, and our consequent immeas¬ urable debt to them; and, second, by our sense of falling far short of attaining what must be God’s ideal for our¬ selves. Jean Ingelow’s old fisher preacher marked the difference between true and false humility: The day was, I have been afraid of pride— Hard man’s hard pride; but now I am afraid Of man’s humility. I counsel you, By the great God’s great humbleness, and by His pity, be not humble over-much . 7 The self-respecting man, then, without either self-con¬ ceit or self-depreciation, may believe in his genuine significance, that he is “called to an imperishable work in the world” and hence must make necessarily great “claims on life.” Such self-respect , now, is necessary and basic for character , to be what one ought; for influence , to count as one can; for happiness , to enjoy what one may, —what it is given a true man to enjoy. It is worth while to examine the prime importance of self-respect, from this threefold point of view. First of all, self-respect is necessary for one's own 7 Brothers and a Sermon. 82 Seeing Life Whole character. For the self-respect which we hold to be due to ourselves is the only measure we have, in the first place, for our understanding of others. For there is just one bit of reality in the universe that we can know from within, namely, ourselves. And this self of ours becomes for us necessarily the key to the universe, especially the key to all other personalities. In the second place, self-respect is the only measure we have for our interpretation of the Golden Rule. For what it means that we should do unto others what we would that men should do unto us, evidently depends on our own claims on life, on what we believe to be due to ourselves. As Lotze says: “When an Indian tortures his captured enemy, this is no proof that he is not guided by some Idea of right; by so acting he affords the con¬ quered man an opportunity of upholding his honour by that silent endurance and contempt of pain which seem to him the ideal of manly perfection; and he himself, if the same unlucky fate should befall him, endures as great suf¬ fering with equal fortitude.” 8 If one asks only for food and shelter for himself, that will compass his full sense of obligation for others. On the contrary, if one asks much —a man’s full life in its largest and highest range—then that will be the measure of his sense of obligation to other men also. Whatever, therefore, tends essentially to lessen or cheapen our own self-respect affects at once our respect for others also. For example, if we have lost faith in our own immortality, we may for a time be able to forget the sense of intolerable loss in work for others. But the time inevitably comes when we must see that others, too, have now become only creatures of a day, not “called to an imperishable work in the world,” and thus not endowed with “the power of an endless life.” McDougall speaks 9 Microcosmus, Vol. I, p. 707. The Personal and Ethical Approach 83 as a psychologist when he says: “Thus if a man believes that he has, or is, a substantial soul that can continue to enjoy consciousness after the death of the body, that belief is a feature of his total conception of his self which may, and of course often does, profoundly influ¬ ence his conduct.” 9 That means that we cannot lose our own sense of immortality and still keep the same sense of the value of others or of the significance of work for them. Whatever we may think of immortality, we may not rationally ignore this consideration. John Stuart Mill is candid enough to admit this influence of the hope of immortality. “The beneficial influence of such a hope,” Orr 10 quotes him as saying, “is far from trifling. It makes life and human nature a far greater thing to the feelings, and gives greater strength as well as greater solemnity to all the sentiments which are awakened in us by our fellow-creatures, and by mankind at large. . . . But the benefit consists less in the presence of any specific hope than in the enlargement of the general scale of the feelings ; the loftier aspirations being no longer kept down by a sense of the insignificance of human life—by the disastrous feeling of ‘not worth while.’ ” Sully, in his work on Pessimism, says also: “I would only say that if men are to abandon all hope of a future life, the loss, in point of cheering and sustaining influence, will be a vast one, and one not to be made good, so far as I can see, by any new idea of services to collective humanity. 11 All kinds of substitutes, therefore, for personal immortality seem likely inevitably to lessen the significance of persons now in our relations with them; though there are undoubt¬ edly considerable temperamental differences between men 8 Op. cit., p. 182. 10 The Christian View of Ood in the World, pp. 159-160. u Pessimism, p. 317, quoted by Orr, op. cit,, p. 79. 84 Seeing Life Whole in their feeling about the significance and value of personal immortality. But there is still another way in which any cheapening of ourselves endangers right relations with others. One of the poets expresses the danger: The hands that love us often are the hands That softly close our eyes and draw us earth-ward. We give them all the largess of our life— Not this, not all the world, contenteth them. Till we renounce our rights as living souls. And, as Hugh Black says, “we cannot renounce our rights as living souls without losing our souls.” Respect for oneself, therefore, as an individual and significant member of the whole of human society means that, for the sake not only of ourselves but for the sake of all with whom we have to do, our first basic, all-inclusive duty is to be true to the trust of our own individuality. There is, therefore, a point beyond which we must not allow ourselves to go in seeming service of others or in seeming sacrifice of ourselves to others. Mrs. Browning makes Romney Leigh say: I have a pattern on my nail, And I will carve the world after it. So the “exploiter of souls,” to use the deft phrase of one of our novelists, has a pattern on his nail, by which he feels perfectly competent to judge and direct the lives of all about him. We cannot yield to this kind of exploita¬ tion, and still keep either our character or our best influence. When we have thus yielded to the desecration of our own personality, we have done exactly that which Christ called casting our pearls before swine. For the door is so closed on all the finest personal relations. The Personal and Ethical Approach 85 Self-knowledge, self-reverence, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power. And self-reverence is basic. Self-respect, then, lies everywhere at the base of char¬ acter. Whatever lowers self-respect lowers all personal relations. Self-respect , in the second place, is necessary for one's own influence. Ultimately we have only ourselves to give . This is our one great contribution, our truest influence, our one great trust. The largeness and significance of that gift of ourselves depend upon the largeness and sig¬ nificance of the self given. We owe, too, in all personal re¬ lations, with God or men, a growing self —growing in the line of our unique individuality but constantly enriching. If, then, we do not value our own individuality, our own unique possible contribution, but fall into a mistaken imitation of others, we have practically no significant contribution to make—nothing worth while to give. For if two of us are just alike, one of our philosophers has said, one of us can be spared; and plainly it will be the imitation, the copy, that can be spared. For even a small reality is far more significant than a big sham. The infinite variety and complexity of nature insures a field for a man’s unique individuality. According to the evolu¬ tion point of view, all progress ultimately depends on “favorable variations.” In human progress, therefore, the individuality of each man, we may believe, constitutes each man such a possible “favorable variation”; for he has his own unique self to give, and so can render to so¬ ciety and the race a service no one else can replace. The community, too, if it is to be at its best, needs this free initiative on the part of each individuality. Nothing is so essential to human progress. This becomes, indeed, 86 Seeing Life Whole the surest test for the kind of state or community action which, in any given case, may be wisely employed. The principle, that is, justifies, not every kind of state action, but only that kind of state or community action which tends to promote the initiative of the individual and helps him make his full contribution. On the other hand, it counts indubitably unjustified every form of state or community action which hinders individual initiative and contribution. 12 The greatest discovery, therefore, that a man ever makes, next to his discovery of God—and the two are probably essentially synchronous—is the discovery of himself , finding himself, finding that particular unique¬ ness which is manifested and reflected in his entire per¬ sonality; finding his own particular mission and message —his calling both to life and to work. Emerson’s warn¬ ing against throwing away one’s own honest individuality is always needed: “Set ten men to write their journal for one day, and nine of them will leave out their thought or proper result—that is their net experience—and lose themselves in misreporting the supposed experience of other people.” But their “net experience” is precisely the one great gift which they have to make to men. This requires absolute inner honesty—the honesty, as we have already seen, of a true witness to the great values of life. Once more, self-respect is necessary for one's own hap¬ piness. One needs supremely the joy of knowing that he has a part, a real, a significant, an unique part, a son’s part, to play in life, a part which if he does not play simply will not be played. For this fidelity to his own in¬ dividuality, as we have seen, constitutes both his own largest attainment in character and his highest service “Cf. King, The Moral and Religious Challenge of Our Times, pp. 75 - 76 . The Personal and Ethical Approach 87 to others, and hence naturally becomes as well the source of his highest joy. In The Boy and the Angel , Browning tells the story of the great Archangel coming down to sing God’s praise in the place of a little boy, and the poet represents God as saying, “I miss my little human praise.” Not even the great organ note of the Archangel could replace in the ear of God the little treble of the boy. From this point of view, therefore, each one of us may have the assurance and joy of knowing that he has his own absolutely unique individuality, his own note, his own flavor, his own vision, his own message. This is hardly more than the expression of the plain fact of the untold complexity of the being of man revealed in evolution and in modern psychology. It is not too much to say with Hoff ding 13 that individuality is the ultimate miracle of history,—an individuality of the entire personality, of which the individuality of face and the individuality of voice are only quite inadequate illustrations. How marvel¬ ous is this fact of individuality, like the unexplained for¬ tuitous but essential variations of evolution! The uniquely individual person! Only this could be truly and in the high¬ est sense a child of God, worthy to be the goal of age-long evolution; and only the deep spirit of reverence is sufficient to express what we need to recognize in such a personality. The complete realization of his individual self—this it is which constitutes a man’s high calling in morals and in religion, in character, in influence, in happiness. In a deeper and more all-inclusive sense probably than Shake¬ speare himself saw, is it true, This above all; to thine own self be true: And it must follow, as the Night the Day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. a Cf. Outlines of Psychology, p. 353. 88 Seeing Life Whole And we may not leave this discussion of the significance of self-respect without remembering that we are under the most solemn obligation to make the full self-respect which we claim for ourselves possible to others also. But the principle of reverence for personality involves not only self-respect but respect for others, And respect for others always includes both respect for their liberty and respect for the inner sanctity of their person. IV First, then, it means respect for the liberty of others; for that respect is necessary and basic for character, for influence, and for happiness. In the first place, respect for the liberty of others is necessary for one's own character. One becomes a slave who treats another as a slave, as Fichte long ago pointed out. And Booker Washington was only giving us a modern version of this same proverb when he said that you cannot hold another man in the ditch without staying in the ditch yourself. Character inevitably deteriorates through the use of arbitrary power. And this holds true whether the arbitrary power is sought by one man or another, by labor or by capital, by one nation or another, by one race or another. For we all need, if we are to build solidly in the matter of character, a deep sense of accountability, and we should consequently neither desire nor accept the place of arbitrary power. For it makes right moral conditions and fine personal relations impos¬ sible, whatever else is done or not done. For arbitrariness has no rational place for true freedom on the part of any man. Even the “ benevolent tyrant” necessarily defeats his own aim, in whatever field he works. So long as he takes the tyrant’s attitude he can only give things and The Personal and Ethical Approach 89 physical conditions; he cannot give fine personal condi¬ tions. So long, then, as he keeps his arbitrariness he can¬ not give the highest conditions of happiness; for these conditions are inner, not outer, and involve, at the very least, respect for the liberty of the other man. And that means that such continued disregard of inner conditions, of the moral liberty of the other man, disintegrates one’s own character. And respect for the liberty of another is necessary also for one’s own influence . The highest influence is to win another man to his own choice of character or of the right course of action. But you cannot win another to char¬ acter without enlisting his will, not breaking it. Respect for his liberty is here, therefore, plainly basic to your own influence. It is possible to tie a boy disastrously to his mother’s apron strings, as the phrase goes. For the boy must have some opportunity for using his will if he is to learn to use it wisely. It is not too much to say that every human being, including the child, has an inalienable right to make his own blunders. It is far better that one’s daughter should occasionally wear a ribbon that does not harmonize with the rest of her apparel, rather than that she should never have the opportunity to use her own judgment at all. There are weak-willed children often, not because their inheritance is not good, but simply because they have not had a chance to use their own wills. Military obedience by children cannot, then, be the aim on the part of either parents or teachers. It is no sim¬ ple victory in the “conflict of wills” which the righteous parent or teacher seeks. No real obedience or true char¬ acter can be so obtained. And that means that the man is himself exerting no true influence. For true influence involves enlisting the will, calling it out, training it in the direction of its own best, and all this is an unobtrusive way 90 Seeing Life Whole that sacredly respects the liberty of the child and increas¬ ingly throws decisions upon the child as he grows. Fair- bairn has put in classic form the growth of unobtrusive¬ ness in the relations of a true father to his growing son. For the true father knows that influence is not dom¬ ination. For “in whatever form,” as Fairbairn says, “the sovereignty of a father who has been a father indeed, is of all human authorities the most real and the most en¬ during.” 14 Respect for the liberty of the child, therefore, does not necessarily mean that in the relation of parent and child there is no place for authority, for law, even for physical punishment, for some form of what may be called “police action.” There is such a place, as McDougall says: “It is generally necessary that law shall be enforced at first by physical strength, and that his (the child’s) regard for it shall be encouraged by physical punishment; for the first step towards moral conduct is the control of the im¬ mediate impulse, and fear of punishment can secure this control of the immediate impulse.” 15 But we are not to mistake the result of all this for real moral character. It is at the most only a bare beginning in true moral devel¬ opment. Perhaps no one has put more significantly or sugges¬ tively the central aim and means in this whole relation of parent and child than Patterson Du Bois in his definition of the true father , when he insists that the true father does not say, “I will conquer that child, no matter what it may cost him,” but, “I will help that child to conquer himself, no matter what it may cost me. . . . Parent and child are to meet in a joint effort on the part of both to do God’s right, and not on the part of either for mere supe- u The Place of Christ in Modem Theology , pp. 434435. “Op. cit., p. 187. The Personal and Ethical Approach 91 riority or mastery. The only principle that works under all conditions is, not the principle of arbitrary parental mastery, but of parental aid and service. This is our Father’s way of dealing with his children. He threatens no compulsion, but throws the responsibility on them by giving them a right of choice.” Let it be clear that this is no cheap and easy and sentimental way; it rather alone faces ail the facts. It respects the child’s liberty and seeks his real character. And it exerts the highest in¬ fluence because it is reverent of the liberty of the child, and is no domination. We have discussed this principle, of the necessary respect for the liberty of others, chiefly as illustrated in the relation of parent and child, but the principle holds, it should be remembered, in all personal relations , and even more when we seek influence over adults. For to fail sacredly and persistently to respect the liberty of others in any of the associations of life, to fail to give them full room for the exercise of their moral freedom, is ultimately to abjure moral means altogether and to fall back directly upon force. No association or situation between individuals or groups or classes or nations or races can be finally satisfactory into which men do not come freely with self-respect and with respect for the free¬ dom of others; in which rational sympathetic persuasion and unconscious contagion of character have not prac¬ tically replaced force of all kinds. Naturally masterful personalities have need to be pecu¬ liarly on their guard at this point in their relation to others; for in spite of themselves and even in spite of their own principles and desires, they are likely by sheer force and weight of personality to determine what the relation to others is to be, to dominate the situation, and to sub¬ stitute this forceful domination for genuine influence. 92 Seeing Life Whole With full honesty of intention they have still become quite unconsciously benevolent tyrants. We need to consider here, too, the two great tempera¬ mental types into which humanity divides, and see their respective dangers: the stable type and the unstable type. 16 The danger of the stable type is that of simple domination, without regard to the particular situation and without any real insight into it, in the place of genuine in¬ fluence. And this hinders progress, because it tends to prevent new suggestions from arising. The danger of the unstable type, on the other hand, is that it shall have no influence because it is too changeable. It has no con¬ sistent leadership that can be followed, and so in its turn hinders progress too. The contrast is very like that of which James speaks 17 when he says: “Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception of them as individual facts. . . . Sometimes the abstract conceiver’s way is better, sometimes that of the man of instinct.” Respect for the liberty of the other is also necessary both for your own and for the other’s happiness. It is necessary, in the first place, for your own happi¬ ness; for respect for the liberty of others evidently avoids the friction of forced situations, and gives positively finer personal relations, and so truly helps to your own happiness. The simple fact, too, that the situation is what it ought to be gives to the man who wants the best a sincere pleasure. No personal relations can bring their best, in joy and enrichment of life, that do not fulfil these ethical conditions. Respect for the liberty of others is not less necessary 18 Cf. Outline of Science, Vol. II, pp. 553-4. ” Psychology, Vol. II, p. 674. The Personal and Ethical Approach 93 for their happiness . For to make another fully happy it is necessary that he should have some sphere of action of his own, some chance for choice and decision—some range, however small, for accomplishment that is genuinely his own, of which he can say, “That, under God, is my work.” Of that room for liberty you have no right to deprive him, and you cannot make him happy without it. The head of any enterprise with a large staff, particularly if he is himself naturally a masterful personality, is in danger unconsciously of practically coming in and taking on, from time to time, the work of another; and that is a very serious breach of the fundamental rights of the sub¬ ordinate. This centrally important condition of happiness through sacred respect for the liberty of others is often overlooked. No possible combination of things and ar¬ rangements and physical advantages can take the place of this respect for another’s liberty. With reference to all such mechanical adjustments, employees, for example, are pretty certain to feel, if not to say, “I can get on without these things, or provide them for myself, but what I want is not these things, not these convenient arrange¬ ments, but recognition as a personal willing factor in the whole enterprise, freely contributing my own best to the result and so in some real sense a personal partner whose will is respected.” There are, therefore, few executive principles better worth faithfully following than to find the best human beings one can, and then to give them room. For that will mean, in the first place, deepened self-respect on the part of the employees, and an added sense of the value of their work. Both these factors will carry with them a distinctly greater happiness in the work undertaken, and consequently tend to increase the quantity of the work done, and improve its quality. 94 $ Seeing Life Whole y But respect for the personality of others involves not only respect for the liberty of others, but a sacred rev¬ erence for the sanctity of the other's inner personality. And that sacred reverence for the sanctity of the other’s inner personality is necessary and basic, first of all, for one's own character. One falls inevitably below his own best, even in the closest relations, or with his youngest child or his least mature pupil, or in the difficult rela¬ tions of groups and classes, when he forgets that in the case of every person there is an inner sanctuary into which he may come only by the other’s permission. There is a certain solitariness of the human soul , which is scarcely ever fully recognized. What an infinitesimal fraction of one’s whole experience is ever known even by those with whom one is most intimately acquainted! How little either of the best or of the worst in us is or can be revealed to another! It is not strange, when this sense of soli¬ tariness and of the impossibility of being fully under¬ stood by another sweeps over us, that we are driven back to God. We learn to be deeply grateful for a sense of the presence and knowledge of God, such as awed and almost terrified us in our earlier years, and we say now with the ancient Psalmist, and with a new note of profound thankfulness: O Jehovah, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising; Thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, And art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, But, lo, O Jehovah, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, And laid thy hand upon me. The Personal and Ethical Approach 95 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? 18 One can hardly take in this large measure of the solitari¬ ness of the human soul even at the best, and fail to get at the same time some feeling of the “Holy of Holies” in the personality of another. For the one holy thing that the universe contains is a person, and when one sees this sacred significance of the person he instinctively knows that in the presence of this “Holy of Holies” he needs to take off his shoes and to uncover his head. At the same time, we may be grateful that “this myster¬ ious isolation of self from self 9 is not quite so absolute as we are likely to take it, and that there is a very real and significant way, which Hocking has pointed out, in which we may deeply share in each other’s lives: “I have sometimes sat looking at a comrade, speculating on this mysterious isolation of self from self. Why are we so made that I gaze and see of thee only thy Wall, and never Thee? This Wall of thee is but a movable part of the Wall of my world; and I also am a Wall to thee: we look out at one another from behind masks. How would it seem if my mind could but once be within thine; and we could meet and without barrier be with each other? And then it has fallen upon me like a shock—as when one thinking himself alone has felt a presence— But I am in thy soul. These things around me are in thy experience. They are thy own; when I touch them and move them I change thee. When I look on them I see what thou seest; when I listen, I hear what thou hearest. I am in the great Room of thy soul; and I experience thy very experience. For where art thou? Not there, behind those eyes, within that head, in darkness, fraternizing with chemical processes. Of these, in my own case, I know noth- “Psalm 139:1-7. 96 Seeing Life Whole ing, and will know nothing; for my existence is spent not behind my Wall, but in front of it. I am there, where I have treasures. And there art thou, also. This world in which I live, is the world of thy soul: and being within that, I am within thee. I can imagine no contact more real and thrilling than this; that we should meet and share iden¬ tity, not through ineffable inner depths (alone), but here through the foregrounds of common experience; and that thou shouldst be—not behind that mask—but here, pressing with all thy consciousness upon me, containing me, and these things of mine.” 19 This conception of a great common fellowship with others in our experience of a common world enlarges and enriches our whole thought of the personal relations in which we stand. And respect for the sanctity of the inner person of another is necessary to our own character also, because we are in danger of measuring too often the intimacy of our friendships by the number of privacies which we feel at liberty to ride over roughshod. Oliver Wendell Holmes reminds us that it is those who, because of long acquaint¬ ance, have the key to the side door of our hearts, who are most likely to invade the sanctities of our being. “Be very careful to whom you trust one of these keys of the side door,” he says. “The fact of possessing one renders those even who are dear to you very terrible at times. . . . Some of them have a scale of your whole nervous system, and can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semitones,—touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes his instrument. ... No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well.” 20 Confucius is reported as say- lfr The Meaning of God in Human Experience, pp. 265-6. 80 Quoted by H. Clay Trumbull in Friendship the Master Passion, p. 91. The Personal and Ethical Approach 97 ing of another, that he “knows the art of associating with his friends: however old the acquaintance may be, he always treats them with the same respect.” 21 And it should be remembered that we are in peculiar danger of overriding the finer spirits. The ruder and the brusker may be able to defend themselves, but those of finer mold are more easily crushed. It was a new sense of the sacred¬ ness of intimate relations which a young man of my ac¬ quaintance got when, as a boy, he heard an older man in a chance remark say to another: “I never go into my wife’s room without knocking.” It was not that this need necessarily be an absolute rule, but the remark suggested to the boy what had not before dawned on him—the pos¬ sibility of a sacred reverence for another, in even the most intimate conceivable relations. On the other hand, the worst and most damning of all sins is the spirit of contempt for the person of another. Bishop Brent gives an illustration of this attitude: “The mistress of a household on coming downstairs one morn¬ ing was greeted by her maid, who was dusting in the hall, with a ‘Good morning,’ and, ‘Do you know, Mrs. Z-, that I have been with you five years today?’ ‘Have you?’ was the response. ‘You have left some dust on that chair.’ The mistress boasted doubtless that she had ‘reminded her servant of her place.’ No further comment is needed. The maid thought herself to be a person, but was reminded that she was a thing”— 22 an animated dustrag. Such contempt for the inner life of another suggests how deeply one’s own character may suffer by willingness to use another merely as a convenience. Fine high-minded personal relations do not come by accident. The door, we do well to remember, in all such a Sayings of Confucius, p. 74. 83 With Qod in the World, p. 65. 98 Seeing Life Whole relations, is always opened from within. One stands with¬ out and knocks. He may not force the door. So God him¬ self reveres our human personalities. For even the Christ is represented as standing at the door of the human heart and knocking, that he may enter. “Behold,” saith he, “I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” 23 But he must open the door. Even the Christ stands without and knocks. One cannot fail, then, in this finer observance of rever¬ ence for others, and not fail in his own highest char¬ acter. And this reverence for the sanctity of the inner person¬ ality of others is necessary also for one's own influence. If one is to influence others toward the highest in char¬ acter, one must himself show this highest. We cannot much help to bring our children, our pupils, our friends to a fine sense of the reverence due to the inner sanctity of the person of another—the finest flower of character— without revealing a like reverence ourselves. Our example goes farther than our words. Nowhere more than here is it emphatically true that “what you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say.” We can hardly be too sen¬ sitive to what is due to another person at just this point. I once sat at a table with a university president who pro¬ ceeded, in my presence, to take pretty severely to task his two grown children, who sat at table with us. He seemed quite oblivious to the fact that he was inevitably seriously breaking down their own self-respect. What he had to say to them ought never to have been said in the presence of a third person, and especially in the presence of one who was a stranger to them. One of my pupils in psychol- ogy, years ago, in reporting on some childhood experi- 28 Revelation, 3:20. 99 The Personal and Ethical Approach ences, said that she had never been able to get over the half sense of outrage which she had as a very little girl, when her mother took the key to a doll’s chest of drawers which had been given to her, and proceeded to go through the drawers without her permission. There was nothing in the drawers that her mother might not well enough have seen, but the daughter felt, young as she was, that the chest of drawers had been given to her, and that her mother ought to have asked her permission before she went through them. And it is difficult not to believe that the daughter’s instinct in this was right and the mother’s wrong. And we need especially, in considering this principle of reverence for the inner sanctity of the person, to bear clearly in mind that influence is one thing , and domination quite another. The stronger a man’s per¬ sonality, the more he ought to take this distinction to heart. One of my acquaintances, years ago, said to me concerning a student, “He is one of your disciples.” I do not remember what I said; it is not important; but if I had expressed my full mind, in answer to the remark made, I should have said something like this: “I want you to understand that, in the sense in which you use the word ‘disciple,’ I have no disciples and wish to have none. I want no pupil of mine, if he looks back to his association with me, to have to say, ‘That man took advantage of my youth and ignorance and inexperience to stamp himself upon me,’ instead of being able to say, ‘He helped me to be true to my own absolute best.’ ” The last is influence, which any man may eagerly covet; the other attitude is domination, which no man should be willing to exercise. And this principle, too, it should be remembered, holds for groups, for classes, and for nations and races as well as for individuals. Nothing is more needed in the very 100 Seeing Life Whole difficult Negro question here in America than this deeper reverence for personality, on every side. 24 And once more, reverence for the sanctity of the inner personality of another is necessary for the happiness both of yourself and of the other . It is necessary, first of all, for your own happiness . For without such reverence you cannot know the finest, most beautiful, and most rewarding personal relations, which alone can constitute happiness of the highest order. And such reverence is needed not less for the happiness of others. For without such reverence you keep others from finding rewarding relations with yourself and with others as well, so far as they are affected by you. Some very honest attempts to increase the happiness of others thus fail egregiously, just because of that “certain blind¬ ness in human beings, 55 of which James wrote, “the blind¬ ness with which we all are afflicted in regard to the feelings of creatures and people different from ourselves. 55 And he draws this counsel from his study—a counsel, it will be noted, to be deeply considerate of the personality of others: “And now what is the result of all these considerations and quotations? It is negative in one sense, but positive in another. It absolutely forbids us to be forward in pro¬ nouncing on the meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own; and it commands us to tolerate, respect, and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however unintelligible these may be to us. Hands off: neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer, although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands. Even prisons and sick-rooms have their special revelations. It is enough to ask of each of us that 81 See King, The Moral and Religious Challenge of Our Times, Chap. VIII. The Personal and Ethical Approach 101 he should be faithful to his own opportunities and make the most of his own blessings, without presuming to regulate the rest of the vast field.” 25 There are many mechanically smooth-running house¬ holds, it is to be feared, that are so because the rest of the family have finally yielded to a domestic tyrant, who knows what the others need, and who is inclined to think, if not to say, that if they are to be happy at all they must be happy in the tyrant’s way. There are many such benevolent tyrants, who have a plan for the lives of all others with whom they come in contact, and who insist on making others happy in their own fashion, but who have never made the really great sacrifice of giving up their own way. One sometimes feels that he would like to write on the fibres of the heart of some of these benevolent tyrants (although that would probably not be respectful of their personality) Charlotte Yonge’s deep-going aphorism: “It is a great thing to sacrifice; but it is a greater to consent not to sacrifice in one’s own way.” This principle of reverence for personality is the high¬ est test and standard for all friendships. And it is some such test of high friendship as this which Emerson had in mind, in one of the best things that he ever said about friends: “Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. This is the service of a friend. With him we are easily great. There is a sublime attrac¬ tion in him to whatever virtue is in us. How he flings wide the doors of existence.” 26 There is a beautiful story of Baron Bunsen, that, as he lay dying and looked up into the face of his wife as she bowed over him, he said to her, “In thy face I have seen the face of the Eternal.” There is 25 Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals, pp. 263-4. 20 Considerations by the Way. 102 Seeing Life Whole suggeistiGii here of the finest personal relations, of what our friends at their best may be to us—media for the reve¬ lation even of the divine; so that we could honestly say to a true friend, “Since I knew you it has been easier to believe in truth and honor and purity; it has been easier to believe in the world of the spirit; in thy face I have caught glimpses at least of the Eternal.” But in Christ alone shall we find the most perfect example of this deep sense of reverence for personality. As I have elsewhere said, 27 the incident, in John’s Gospel, of the woman taken in adultery, in which it is said of Jesus, that he “stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground,” illustrates, in a single case, the response of Jesus to this basic and eternal principle of reverence for the person. For it is hardly possible to misinterpret this action of Jesus, as he thus stoops down and writes upon the ground. Any one who has ever felt the intolerable sense of shame that arises when he has been made an unwilling spectator of the needless public humiliation and breaking down of the self-respect of a servant, a child, a wife, or a fellow man, will know what the feeling of Jesus must have been. He would not share, though unwillingly, in the cruel, brutal, needless humiliation of even a sinful woman by adding to her load of shame so much as the weight of his pitying look. She is no thing that she should be thus bandied about of men, but a person, herself made in the image of the Eternal God. He could not bear that the sanctities of her inner person should be thus brutally laid open to the brazen gaze of men, though she be an open sinner. And the conduct here ascribed to Jesus in this interpolated incident in the Gospel of John —the present position of which no critic defends, but the inimitable truth of which none denies—is characteristic ” The Moral and Religions Challenge of Our Times, pp. 3-5. The Personal and Ethical Approach 103 of his attitude throughout his ministry. Jesus seems constantly to be standing, with a kind of moral shudder, between the spirit of contempt in the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the outraged personality of the common people, even of the publicans and sinners; he feels the contempt, even for these least, as a blow in his own face. The principle of reverence for personality, then, we may well believe, as was suggested at the beginning, is a supreme guiding principle both in ethics and in religion— supreme in all the finer and deeper problems of our living. It is in very truth a great way to life, and it has a great gift to make to our own troublous times, and particularly to a present-day Christian philosophy of life. CHAPTER V THE PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH I In turning to the philosophical approach to our prob¬ lem of a Christian philosophy of life, we must recognize the extent of the field, and see that we can only deal with it suggestively, with the utmost brevity. I am to try to indicate some articles in my philosophical creed, especially as bearing upon religious thinking and living, and as help¬ ing to that wholeness in the vision of life which we have been making our guiding thought. There is a present tendency in some quarters to under¬ rate if not to despise philosophy because of the triumphs of empirical science. The philosophers, to be sure, must be most willing to accept new light from every quarter, and be keen in criticism of their own methods. But Professor Robinson’s general position in his The Mind in the Making seems to me only weakened by his contemptu¬ ous view of philosophy: “Nowadays metaphysics is re¬ vered by some as our noblest effort to reach the highest truth, and scorned by others as the silliest of wild-goose chases. I am inclined to rate it, like smoking, as a highly gratifying indulgence to those who like it, and, as indul¬ gences go, relatively innocent.” 1 The inescapable and deep-going questions of ultimate reality, origin and des¬ tiny, and of meaning and value are not so easily disposed *P. 102. 104 The Philosophical Approach 105 of. The view is redolent of the unscientific procedure of cutting short the facts to suit one’s theory. The world is less simple than this denial of philosophy would suggest. We need the best thinking of inquirers in all fields. For while it is clear that we must use the scientific method to the farthest possible extent, it would still seem ill-advised and vain to attempt to eliminate all the questions with which men have been engrossed through the centuries under the name of philosophy,—especially the deep reli¬ gious questions. For men are driven by their own natures from infancy to try to think the world into unity in various kinds of terms. Both the problems of science and the problems of philosophy are included in this ideal. Natural science is concerned, as we have seen, with the simplest of these problems—the problem of trying to think the world into unity in mathematico-mechanical terms, and its large measure of success is an encouragement to expect increas¬ ing success in the other much more difficult problems. For, as James says: “Though nature’s materials lend themselves slowly and dis- couragingly to our translation of them into ethical forms, but more readily into aesthetic forms; to translation into scientific forms they lend themselves with relative ease and complete¬ ness. The translation, it is true, will probably never be ended. The perceptive order does not give way, nor the right conceptive substitute for it arise, at our bare word of command. It is often a deadly fight. . . . But victory after victory makes us sure that the essential doom of our enemy is defeat.” 2 And one of these aims, which the mind sets itself—the scientific aim—cannot rationally scout the other aims— esthetic, ethical and religious—equally well grounded in 9 Psychology, Vol. II, p. 640. 106 Seeing Life Whole human nature. Moreover, the triumphs of science, as we have seen, are due to severe self-limitation, to confining itself to questions of process, of mechanical explanation. This should not at all imply, however, the unimportance of the philosophical questions of meaning, of ideal interpre¬ tation; though the two sets of questions should not be confused. In taking up, then, some of these articles of my philo¬ sophical creed, I am simply trying to share my own best vision at this point; those simplifying and unifying lines of thought that I have myself found most helpful; the series of insights and principles which have seemed most illuminating and to which I find myself returning again and again; such points as one under the experience of life has learned to sift out as most significant. Such working principles constitute a kind of practical confession of philosophical faith,—the insights, convictions, enthusi¬ asms, indignations, ideals, hopes and decisions that have grown up out of life’s experience. Such an attempt must be a matter of faith on my part that what means much to me is likely to mean something, at least, to others. And what such testimony will mean to another man he himself can hardly tell at the time. How significant any particu¬ lar insight will prove only future experience can show. n First of all, to see the significance of the whole philo¬ sophical viewpoint, it may be worth while to bring together a number of more or less untechnical definitions of the sphere of philosophy , which may help us to see what men have been feeling after in this whole realm. Dante touches on the spirit of philosophy when he says: “To live lovingly with truth is philosophy.” A spirit of The Philosophical Approach 107 loving loyalty to the best one finds, and a belief in the unity of truth, are here made the key thoughts. And it may be suggested that the spirit of Sophocles, as we saw that Matthew Arnold characterized it, “to see life steadily and to see it whole,” suggests another un- technical definition of philosophy; and implies at least two things: taking into account all the facts, not merely those of process, and applying the test of the whole man. Glover develops a similar thought of Plato: “A man who is to make anything of life, who means to capture the truth of things, must be, so Plato tells us, the ‘ spectator of all time and all existence* —‘ever longing after the whole of things in its entirety, divine and human.’ In a universe which has a real unity about it, half-views will not do. We have to practise ourselves to get out of the habit of the half and be resolute to live in the whole, the good, the beautiful.” 3 James gives his conception of the relation of philosophy to the special sciences when he says: “All these special sciences, marked off for convenience from the remaining body of truth, must hold their assumptions and results subject to revision in the light of each other’s needs. The forum where they hold discussion is called metaphysics. Metaphysics means only an unusually obstinate attempt to think clearly and consistently . . . and as soon as one’s purpose is the attainment of the maximum possible insight into the world as a whole, the metaphysical puzzles become the most urgent ones of all.” 4 To like effect Jevons says the difference between philosophy and science is this: “Each science deals with one particular set of facts, and no one science deals with * The Pilgrim, p. 61. 4 Psychology, Briefer Course, pp. 461-2. 108 Seeing Life Whole all the facts of experience, whereas it is with all the facts and with experience as a whole that philosophy deals; for the object and purpose of philosophy is to inquire, What does all our experience come to—what is the meaning of it all?” 6 Eucken’s point of view is quite similar, and he suggests that the test of any philosophy must finally lie in the fact that it can give 'permanent meaning and value to life. Kant attempts to cover the field of philosophy by the three questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? For what may I hope? and puts the questions of religion under the last head. And philosophy has inevi¬ tably to face the questions of religion as a part of the whole question of the meaning of the world, and of the possibility of its ideal interpretation. Hoff ding says: “The innermost core of all religion is faith in the persistence of value in the world.” Or, as he elsewhere calls it, “ belief in the conservation of value” where he is thinking of the analogy with the physical principle of conservation of energy. From the Christian point of view Streeter would carry HofFding’s conception farther, when he says: “Christian¬ ity is more than a belief in the Conservation of Value; it is above all the belief in the Augmentation of Value. It is a belief that the whole creation will ultimately be re¬ deemed, that the Golden Age is to be looked for not in the past but in the future, and that whenever any good thing seems to perish there will appear to take its place, not merely an equivalent good but some far better thing.” 6 The full scope of philosophy is indicated by its divi¬ sions. Philosophy is commonly divided into metaphysics, or theory of being, the theory of knowledge, esthetics, 6 Philosophy: What Is It? pp. 31-2. 0 Concerning Prayer, p. 6. The Philosophical Approach 109 ethics, and philosophy of religion. And metaphysics, as giving the theory of being, is made to include rational cosmology, rational psychology, and rational theology, dealing with the ultimate questions which lie back of the being of the world, of man, and of God. Empirical science has a direct and absolutely indispensable contribution of facts to make to every one of these divisions of philosophy. But after the scientific method has done its utmost, there will still remain the questions of the meaning of experience as a whole, including the ultimate questions of origin and destiny. From his own point of view Dewey thus incidentally defines philosophy: “Philosophy starts from some deep and wide way of responding to the difficulties life presents, but it grows only when material is at hand for making this practical response conscious, articulate, and communi¬ cable.” 7 All that Dewey here suggests certainly philos¬ ophy must include, and there is undoubted need of Dewey’s general emphatic insistence on the scientific factor in philosophy. The only question to be raised is, whether his definition does not exclude much that cannot be wisely ignored, and especially whether the place made for religion and particularly for the Christianity of Christ is not singularly bare and inadequate. 8 Now, one can hardly deny that these definitions of the sphere of philosophy suggest a worthy and permanent task , which men cannot escape, and which has incalculable and permanent interest for men. Religion, certainly, has no quarrel with the broad task of philosophy here sug¬ gested, and it is worth remembering that we can none of us help having some kind of view on these age-long philosophical problems. The only question seems to be 7 Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 53. 8 Ibid., pp. 210-212. 110 Seeing Life Whole whether our views shall be well thought out and soundly based or not. m In passing from the definitions of the sphere of philosophy to fundamental philosophic points of view , the philosophical emphasis on the meaning of experience as a whole brings us naturally first of all to the importance of what may be called the organic view of truth, where truth is conceived not as a closed system but as an evolving organic whole. 1. Various considerations lead to emphasis upon this organic view of truth. For it is to be noted, in the first place, that truth comes not by men keeping silent concerning the convictions which have been gradually wrought in them by experience, but by bearing honest testimony to the truth so far as they have seen it, in the firm belief that what truth needs is simply a fair and open field, and that in such a field the partialness of the view of one man will be supplemented and corrected by the insights of others. This is the essence of the Socratic.method, which is not a mere pedagogic device to bring minds to foreordained conclusions, but a method of inquiry, whose success de¬ pends on each man’s bearing his honest testimony to the truth as he sees it. It assumes that the whole truth is not in a man but in all men, and, so far as it is in a single man, is above all in his whole personality, not in some fragment of it. This organic view of truth also emphasizes, it will be noticed, the fellowship and cooperation in experiment and research of the scientific method , as we have already seen it. It recognizes the imperativeness of welcoming truth The Philosophical Approach 111 from every quarter; that truth cannot come from conceit on one’s own part, or from depreciation of the value which another brings. And in this organic view of the truth there is not only this emphasis on fellowship and coopera¬ tion, but also, as we have seen, the necessity of the honest reaction of each one on the problem faced, the determina¬ tion of each to see the new as new, and in this again to find one’s limitations corrected by others. Society needs at every step the full and free initiative of the individual , the possibility for each to make his completest contribution to the life of the whole. The social consciousness, with its threefold conviction of the essential likeness of men, of the inevitable mutual influence of men, and of the priceless value and inviolable sacredness of every person, fits, it will be seen, right into this organic view of the truth; for the pursuit of the organic view of the truth is in itself an essentially social process. The organic view of the truth calls, thus, for that fundamental tolerance which Kidd believes is absolutely basic in the progress of western civilization. But it is a tolerance that has convictions and is in earnest in pursuit of the truth, not an empty indifference and not lack of discrimination. It concerns us, therefore, to take the organic view of truth in all our philosophy. 2. We turn naturally next to the tests of truth or reality . If we are to do any thinking at all, we must assume that we can think. That is, we must assume, on the one hand, that we can trust our faculties at least to some degree, and, on the other hand, can believe that the world is a place where thinking can be done, where it is at least possible. This is a basic assumption and may be said to be the major premise of all our thinking of every kind, 112 Seeing Life Whole whether scientific or philosophical, whether holding to one or another theory of the universe. Lotze states the whole position in thoroughgoing fashion: “Our thoughts receive the stamp of certainty by being re¬ duced to either the already proved certainty of others, or to that of immediate truths which neither need nor are sus¬ ceptible of proof. The trust which we repose on the one hand in the laws of thought by means of which this reduction is accomplished, and on the other hand in the simple and immediate cognitions to which this leads us, may be guarded by repeated and careful proof from the influence of preju¬ dices of which the persuasive force is accidental and evanes¬ cent; but on the other hand no proof can guard against a doubt which suspects of possible error that which men have always found to be a necessity of thought. A scepticism that does not demonstrate from individual contradictions which may be cited the erroneousness of specified prejudices, and hence the possibility of correcting them, but goes on cause¬ lessly repeating the simple question whether in the end every¬ thing is not really quite different from that which we neces¬ sarily think it to be, would, in banishing certainty wholly from the world, also destroy all the worth of reality. That, however, this cannot be—that the world cannot he a mere meaningless absurdity —is a moral conviction, which is the ultimate ground of our belief in our capacity of cognising the truth, and in the general possibility of scientific knowledge. But this conviction does not define the extent of such knowledge.” 9 This is assuming or making our major premise the unity of truth, that truth cannot contradict itself, and that we may rest in that conviction. It is also assuming that the world is a rational world in two great senses: as meeting the test of logical consistency on the one hand, and the test of worth on the other. 10 As a whole it is not too much to say that a faith essentially religious logically 9 Microcosmus, Vol. IT, pp. 346-7. 10 Cf. King, The Seeming Unreality of the Spiritual Life, pp. 201, 204-10. The Philosophical Approach 113 underlies all our thinking, all work worth doing, all our striving for character, and all earnest social service. 11 From the religious point of view this means that the assumption of God is practically the major premise of all our thinking. For. as I have elsewhere said: 12 Our only possible standard of truth is in our own constitution. In consequence, all proof of every kind moves on a double assumption: first, that the world is a sphere of rational thinking—must satisfy the intellect; second, that the world is a sphere of rational living—must satisfy the whole man. One might say that this double assumption is the heart of the intention of the so-called ontological argument for the existence of God, and suggests the two forms in which that argument may be stated, or the double interpretation of our necessary constant assumption that the world is a “rational,” or an “honest” world. To see, now, the fundamental nature of these two great assump¬ tions that underlie all our thinking and living, is really to see that the existence of a God of reason and love is so certain and fundamental a fact that it really has to be assumed in all thinking and living—a fact that cannot be proved just because it is the basis of all proof;—the postulate, without which we should ultimately be driven to give up altogether the possibility of rational thinking. Again a test of truth that has assumed great impor¬ tance in the development of modern science is the test of the working hypothesis , the verification of a theory by putting it to the test of actual practice. Will the hypothesis work? Does it fit into that reality that we have elsewhere found assured? Does it give us any rational whole in our experience? This pragmatic test of truth is that which Dewey emphasizes when he says: “By 11 Cf. King, op. cit., pp. 181-186. “ Op cit., pp. 204 ff. m Seevng Life Whole their fruits shall ye know them. That which guides us truly is true—demonstrated capacity for such guidance is precisely what is meant by truth.” 13 Hocking believes that we should make a sharp discrimi¬ nation between negative pragmatism and positive prag¬ matism, and that the truth of pragmatism lies on the negative side: “The pragmatic test has meant much in our time as a principle of criticism, in awakening the philosophic conscience to the simple need of fruitfulness and moral effect as a voucher of truth. It is this critical pragmatism which first and widely appeals to the intellectual conscience at large. Negative pragmatism, I shall call it: whose principle is, *That which does not work is not true * The corresponding positive principle, ‘Whatever works is true,’ I regard as neither valid nor useful. But invaluable as a guide do I find this negative test: if a theory has no consequences, or bad ones; if it makes no difference to men, or else undesirable differences; if it lowers the capacity of men to meet the stress of existence, or diminishes the worth to them of what existence they have; such a theory is somehow false, and we have no peace until it is remedied.” 14 Another test of reality is the test, to which we have repeatedly referred, of the whole man as the organ of the spiritual. This growing emphasis in our time on wholeness has many illustrations. An instance is found in Mc- Dougall’s insistence that “even the most purely instinctive action is the outcome of a distinctly mental process . . . and one which, like every other mental process, has, and can only be fully described in terms of, the three aspects of all mental process—the cognitive, the affective, and the conative aspects; that is to say, every instance of instinc¬ tive behavior involves a knowing of some thing or object, 13 Reconstruction in Philosophy, pp. 156 ff. 14 The Meaning of Qod in Human Experience, pp. xiii ff. The Philosophical Approach 115 a feeling in regard to it, and a striving towards or away from that object.” 15 So Hocking makes his appeal to wholeness when he calls his philosophic view a “point of convergence,” and says: ‘‘It is the finished pragmatist who best knows the need of the absolute. It is the finished mystic who best knows the need of active life and its mediation. It is the finished idealist who best knows the need of the realistic elements of ex¬ perience; the mystical and authoritative elements of faith. I know not what name to give to this point of convergence, nor does name much matter: it is realism, it is mysticism, it is idealism also, its identity, I believe, not broken. For in so far as idealism announces the liberty of thought, the spir¬ ituality of the world, idealism is but another name for phi¬ losophy—all philosophy is idealism. It is only the radical idealist who is able to give full credit to the realistic, the naturalistic, even the materialistic aspects of the world he lives in.” 16 Another common test that men instinctively apply is the test of many minds in the long run of human experi¬ ence. This is the test which underlies Lincoln’s often quoted statement on democracy, that you can fool all of the people part of the time, and part of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. In spite of the herd instinct and its power and dangers, there is real value in this test of many minds. Another closely allied test is the test of great minds — minds with initiative, creative minds, recognized experts in given fields, authorities in the true sense. For, as we have seen in our discussion of the way into the great values of life, it is the geniuses, the great souls of large experience in a given realm, by whom we are naturally led to the best the race has yet achieved. 15 Social Psychology, p. 26. 18 Op. cit., pp. xix-xx. 116 Seeing Life Whole And both these tests, of the many minds and of great minds, connect themselves inevitably with the test of the historic trend of the progress of the race, the test of racial experience. In the light of the theory of evolution we have naturally come to conceive the great outstanding ethical standards and ideals of the race as to a large extent, at least, the outcome of racial experience. No doubt we must be on our guard against the static concep¬ tion of standards and ideals, and should not forget that conventions must change as ethical growth goes on. “Hence,” as Schiller says, “ ‘transvaluations’ must be regarded as normal and entirely legitimate occurrences in every sphere of values.” 17 And yet we cannot help drawing inferences from the historic trend of the race. But we need to be keenly alert, in the interpretation of history, against the bias that selects out such phenomena in history as will simply confirm a foregone conclusion. Another test of great value in the complexity of modern civilization is the test of the converging of many lines of fact and experience and thought. It was this test which Hocking was using in the definition of his own philosophi¬ cal viewpoint, and we are ourselves using this test in the method adopted of a sixfold approach to our general problem of a Christian philosophy of life. Where a num¬ ber of more or less independent lines of thought do tend to converge upon a conclusion, we rightly give great weight to the conclusion so reached. If, for example, historic, psychologic, scientific, philosophic, ethical and social emphases all point to a certain goal, that goal will rightly seem to us strongly verified. 18 The very complexity of the world and of human nature, 17 Article “Value,” Encyc. of Religion and Ethics, p. 588. 18 Cf. King, The Seeming Unreality of the Spiritual Life, pp. 165- 180. The Philosophical Approach 117 and growing experience in so complex a life, suggest that any extreme, one-sided view is pretty certain not to represent the full truth, but that there will surely be some balancing facts which must be taken into account. For the very unity of man’s nature means that it will certainly avenge itself for any disregard of any real part of its experience. This brings us to another test, especially suggested by psychology: the test of the paradox. The test of the paradox is really a part of the emphasis on seeing life whole; for it has grown up in universal human experience. Men have repeatedly found in many situa¬ tions in life that something like Hegel’s transcending syn¬ thesis is called for, that includes the truth of both sides of a practical paradox and brings both together. These paradoxes of course go back to the paradoxes in man’s own constitution: such paradoxes as self-assertion and self-surrender; as the stable and unstable types of men; as Christ’s great all-inclusive paradox of saving one’s life by losing it; and as the paradox of the necessary combina¬ tion in our life of both complexity and simplicity. We may well use the test of one of these paradoxes as applied to religion: the test of both likeness and difference; that religion, in the first place, if it is to seem most real to us, must be like those other realms of experience which have seemed to us most real; and, on the other hand, that religion must be different from all other realms, as having a certain uniqueness which cannot be spared, and therefore having an indispensable contribution to make to life. Both likeness and difference are necessary, in spite of the seeming paradox. 19 James suggests a useful threefold test of opinions and experiences: immediate luminousness, philosophical rea- 10 Cf. King, The Seeming Unreality of the Spiritual Life, pp. 14- 17; Cf. Sheldon, Strife of Systems and Productive Duality. 118 Seeing Life Whole sonableness, and moral helpfulness. This test of James’ is, of course, a direct appeal to the judgment of the whole man. There is a negative test also of truth or reality, which deserves to be included in this survey. The great achieve¬ ments of modern science have led some to regard the con¬ ceptions which underlie the mathematico-mechanical view of nature as though they were peculiarly real, the essen¬ tial realities of the universe, and to hold that they con¬ stituted the superior “hard facts” with which we have to do. But atoms are no more real than minds, or the fact that man has two appetites more real than man’s sense of truth, of goodness, and of beauty. The man who seeks the truth, who seeks reality, must be prepared to face the facts wherever those facts lie. Religion believes in these tests of truth and reality and has no occasion to shrink from them, for they are a part of her faith in God and in a world that is God’s world. She believes so fully in the whole man as the organ of the spiritual that she can have no quarrel with these many- sided tests of truth. 3. Another point of view that helps to clearness in the philosophic realm is that of the three spheres of reality , the is , the must , and the ought. It is worth while to give Lotze’s full putting of this thought: “Our whole theory of the universe has three starting-points. We find within ourselves a knowledge of universal laws, which, without themselves giving rise to any particular form of existence, force themselves on our attention as the necessary and immediately certain limits within which all reality must move. On the other hand, we find within ourselves an in¬ stinct bidding us discern in Ideas of the good, the beautiful, and the holy , the one indefeasible end whence alone reality The Philosophical Approach 119 derives any value; but even this end does not bring to our cognition the special form of the means by which it is to be attained. Between these two extreme points extends for us a third region—that of experience —boundless in the wealth of its forms and events, unknown in its origin. We can track into this wealth the universal Laws imposed on all phenomena. ... In this wealth of reality we may also seek the radiance of those Ideas which give worth to all being and doing. . . . But the more, while endeavouring to fulfil one of these two tasks, we become absorbed in the details of Nature’s course, the more does Nature’s own originality again come to the front—the independent wealth of forms in which it envelops the universal and colourless laws of mechanism, and the self- will with which it carries out Ideas not always in what seems to us the shortest way, but by circuitous paths and in ac¬ cordance with general and far-reaching habits of working.” 20 No one of these three spheres of reality can replace any other. Nor can we rid ourselves of any one of the three. And though we study incessantly the third region, that of experience—the is —for all possible light upon the must and the ought , if we are to be successful in thinking the world through into final unity, we shall all of us have to start in our final unifying statement with the ought , with the teleological view of the essence of the world. 21 The ought we have to think of as the ideal goal of the universe; but for its embodiment it requires laws, the must , and it requires also a given content, a certain matter of fact, the is. Three of the most influential philosophical minds of the generation just past, Lotze, Wundt, and Paulsen, agree that ethics must thus determine metaphysics; that the ought must determine the must and the is. 22 4. It helps to clearness also to see that the ought , the ideal in the widest conception we have of it, is itself at 20 Microcosmus, Vol. I, pp. 417-18. 31 Cf. Lotze, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 719 flf. 50 Cf. King, Rational Living, p. 166. 120 Seeing Life Whole least threefold, gathering, as a result of the experience of the race, around the three great ideals of truths goodness , and beauty , which correspond to the three aspects of man’s ideal nature, and to three great realms of value: unifying intellectual values, ethical values, and esthetic values. And yet all belong indubitably together. These three may be said to make our great irreducible universe of the ideal. And the discernment and formulation of them are an expression of one of the surest and most significant insights growing out of the experience of the race. They may be said to constitute the great affirma¬ tions of religious faith, for they deal with a world of persons, and naturally look to an ultimate source not less than personal. As Streeter puts it: 23 “The worship of God is not something different from the love of Humanity, the passion for the Beautiful, and the devotion to Truth; it is not something which exists alongside of these and in addition to them, it is what these actually are whenever and in so far as they are realised in their highest form, in their true co-ordination, and in their real meaning. Conscious worship of the Divine is not an extra, it is the summary and the explanation of every separate and depart¬ mental pursuit of the Ideal. And yet to say without further explication that Worship is merely the sum total of the love of Goodness, Beauty and Truth, all realised in perfect har¬ mony and proportion, ts to leave out something essential. The love of Goodness means less than the love of God, unless we recollect that it must include not merely the love of the mother for the babe, but also that of the babe to the mother —reverence, gratitude, unqualified trust, as well as an ecstasy of self-devotion. The service of man is the most essential activity in the service of God, and the love of humanity is a necessary element in the love of God, but it is not the whole of it; and it only becomes the whole of it when directed towards that ideal Humanity which is for us the ‘image of * Concerning Prayer, pp. 245-247, 249. The Philosophical Approach 121 the invisible God.’ . . . The conception of Worship is that which co-ordinates and illustrates the three parallel aspira¬ tions of the human mind, the passion for Good, for Beauty and for Truth. . . . Thus devotion to Goodness, devotion to Beauty, devotion to Truth in the last resort can only coexist, can only each attain its true character, if the object of the individual’s own special interest is seen to be an expression of and a part of the Eternal Harmony which is above all, which is in all, and which is all. When this is consciously realised, and all the faculties are consciously and spon¬ taneously orientated in that direction. Worship in its highest form begins.” Men have been slow to grasp the full meaning of the race’s practically universal affirmation of these values of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, as real and inescapable. Our minds are real facts, and their experi¬ ence and affirmation of truth, goodness and beauty are facts. The sense of value would go if faith in their objective reality vanished. That would make a thor¬ oughly irrational world, meeting none of the highest tests of reality. Hoffding puts most compactly a single aspect of this necessary objectivity of truth, goodness and beauty: 24 “There are lines of evolution which have their end in ethical idealism, in a kingdom of values, which must struggle for life as all things in the world must do, but a kingdom which has its firm foundation in reality.” 5. But an adequate philosophy, particularly in a scientific age, must do full justice to the mission of mechanism , 26 and it would be difficult to state that mission more concisely and justly than Lotze has done, in what is practically the thesis of his whole philosophy, 26 where he 84 Evolution in Modem Thought, p. 222. 85 Cf. Lotze, Microcosmus, Vol. II, p. 727. 5,0 Mi-cro-cosmms, Vol. I, p. xvi. 122 Seeing Life Whole seeks to show “how absolutely universal is the extent and at the same time how completely subordinate the signifi¬ cance , of the mission which mechanism has to fulfil in the structure of the world” In other words, “nowhere is mechanism the essence of the matter; but nowhere does being assume another form of finite existence except through it.” 27 On the one hand, it must be plain that mechanism is absolutely universal in extent; that agency, machinery, organization are always necessary; that nothing can take place in the realm of nature or spirit without means. And this insistence on mechanism’s abso¬ lute universality in extent corresponds to science’s funda¬ mental conviction of the universality of law. On the other hand, Lotze insists that mechanism is completely sub¬ ordinate in significance. It is means, not end, and its whole value lies in the end for which the means exist. For us all, a rational world requires such subordination of the machinery of the world. We need to know that values can conquer; that the universe is on the side of the righteous will. The whole religious interest in the ques¬ tion of miracle, it should be noticed, however one deals with that problem, lies not in emphasis on isolated marvel, but at just this point: whether men can believe in the supremacy of the ideal values in the universe over the machinery of the universe. This is not a selfish grasping for our own little personal reward but for ground for faith in an honest world and in the character of God. “We regard as incomplete any philosophy which holds that good may vanish out of the universe unrequited.” 28 It is well to remember, also, that even in natural science, machinery is not the whole; quality and content are also absolutely essential. In the emphasis, therefore, upon ** Microcosmus, Vol. I, pp. 399-400. 36 Cf. Lotze, Microcosmus , Vol. II, p. 473. The Philosophical Approach 123 mechanism as, on the one hand, absolutely universal in extent, and, on the other hand, completely subordinate in significance, we are doing justice both to the real and to the ideal sides, and looking to a final philosophy of ideal- realism or real-idealism. IV In this survey of fundamental philosophical viewpoints, and in close connection with the consideration of the mission of mechanism, we need to return to the problem of the possible harmony of the two final questions concerning phenomena: the question of process, of immediate causal connection,—How did it come to be? which is the question of empirical science; and, second, the question of meaning, of ideal interpretation,—What does it mean? the question of philosophy and the ideal interests. One of these ques¬ tions is as real and as justified and as necessary as the other. As has been already pointed out, they supplement each other, and, in all preliminary inquiry certainly, have no quarrel with one another. But we cannot stop, of course, with a final irreconcilable dualism between the two. There must be ultimate unity. We cannot get on with a final denial of the unity of truth. An ultimately rational immerse, that is, must be so constituted that the process shall not be so inconsistent with the meaning as to make ultimate unity impossible. The universe must be on the side of the ethical will, in the struggle for existence of the values for which it stands. That is, the universe must be so made that we shall have good grounds to believe that values will be conserved and will make progress. This means, in turn, that God’s purpose in the universe and in its constitution must be such as shall be in line with man’s own highest purposes, that man shall not be at endless 124 Seeing Life Whole cross purposes with himself. There could be no possible adequate religion otherwise. Even evolution feels that it must believe that while adaptation to environment does not always mean progress in a particular organism, in the large and in the long run it does mean progress. We could hardly else justify the evolutionary process of the world at all. What grounds for faith are there, then, for the ultimate harmony of process and meaning, of mechanism and values, of the mechanical and the ideal, of empirical science and philosophy? In the first place, science's universality of law, as Lotze says, must be taken as only a disguised expression of the unity of the Infinite, and so conceived it is both a scientific and a philosophic insistence, and we have no reason to expect final conflict between process and meaning. To like import Haering says: 29 “The more clearly the conception of science is grasped, the less, in the long run, can people fail to discover the limit to its domination, as supplied by itself, or the presence of other mental powers of the strongest kind; and the less can the desire, ineradicable in the human mind that is not distorted, for an ultimate conviction regarding the world as a unity, be suppressed.” We have also seen that in order to reach any final unity of the world, with its three realms of reality,—the is, the must, and the ought, —we must begin with the ought, with the ideal; for we cannot derive the ought from either the must or the is. But beginning with the ought, we may reach faith, at least, in an ultimate unity here. In the evolution process itself, also, the condition of all progress lies in the variations, which are not causally explained, that is, in individuality, and as evolution “ The Christian Faith, Vol. I, p. 162. 125 The Philosophical Approach reaches man, in human individuality. Here, in the recog¬ nition of the significance of human individuality both in process and in meaning, the two come together, and give one once more an assurance of final unity. More and more, also, in the process of evolution we are compelled to recognize two aspects of reality from the beginning of life, the mental and the physical , mutually adjusted and ever interacting—an actual working unity at least. A philosophy which recognizes this “recognizes the facts of the case and does not delude the mind by offering a solution which is in reality no solution at all.” 30 Where both aspects of man’s nature are recognized, it is plain that the mental becomes increasingly significant and powerful as the evolution goes on, and grows continually in the knowledge of the world and of life. The “matter,” too, with which we have to do, it is becoming increasingly plain, is no dead inert static stuff, but a dynamic energy of inconceivable power, a kind of “matter” that might well be called “of the nature of mind”; particularly since the only power we directly know from within is will power. 31 Moreover, for the ultimate harmony of process and of meaning, of science and of philosophy, and particularly in the theistic interpretation of evolution, we have to recog¬ nize both the immanence and transcendence of God. For, if the religious point of view is to be taken at all, the world must be conceived as neither self-originating nor self-sustaining. For if God is necessary anywhere he is necessary everywhere. There are no breaks in the evolu- w Outline of Science, Vol. II, p. 549. Cf. also Pratt on "a dualism of process and not necessarily of substance,” Matter and Spirit, pp. 183 if. 81 Cf. McDougall, Social Psychology, pp. 361-363: ‘‘Of the two types of process, we certainly understand the appetitive more intimately than the mechanical.” 126 Seeing Life Whole tion series where he is more necessary than at other points. Nor can God’s relation to the universe be conceived to be an external finite relation to the process of things. Rather must he be thought as in these processes, as the very soul of them. But, while this is true, no satisfactory religious conclusion concerning the immanence of God can be reached without clearly recognizing that the immanence of God in the world of men must be conceived as in some respects of a quite different kind from that in all the sub¬ human world. For in the human world there are moral conditions to be observed—some genuine self-conscious¬ ness, and free moral initiative, that make personality and character possible. We are thus obliged to ask, in the case of men, for a kind of separateness from God that would not hold for the lower animals. It is not meta¬ physical separateness of being which is required in the case of man—all our being roots in God—but the sepa¬ rateness of man’s own self-consciousness and free moral self-determination. If these are guarded the real person¬ ality both of God and of man is guarded. As Martineau says, in presenting a similar view of God’s immanence in men: “Here is a holy place reserved for genuine moral relations and personal affections, for infinite pity and finite sacrifice, for tears of compunction and the embrace of forgiveness, and all the hidden life by which the soul ascends to God.” 32 It is also to be noted that there is a certain “duplicity of the Infinite Being” at work in all finite forces, if they are to be regarded as real causes adequate to the situa¬ tion. 33 For the full cause is never really present for science, even in its strictly scientific investigations, in the “Quoted by McGiffert, The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, p. 220 . 88 Cf. King, The Reconstruction of Theology, p. 64. 127 The Philosophical Approach sense that by any possible analysis of the present stage it is able to prophesy the next stage independent of experi¬ ence. In such a situation both immanence and tran¬ scendence are demanded. 34 The parallel emphasis on transcendence , which the unity of the scientific and ideal views require, may be taken at least to mean, in the first place, that we have to do with no finite God; that the infinite fulness of the life of God is not exhausted in his universe. Men must know God, that is, as something more and other than the evolutionary process of things and animals and men, in which God is. For worship and vital relation to God require another than oneself, however intimate the relation between the two may be. Otherwise the highest we know will be man, and Humanity necessarily becomes our god, as Frederic Harrison’s Positivism asserts. 35 Pringle-Pattison thus sums up the necessity of both immanence and transcendence for a Christian view of God and the world: 38 “The immanent God is thus always the infinitely transcendent. The two aspects imply one another. A purely immanental theory means the denial of the divine altogether as in any way distinguishable from the human, and involves, therefore, the unqualified acceptance of everything just as it is. A theory of pure transcendence, on the other hand, tends to leave us with a ‘mighty Darkness filling the seat of power,’ for only so far as God is present in our experience can we know any¬ thing about Him at all. It is the immanence of the transcendent, the presence of the infinite in our finite lives, that alone explains the essential nature of man.” So Haering says: 87 “To be sure, the forms of our 84 Cf. Microcosmus, Vol. T, pp. 382, 384. 83 Cf. King, Reconstruction in Theology, p. 108. 88 The Spirit, edited by Streeter, pp. 21-22. ” The Christian Faith, Vol. I, p. 351. 128 Seeing Life Whole thought are changing away from the transcendence of God, and are deepening in the measure in which we realize His immanence, rightly understood. But if the ultimate mystery is shifted to the soul of man itself, if the ‘God in man’s own heart’ is in man’s heart alone, real religion ceases, and all sorts of substitutes, chiefly esthetic, take its place.” And finally, in this harmonizing of the scientific and ideal viewpoints, it is to be noted that even the so-called necessary truths are not to he thought of as a world above God , to which he must be subject, but only the eternal habitudes of God himself. This is neither to say with Duns Scotus that the truth is true and the good is good because God wills it; nor yet to say with Thomas Aquinas that God wills the true because it is true and the good because it is good. Both views alike assume the possibility of a fragmentary God, a God for whom at some time truth and goodness were not yet. We must rather say, God alone is the Eternal Being and absolute Source of all, always complete in the perfection of his personality; and therefore, what we call the eternal truths are only the eternal modes of God's own actual activity v Two supplementary but vital considerations need emphasis in concluding our philosophical approach to a Christian view of God and the world. 1. One of these considerations is to be found in the suggestion that one's own self is the best hey one has to the understanding of the universe . For man is, after all, in a very real sense both microcosmus and microtheos— 68 Cf. King, Theology and the Social Consciousness, pp. 212 ff. The Philosophical Approach 129 the world in little and God in little—and therefore the best key to the understanding of both the universe and God. For one’s own self is the only bit of reality we can know from within, and hence know best, and becomes thence naturally our one best key to the understanding of the world both of nature and of human nature. Lotze is very emphatic in making the whole man in the entire range of his experience the key to reality, in this signifi¬ cant passage: 39 “The nature of things does not consist in thoughts, and thinking is not able to grasp it; yet perhaps the whole mind experiences in other forms of its action and passion the essential meaning of all being and action, thought subsequently serving it as an instrument by which that which is thus experienced is brought into the connection which its nature requires, and is experi¬ enced in more intensity in proportion as the mind is master of this connection.” This principle of ourselves as the key to the under¬ standing of the world means particularly, of course, that what we inevitably recognize as the highest in us must he taken as the best key we have to the understanding of God . If we are to have any adequate conception of God at all, it is plain that we cannot conceive him as less than the best in our finite selves. While, therefore, we shall not ascribe to God the limitations of our finite personali¬ ties, we shall be certain at least that he is not less than personal. And as we must believe that in us will is more than power, and love more than will, so we shall be sure that the highest in God cannot be less than that love which is highest in us. It is a similar line of thought that leads the modern philosopher and theologian to interpret essence no longer in terms of substance or stuff, but in terms of purpose, as * 9 Microcosmus, Vol. II, pp. 359-360. 130 Seeing Life Whole we know it in ourselves. And this principle of the teleo¬ logical view of essence has important bearings upon our conception of God and of Christ, as well as upon our conception of our own significance. 2. The remaining philosophical consideration needing special emphasis in reaching a Christian philosophy of life is that of a purposed seeming unreality of the spiri¬ tual life, as I have elsewhere pointed out. 40 For this seeming unreality there are undoubtedly certain plain removable causes in various kinds of misconceptions and in failure to fulfil necessary conditions; but there are also equally plain unremovable causes, due first of all to cer¬ tain definite limitations of our natures, but especially due to what may be called a purposed seeming unreality on the part of God , to insure respect for human personality. This explanation of the seeming unreality of the spiritual life began with Kant and is very important as throwing light on many questions difficult for religious faith. The principle, for example, throws a great new light on the whole dark problem of evil—our greatest natural obstacle to a satisfying religious faith. As I have previously said: Seeing how much is at stake in this reverent guarding, at any cost, of our moral initiative and of our individuality, we learn not to expect God to interfere, even when great evils threaten. The greatest evil, after all, would be that the conditions of genuine character should fail. We come even to rejoice that we live, in this time of our pre¬ liminary training, in a world in which the rewards of virtue do not seem to follow either immediately or cer¬ tainly. The natural and inevitable doubt which underlies for every man “the problem of evil” becomes, in the light 40 The Seeming Unreality of the Spiritual Life, especially pp. 141- 165. The Philosophical Approach 131 of this far-reaching principle of reverence for personality, itself a cause of thanksgiving; for it insures that our righteous choices shall not be selfishly motived. We are glad that the genuinely unselfish choice seems so often to cut right athwart our own interests; for it means that our wills are not over-ridden. The very existence of the problem of evil makes possible our belief in the genuine¬ ness of the character of ourselves and of others. It is a heavy price that is thus paid, no doubt; but it is not too heavy for the priceless interests so guarded. We have to recognize on the part of God, then, something like a really purposed obscuring of the spiritual world. The seemijg- unreality of the spiritual life is a chief part of our moral and religious training. If these philosophical view-points now reviewed, with their emphasis on seeing life whole, are justified, we can get all the unity necessary in our view of the world, and religion will have ample room for existence and growth. Religion, indeed, becomes the natural culmination of our best thinking along many lines. CHAPTER VI THE BIBLICAL. AND CHRISTIAN APPROACH In facing the whole problem of a Christian philosophy o\ life, it is impossible to avoid careful consideration of i\^ Biblical and Christian approach; for Christianity is uo mere philosophical speculation, but a definitely histori¬ cal religion, using as a part of its literature the Old Tes¬ tament Scriptures, and building preeminently on the life and teaching of Christ. We need not seek in any way or degree to evade consideration of these historical relations of Christianity. Indeed, this historical basis may well become an element of great strength. At the same time the relation of Christian faith to the Scriptures involves some difficult problems, greatly need¬ ing clear solution. It is particularly true that questions of real difficulty for very many have naturally arisen from false conceptions of the Bible, because the facts of modern science could in many cases not be harmonized with the Biblical statements. One can only say, as honestly as he may, how these questions best come to him. In the light of the long history of conflict between reli¬ gion and science, it is highly important to see with President McGifFert 1 that “in all these matters the readjustment might have taken place naturally and with¬ out harm to anybody, had it not been for the notion that the Bible is an infallible authority upon all subjects, 1 The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, p. 33. I3 2 The Biblical and Christian Approach 133 taken together with the fact that like most other ancient documents it represents a world-view which the new scien¬ tific discoveries were showing erroneous at one point after another.” Thoughtful Christians, therefore, are forced to con¬ sider what view they are to take of the Bible, if they are to keep an open mind toward growing scientific knowledge on the one hand, and toward an equally honest study of the Bible on the other hand. The difficulties to be met really need just two things for their solution. In the first place, it needs to be seen, as has already been pointed out, that all questions of science strictly interpreted are questions of process, and at bot¬ tom cannot conflict with the questions of ideal interpreta¬ tion raised by religion; and that a careful study of the established facts of evolution shows that there is no diffi¬ culty in a theistic interpretation of the evolution theory. We need not return to these aspects of the relation of science and religion. In the second place, if Christian people are ever to avoid the feeling of constant conflict between science and the Scriptures, there is need to go to the bottom as to what it is to be a Christian, and so what a Christian use of the Bible is. i What then is it to be a Christian? To that question, I suppose, the simplest and at the same time the funda¬ mental answer is: a Christian man is a man who means first and foremost to be a disciple of Christ. Why does a man take that position? That is, why do Christian people call themselves Christian at all? Simply because they believe that Christ is truly the supreme revelation of God and of the highest life open to men; that is, that 134s Seeing Life Whole they can get more light and help from Christ than from any other. The Christian man believes that the great outstanding claims of Christ upon the love and loyalty of men, as I have elsewhere said , 2 are these: that in him we have the best life, the best ideals and standards, the best insight into the laws of life, the best convictions, the best hopes, the best dynamic for character, the surest revealer of God, and the greatest persuasive of the love of God; and, therefore, “the most precious fact in history, the most precious fact our life contains.” The Christian man thus counts Christ as veritable Lord of his life. For it is the simple truth to say that in all the higher ranges of his life he literally lives by Christ, for his highest ideals, insights, convictions, motives, faiths and hopes he owes to Christ. The Christian man, now, with this conception of Christ is brought face to face with the Bible,—the historical Scriptures of his religion,—and confronts its challenge: Are you in dead earnest—as a Christian must be—with the Lordship of Christ P If you are, then you must assert his supremacy in the Bible—great as the Bible is—as well as out of it. You will not put all the rest of the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament alike, on a level with him; but you will rather insist that all else in the Bible must be tested by him—by his spirit. And only that which bears that test is in the highest sense Christian, and to be received by you as such. This is the Christian use of the Bible , and there is no other, just because it alone gives Christ his supreme place. And this Christian use of the Bible brings a great emancipation both to Christian living and to Christian thinking. One is no longer confused and hindered by the imperfect approaches to the spirit of Christ found in many parts of the Bible. * Fundamental Questions , p. 107. The Biblical and Christian Approach 135 He feels no obligation to defend anything in the Bible which is unworthy of the spirit of Christ or manifestly not true; for the obligation to be true to the truth is a part of essential loyalty to Christ. Now all this has nothing primarily to do with scientific theories of any hind. There is nothing in the teaching of Jesus denying a theistic interpretation of evolution. He is in truth not dealing with that sort of question at all— not with astronomy or physics or chemistry or biology, but only with religion, with a man’s highest relations to God and men. On the other hand, Christ’s teaching fits well enough into the idea of evolution, for example in the parables of the kingdom. As others, and especially Romanes, have suggested, Jesus’ teaching is almost as remarkable for what it does not say as for what it does say. His spiritual insight, sanity, and balance keep him from mixing the questions with which he deals with other questions of a very different sort. One might leave the matter right there. But the very interest which the Christian man has in Christ and in his teaching well-nigh compels him to under¬ take a genetic understanding of Christ and Christianity, —such as can be obtained most naturally through the Old Testament. And that means that he can hardly use wisely and to most profit the Scriptures of his religion, including the Old Testament, except by a thorough criti- cal i literary and historical study of the entire Bible ,— what our time has called higher criticism. The emphat¬ ically Christian use of the Bible thus itself leads to its critical study. There is imperative need of a very honest application to the Bible of the principles of historical and literary criticism. The difficulty for Christian believers, at this point, has almost wholly come, as has been said, from the notion that the Bible is an infallible authority 136 Seeing Life Whole upon all subjects, and from the fact that many have been making claims for the Bible that the Bible does not make for itself, and so have been rendering it impossible for the Bible to give the priceless help that it may readily give. It is highly important, therefore, to see the full meaning and bearing, for the Bible, of what is called “higher criticism.” Higher criticism 3 may be defined as a careful historical and literary study of the book to determine its unity, age, authorship, literary form, and reliability. The higher criticism of a book is thus, in the main, simply a pains¬ taking study of the book itself, to get at the facts about it. The inquiry in its entirety is evidently wholly legiti¬ mate and ought to be of value when applied to the books of the Bible as well as to any other ancient book. In its purity, then, it is to be noted, the higher criticism of the Old Testament, for example, is simply an honest inductive study of the facts about the historical revelation of God in order to determine, just as in a truly scientific study of nature, how God actually did proceed, not how he must have proceeded. Every Christian ought to desire to know just that. To such an inductive study, therefore, however thorough, no reasonable objection can be made. There is, however, one caution voiced by Pro¬ fessor E. F. Scott, whose liberality will not be questioned, 4 which deserves careful heeding: “As we read not a few of the more recent books on the origins of Christianity we cannot but feel that the authors have lost sight of the result in their occupation with the process. They have much to say about sources and influences, about all the different phases of the development, but with the thing that developed they do not concern themselves.” *Cf. King, Be construction in Theology, Chap. VIII, pp. 109 ff. 4 The New Testament Today, p. 48. The Biblical and Christian Approach 137 n 1. In turning, now, to some of the present-day obstacles to a Biblical approach to a Christian philosophy of life , the doctrine that the Scriptures are inerrant on all sub¬ jects and equally authoritative throughout, must be squarely faced; for, as we have seen, it makes impossible a truly Christian view of God and his relation to men. The element of truth in this general position is the priceless value which the Scriptures have in enabling one to share in the most significant religious experiences of the race (for it may truly be called a record of the preeminent meetings of God with men), 6 and to get a genetic historical understanding of Christ and Christian¬ ity. And this value must never be lost sight of. But the view that all parts of the Scriptures are equally inspired and authoritative inevitably involves, in particu¬ lar, over-attention to the Old Testament , over-estimation of the Old Testament, and over-influence of the Old Testa¬ ment on our life and thought. Christian thought as a whole has never faced that fact. From the beginning of Christianity men have tended to give the Old Testament such an undue place, and this is still true for great multitudes, and leads to many un-Christian inferences. Dr. W. N. Clarke does not put the matter too strongly: 6 The Old Testament is “sure to offer more than its rightful share. It is the larger book. It is more pictorial in its modes of representation than its companion. It is more anthropo¬ morphic, and more given to expressing truths by means of institutions. It thus excels in quick suggestiveness. . . . Moreover, in spite of all its lofty passages, the Old Testament is less spiritual than the New, and therefore less exact- •King, Reconstruction in Theology, p. 156. 9 The Use of the Scriptures in Theology, pp. 13-14. 138 Seeing Life Whole ing. . . . In a word, the Old Testament is such a book in comparison with the New that to over-exalt it is to unspirit¬ ualize theology. And as a matter of fact it has been over¬ exalted far. The third chapter of Genesis has been more influential upon the doctrine of sin than all the words and attitude of Jesus. The book of Leviticus has done more to give form to the doctrine of salvation than any single book in the New Testament. Legalism has entered theology through the open door, and found permanent lodgment in the doctrine of the atonement.” The doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture, moreover, takes an external view of authority in the spiritual life, in its thought of the Bible as equally authoritative through¬ out, in a way that is quite contrary to the whole spirit of Christ’s life and teaching. For Christ’s whole desire is to bring his disciples into a genuine sharing in his own spiritual life—to convictions, ideals, faiths and hopes veritably born in their own experience with him,—not to allow them to rest back on any ancient say-so. The view trifles, too,—half unconsciously no doubt— with facts and with the sense of truth, in its insistence on putting all Scripture on a level and on affirming the unity of all. For this insistence—I think one must say —is manifestly not based on truth, and only the exigen¬ cies of an unwarranted theory force it on men. The fifth chapter of Genesis and the first nine chapters of First Chronicles, for example, are certainly not to be put on a level with the twenty-third Psalm and the Ser¬ mon on the Mount. It is not a light matter thus to trifle with the facts—with the truth—for that is a training in disingenuousness. As another has put it, “Truth, which implies reverence for fact, and even for what may seem trivial fact, is part of the very being of God, and therefore any cynical or easy-going indifference to truth is itself The Biblical and Christian Approach 139 . an obstacle to real fellowship with Him.” 7 “Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay.” Moreover—what supremely concerns the Christian— the view of an equally authoritative Bible, as we have seen, denies the real Lordship of Christ in the Bible by putting all Scripture on a level with him. My complaint is not that the defenders of an equally authoritative Bible make too much of Christ, but that in reality they make far too little. Those who take this position should heed well what it involves. For as a matter of fact, by this very attitude they absolutely fail to give Christ anything like the place he merits, or anything like so large a place as do many of those whom they criticize for denying the divinity of Christ. This is no small error. It is time that this truth was pressed earnestly home upon all Christian men and women, for this doctrine of the in¬ errancy of Scripture, just because it makes all Scripture equally authoritative, makes it impossible to give Christ his real supremacy, whether in the Bible or out of it, and is therefore fundamentally un-Christian in the highest sense. Positively, then, the opposition to this claim for the inerrancy of Scripture and all that goes with that should mean several things. First, it means unhesitating accept¬ ance of the principles of the historical and literary criti¬ cism of the Scriptures. We cannot otherwise use the Scriptures as they ought to be used, or even defend them. A professor of the Bible in an Indian Christian college told me that in his Bible classes he taught Christian students and Hindu students separately, for he could svot answer the questions raised by the Hindu students except on the basis of historical and literary criticism, and this critical position he did not feel at liberty to take 1 The Spirit, edited by Streeter, p. 166. 140 Seeing Life Whole in teaching the Christian students, on account of the op¬ position of other members of the faculty. In the second place, this should mean discriminating recognition of the limitations of the Old Testament. One of the great gains of the newer view of the Scriptures is that it requires discrimination in their use; it means a more genuinely spiritual method in spiritual things; for, as Drummond says, “Truth never becomes truth until it has been earned.” The setting aside of the doctrine of the in¬ errancy of the Scripture should emphatically mean, as we have seen, coming to a new and clear assertion of the Lordship of Christ in the Bible as well as out of it. The rational view of the Scriptures would also involve the application of the evolutionary point of view, though in no mechanical fashion, to the Scriptures as a record of the growing revelation of God on the one hand, and of man’s growing response to that revelation on the other. For it is impossible to put all the different stages of revelation in the Old Testament on a level or to assert that the order of time is in all cases the order of progress. And such a view of Scripture implies especially perceiving the progressive apologetic within the New Testament itself with its continuing help. As Scott points out in his Apologetic of the New Testament , we have been slow to see the great value, for example of the Johannine apol¬ ogetic and the help of its later date. The victory over Gnosticism, in Scott’s words, “has been described as the victory of sober reason over wild irresponsible speculation; but it was much more. It ensured that Christianity should continue as an ethical religion, appealing to all mankind, and not as an esoteric philosophy. It ensured also that through all its future developments the church should be anchored to its historical origins in the life The Biblical and Christian Approach 141 and death of Jesus Christ.” 8 This makes the New Testament Christianity emphatically ethical, universal, historical, and Christian. The Fourth Gospel “has per¬ ceived that Christianity is ultimately bound up with Christ himself—not with any work accomplished by Him, but with His own Person.” 9 This historical critical study of the Scriptures gives an emancipated theology, and has still much of fruitful sug¬ gestion for theology. For example, light from the extra- canonical apocalyptic writings helps to relieve the tradi¬ tional Christian eschatology , as Rev. C. W. Emmet points out in his essay on The Bible and Hell . 10 He defines the traditional view of hell as “any state of punishment, whether bodily or spiritual, from which there is no longer any prospect of the soul deriving any benefit, and in which it suffers without hope for itself or profit to others. Our strongest ground for the belief in immortality at all is our trust in the infinite Love of God and our conviction that in His Universe goodness must ultimately prevail; but the doc¬ trine that through all eternity there will continue to exist individuals suffering acutely in useless and hopeless agony is too cruel and too irrational to be compatible with that belief. . . . The traditional Christian teaching in this matter is very generally supposed to rest directly on the teaching of the Bible as a whole and of the New Testament in par¬ ticular. . . . It is the contention of this paper that this supposition is wholly erroneous. The recovery, during recent years, of a large number of lost Jewish apocalyptic writings has thrown an entirely new light on the exact nature of the problem contemplated, on the exact meaning of the terms employed, and on the history and origin of many of the ideas on this subject found in the Biblical writers. The net result of modern Biblical scholarship, with its application of the historical method commonly known as the higher criticism, * Op. cit., pp. 180-181. • Scott, op. cit., p. 207. 19 Immortality, edited by Streeter, pp. 170-172, 212-213. 142 Seeing Life Whole combined with the light derived from these new sources, is to make it quite clear that the doctrine of hell in the sense in which that term was understood by our great-grandfathers is not to be found in the Bible at all. The Bible teaches, indeed, that the choice between right and wrong action is one which has eternal and abiding consequences. It is emphati¬ cally opposed to any belief that, do what we will, it will make no difference in the long run. What it does not teach is, that in the last and final result of things, there will still remain in the Universe beings suffering acute and everlasting torment in permanent rebellion against the Divine Will and forever rejecting the Divine Love.” The way in which the eschatological question has so largely dropped out of theological controversy is most significant. For more or less consciously that fact prob¬ ably reflects the immovable feeling that there is nothing in the teaching and revelation of Jesus so certain as his fundamental conviction of the infinite love of God as Father; and that no single passages or particular dif¬ ficulties of interpretation can set aside this never-to-be- doubted love of God. And no view of the future life which is inconsistent with this eternal tireless seeking love of God can be regarded as finally Christian. Or, as Emmet says, “It is our belief in the Fatherhood and love of God as revealed in Christ which makes the idea of unending torment strictly intolerable.” 10a The World War naturally brought into the foreground, especially in England, another eschatological question—• the question of prayer for the dead. And one may well wonder if it is not becoming increasingly doubtful whether Protestantism is justified in its complete rejection of such prayer. In another’s words, “The reaction of the Protestant mind against mercenary prayers and cere¬ monies to relieve the misery of the souls in Purgatory 10 “ Op cit., p. 013. 143 The Biblical and Christian Approach was healthy. But with this came in another supers ti- tion, that it was wrong to pray for the dead or to believe in their fellowship with the living.” 11 2. Another obstacle to a Biblical approach to Chris¬ tian life and thought is to be found in a prevalent extreme apocalypticism . There is an undoubted eschatological element in Christ's own teaching , and there ought to be if his teaching is to really meet the fundamental needs of men. This escha¬ tological element is to be found in the first place in the calm assurance which Christ has and gives of another life of fulness and of value. This will always be needed for any adequate Christian apologetic. In the second place, Jesus recognizes that another life is necessary if we are to be able to keep our faith in the justice and love of God. This demand for justice in God is the one great redeeming feature of the apocalyptic literature. As Glover puts it: 12 “In the apocalyptic books we have their philosophy of history, their conviction that funda¬ mental Justice is the secret of the universe, that present wrong will yet, by God’s providence, issue somehow in future right.” The most of the rest of apocalypticism should be sloughed off as simple unwarranted Jewish survival. Dr. Clarke’s language is justified: 13 “Visible advent, simul¬ taneous resurrection, assemblage of all men for judg¬ ment, millennial reign of Christ on earth,—all is Jewish survival, historically discredited by the work of Christ himself: it is a remainder from pre-Christian life and hope, demonstrated to be non-Christian by the different “ Miss Dougall, Immortality, p. 292. n Jesus in the Experience of Men, p. 101. u The Use of the Scriptures in Theology, p. 108. 144 Seeing Life Whole course of Christian history; wherefore it forms no part of Christian theology.” This literalistic premillennialism is contrary to the whole spirit of the teaching of Christ, for it reveals an essentially atheistic disbelief in spiritual forces and re¬ pudiation of them, yielding thus to a temptation which Christ himself rejected in the wilderness struggle. More¬ over, this literalistic premillennialism practically sets aside the whole social aspect of the kingdom of God, and makes meaningless Christ’s prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth .” 3. Another obstacle to a Biblical approach to Christian life and thought is to be found in modern spiritualism. Spiritualism naturally took on a new lease of life during the World War, but has been singularly disappointing in its contribution to the religious life. Its chief value, so far, has been to have called out the activity of the Society for Psychical Research. Professor Leuba, who is sufficiently skeptical on points bearing on the spiritual life, seems to accept the evidence for something like telep¬ athy as adequate. He writes of psychical research: 14 “The greatest accomplishment to record is the approxi¬ mate demonstration that, under circumstances still mostly unknown, men may gain knowledge by other than the usual means, perhaps by direct communication between brains (telepathy) at practically any earthly distance from each other. This dark opening is indeed portentous. It may at any time lead to discoveries which will dwarf into insignificance any of the previous achievements of science.” But with the acceptance of something like telepathy, it is to be noticed, a very large part, at least, of all “spiritualistic” phenomena would be explained. u Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, article “Psychical Re¬ search.” I The Biblical amd Christum Approach 145 A fairly sane attitude for Christian men and women not expert in psychical research has been thus phrased: “I am quite sure that at the heart of the universe lie order and reason and health—that God is the God of order and reason and health in all human affairs—and therefore I can, with a light heart, leave the investigation of alleged spiritualistic phenomena to expert scientists; I am quite certain that whatever turns out to be true will also prove useful to man and honoring to God.” 15 Dabbling in seances is dubious business for those not trained in critical investigation. My own belief is that anything like a scientific proof of existence after death would be of very doubtful value to religion. We chiefly need a rational faith in another life,—not satisfaction of our curiosity concerning all kinds of details that would probably now mean little to us. Certain general considerations warn us not to expect over-much from modern spiritualism. In the first place, in the words of G. R. S. Mead, “In the demonstrations of spiritualism psychical capacity is notoriously unaccom¬ panied with intellectual ability.” In the second place, spiritualism seems to tend, in most cases at least, to a distinct lowering of the tone of the other life. Miss Underhill’s words are hardly too strong: “One of the most remarkable and distressing characteristics of spiri¬ tualism is the thoroughly unspiritual tone of its revela¬ tions.” Moreover, spiritualism almost completely ignores ethical values and seems to have practically no ethical impiilse. Here again Christ’s principle applies, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” A recent critic of spiri¬ tualism makes the interesting suggestion that its claims would put us back in the old maze of verbal inspiration; “ Immortality, p. 244, 146 Seeing Life Whole for she says: “If we believe that by these methods we obtain messages verbally dictated by departed souls, we have returned to a belief in verbal inspiration, and I wish to submit that all the difficulties with which we are familiar in believing that our Scriptures were thus in¬ spired are to be urged against any belief that our friends in the next world give verbally inspired messages to those who remain in the flesh.” 16 4. Among present-day obstacles to a Biblical approach to Christian life and thought I fear must be included also Christian Science. In Christian Science we have one of the most anomalous phenomena of a scientific age, and we need to have in mind the appalling assumptions it makes. In the first place, Christian Science denies the scientific facts and laws of the world and repudiates all modern science, through which the conquest of material forces has come to pass. There is really no place for a scien¬ tifically educated man in Christian Science. It has not even any working hypothesis of its relation to science. Its “glossary” is an absolute repudiation of any pos¬ sible rational interpretation of the Scriptures. Nothing too harsh could be said of it as a method of reaching the truth of the Bible. It thus trifles with the sense of truth and with all possible evidence in most self-con¬ tradictory fashion. One of the most appalling facts for one who remembers Christ’s emancipation of his disciples from superstition and fear is that Mrs. Eddy brought back for her fol¬ lowers belief in all the horrors of witchcraft in her theory of “malicious animal magnetism.” She lived in fear of it herself and put others in fear of it. Her statement “Miss Dougall, Immortality, p. 273. The Biblical and Christian Approach 147 concerning it is unusually clear: “If the right mental practice can restore health, as is proven beyond a ques¬ tion, it is self-evident that a mental malpractice can impair the health of those ignorant of the cause and how to treat it.” 17 But it is nevertheless to be said that in the conviction of healing , Christian Science has undoubtedly brought to many a sense of the reality of living relation to God ,— a vital religious conviction. And though Christian Science has terribly encumbered this simple religious fact with a false philosophy, a repudiation of science, and an impossible interpretation of the Bible, it has still brought to men a sufficient sense of the positive healing power of religious faith to help them to feel their way into some discernment of the spiritual conditions of health. The way this has come about with such new sense of power and reality is perhaps indicated by Rev. Harold Anson in his essay on Prayer as Understanding . 18 He believes that to many people with an inadequate conception of God, “the idea comes as new that, in worshipping God, we are really worshipping Goodness, Love, Life, Principle, and so on; it comes as a new strength and stay in life. To this newly discovered belief ‘Christian Science’ and similar re¬ ligious movements owe much of their influence and their power of regenerating character. Many people thus attain for the first time something of the calmness and balance of the man of science. They learn to believe that the results of co¬ operation with God’s purpose are as certain and accurate as the demonstrations of the laboratory. . . . Thus the idea of God as the abstract active principle of good does, as a matter of fact, bring to many in our own generation a new steadfastness in disappointment, and a confident assurance in the search after God which they did not possess before.’’ 1T Science and Health, 13th ed., p. 175. u Concerning Prayer, pp. 94-95. 148 Seeing Life Whole Science and Healthy the Christian Science textbook, is singularly lacking in intellectual and spiritual insight, and the Christian church as a whole ought to be able distinctly to outbid Christian Science in true spiritual healing. For, as another has put it, the truly Christian spiritual healer “is seeking for a re-constitution of the soul more profound than that which the purely psychical healer is seeking.” 19 5. Another obstacle to a Biblical approach to a Chris¬ tian philosophy of life is to be found in a false type of mysticism . A new wave of mysticism—partly at least due to the World War—seems to be sweeping over the world, and with such a movement there is grave need of some sharp discriminations between a true and a false mysticism. For there are some highly important considerations to be taken into account when one is trying to think his way through mysticism. 20 The dangers of mysticism seem to me to be these: the tendency to make simple emotion the supreme test of the religious state; the tendency toward mere subjectiv¬ ism ; the tendency, therefore, to underestimate the histor¬ ical; a tendency toward vagueness, for mysticism nat¬ urally lacks positive content; the tendency toward Pantheism, underrating the personality both of God and of man; and the tendency to extravagant symbolism. On the other hand, the justifiable elements in mysti¬ cism at its best may be said to include: the insistence on the legitimate place of feeling in religion as a real and vital experience; the emphasis on one’s own conviction and faith; the real difficulty of expressing the full meaning M Concerning Prayer, p. 349. 30 Cf. King, Theology and the Social Consciousness, Chs. V and VI. The Biblical and Christian Approach 149 of the religious experience; the demand for a complete ethical surrender to God; the faith in the real unity and worth of the world in God. Perhaps the best definition of what I have called false mysticism is this of Herrmann’s: 21 “When the influ¬ ence of God upon the soul is sought and found solely in an inward experience of the individual, that is in an excitement of the emotions taken, with no further ques¬ tion, as evidence that the soul is possessed by God; with¬ out, at the same time, anything external to the soul being consciously and clearly perceived and firmly grasped, or the positive contents of any soul-dominating idea giving rise to thoughts that elevate the spiritual life, then that is the piety of mysticism. He who seeks in this wise that for the sake of which he is ready to abandon all beside, has stepped beyond the pale of truly Christian piety. For he leaves Christ and Christ’s Kingdom altogether behind him when he enters that sphere of experience which seems to him to be the highest.” The marks of a false mysticism, then, for Herrmann, are: that it is purely subjective; that it is merely emotional and unethical; that hence it has no clear object, and is abstract, un- rational, unhistorical, and so un-Christian. The greatest single danger of mysticism is probably the acceptance of the Neoplatonic theory, that the soul, in Nash’s words, “must pass into a state that is half a swoon and half an ecstasy before it can truly know God.” Now it must be squarely faced that this half-swoon and half-ecstasy, which both the Indian and Neoplatonic mys¬ ticism attain, may be produced by various forms of self¬ hypnotism, often markedly sexual, and even through ni¬ trous oxide gas intoxication. James calls attention to the “ The Communion of the Christian with God, 2nd English ed., pp. 22-23. 150 Seeing Life Whole fact that nitrous oxide gas gives “the immense emotional sense of reconciliation.” The vital question, then, is not that of the reality of the experiences, but that of the real cause and significance of the experiences, and the only pos¬ sible test of this is rational and ethical. Once again one must apply Paul’s test of “the fruit of the Spirit.” There is grave danger, therefore, in much modern as well as ancient mysticism, of substituting an essentially unreligious and unmoral experience for a true Christian communion with God. Much of this mysticism has prac¬ tically no use for the historical Christ, except as a ladder by which the mystical experience may be reached. We do well, therefore, to call our thought back to New Testa¬ ment testimony upon this point. For example, Glover, 22 bears truthful testimony, I think, when he says: “Remark, at any rate, in the teaching of Jesus, that there is no mysticism of the type so much studied today. There is nothing in the least ‘psychopathic’ about him, nothing ab¬ normal—no mystical vision of God, no mystical absorption in God, no mystical union with God, no abstraction, nothing that is the mark of the professed mystic. Yet he speaks freely of ‘seeing God’; he lives a life of the closest union with God; and God is in all his thoughts. A phrase like that of Clement of Alexandria, ‘deifying into apathy we become monadic,’ is seas away from anything we find in the speech of Jesus. That is not the way he preaches God. He is far more natural; and that his followers accepted this naturalness, and drew him so, and gave his teaching as he gave it, is a fresh pledge of the truthfulness of the Gospels.” And even a writer so sympathetic with mysticism as Professor Rufus Jones can say: 23 29 The Jesus of History, p. 89. 28 Concerning Prayer, p. 115. The ISihlical and Christian Approach 151 “The well-marked, sharply defined ‘mystic way’ which many mystics of the past have taken is esoteric and more or less artificial, not grounded in the inherent nature of the soul and not a universal highway for the whole race of the saved, though even here the experience of mystics, as a typical pil¬ grim’s progress, may be and often is illuminating. The ‘lad¬ ders’ of mystical ascent must be treated as parables of the way upward rather than as literal rungs and necessary stages of religious experience, and one feels how artificial they are when an attempt is made to fit the mighty life-experiences of Christ and of St. Paul and of the author of the Fourth Gospel into these mystical model-forms and to make them follow the ‘purgative,’ the ‘illuminative’ and the ‘unitive’ stages.” In the case of Christ, as Emmet says, 24 “there is a strik¬ ing absence of any claim to peculiar or abnormal modes of intercourse; we hear but little of ecstatic vision or mystic absorption. What Christ experienced was a close and unsullied union with His Father through the normal means which are open to every child of God.” m Turning now from these present-day obstacles to a Biblical approach to Christian life and thought, to a pos¬ itive setting forth of the Christian way of seeing life whole , I know no such significant illustration of the determined seeing life steadily and seeing it whole as is found in Christ’s answers to the wilderness temptations. Those temptations, on the eve of his public ministry, graphically pictured, gathered about the questions of the nature of his kingdom and the ways in which it was to be built up. The temptation to command the stones to be made bread, was the temptation to make the satisfaction of men’s 84 The Spirit, p. 217. 152 Seeing Life Whole physical wants the primary way to the upbuilding of his kingdom. The temptation to cast himself down from the pinnacle of the temple was the temptation to sweep men into his kingdom by dazzling marvels. The temptation of the vision of “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them” was the temptation to ruthless seizure of all power, as that to which he was entitled,—the funda¬ mental mistake of making means into ends. The kingdom by bread alone, the kingdom by marvel alone, the king¬ dom by power, by making means into ends,—all these he set aside. For Christ was fighting his way through to the fundamental principles of his kingdom. And in this great crisis of his life he illustrates and enforces the necessary wholeness of his kingdom , as against the three¬ fold temptations to a fragmentary and superficial one¬ sidedness. His kingdom is to be no makeshift, no trying to satisfy men with partial goods, no stopping on the surface, and no despising of any man’s nature. He must do justice to the whole man as God has created him. 1. Christ’s answer to the first temptation is thus im¬ plicit in his reply to the others also: “ Man shall not live hy bread alone , but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” It is a broad illuminating prin¬ ciple and points to an open road. Keenly sensitive to the bodily wants of men and to the basic nature of those wants, Christ raises the question whether the satisfaction of those bodily wants is the primary way to the victory of his kingdom. Christ felt here the frequent temptation of the modern social worker. He saw clearly that the need of bread is a real need. The body is a genuine part of the nature of man. Christ had no quarrel with the modern realist in this. The sat- The Biblical and Christian Approach 158 isfaction of man’s fundamental hungers is necessary both to the life of the individual and of the race. Upon the hunger for food are built self-defense, in victory over the hardships and obstacles of life; self- support, through the dignity of work in which a man proves himself no parasite; and hence the self-respect of a true man, who has responded to the ancient prophetic challenge, “Son of man, stand upon thy feet and I will speak to thee.” Upon the fact of sex have been built up through human history the beauty and glory of romantic love as western civilization has come to see it; the deep meaning and sacredness of family ties; the priceless values of the Christian home at its best. In the train of the urge for material comfort has come, too, much of the conquest of wretchedness and want and suffering and disease, and much, too, of the positive achievements of civilization. Moreover, Christ saw clearly that his doctrine was to be no asceticism. He had none of the celibate’s con¬ tempt for the body. On the contrary, he ministered joy¬ fully and continually to the bodies of men as well as to their spiritual natures. Man doth live by bread, then, but not by bread alone,— not alone by the satisfaction of physical hungers. Man is made on so large a plan that he may not think simply of physical hungers. Imagination and reason and ethical ambition and the sense of beauty have their hun¬ gers, too; and man may not abuse this trust of the whole of his nature, just as he must not abuse the trust of his physical nature. Our generation needs this wholesome breadth of Christ’s, as against a narrow, one-sided emphasis in much of our current fiction, upon sex, and upon a frank, definitely 154 Seeing Life Whole anti-Christian paganism that has no use for morals and no respect for the experience of the race. The case has rarely been put more clearly and discrim¬ inatingly than by one of our soundest critics, the editor of The Literary Review , 25 in his criticism of the English novelist Mr. D. H. Lawrence. A clear vision just here is so demanded for the health of our time as quite to justify the inclusion of some of Mr. Canby’s trenchant sentences: “With rare exceptions, Lawrence’s characterizations turn upon the possession, or the lack, or the perversion, of the sex instinct. His men and women are consistently bedevilled by sex, and in his philosophizing so is he. For him, sex not merely interpenetrates the living world, which is true, but overshadows it, which is by no means often or necessarily true. . . . Now our race may have often denied sex to their own hurt or ignorantly miscalled its manifestations by the names of hate, religion, irritability, courage, ambition, or wrath; but the age-long insistence of the wise upon keeping the sensual in its place and restraining passion by reason was not utterly void of sense, nor has human experience through the Christian ages gone for naught. ... It is more than curious to list the novels of the last two years—particularly the first novels—of younger men and women, and to see how prevailingly egoism, self-development at all costs, ruthless¬ ness, and the selfish generally are lauded by illustration and philosophically implied. . . . This uninhibited ego is the ambition of many in our times, and in Lawrence they find it frankly, discriminatingly apotheosized.” Mr. Lawrence’s conclusion is: “‘We must either love, or rule,* and when love wears out, it will be rule, or obey.” Upon this conclusion Mr. Canby pertinently remarks: “Well, this may be true, and only slavery or masterfulness may be able to save us from sex. Perhaps altruism, perhaps 25 June 3, 1922. The Biblical and Christian Approach 155 love, as we knew it, is bankrupt. Perhaps liberalism and the release of energies which it offered was a dream. Perhaps the ethics of Christianity were futile and are now obsolete. But it will take more than a powerfully saturnine novelist to convince us. Lawrence’s liberals are singularly arid and futile, his Christians are mere pious platitudes. The only vigor in his books is a selfish vigor, the only intensity springs from sex. . . . As an analysis of a shell-shocked society I find all this excellent. As a world philosophy it seems morbid moonshine, the reflections of frightened men running from passion to take shelter in power.” Man doth not live, then, by bread alone, “but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Every creative utterance of God, every revealing word, every expressed purpose, every fibre of man’s God-given nature, every implanted instinct,—all this is a part of life for man. None of it may be left out of account. 2. In the second temptation Christ asks: If the kingdom is not primarily to come by bread, by the answer to even real physical needs, is it to come by giving men over¬ whelming emotional experiences , by mystery and marvel and ecstasy? Passion and religion have much that is akin. Both have often appealed to the overwhelming emotional ex¬ perience, tending to sweep men off their feet, as its own unquestionable justification. Men feel in any form of ecstasy a kind of “divine fire,” for they feel that they are living intensely. There is a large element of truth here. The thrill of passion, the thrill of beauty in nature and art and music, the thrill of discovered truth, the thrill of creative activity, the thrill of duty squarely faced and done, the thrill of felt identity with God,—these are all somehow akin to the divine, and all need to be taken into due account. 156 Seeing Life Whole It is natural, therefore, that the religious leader should be tempted to ask: Cannot I bring such marvelous ex¬ hibition of the power of God as will sweep men perforce into the kingdom; as will make it impossible for men to doubt the reality of God and relation to him; as shall make men say to themselves, “This is so marvelous that it must be divine, and nothing else is of any account compared with it”? Here the sense of God is felt as the enthralling power of a great personality. Now here again one may well say, “Yes, man shall live by mystery and marvel and ecstasy. We may well believe that the wonders of the telescopic and microscopic world are only poor illustrations of the wonders of the experi¬ ences which God may give the soul with him. “Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man, whatsoever things God prepared for them that love him.” Feeling and wonder do have their great place in the life of man. So fundamental is feeling that the sense of reality everywhere requires feeling. And in wonder both philosophy and religion begin. Religion cannot live in a world in which there is not mystery. Man shall live by mystery and marvel and ecstasy, but, once more, not by these alone, and not by a nar¬ row range of these, “but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” The one-sidedness of mystery and marvel and ecstasy is revealed in their lack of ethical content, as we have already seen. Only through the whole man, through the relation of the entire personality, with deep sense of the sacredness and ethical obligations of the personal relation, in which alone the whole man can be expressed, can the full life of man come. For we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that there is a very ugly element of selfish, ruthless treachery The Biblical and Christian Approach 157 in the personal relations of those who make supreme the emotional simply as such. Indeed, emotional experience itself cannot mean most without its thoughtful interpre¬ tation by the intellect and the whole-hearted choice of the will. Without this response of the entire personality there can be no adequate revelation of God, no adequate king¬ dom of God. The full revelation of God even in the beauty and glory of nature can only come where the whole man is made the organ of the spiritual, as Bliss Carman illustrates in his “Vestigia”:* I took a day to search for God, And found Him not. But as I trod By rocky ledge, through woods untamed. Just where one scarlet lily flamed I saw His footprint in the sod. Then suddenly, all unaware, Far off in the deep shadows, where A solitary hermit thrush Sang through the holy twilight hush— I heard His voice upon the air. And even as I marveled how God gives us Heaven here and now, In a stir of wind that hardly shook The poplar leaves beside the brook— His hand was light upon my brow. At last with evening as I turned Homeward, and thought what I had learned And all that there was still to probe— I caught the glory of His robe Where the last fires of sunset burned. Back to the world with quickening start I looked and longed for any part In making saving Beauty be . . . And from that kindling ecstasy I knew God dwelt within my heart. * Quoted by the kind permission of Bliss Carman. 158 Seeing Life Whole 3. In Christ’s answer to the third temptation he is facing another typically partial good. If God’s kingdom and man’s is not to come primarily by relief of physical need, nor by mystery, marvel and ecstasy, then is it to come by direct domination of the world’s kingdoms and of their glory and authority? Is it to come hy power , by making means into ends? Is the founder of the kingdom to be a world conqueror, a monopolizer of world power? Nietzsche succumbs to some such temptation as that for his superman. The position is an essentially irreligious one, for it has lost its faith in the efficacy of spiritual forces. Still in any case these great human constructions of the State—economic, political, scientific—have their place. They are inevitable fields of human endeavor, cor¬ responding to many-sided needs of men. By these men shall live, but not by these alone. There is not only need that they should have the right spirit in them, but it is further true that governments and institutions and forces do not exist for their own sakes. They are means, not ends. They are made for man, not man for them. Like the machinery of the universe, they must be subor¬ dinate to the great ends of God. They must be tested at every step by their service to men and by their rever¬ ence for men’s personalities. Even Plato and Aristotle could put slavery into the foundation of their ideal State, but the Christian centuries have made that, at least, im¬ possible. The place of governments and institutions is therefore a subordinate place. When they are made ends in themselves the relative goods take the place of the su¬ preme goods ; things dominate persons ; monstrosities take the place of normal life values; and the devil replaces God, and says falsely to the soul, “All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” The Biblical and Christian Approach 159 That is what we do, when we stop in mechanism, when we make means into ends. The world-devastating war should have demonstrated for us all the utter futility of a nation or a civilization or a world whose roots go not deeply down into the spiritual. For, as Kennedy—in his drama, The Terrible Meek — makes his Roman Captain say at the crucifixion: “We go on building our kingdoms—the kingdoms of this world. We stretch out our hands, greedy, grasping, tyran¬ nical, to possess the earth. Domination, power, glory, money, merchandise, luxury, these are the things we aim at; but what we really gain is pest and famine, grudge labour, the en¬ slaved hate of men and women, ghosts, dead and death¬ breathing ghosts that haunt our lives forever. It can’t last: it never has lasted, this building in blood and fear. Already our kingdoms begin to totter. Possess the earth! We have lost it. We never did possess it. We have lost both earth and ourselves in trying to possess it; for the soul of the earth is man and the love of him, and we have made of both, a desolation.’’ We have been putting relative goods into the place of absolute goods, national selfishness for love—means for ends. All the temptations of the wilderness have suggested a partial kingdom, as Jesus clearly saw: a kingdom by bread alone, a kingdom by marvel and ecstasy alone, a kingdom by power alone—where means have become ends. But the real kingdom of God must include all goods and must measure up to God’s complete revelation of himself in all the universe, inner and outer; must measure up to the infinity of the creative Source of all. It must be tested by the quality of the spirit of God himself. Let a man honestly ask himself where the secret of humanity, the secret of the world’s life lies. Can he get 160 Seeing Life Whole closer to it anywhere than in the spirit of Christ, as Kennedy declares ? The prophetic voice says to Mary on the wind-swept hill of the cross: “I tell you, woman, this dead son of yours, disfigured, shamed, spat upon, has built a kingdom this day that can never die. The living glory of him rules it. The earth is his and he made it. He and his brothers have been moulding and making it through the long ages: they are the only ones who ever really did possess it: not the proud, not the idle, not the wealthy, not the vaunting empires of the world. Something has happened up here on this hill today to shake all our kingdoms of blood and fear to the dust. The earth is his, the earth is theirs, and they made it. The meek, the terrible meek, the fierce agonizing meek, are about to enter into their inheritance.” In his parable of the last judgment, Jesus makes the Son of Man say to those who have been characterized by the tireless spirit of unselfish, serving love: “Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Yes; for the whole universe enters into the completed kingdom of God. For in man’s redemption lies the redemption of the whole w r orld. “For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God.” “For the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God/’ INDEX Anson, Harold, 147 Apocalypticism, a prevalent ex¬ treme, 143-4 Apologetic, need of a new, 1 ff. Arnold, Matthew, 5, 107 Augmentation of Value, 108 Authority, an external view of, 138 ff. Behaviorism, 32 ff. Best, staying persistently in the presence of the, 68 ff. Beauty, goodness, truth, the three great ideals of, 119 ff. Biblical and Christian approach, 132 ff. Bosworth, Edward I., 57 Brent, Bishop, 97 Brook, Richard, 69 Browning, Robert, 74 Canby, 154-5 Carman, Bliss, 157 Carpenter, 51 Carruth, W. H., 28 Christian, definition of, 133 ff. Christian Science, 146-8 Christian use of the Bible, 134-5 Clarke, W. N., 137, 143 Conklin, 27 Contempt, the spirit of, 97-8 Converging of many lines of thought, the test of, 116 ff. Cou£ism, dangers of, 42 Croly, Herbert, 17 Danger of making means into ends, 158 ff. Dewey, 42, 109, 113 Doctrine of the inerrancy of the Scriptures, 137 ff. 161 Dougall, Miss, 146 Du Bois, Patterson, 90 Emmet, C. W., 141 Emotional one-sidedness, 155 ff. Eschatology, relieving the tradi¬ tional Christian, 141-2 Eucken, 15 Fears and anxieties, the Christian mastery of, 47 ff. Fiction, some tendencies in mod¬ ern, 154-5 Freedom of investigation, re¬ ligion need not object to, 22-3 Friendships, the highest test for, in reverence for personality, 101 ff. Glover, 107, 150 God as the major premise of all our thinking, 113 God, the will of, revealed in two ways, 36 ff. God, transcendence and imma¬ nence of, 125 ff. Goodness, truth, beauty, the three great ideals of, 119 ff. Great minds, the test of, 115 Haering, 124, 127 Herrmann, 149 Higher criticism, 135-6 Hocking, 95, 114, 115 Hoffding, 4, 121 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 96 Honesty, 62 ff. Human society, creation of a higher type, 16 ff. Huxley, 36 162 Indent Immanence and transcendence of God, 125 ff.; the necessity of both for the Christian view of God in the world, 127-8 Individuality, the miracle of, 87-8 Influence and domination, 99-100 Ingelow, Jean, 81 Intimacy of friendships to be guarded, 96-7 James, 74, 92, 100, 105, 107, 117 Jesus, 19, 40, 50 Jevons, 107 Jones, Rufus, 150-51 Kennedy, 159, 160 Leuba, 144 Lordship of Christ in the Bible, often denied, 139 Lotze, 112, 118, 121-2, 129 Man as the image of God, 24 Many minds, the test of, 115 McDougall, 29, 73, 76, 83, 114 McGiffert, 18, 132 Meaning and process, questions of, 10-11; the possible harmony of, 123 ff. Means, danger of making into ends, 158 ff. Mechanism, the mission of, 121- 23 Mill, John Stuart, 83 Modern Psychology, great prac¬ tical inferences from, ST ff.; these inferences indubitably Christian, 40-41 Modern science, contributions of, to the ideal interests, 11 ff., 13 ff- Modesty, 65 ff. Miinsterberg, 31 Mysticism, a false type of, 148 ff. Nash, H. S., 16 Natural ills, the conquest of, 47 ff' Necessary truths as eternal modes of God’s activity, 128 Old Testament, overattention to, 137 ff. One’s own self the key to the universe, 128-9 Organic view of truth, 110 if. Paradox, the test of, 117 Paul, 68 Paulsen, 10, 119 Personal association, 70 ff. Personal and ethical approach, 75 ff. Personal relations, our whole con¬ stitution looks to, 78 ff. Philosophical approach, 104 ff. Philosophic points of view, fun¬ damental, 110 ff. Philosophy, definition of the sphere of, 106 ff.; relation to the special sciences, 107-8; ten¬ dency to underrate, 104 ff. Physical, the place of, in life, 152 ff. Pragmatism, negative and posi¬ tive, 113-14 Pratt, 32 Prayer for the dead, 142-3 Premillennialism, literalistic, 143-4 Present-day obstacles to a Bib¬ lical approach to a Christian philosophy of life, 137 ff. Pringle-Pattison, 127 Process and meaning, questions of, 10-11; the possible harmony of, 123 ff. Providence, faith in God’s, 50 Psychology, definition of, 29 ff. Psychology of power, 43-4 Reality, the three spheres of, 118/f.; the is, the must, and the ought, 118^*. Religion, positive gains for, from evolution, 26 ff. Religious faith and evolution, 19 ff. Respect for the liberty of others, necessary for one’s own char¬ acter, 88-9; necessary for one’s own influence, 89 ff. ; needed in Index 163 all personal relations, 91-2; necessary for happiness, 92 ff. Respect for others, 88 ff.; in¬ cludes respect for the liberty of others, 88 ff.; includes rever¬ ence for the sanctity of others’ inner personality, 94 ff. Revelation of the will of God, in the life and teaching of Jesus, 36; in man’s nature, 36 Reverence for personality, 75 ff.; includes self-respect, 80 ff. Reverence for the sanctity of others’ inner personality, 94 ff.; necessary for influence, 98 ff.; necessary for happiness, 100 ff. Schiller, 53 Schmid, 25 Science’s threefold self-restric¬ tion, 21 Scientific approach, 8 ff. Scientific method, 9, 15 ff. Scientific spirit, 8, 18-19 Scott, E. F., 136, 140 Seeing life whole, iff.; the Chris¬ tian way of, 151 ff. Seeming unreality of the spiritual life, 130-31 Self-mastery, problem of, 44 ff. Self-respect, included in rever¬ ence for personality, 80 ff.; affects our respect for others also, 82 ff.; necessary for influ¬ ence, 85 ff.; necessary for hap¬ piness, 86 jf. Services, only two supreme, to render, 58 Solitariness of the human soul, 94-6 Spiritualism, 143-6 Spiritual life, purposed seeming unreality of, 130-31 Stevens, James, 49-50 Streeter, 108, 120, 138-9 Thomas, Norman, 5 Thomson, J. Arthur, 27 Thomson and Geddes, 21-2 Three great ideals of truth, goodness and beauty, 119 ff. Transcendence and immanence of God, 125 jf .; the necessity of both for the Christian view of God in the world, 127-8 Truth, goodness, beauty, the three great ideals of, 119 ff. Truth or reality, tests of, 111 Value, the place of, in philoso¬ phy, 53 ff. Values, a relation to personality inherent in all, 55; introduction to, 56 jf.; of life, the way to them all essentially the same way, 55 Waggett, 26 Whole man, the organ of the spiritual, 114 jf. Witness, qualities of an effective, 58 ff. World, larger and more signifi¬ cant, 14 ff. Worship as involving truth, good¬ ness and beauty, 120 ff. . : — Date Due 4255