MASTER NEGATIVE NO. 93-81525- MICROFILMED 1993 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project" Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States - Title 17, United States Code - concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or other reproduction is not to be *'used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research." If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of "fair use," that user may be liable for copyright infringement. This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. A UTHOR: HOCKING, WILLIAM ERNEST TITLE: HUMAN NATURE AND ITS REMAKING PLACE: NEW HAVEN DATE: 1918 Master Negative # COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT 73'?/5^5'3 BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record Restrictions on Use: i91H659 ^* Hocking, WiUiam Ernest, 1873-1966. Human nature and its roinaking [bv] William Ernest Hocking . . . New Haven, Yale university press ; retc, etc.] • 1918. XX vi p., 1 1., 434 p. 23"". D191H66 Copy in Butler Library of Philosophy. R4 1. Man. 2. Life. 3. Instinct. 4. Social ethics. 5. Religion. i. Title. T-T5^s . . D Association for information and image iManagement 1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1100 Silver Spring. Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 1 8 10 11 12 13 UMUUllilUUllUMUUl ITT IiiiiIiiiiIiiiiIiiiiIiiiiIimiIiiiiIiimIiiiiIiiiiIimiImiiIiiuIiiiiIiiiiIiiiiIiiii^ I I I I I ^M ITT ITT TTT 14 15 mm iiiimiiiiiliiiiliiii Inches 1.0 I.I 1.25 ■ 50 2.5 2.2 UfL 1^ HjO _ 2.0 1^ a lUbu 1.8 1.4 1.6 MflNUFfiCTURED TO flllM STflNDfiRDS BY APPLIED IMPGEr INC. i' ' I*' Columbia ^nibergitp LIBRARY iiu Id" t* W\ Ui f HUMAN NATURE AND ITS REMAKING !;; % .1 HUMAN NATURE AND ITS REMAKING WILLIAM ERNEST HOCKING, Ph.D. M t PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCCXVIII Copyright, 1918, by Yale University Press First published^ May, 1918 O^ I TO GEORaE HERBERT PALMER SKILLED INTERPRETER OF HUMAN NATURE TEACHER AND FRIEND PEEFACE SINCE books are no longer supposed, whether by author or public, to contain the final and finished truth, no book need apologize for being unripe. One's hope is, not to close discussion, but to open it. What I have here aimed to do is the work rather of the quarryman with his blasting powder than of the sculptor with his chisel. Not that the quarry of human nature is a new one. But that we are only beginning to learn the technique of dealing with the larger masses. Few of us, I dare say, are satisfied with the degree of clarity we have reached about the rights of the primitive impulses,— of the instincts of pugnacity, sex, acquisition, etc.,— as compared with the claims of social orders such as we see dissolving before our eyes, or of super-social orders, of art and religion. These and other agencies attempt to transform the original material of human nature; human nature resists the remaking process; the groping effort of mutual adjustment has continued throughout the length of history, has made the chief theme of history ; we still seek the broader principles which govern the process, call it what you will,— the process of remaking, of educating, of civilizing, of con- verting or of saving the human being. Quest of such principles is the object of this present essay. Viii PBBFACE No doubt, we have always had our authorities ready to spare us the trouble of search, ready to settle ex cathedra what human nature is and ought to become. And presumably we have always had a party of revolt against authority, convention, and the like, in the name of what is 'natural,' — a revolt which has commonly been as dogmatic and intuitional as the authority itself. But the revolt of today is no longer either impres- sionistic or sporadic. It is psychological, economic, political : — and it is general. The explosive forces of self-assertion which have finally burst their bounds in the political life of Central Europe have their seat in a widespread spiritual rebellion, a critical im- patience of * established' sentiments and respecta- bilities, a deliberate philosophic rejection not more of (Hague Conventions than of other conventions, a drastic judgment of non-reality upon the pieties of Christendom. This rebellion would hardly have become so wide- spread or so disastrous if it were wholly without ground. It indicates that our moral idealisms like our metaphysical idealisms have been taking their task too complacently. Our Western world has adhered to standards with which it has never supposed its prac- tice to be in accord ; but heaving a resigned sigh over the erring tendencies of human nature, it has offered to these standards that 'of course' variety of homage which is the beginning of mental and moral coma. By labelling these standards 'ideals' it has rendered them innocuous while maintaining the profession of defer- ence: an 'ideal' has been taken as something which PREFACE IX y everybody is expected to honor and nobody is expected ^ to attain. It is just these ideals that are now violently chal- lenged, and the challenge is salutary. It is precisely the so-called Christ ian wo rld whieh,JbavingL.gone mor- sOiy to sleep, is" now put to a figH for life with th^j gaen who per sist in reducing their standards to t he level 5fco^onj2rafi^^ their code of behavior from "beWupward, not from above downward, in keeping their 'ideals' close to the earth or at least in discernible working connection with the earth. Their creed we may name moral realism; aad thgJia ^Pg" fa ^»- an ingredient of moral realism in our philosophy seems ^ mo n ^^^fi^T^^a^i^mg^ ^15^tEe^age . The whole set of realistic upheavals, Nietzscheian, neo-Machiavellian, Syndicalistic, Freudian, and other, crowd forward with doctrines about human nature and its destiny which at least have life in them. Whatever else they contain, unsound or sinister, they contain Thought: and this thought must be met on its own ground. The next step, whether in social philosophy, or in educa- tion, or in ethics, requires an understanding between whatever valid elements moral realism may contain and the valid elements of the challenged tradition. We find our initial common ground with this realism by accepting, for the purposes of the argument,Jbhe pict ure of original human nature as a group of i nstincts . "with this starting point, the usual realistic assump- tion is that human life consists in trying to get what X PREFACE these instincts want. Mankind's persistent concern in food, adornment, property, mates, children, pohti- cal activity, etc., is supposed to be explained by the faot that his instincts confer value on these objects. By shaping our ^values,' instinct becomes the shaper of life. And the first and main business of the science of living would be to set up an authentic and propor- tionate list of the instincts proper to man. Then every social order, every moral or economic code, every standard of living would be judged by the satisfaction it could promise to the chorus of innate hungers and impulses thus revealed. This view is simple, attractive,— and profoundly un- true to experience. The trouble is that no one can tell by identifying and naming an instinct what will satisfy Certainly we cannot take the biological function of an instinct as a suflScient account of what that in- stinct means to a human being— as if hunger held the conscious purpose of building the body, or love were an aim to continu^he species. The word 'instinct' has no magic to fifcnull^ the obvious truth that satisfac- tion is a state of mmd, nor to evade the long labor of experience in determining what can satisfy a mind. Conscious life is^ engaged quite as much in Jrying to, find out what it wants as in trying to get it. The truth is, instinct requires interpretation. We can set up a usable measure of social justice and the like only if we can find something like a true inter- pretation of instinct, or of the will as a whole. In- stinct by itself has no claims, because it has no head ; PREFACE -^ it cannot so much as say what it wants except through an interpreter. Our essay becomes, accordingly, an experiment in interpretation. And there are various agencies which offer aid in the undertaking. In the person of parent, pedagog, lawmaker, society stands ready to inform the individual through its discipUne, "This is what you want,-not that," and to insist on his choosing the alleged better part. All the usual processes of train- ing or remaking t?3¥^ to be at the same time works of interpretation : they profess to bring to light a real will, as contrasted with an apparent will, and so to introduce human nature to its own meaning. But if society (as not a few of our social philoso- phers beUeve) is the only or final interpreter of human nature, human nature is helpless as against society. Our individualisms, our democracies, with their brave claims in behalf of the human unit, have no case. 'Socialization' is the last word in human development; and society is always right. If we refuse, as we do, to accept this conclusion, the alternative is to find some way, in independence of 'society,' to an objectively valid interpretation of the human will. The case of all liberalism, of all reform, of every criticism and Ukewise of every defence of any social regime, must rest in the last analysis upon the discovery, or the assumption, of such a 'true' inter- pretation. And my hope in this essay is that we may chart the way to it, and thus sketch the valid basis of an individuaUstic theory of society. Xii PREFACE We are not, of course, presuming that mankind has ever, in practice, been without such a standard. For mankind has always had a religion, and it has been one of the historic functions of religion to keep men in mind of the goal of their own wills. And in so far as it has done its work well, religion has in fact set men free from the domination of unjust social and political constraints. The religious consciousness has apprised human nature of its ^rights'— not merely of its claims— and has become the source of whatever is now solid in our democracies. And even if the social order were perfectly just in its arrangements, freedom would still require the ful- filment of this religious function. For a man is not free unless he is delivered from persistent sidelong anxiety about his immediate effectiveness, from servi- tude to an incalculable if not whimsical human flux. He is free only if he can mentally direct all his work to a constant and absolute judgment, address his daily labor, if you like, to God, build his houses to God and not to men, write his books to God, in the State serve his God only, love his God in the family, and fight against the (incarnate) devil and the devil alone. Kepler's famous words at the end of his preface to the Weltharmonik are the words of the free man in this sense: Here I cast the die, and write a book to be read whether by contemporaries or by posterity, I care not. I can wait for readers thousands of years, seeing that God waited six thou- sand years for someone to contemplate his work. An age of competition, like our own, unless it is • • • something else than competitive, cannot be a free age, however democratic in structure, because its chief concerns are lateral. To the competitive elements in our own social order we owe much:-an impersonal estimate of worth in terms of efficiency which we shall not surrender, a taste and technique for severe self- measurement, incredible finesse in the discrimination and mounting of individual talents. But we owe to it also an over-development of the invidious comparative eye a trend of attention fascinated by the powers, perquisites, and opinions of the immediate neighbors. The eternal standard is obscured: hence we do nothing well- weHlacr'sincerity and simplicity; we are sus- picious, disunited, flabby; we do not find ourselves; we are not free. Unless we can recover a working hold on some kind of religious innervation, our democracy will shortly contain little that is worthy to survive. But it is one of the permanent achievements of our time that we recognize no antagonism between the work of thought and the voice of reUgious intuition. We must perpetually regain our right to an absolute object through the labor of reflection,-in our own case, the labor of interpretation. In the preparation of this book, I have accumulated many personal obUgations, quite apart from the scientific debts acknowledged at various points m the argument. And beside these, there is an obUgation of a less personal character though not less real: that, namely, to the liberal and heartening spirit of the Yale n • PKEFACE ,.Uv Those who heard the lectures on which r:Zt '-origin* basea. .*.««» - K.thani,> Wor ..-..ion ^™- ~:^^^^ School of Religion of Yale Universi y, recognize them in their present form. But he mcen tive Is theirs; and if the idea has grown I trust it is by way of doing greater justice to the original theme. WILLIAM ERNEST HOCKING. Cambridge, March, 1918. CONTENTS Preface Vll PART I ORIENTATION Chapter I. An Art Peculiar to Man . • • Why human character is and should be an artificial product. Chapter II. The Emergence of Problems . Tt is only through much social experience that the funda- Leirjroblems'of the art of remaking huma. nature ^e "cognized; the experience of religion, of pobt.cs, of the social sciences. Chapter III. On the Possibility of Changing Human Nature . • • • Intuition neither deceives nor settles t^e qu*»tion of fte^ dom to change; evidence, structural and historic, of human Sti^ty; legislative pessimism and religious hopefulness; why experience fails to solve the problem. Chapter IV. What Changes are DEsmABLE? Lib- eration versus Discipline Difficulty of realizing ideals casts doubt »» /''^/^f ; doubt whether we know what we want ; liberalism t„rns to nature for instruction; the faUure of pure liberalism, Nietzsche. Chapter V The Liberator as Disciplinarun . Change of mind in Eousseau and in German Romanticism; why Hegel's work must be done over, and is bemg done m part by naturalistic psychology; the element of strength m Nietzsche; present state of the problem. 16 24 XVI CONTENTS i i !i Hi t 'i CHAPTKE VI. AK IKPEPENOENT StANPARD • ^^^^ The logical POBB« of be.g whoUy^t^to ^^ ^^^^^ ^^ PART II THE NATURAL MAN CHAPTER VII. THE ELEMENTS OF HtTMAK NaTXTBE: THE Notion or Instinct . The notion of instinct a result of abstraction; its biological definition; its psychological side. A- TTTTT Tnv TlANaE OP Instinct . Chapter VIII. iHB kawuk. u What criteria can be used for recognimg mstmctt How XhT observers differ as to the amount of .nstmct to be attributed to man. CHAPTER IX. SURVET OF THE HUMAN EQUIPMENT . The 'units of behavior'; the existence of 'ge°««^l J] Bttocts'; instincts of the second order; 'central .nstmcts , a partial tabular view. CHAPTER X. THE CENTRAL INSTINCTS: NECESSARY Interests . • • • ' The alleged instinct of curiosity as a problem in the n.orpholo|y of instinct; the theory of central "tmulatum and response; importance and difficulty of the central instincts. Chapter XI. The Will . • • • • Probability that central instincts are not separable entities; the wiU as the identical element in all value-experience when that element becomes a 'stable policy »; the ^will to power as a name less bad than some ethers for the general element in human wills; two Nietzscheian errors discarded at the outset. Note on Freud 29 37 45 51 61 87 68 91 75 contents in terms of idea at work. PART III CONSCIENCE Pttapter XIII. The Interest IN Justice . • • Chapter J^h according to Aristotle, is the basis T^S^T^^U^on of hum^ nature; ca. Je^dmit an original moral disposition or uistmetl Ohapter XIV. Conscience and the Generai, Wnx . seeking for objects or P"^ ' f seU-aware- from aU hereditary mechanisms; it is a lorm o 1:::; dealing with.fluxes in the leing of the will. Phaptep XVI. Current Fallacies Regarding Sin . "^^^e l7gic of moral error-does a lie prove a ^ T^e ^^- lacy of cancelling right against '"°"?'..*« *^J "* f^. torn to the effect that generaUty dimmishes P"?'' *« ^"^ ^; of 'nature,' to the effect that the natural » nght. Chapter XVII. Instinct and Sm . • • • -KT • fi,. imnnlse taken by itself is wrong; but in the No primitive impulse t^«" ^ ^ ^^ impulses are human mind no impulse is by itselt, ana cruu= f p^^mably not justified in remaining cr^de; sm as faUu^ to give an impulse its achievable meaning, i.e., as failure to interpret it. Chapter XVIII. Sm as Blindness and Untruth . ^e descriptive difference between sin and ^8" " «vanee- I^' fi^may consist in suppressing an increment of know^ S; »d the act, by virtue of ite enviromnent, wOl then express a false judgment. 95 101 111 118 XViii CONTENTS Chapter XIX. Why Men Sin • * . * ' Sin cannot be causally explained ; it >-»* fjj^f f^ut to the 'stronger motive,' nor to the 'curve »* ><«'J"^8 ;^^^. the conditions may be ^-'^""'H^^Jritlr^ ii- n,entioned blindness, namely, ^r"'-!'""* ° j^te moral lemmas Various dUemmas described. Ihe compiew lemmas, varo . f „a ^uh the attraction of motive combines the ruing oi evu good. Chapter XX. Sin as Status . • • • ; Sin as deed cannot be original. But beside the moral act, ^"re is rial status; and if the holy wiU is -»*«»-*» ^ acquired, it is presumably not inborn; a moral «»«*»» .°'«y Xaysbe regarded as a matter of fact, and as such neither ZZ punished nor rewarded; it becomes a correspondmg question of fact whether such status has metaphysical im- plications. The metaphysical assertion, sin mvolves finitude or mortality, a legitimate addition to the moral motive, if true. PART IV EXPERIENCE Chapter XXI. The Agencies of Remaking . Original human nature always a factor in remaking human nature: ultimately nothing can change a will but itself. But outer facts must furnish data and incentives: and the co-operation of outer and inner factors of change is 'expe- rience.' We cannot distinguish between social and mdi- vidual experience; but we can distinguish between free ex- perience and experience under social constraint. Chapter XXII. The Task op Experience . Experience has (among other tasks) to effect the trans- formation of general dispositions into individual habits which interpret these dispositions; the work of intelligence, curiosity, and play; experience in active form as experi- mentation. Chapter XXIII. The Methods of Experience Pleasure and pain, the universal instruments of experience, produce different results upon different types of mind; in 125 137 147 151 156 contents the human being, pain leads to discrimination and thought rather than to blank inhibition. Human experience with any Sen instinct thus takes the form of a series of hypotheses Is to what it wants, constituting a more or less coherent argument, guided chiefly by the * mental after-image ; this ^l^ment rght reasonably be called the 'dialectic' of the will. Chapter XXIV. The Dialectic op Pugnacity mat pugnacity wants, described in a typical series of hypotheses: destruction, revenge, punishment, cure; this development would probably take pla^ were there no social constraint upon the expression of pugnacity. PART V SOCIETY Chapter XXV. Social Modelling . . • • The presumption that social pressure warps human nature; and the counter presumption that conventions have a mean- ing. Chapter XXVI. Main Directions op Social Model- ling Normally, social interference facilitates, and carries on farther in the same direction, the work of individual expe- rience,-and, for that matter, of organic evolution as a whole; as instances: ^prolonging the vestibule of satisfac- tion ' as seen in the case of hunger and sex; the widenmg of the horizon of action together with increasing discrimi- nation or restriction of objects dealt with. Thus, social action is not primarily repressive; but there are three ways in particular in v^hich it becomes so. These are to be dealt with in order. Chapter XXVII. Ideals and Their Recommenders . Most ideals are colored by the selfish wishes of those who promulgate them; but not even the self-interest of society as a whole takes precedence of the interest of its members. Here is stated an individualistic theory of ^right'; and the postulate is deduced with which society must comply if its XIX 164 171 177 183 i CONTENTS . V. rri.^ i^Aala Various social arrangements ideals are to be '^g^* ^f/f^^ J^^ . ^ong others, the nat- which help to secure this condition, am g ^^ ural function of the Becommender; and the conn stract ideals. Chapter XXVIII. Laws and the State . • • """men we eonaide. not ideals b„t the^— ^^f^ ec^! instinct-satisfactions it » /^"""A *>™of the social sarUv requires sacrifice, and that the question oi TontLtlis society worth the sacrjflcet-^ no^ fane^"^ The condition under which a social life can be ^'"^"'J^ urcost stated in a second postulate: it must be possible Its cost, siaieu m i„.„„sta to non-competitive to subordinate competitive interests to no j- interests; this postulate can be complied ^'t*! »°ly *7"|^ the existence of the political State: the existence of the Tate, therefore, is something which men necessarily (hence unanimously) will. Chapter XXIX. Institutions and Change . • No institutions wholly comply, and perhaps none can wholly comply, with the foregoing demands: it does not at once foUow that they should be abolished. It is to be considered that part of the maladaptation, so far as it comes to con- Bciousness, is'an incident of progress itself ; and that hun.an nature is adapted to maladaptation, provided that it cm regard all existing misfit as grist for its will to power. The highest social expression of the will to power is found m the changing of institutions; institutions must be condemned, not if evU exists in them; but if it persists. Our third postu- late is that institutions shall make institutional provision for change, as their unfitness is felt and diagnosed; but smce it is the wish of every radical and experimentalist that something be established, he has an inalienable interest in conservation. Hence a fourth postulate: conserving force must be proportionate to certainty. Chapter XXX. Education . . . . The activity of educating has an instinctive basis and func- tion; it requires social self -consciousness and self-criticism. It is commonly regarded as a sort of social reproduction; but it must provide for growth beyond the type; yet the process of education is such that the type is transmitted; the first business of education is to bring a will into exist- ence; this can be done only by exposing all instincts to 196 211 contents ^^ :^q Sti? ard^IIx-eSression; subUmation J thtpCning-instinct, and in world-building; education m originality; the self -elimination of society. Thapter XXXI. The Right op Rebeluon ^who would destroy a too conservative social struc uxe ^Lt assure himself (1) whether it has the good wd^ ^ Change; and, if not, (2) whether he can have faith in ite be right. Chapter XXXII. Punishment . • • • Punishment consists in making the external status cone- ^nd to the internal status. The criminal must be disto- Xshed from the rebel; he must be treated as Po^'ble rebd f^f L possible citizen. The State has no choice but to «unisT- yet punishment, administered by an imperfect S^o^a Jself-defeating elements; the h sto^ of crimi- nal procedure shows the various attempts of society to «. ^e this dUemma; but their chief si«.cess so far is ^ ZZZl the inou;y. The restoration of the crumn^ to c°feensWp must be the work of forces not contained in S Stote per se; in punishing, «. in educating, society de- pends for Us success on agencies beyond its own border. PART VI xsi 254 ART AND RELIGION 257 226 Chapter XXXIII. Vox Dei . • ' . ^ * ^. Can the distinction between the work of society and the wk of re igion in remaking human nature be maintained t Mtoric^ differentiation has apparently e»d<^ J ^: Dating the dfstinct Vox Dei as useless; reasons for donbt- "Hhis result; and proposal of a mettod for a„eriminat- Zl he work of society from that of further factors. 273 CONTENTS XXIU • • xxu CONTENTS )ii AND THE 285 293 h Private Order • • • " How much of the mdividual man can find expression, or be ^e^red ' t each of the two orders that constitute society, or in both taken together? Chapter XXXV. Society and Beyond Society . The private order and the public order are 80 ^elate^ thf each not alone eupplements the other, but pr^upp^^^^^ s- cess in the other; this success is always ^^^^^^'/f^*^!^:^^ promissory than actual; and hence at no point can life in Liety bJ satisfactory, unless the will finds some point of Xl'te satisfaction outside society; the -^^ole psychology cal structure of society depends on some P~^;^^^^^^^^^ the wUls of its individual members (m ^^^'!^^^''i;^}^' result of infinite social evolution) may attain an absolute goal; this need is professedly supplied, in one way by art, in another by religion. Chapter XXXVI. The World of Rebirth . It is not to be supposed that art and religion undertake to provide only for residues, or lost powers, in human nature : their business is with the whole of human nature, and with residues only because they are concerned with the whole ; in early law and custom, at the time when these were stiU regarded as sacred, we find art and religion assuming joint control over the shaping of human nature. And as every man was considered not alone subject to the law, but also a trans- mitter and wielder, if not a maker, of the law, he was sup- posed to come through it into the exercise of this same ulti- mate control; the experience of * initiation ' ; of conversion: subordinating social passions to an ulterior passion. Chapter XXXVII. The Sacred Law A more detailed examination of the sacred law, showing that it was based not on social utility, but on a principle claiming to instruct utility; its aesthetic and ethical ele- ments; truth and error in its claim to validity. Chapter XXXVIII. Art and Human Nature . Art wins independence from all religious entanglements; in this free shape it is neither wish-dream nor imitation of fact: it is a symbolized achievement of the will in real and „b,.tive media; -^^t ^'ZZXr^^ ^^ '^^l but 0^ «»"^"'"°« ;X|eIe?Id thus win power over the beginning as an "^fJ^J^^^^ ^ ascendency over the ""^f 1 rrirJrrrra LTndary satisfaction in mmds of *''«.^«^''*T:" -bieef it thus discovers a field creating the mage ■>* «^ ;^*'j^\„ ^^her way than by of objects which -° ^« P^^^ijt, „e called e o^^' " „7must be order also, in all education, the "^^f f Xdonment of active; the Christian command seems an aDanao S«ce and a return to the moral indrfference of n^nre , int there are circumstances under which it may be the pre c^l ^posi" expressing a iustiee not to the »^t'^^^^^; chang^ble self; these circumstances show "^^ ^'^^Y meanl and aispo. of the oppo- e-"^>^^^^ less non-resistance and (i) oi reierrmg i^ taut future. Chapter XLII. Chbistianitt and Sex-love . • The eeneral attitude of Christianity toward sex-love is as ^itlve » toward pugnacity; from the -dividual stand- poL it is not obvious that sex-love is necessary, as pug- ^ty is necessary; though the PBy«ical Junct^n o^^ sex-love must be performed; the question: mat » t»is psy chological function* Beginning as a craving for sub- conscious respiration,' in which the will to power seems mingled with a^ opposite impulse toward self-abandonnient, the experience of love is one of progressive discovery of its own meaning; this meaning, whUe it certainly has a meta- physical horizon, is not Platonic : it is, a giving of concrete life, i.e., life of soul, body, and estate. Christianity assumes that this life-giving impulse can be satisfied completely apart from marriage, on the simple ground that it is not the deepest thing in human nature; at most, it is next to the deepest; it proposes philanthropy and art, when conjoined with worship, as a complete 'sublimation'; but its intention is that its 'absolute' meaning shall live within the relations of men and women, not displace them; and just because its entire interest is in the ultimate meaning, it neither criti- cises nor sanctions any particular convention: it insists on nothing but its highly simple criterion. Chapter XLIII. Christianity and Ambition . Early Christianity acconunodated itself to the conditions of State life; but professed scorn for all those things after which "the Gentiles seek"; it was as far as possible, how- ever from attempting to eliminate ambition: it recognized 344 355 372 CONTENTS the fact, not perceived by Buddhism, ftat ambition is the ^nce ;f religion; it undertook, as its chief VO^^^Z La to human nature, to swing all energies mto tHe chaund Tspreading the 'Kingdom of Heaven,' an uiterestw^ch I personal form, becomes the 'passion for souls ' the rn^t characteristic product of Christianity; it exists m n«my recognizable forms; in this point, the meanuigs of ^ he insticts converge; and there is reason to regard it as the ultimate transformation of the wiU to power. Chapter XLIV. The Crux of Christianitt . It is precisely in this form of the ideal-that of the will *» save men-that the profoundest objection maies itself felt, the ideal is fundamentaUy presumptuous, and b«W)mes in- creasingly impossible to contemporary moral diffidence and modest self-consciousness; this fact, however, is an addi- tional reason for regarding it correct as aa "'terp^tataon of Christianity; for this was the ground for the hostd.^ provoked by the doctrine in its early d^y^; /^^ *« T'"^ mfficulty of any ideal is hardly a final refutation of it, what we require of Christianity is that it be responsible for showing how the ideal is possible. Chapter XLV. The Theory op Participation . The 'essence' of any religion is to be found not in its ethical demand upon human nature, but in its answer to the question stated : How is it possiblet The demands of Chns- tianity create a logical dilemma; the phenomenon of par- ticipation, by any given self, in the properties of the object known, may lead to a solution, provided that the object known can be an absolute or divine object, having the quali- ties and powers which the individual cannot claim for hnn- self ; the objection to the phrase "the will to PO-er'' ad- mitted, and the term rendered finally harmless; the ideal of ' humility ' ; but the difficulty stUl remains that the indi- vidual, as imperfect, cannot perceive the divine object. Chapter XLVI. The Divinb Aggression . . • The logical situation resumed; the idea of salvation from outside; in what sense obnoxious, and in what sense rea- sonable; the kind of theology by which Christdanity meets the situation; its large demands on belief; probability in metaphysics out of place. 379 383 392 xxvi CONTENTS 402 I; < CHAPTER XLVII. THE LAST FACT . _^ -^^^^ ^ ^^.^, Whether the ultimate r<^'fjl^ ,, f„et; and this que.- tianity affirms it to be is a qu^t.o . y Wcal argu- iion lanBot be "-0-P'«»f J t':^ or recognition is called • „.ent; an act of P*"'""^^*^"^^^^, operation of every u. for. Recognition is a part « *^* ^ j^ objects which :i„ct;asthefood.gettmgmstinctre^o^^^^^ ^^ ^^ ^ „,ay serve as food so he toW .,^1 reality, recognize what it needs m t^«jf ^J„,,^iy, n.etaphysicsa if what it needs exists «f «' ^^ ^ „e matters of ■findings' are not indifferent ^^^^\^^^ f,^ part of the Ufe anfdeath for the »^-- ^ ^he 'b^Ss men have long circuit of instinctive We; ^^^'iJ^^ ^ ^y,^ fact that men held are to some e^«f ;°"«^";t JJTbelief , imagination have lived by them; ^""'J.fJ'^^^o^ proportions; ^y mingle with e=^™" ^yf.^.Xed by the co-operation our beliefs must ^^ P*'^^ Je»«me lome guide to in- of the mystic and the <='^>'=' J* y^t^^eal analysis, en- dividual judgment ^^ ^J^,i„ Adiefs have been essen- quiring -^-' fZClo^^^^^t which give our civili- tial to those developments 01 1 ^ y^ sketch of """^ '^j^^J'^'; t3 tendency to attack aU merely as an experunental aid, »? ^^t the belief subjective or '»"t'>"'»*fl,''ttf thl w!rld to human indi- ^ a .•."-■-Tp'^^f^^eitrwith the metaphysics of viduals, a beUef partly come civilization; and Christianity, has been ."» the bas» of ^ ^^^^^^ this belief, in turn, might Pl^»;*f J' '^f„ the belief in subjective or pragmatic; "I'J^^^^^^P^"'^ fi„a in the his- question, men ^--"PP-^.^Ty^" those e^pennental torical process 'tseW, P"ticuia y ^^i^a^x men, saoHfces which ^^^^^Z:ZS.: >^<^ authoritative -CTe OurTrgTent ends in pointing out the alter- significance^ Our arg ^^termination ; a negation of =ti', r>ii.r^=:^' — — - only the best of the past. Appended Note Index . • • * PART I ORIENTATION 417 429 r^. CHAPTER I AN ART PECULIAR TO MAN WE have grown accustomed to think of Na^e as engaged in fitting Uving specxes to the« += TViP Uvina things, however, for their environments. The Uving tm g», ^^^nments part, are largely engaged in fitting their ^^^^ „ ^„^a T+ iq true that Nature is inexoraoie to themselves, it is true i"**- -Mntnre J ^v,„* «f<. is frail- but it is also true, that Nature :^.^:£^ and not ^thout amia^^ tr^ts while Uf e is infinitely elastic, masterful, and deter ^1/ Wherever in the world we find signs of con- tnmed. wherever i ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ scions activity, there we nuu r^Arsiatent over into forms more auspicious for the persistent Tds of hf e This is what, in the widest sense^e call ::t':in this sense all -.ions h^havio^^^^ artfuh^^^_ Twndert!;:rwM eLSg^i^ outer world, r^r":^ also, in -ting —-7, j-i4 = ■h^^■nsr(^T danger, or what not,— tne sunpier conditions,— hunger, aangei, ..mi-ere must be tvDe of mind has but one argument: Ihere n^^^x type 01 uuu ^^ human mmd has some change in the facts^ i^ ^^^^^ beside this argmnent another . Perhap be some change - -jf ^^^^.^.^tlned, he may. LTdeat:;:^"*;: faZ take issue also with his • own fear or anger. i 2 OBIENTATION I do not say that man is the only creature that has a part in its own making. Every organism may be said (with due interpretation of terms) to build itself, to regenerate itself when injured, to recreate itself and to reproduce itself. But in all likelihood, it is only the human being that does these things with conscious intention, that examines and revises his mental as well as his physical self, and that proceeds according to a preformed idea of what this self should be. To be human is to be self-conscious ; and to be self-conscious is to bring one's self into the sphere of art, as an object to be judged, altered, improved. Human beings as we find them are accordingly arti- ficial products ; and for better or for worse they must always be such. Nature has made us: social action and our own efforts must continually remake us. Any attempt to reject art for ** nature" can only result in an artificial naturalness which is far less genuine and less pleasing than the natural work of art. Further, as self -consciousness varies, the amount or degree of this remaking activity will vary. And self- consciousness is on the increase. M. Bergson has strongly argued that consciousness (including self- consQiousness) has no quantity;^ but I must judge that among the extremely few respects in which human iLes donn^es imm^diates de la conscience, ch. i. Naturally one can define a situation, such as the relation of being aware of an object of which one must say that it either exists or does not exist, — without variations of degree. Such is Natorp's interpretation of Bewusstheit, not essentially different, I think, from the consciousness of which Berg- son 's statements are true. But such a situation is palpably an abstrac- tion from the reality indicated by ** consciousness ' ' to which Bergson himself wishes to call attention. AN ABT PECULIAR TO MAN 3 history shows unquestionable growth we must include the degree and range of self-consciousness. The gradual development of psychology as a science and the persistent advance of the subjective or introspec- tive element in literature and in all fine art are tokens of this change. And as a further indication and result, the art of human reshaping has taken definite char- acter, has left its incidental beginnings far behind, has become an institution, a group of institutions. Among the earliest of men (if we may trust our powers of prehistoric speculation) we can perceive merely such sporadic expressions of criticism and admiration as pass perpetually between the members of any human group,— acting then, as they still act upon ourselves, like a million mallets to fashion each member somewhat nearer to the social heart's desire. Wherever a language exists, as a magazine of estab- lished meanings, there will be found a repertoire of epithets of praise and blame, at once results and implements of this social process. The simple exist- ence of such a vocabulary acts as a persistent force; but the effect of current ideals is redoubled when a coherent agency, such as public religion, assumes pro- tection of the most searching social maxims and lends to them the weight of all time, all space, all wonder, and all fear. For many centuries religion held within . itself the ripening self-knowledge and self -discipline of the human mind. Now, beside this original agency we have its offshoots, politics, education, legislation, the penal art. And the philosophical sciences, including 4 OBIENTATION psychology and ethics, are the especial servants of these arts. The agencies have thus become diverse, and to some extent have lost touch with each other,— until of late, when common difficulties have tended to remind them here and there of their common origin and common purpose. It is our wish in this study to concern our- selves with these common and original problems, enquiring into the raw material of human nature with which all such agencies must work, and considering in what goal their various efforts should converge, and what principles may guide them to success. CHAPTEE n THE EMEEGENCE OF PEOBLEMS FOE all the agencies which are now engaged in remaking mankind, three questions have become vital. What is original human nature? What do we wish to make of it? How far is it possible to make of it what we wish? I say that these questions have become vital, because (though they sound Uke questions which any wise workman would consider before beginning his work) they are not in any historical sense preUminary ques- tions. It is always our first assumption that we already know both what human nature is and what we wish it to be. Nothing is more spontaneous and assured than the social judgment which finds expres- sion in a word of passing criticism: yet each such judgment ordinarily assumes both these items of knowledge. And it assumes, further, that human nature in the individual criticised could have been, and without more ado can now become, what we would have it. If we convey to our neighbor that he is idle, or selfish, or unfair, and if he perceives our meaning, nothing but wilful failure to use his own powers (so our attitude declares) can account for any further continuance in these ways. Now and always, all spontaneous human intercourse— a nest of un- >, It Ik g ORIENTATION avowed assumptions-takes for granted the common knowledge and acceptance of standards,— at least the fundamental ones,— and their attainableness.* It is only as a result of much failure in the effort / to remake men that the question of possibility gains a ^ status and a hearing. It is this same experience which suggests that there is such a thing as a 'human nature,' offering a more or less constant resistance to the remaking process. These two questions, of possi- bility and of original nature, are therefore not inde- pendent : we have to consider the human material just because it is this, primarily, which sets a limit to the human art. It may be regarded, I dare say, as a dis- covery of religion that there exists a 'natural man' who behaves as a quasi-inevitable drag upon the flights of the spirit. No agency could struggle, as religion has struggled, toward definiteness in its notions of what men ought to be without at the same time win- ning a large experience of the hindrances to the achievement. It lay in the situation from which the concept of human nature arose that the first picture of the natural man should be disparaging. To say that mankind is by nature bad is, in its origins, only a more sophisticated way of saying that virtue is diffi- cult. > One reason why conversation always assnmes such knowledge, and such possibility, may be that conversation is itself a momentary asser- tion, and realization, of an ideal. In conversation the mind of each has laid aside its egoistic boundary, as far as the fact of communication goes, and has so far 'universalized itself.' A large part of the meaning of our ordinary postulates of knowledge and freedom might with advantage be stated in these terms: Tou must admit as general principles whatever is implied in your own act of entering into this community of action which we call conversing. 7 THE EMEBGBNCB OF PROBLEMS But reUgion is by no means alone in this experience. Legislation and the social sciences have, -^t^^ J'^^^" ing slowness, and each in its own ^ay, reached the conclusion that there is a human material to be reck- oned with, having properties akin to inertia, just be- cause each has found its original assumption of trans- parent rationality and freedom difficult to maintain. > Economics, in setting up a typical man whose self- ^ devoted prudence should consistently stand above suspicion, certainly postulated a very moderate degree of virtue even for the sake of the argument; but no science has more thoroughly discarded its error, or more heartily undertaken the task of reckoning with the non-reasoning strands in the human fabric. Politics, especially the liberal politics of the past two centuries, was inclined to build iis faith upon the existence of a reasonable public and a reasonable gov- ernment. But the disiUusioned-not disheartened- liberaUsm of today turns itself heart and soul to psychological enquiry. It perceives that there is a human nature which invites the use of the same prin- ciple that Bacon applied to physical ^«t«'^«'-^°'^f- tMng having laws of its own which mus be obediently examined before we can hope to control It. The Great Society," whether it is to be ruled, or educated, or saved, or simply lived in, has to be taken as a meet^ ing ground of forces to which we would better apply the name instinctive or passional than simply rational. Thus the experiencT^f all social enterprises seems to converge in the common admission that human nature J 8 ORIENTATION is a problem, because human possibility has proved a problem. But these problems are not so far identical that the recognition of a 'nature' to be dealt with at once closes the question what can be done with it. On this issue wide differences of judgment are still possible. On one side it may be held that this human nature is unlimitedly plastic,— we can make of it anything within reason; at the other extreme it may be held that it is fundamentally fixed, — we may refine it and polish it but can change none of its essential passions. Let us look more closely at the present condition of this discussion. i i CHAPTER III ON THE POSSIBILITY OF CHANGING HUMAN NATURE WE are said to have an immediate consciousness of freedom, that is to say, of wide margins of possibility. If this consciousness could be translated into a definite proposition, it would presumably assert not alone *'I can do (within these wide margins) what I will,'' but also, **I can become what I will." There have been times when this * testimony of consciousness' has carried much weight, even to the point of being held decisive; there have been other times when it has forthwith been rejected as more likely than not an illusion. At present, there is far less disposition to believe that we have within ourselves either a foun- tain of deception or a fountain of finished truth: we are inclined rather to question what precisely these intuitions mean, and to seek that meaning in facts of a more objective order, such as the structure of the human being, or his historic doings. As to structure, human nature is undoubtedly the most plastic part of the living world, the most adapt- able, the most educable. Of all animals, it is man in whom heredity counts for least, and conscious build- ing forces for most. Consider that his infancy is long- est, his instincts least fixed, his brain most unfinished JQ ORIENTATION at birth, his powers of habit-making and habit-chang- ing most marked, his susceptibility to social impres- sions keenest,-and it becomes clear that in every way nature, as a prescriptive power, has provided in him for her own displacement. His major mstincts and passions first appear on the scene not as controlling forces, but as elements of play, in a prolonged life of play. Other creatures nature could largely fimsh: the human creature must finish himself. And as to history, it cannot be said that the resu ts of man's attempts at self-modelUng appear to belie the liberty thus promised in his constitution. If he has retired his natural integument in favor of a device called clothing, capable of expressing endless nuances not alone of status and wealth, but of temper and taste as well,— conservatism or venturesomeness, solemnity, gaiety, profusion, color, dignity, carelessness or whim, he has not failed to fashion his inner self into equally various modes of character and custom. That is a hazardous refutation of socialism which consists in pointing out that its success would require a change in human nature. Under the spell of particular ideas monastic communities have flourished, in comparison with whose demands upon human nature the change required by socialism— so far as it calls for purer altruism and not pure economic folly— is trivial. To any one who asserts as a dogma that ** Human nature never changes,'' it is fair to reply, **It is human nature to change itself." When one reflects to what extent racial and national traits are manners of the mind, fixed by social rather WHAT is POSSIBLE 11 than by physical heredity, while the bodily characters themselves may be due in no small measure to sexual choices at first experimental, then imitative, then habit- ual, one is not disposed to think lightly of the human capacity for self -modification. But it is still possible to be skeptical as to the depth and permanence of any changes which are genuinely voluntary. Admitting the importance of knowing what is possible by way of the curious or heroic, it is still more important to know the level to which all curves tend to return after the fortuitous effort and circumstances are withdrawn. Our immediate consciousness of freedom we may then interpret as we interpret the report of our quite simi- lar feeling of physical ability, i.e., as valid primarily for the moment in which it is made. I feel just now as if I could leap to any height, and this feeling is by no means deceptive: I could indeed do so except for the gravity of things in this part of space, which will announce, in the next moment, the level I can reach and where I must come to rest. Likewise, there are few maxims of conduct, and few laws, so contrary to nature that they could not be put into momentary effect by individuals, or by communities. Plato's Republic has never been fairly tried; but fragments of this and other Utopias have been common enough in history. No one presumes to limit what men can attempt; one only enquires what the silent forces are which determine what can last. What, to be explicit, is the possible future of meas- ures dealing with divorce, with war, with political cor- ruption, with prostitution, with superstition! Enthu- ^1 i li -i j^2 OBIENTATION siastic idealism is too precious an energy to be wasted if we can spare it false efforts by -«««f^^f ^« *^J^^ permanent ingredients of our being '^^'<^^}'^ ^7 ^^ words pugnacity, greed, sex, fear. Machiavelh was not inclined to make Uttle of what an unhampered ruler could do with his subjects; yet he saw m such passions as these a fixed Umit to the power of the Prince "It makes him hated above all thmgs to be rapacious, and to be a violator of the property and women of his subjects, from both of which he must abstain.'" And if MachiavelU's despotism meets its master in the undercurrents of human instinct, gov- ernments of less determined stripe, whether of states or of persons, would hardly do well to treat these ultimate data with less respect. It is peculiarly the legislator who needs this wisdom, since he must deal with masses and averages. And there is, in fact, a kind of official legislative pessimism or resignation, born of much experience of the unequal struggle between high aspiration and nature, a pessi- mism found frequently in the wise and great from Solomon to this day. At present it derives large nour- ishment from statistics. The secular steadiness of the percentages, let us say of the major crimes, shows in the clearest light where the constant level of no-effort lies. When Huxley likened the work of civilization to the work of the gardener with his perpetual war- fare against wildness and weeds, he pictured a philos- ophy for the legislator. The world-wise lawgiver will respect the attainable and maintainable level of cul- 1 The Prince, ch. lii. WHAT IS POSSIBLE T ture, a level not too far removed from the stage of ''^'inS, there are many who beUeve, at present, that our social pilots would do well to relax their strain in the field of conscious character-building and turn their attention to the stock. If anything extensive is to be accomplished, may not eugenics offer a better prospect than eternal discipline! The future of the race may conceivably be found in a new and scien ifi- cally developed aristocracy of blood. (I say aristoc- racy,' because evidently under our present arrange- men s the lesser breeds will coexist with the new stock L some little time, and the gap must widen between the two How to induce these rear-guards to seek Mrvana in due time is one of the- awkward problems of the eugenic program.) • • _ ;„ ti,o How different from this legislative pessimism is the above-mentioned pessimism of religion. The grea reUgions have spoken ill of original human nature ; but thef have never despaired of its possibih les. No faSed scripture so far as I ^-^-fj^^^/^^f^VJ^ bom 'free and equal' ; but no accident of birth is held by the major reUgions (with the notable exception of Brahmani m) to exclude any human being from the hihest religious attainment. In spite of the revo^- tionary character of their standards they are still, for tZ most part, committed to the faith that these standards are reachable. And they have so far trusted themselves to this faith that the entire accumulation of scientific knowledge regarding the determmation of character, regarding heredity, and especiaUy regard- V* PS I 14 ORIENTATION ing the instincts, leaves them unmoved. This may be a case of the usual indifference of religion to *^ prog- ress''; but more probably it is a deliberate rejection of the view that the horn part of man is decisive. Religion declines to limit the moral possibility of human nature. Thus in the world of practical endeavor as in the world of theory the two extreme positions in the prob- lem of possibility still confront one another. One might suppose, since the question is a practical one, that experience would long ago have settled the matter. And probably, if experience could have settled the matter, it would have been settled long ago. For after all, how would you judge from experience what the possibilities of human nature are I All the remaking agencies, religion added, have failed to make a world of saints, or any resemblance thereof. True ; but they have made some saints. In a question of possibility, negative experience counts for nothing if there is but a single positive success. As for the rest, their failure may indeed be due to their incapacity. But there are many other conceiv- able reasons for it, such as lack of effort, lack of faith, political pessimism itself, and finally, lack of wish. iJ it altogether certain that the saint of history is the one human success? To the coldly political eye, his leaven seems to lose much of its distinction L it spreads through the lump,— as if the role hardly fitted the majority. Indeed, those who pursue to the end the counsels of perfection tear away from the mass • and the best examples stand in splendid isolation May WHAT IS possible! 15 it not be true that the goal of character which seems possible only to the few is closed to the many only be- cause they cannot be brought wholly to desire it! A revised conception of what is desirable may bring a revised view of what is possible. We turn, then, to consider the status of our third problem. What do we wish to make of human nature! s li »' ,' *1 V% i CHAPTER IV WHAT CHANGES ARE DESIRABLE! LIBERATION VERSUS DISCIPLINE /^F all the doubts that invade our primary assur- V^ ances, the last to arise, and the most disconcert- ing, is the doubt whether we know what we want. We inhale our ideals as we accept our mother-tongue : and 80 great is the momentum of the vocabulary of lauda- tion that it is long before we discover that not all eulo- gistic epithets can be embodied in one being,— not even in a god. Mr. Bosanquet has instanced Falstaflf as disproof of the notion that right and wrong are ulti- mate qualities of the universe :— for who can approve Falstaff's principles, and yet who would willingly consign him to hellf But is not the difficulty this, that the praiseworthy and delightful qualities of Sir John would be hard to unite with certain other reputable qualities, such as responsibiUty and temperance ; and, generally speaking, that among the ideals which we all accept seriatim there is conflict? If so, the natural inference is simply that these ideals, taken one by one are somewhat false and abstract. Neither singly nor jointly do they furnish a true picture of what we wish human nature to be; and, in brief, we do not (concep tually) know what we wish it to be. In this unavowed condition of groping ignorance, WHAT 16 DESIRABLE t 17 mankind has made (equally unavowed) use of certain guiding principles, among which is this : that if any- thing is impossible, it is not wholly desirable. Every failure to impress a nominal ideal upon human nature works two ways : it strengthens the critics of human nature, the legislative pessimists, and the rest; but it also casts doubt upon the validity of the nominal ideal. Men who, in quest of such ideals, have submitted to much discipline have sometimes come to rebel, not because they have reached their limit, but because the friction of the process has led them to suspect the authority of the goal. Such seems to have been the experience of the Buddha, who after six years of exalted austerity in the Uruvilva forest suddenly turned his back upon his Brahmanic guides. And such, in another vein, may have been the experience of the pleadingly defiant Omar. In such cases, when * Nature rebels,' she rebels not as a traitor, but in the name of a different conception of rightful rule. The average man, I presume, has always doubted in his reticent way whether those counsels of perfection are alto- gether what they claim to be; whether the gain in brilliance and purity has not been purchased by some loss in the virtues of reality and concrete serviceable- ness; whether, on the whole, something more like ** Follow Nature'' may not be a truer guide to a wholly desirable human quality. There have been eras in history, eras of liberation, when the general voice of this average man has set itself against the tyranny of prevailing discipline. They have been eras like the Eenaissance in which the ki l^ 18 ORIENTATION hypocritical seams in the traditional strait-jackets have become especially visible, as well as the too- interested character of the profession that men are free to become what they are commanded to become. But every age has its party and its prophet of libera- tion, its Rousseau, its Schlegel, its Whitman, its Nietzsche, — prophets always more or less philosophi- cal, and sometimes political as well. The principle of the Liberator is. Follow thine own inner nature, — Express thyself. As legislator he is anything but a pessimist, not because he thinks that the older dis- cipline is possible, but because he thinks that what- ever ought to be is possible, and that merely a mini- mum of discipline ought to be. The general influence of the philosophy of evolu- tion has been liberating in this sense. Not long ago, Spencer deduced from his ** Biological View'' the obvious doctrine of any naturalistic ethics, that (other things being equal) all * functions' ought to be exer- cised. For what else do functions exist but to be exercised? There is a flattering piety in thus follow- ing the intentions of Nature, which are, besides, much more certainly decipherable than the other oracles of God. It is true, we are obliged to do a certain amount of guessing: but at least one trend of Nature may unhesitatingly be affirmed, — a tendency to the increase of life, measured in terms of these functional I activities. The rule for human culture takes a shape y^,Uke the rule of the medical art: Regard life_ as ji^quan- vt**tity; cQnserxie and increase it; avoid all forms of repression. WHAT IS desirable! 19 The evil of repression — an inevitable accompani- ment of discipline— is primarily simply that it is repression, i.e., subtraction from life. But beside this quantitative evil, we are assured by Freud and his school that repression is the root of numerous psychi- cal disorders. Freud's importance to the cause of liberation lies in his showing the very mechanism of the process by which the ignoring of Nature is pun- ished. The rule of life which these researches imme- diately suggest is formulated by Professor Holt in his recent book. The Freudian Wish, a simple but universal technique for the release of instinctive ener- gies and the solution of conflicts. The ethical prob- lem reduces to this : to find such a mode of satisfying any wish that all other wishes may also be satisfied. This is clearly the principle of a democratic society applied to human desires. The only admissible remak- ing in a regime of this sort is such mutual adjustment of the methods of satisfaction that our numerous impulses may live together in harmony. The sacrifi- cial choices of the older discipline are not merely unintelligent; they are immoral. It is clear that the freedom which interests these prophets of liberation is not the freedom to control and modify desire : it is the freedom to assert desire as we find it in human nature. If we affect freedom in the former sense, a freedom which can only be dis- played by submitting to self-imposed demands, we do but punish ourselves. Such freedom is no more than a Quixotic liberty to imprison our own nature. The rights of self-government are not properly to be % a .1 h; ki SI ' ; 20 ORIENTATION vested in any such transcendent 'ruling faculty' as the Stoics tried to enthrone : these rights should Ue with those primary impulses which emerge, with life itself, from mother earth. It might be imagined that the religions of redemp- tion, with their demands of rebirth, would find them- selves at odds with the Liberators. And so, to some extent, it has been. But the Liberator is mediatory, and can offer an interpretation of regeneration itself, such as liberal phases of religion are not wholly dis- inclined to consider. Let us say that Ho save' means simply 'not to waste,'— not to destroy, not to lose. Eegard religion, then, together with ethics, as a gen- eral economy of life, having definite applications in the field of public justice.* The work of religion is to con- serve a maximum of energy, of value, of experience ; to prevent friction and mutilation, to turn all things to account. A large part of the older meaning of con- version, it is true, must be emptied out. Into this view, no *twice-bom-ness' of the type depicted by William James can be admitted: the precursory sick- ness of soul, the horror of being cosmically lost, are outgrown trials. The way of the mystics, wherein overcoming the world meant mortifying the flesh, is no longer to be followed. Hell has burned out: for God, himself remade in the image of the expansive spirit, is no longer thought of as one who can whole- heartedly exclude any individual or denounce any thing. The 'agonized conscience' of our forefathers 1 As in the recent writings of Professor T. N. Carver, The Religion Worth Having; Essays in Social Justice. WHAT IS DESIRABLE t 21 ? may be gently ridiculed as the passing gesture of a 'genteel tradition,' now empty of vitality. In truth, it has been faring rather ill with the parti- sans of discipUne among us. The temper of our own society, of America, is expansive : it is for giving Uber- ties to everything that can show a claim of right ; it is partial to the under dog,— and are not the primitive passions the under dog in our ^lcbical_et^radeT Nevertheless, we are becoming conscious that our liberalism is at loose ends ; and a hunger for discipline is showing itself in various quarters,— in poHtics, in education, in the administration of justice, in provi- sion for defence. The complete view of what we desire in human nature does not lie with conteDaBaxarjt Eoraanticism: so much we learn through our own experience.* And what we thus learn is being borne out, I believe, by what we are learning as spectators of events in Europe. It has been asserted, and denied, that the Prussian policy is the embodiment of Nietzscheanism : and it should be clear enough that the teachings of Nietzsche have no direct political connection with the present struggle." But it is wholly idle to argue away » Perhaps there is an element of immodesty in the title of The Unpopular Beview-the kina of immodesty that led EUjah of old to complain to the Lord, "I, even I only, am left; and they seek mj life, to take it away." However, the Review has probably no dispotrtion to insist on proving its claim to the title by dying out Beside being tte voice of the many who are ready to subscribe to the creed (and the maeazine) of Mr. Holt, Mr. More, Mr. Mather, and their collaborators, it must be recognized also that the call for a goodly degree of discipline is the voice of the persistent if sometimes subconscious common sense of our racial stock. . , V 8 HistoricaUy speaking, the^ec^nomic historians of Germany, chief l\ .V .^ I *(5 if I' •J i H 22 ORIENTATION the fact that his words have coined the inmost principle of many of our contemporaries on European soil, and faithfully represent to the world a theory of conduct which, while they have not caused, they have mightily reinforced. The natural man of the Nietzschean ideal is a very different person from the natural man of Rousseau: he is far more strenuous, far more ac- quainted with pain and hardness. But like his prede- cessor, he finds his law within himself, and defines his good as the venting of his energies upon the world. He is a hater of Christianity chiefly because Chris- tianity seems to him to curb the salutary surgical processes of nature — his surgery. He has the grim optimism which most rejoices to proclaim the goodness of things when it finds the world red in fang and claw — his fang and claw. The hero of Nietzsche is not converted, and he rejoices in his non-conversion. We now have, I say, an immense demonstration of the working of his type of liberation. And we, who look on, and who have made use of that same faith in our own public and economic life, cannot quit ourselves of taking part in the process by which the whole » Western world in horror and lamentation shall revise its judgment. Meantime we discover an element of this revision in the inner life of the same nation whose international behavior has chiefly displayed the error. For the prowess of Germany, so far as it is due to the willing among them Schmoller, have far more directly influenced the shape of German Weltpolitik than any philosopher, or than Treitschke or Bern- hardi, whose writings are merely symptomatic. WHAT IS desirable! 23 discipline of her own people, commands an admiration which has not failed to enter the soul of her most vehement critics ; and just this admiration may have been needed to present the cause of discipline with adequate force to our own too complacent tempers. n I 1* w CHAPTER V THE LIBERATOR AS DISCIPLINARIAN WE have been doing Rousseau the usual injus- tice in classing him with the liberators pure and simple. Rousseau lived to see and thoroughly fear the fallacies of his early cult of Nature. And had the French public been as susceptible to his words upon this point in The Social Contract as to those of the Dijon Prize Essay, the excesses of the Revolution, if they had still occurred, could never by use of his name have ridden to their fall. By 1762 he was ready to put the case in this way : The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they formerly lacked. . . . Let us draw up the whole account in terms easily compared. What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty, and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting. What he gains is civil liberty, and the proprietorship of all he possesses. We might add over and above all this to what man acquires in the civil state, moral liberty, which alone makes him truly master of himself. For the mere impulse of appetite is slavery; while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.' > The Social Contract, Book I, ch. viii. THE LIBEEATOE AS DISCIPLINABIAN 25 Rousseau had experienced something like an intel- lectual conversion; and for our present puyoses we should like to know more about the logic of it. But we shall learn less on this point from Rousseau than from other examples of the same process. Germany, in the short interval between Kant a Critique of Practical Reason and Hegel's Philosophy of Right passed in ponderous and expUcit argument through the entire gamut of these changes. Kant is the unmatched exponent of the cause «f " »' each one waiting for that of the others, so that in the historical growth of knowledge, all three must be driven abreast. But the logical effect of considerations of fact upon questions of ideal i. rather to exclude errors than to provide positive hypotheses. i I i! t. l m m M '1 30 OBIENTATION behavior, we shortly discover that the dictates not alone of instinct in general but of every particular instinct are ambiguous: instinct, as guide, shows a fatal lack of sense of direction, and one suspects that even where it seems to show the way it is covertly depending on counsel from another source. The^ attempt to follow a leader that cannot lead ma,j com- pel the Bscovery that our real guidance is to be sought elsewhere. This need not mean that the pretender sJiLOuld be^ slaughtered, nor even excluded from the comEasiyj ^ need only fall in behind the new guide. Nature may well exercise a veto power, or a second- ing power, without having the capacity to make defi- nite positive proposals. If there is anything in these surmises, we should have to look beyond human nature itself for the thing which human nature should become. Such an attitude toward nature, considerate, yet independent, appears in the ethical thought of Plato, and in his theory of education. For Plato, the goal of education, as of philosophy and religion, was the attainment of a blessed vision, a state of insight into things as they are. The conditions for attaining this goal included the ascent of an intellectual ladder, the dialectic; but they involved also a purgation of the desires, a genuine remaking of the natural man. The original love for particulars and sensible objects must be transformed into a love of the universal and abso- lute. It is clear that a goal of this description cannot be deduced from the rule of any social instinct, nor of any other instinct observable in the primitive «i' AN INDEPENDENT STANDABD 31 human animal. And Plato has often been regarded as thoroughly hostile to the empirical side of human nature. It has commonly been thought that the dual- ism of Christian anthropology, with the excessive self- distrust of medieval piety, traced largely to him. But while Plato was unquestionably an aristocrat m his attitude toward the 'senses,' what he required of the natural impulses was far more Uke 'sublimation than like 'repression.' No one can read The Banquet in the light of recent psychology without reahzmg how completely Plato understood the transf ormability of passions and desires; and how completely in his view of the goal of human endeavor the original fund ot de8ire- of the facts of human natlrefand of the ways in which various agencies do In fact work upon it, should make that further fact apparent. For what we are mustaU east cons pire i n our own remaking with any iSaSpS^den pJicipleT and with what we at first take to^ejth^dings o nature,' any such foreign impuTse wnTIBo'doubt be mixed. If it exists, it may be «f««t«d to reveal i^^^^^ in the course of our empirical labor. Without attempt- ing therefore a prior critique of pure will, we may now address ourselves to that labor. Valuation, Its Mature ana ir , ^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ ^■^^^ there a tendency to abandon ^^J**"'^^ J'" ^ „f the world we live whole matter of ultimate standards to the «™t,° . j^ z„ Ethik in or to the conditions for improving the race (B. "°"«'f '.*' f", Qogs de's Gimmtwillens. also Entwickelungswerttheone, etc., I^.pzig, 1908). 'A P. :H 7f PABT n THE NATTJBAL MAN CHAPTEE VII THE ELEMENTS OF HUMAN NATUEE: THE NOTION OF INSTINCT IT is no longer possible to share the confidence of Hobbes or of Eoussean that original human nature, in distinction from all that education and civil hf e have made of it, can forthwith be described. Certainly not by direct introspection can any man draw the hue be- tween what is natural and what is artificial in himself . Neither can we find examples of the unaffected natural state: there are solitary wasps, but there are no soU- tary human infants ; and with the first social exchange the original self is overlaid. Further, this very modi- fication of early character by training is a condition for the normal appearance of later dispositions ; an experimental isolation of a human being for the sake of observing his natural behavior would thus be self- defeating. , X 1 „= , Our idea of our own nature, therefore, must always ' be a result of abstraction. We have to reach it as we reach other inseparable units,-namely, by frammg hypothetical definitions of elements that seem to show a degree of constancy, and allowing these formula to show their power, or lack of power, to express simply the facts of experience. Anjingtinct' is such an \ hypo^eti cal unit . 'i! h it) .1 It ! 1 38 THE NATURAL MAN The notion of instinct is a survival of a long his- tory, a survival of much rough usage (such as the attempt to indicate in a single word the difference be- tween man and the animals), a vagabond concept, which has gained scientific standing only because it is indispensable. And it is indispensable only because all sciences which are concerned with human behavior, whether psychology, or psychiatry, or the social sciences above alluded to, are obliged to mould their ideas very largely by the aid of biology. Thus, our best clue to original human nature is found in studies of heredity — ^the narrow gateway through which * na- ture' is transmitted; and our knowledge of heredity is governed by biological conceptions. When we enquire how character is transmitted, we are asked to picture a group of * dispositions* which take on the physiologi- cal form of * reflex arcs' — ^the simple nervous mechan- ism through which a specific * stimulus' awakens a specific * response.' If we accept the reflex arc as the beginning of wisdom in the biology of behavior, we shall find it useful to distinguish between simple re- flexes and complex groupings of reflexes — and we have arrived at the notion of instinct. For as the biologist sees it, an instinct is but a group of reflexes whose parts follow a regular serial order to a significant conclusion. The serial order is appar- ent in any of the conspicuous animal instincts, as nest- building or wooing and mating ; or in such a sequence as carrying objects to the mouth, chewing and swallow- ing, at that point in the seven ages of man when these actions are still instinctive. The mechanism of the THE NOTION OiF INSTINCT 39 serial arrangement is also fairly obvious : the conclu- sion of one stage of the process furnishes the stimulus, or a necessary part of the stimulus, for the next stage. Thus, in general, the series can follow but one order; and when once begun tends to continue to the end. In many instincts, the stimulus is not single but mam- fold; an internal stimulus, for example, must co-oper- ate with an external stimulus before the response can take place. If the internal stimulus is persistent (appearing in consciousness as a craving) while the external stimulus is occasional, the course of the corre- sponding instinct may appear irregular, may be latent or interrupted. The hen ready to brood is presumably subject to an inner source of restlessness which per- sists, like a hunger, until in presence of the nest and its contents the long-deferred behavior sets in with well-known determination or obstinacy (as one chooses to look at it). It is not difficult to invent a scheme of nervous connections which could be conceived to oper- ate in some such way as this in human beings. A such schemes are indeed too simple to account in full for even the simpler cases of actual behavior: but the biologist, like other scientists, lives by faith to this extent,-he inclines to regard his problem as solved when he can see how in principle it might be solved And for the present we may assume that he is justified in his faith, if not by it." To each instinct there will necessarily belong a set of motor organs which may be assembled, in structure, . 1 A carefully devised Bet of graphic schemes has been developed by Professor Max Meyer in The Fundamental Laws of Human Behavior. I % 40 THE NATURAL MAN as a single organ group, or may be dispersed. To the swimming or flying or spinning instincts are bound the distinctive apparatuses. With the beaver's build- ing propensity goes the beaver's tail. And vice versa, with every such group of motor organs^ will be found an instinct for its operation. There is thus a very rough correspondence between bodily shape and instinctive equipment : the instincts are inherited with the body, as its behavior-charter, so to speak. But to the biologist, the notion of instinct contains much more than the picture of a mechanism and the mode of its operation. The mechanism is regarded as a unit not simply because its activity has a definite beginning and ending, but because this activity reaches a conclusion which we called significant. More accu- rately, it brings about a situation which in general favors the survival of the organism or of its species. Instincts are common to all members of a species or to any given sex of the species ; and usually character- ize its way of life. As hereditary paths of least resist- ance, they serve as a sort of initiation, a foreshortened education, for the vital activities of the species. To be useful in this way, it is evident that they must be successful with a minimum of training, or with none. Social imitation helps the first efforts at flying, swimming, song; but it is the untaught and unteachable skill that marks the instinct. Few, if any, instinctive actions can be said to be perfect at the first attempt (unless such unique actions as breaking through the 2 Any given muscle, it must be understood, may appear in a number of such groups. The distinctness of one instinct from another lies in the group, not in the motor units. THE NOTION OF INSTINCT 41 egg-shell, and even then, a preUminary rehearsal or a second birth might well produce improvement). But the instinctive action is effective from the beginning, as it could not be effective had it to wait for either experience or instruction. This relation of the instincts to the wider interests of the organism implies a further fact about their physiology. Their nervous circuits include branches that run through the highest nervous center. The instinct is under cerebral control; and after its first quasi-mechanical operation, is subject to modification through its bearing on other processes reporting at the center. It is the destiny of most instincts to be- come habits shaped by experience of the owner; hence they must work under the supervision of the owner. They are not, like the winking-reflex, for example, incidental reactions of a part of an animal; they are reactions of the whole animal; they constitute the whole business of the moment of their operation. The language we have been using may all be inter- preted physiologically. But for us, the significance of an instinct comes from its psychological, not from its barely physiological aspect. That a nervous loop passes upward through the higher centers means^o us that an instinct is an element of consciousness as wjBll as of sub-consciousness ;Jt falls within what we calla mind, a memory; it is material for remaking. From thelSiiscious side, the 'stimuhis' appears as an object of perception. And the circumstance that this object tends to stimulate, to provoke a response, impUes that the perception will be accompanied by _ St' 42 THE NATUBAL MAN desire or aversion as well as followed by action. As the nervous channel is the physical link between a particular stimulus and a particular response, so a desire is the conscious link between a particular per- ception and a particular action. Without this link of desire the other two mental facts would not be parts of one mind. With the desire often appears feeling or emotion, especially if the response requires a large change in the energy or direction of the existing mental current. But whether the stimulus, the object perceived, arouses emotion or not, it always invites interest. As the kitten finds fascination in a moving string, prior to any experience with mice, so every object that plays on instinctive tendencies appears to consciousness as invested with an unexplained claim upon attention. It has a seemingly intrinsic value. It has a * meaning' for us, more or less vague or pre- monitory or understood, according to the extent of our experience with that particular instinct and its result. It seems probable to me that a pond of water may have to a gosling some 'meaning' at first sight; but any such instinct-object comes in time to 'mean' definitely the whole instinct-process and its end. The conscious 'stimulus' is the perception of the end as the meaning of the beginning. Because of this demand upon attention and interest, always more or less unexplained, an instinctive im- pulse frequently appears in the human mind, full of what we regard more rational concerns, as a stranger in the house, curiously external to the 'self that dwells there. Thus fear or anger may invade a mind as an THE NOTION OF INSTINCT ^3 intruder with which the self deUberately struggles, in • the name of reason or of principle. In working out the issue with fear of the dark, a child commonly reaches a stage in which this fear is ahnost an oboec- tive phenomenon within himself, and may be persom- fied as a dragon or other foul spirit to be overcome. The instinct with its ahnost mechanical sweep is alien to my self. ,, Yet in this externality of the instinct-naturally clearest in the aversions, the negative instincts-there is a paradox. It is in instinctive action that one is most himself. During the moment in which the object of perception, the stimulus, may be purely 'interest- ing,' the self stands outside the instinct; but the fas- cination which that object exercises, whether auspi- cious or baleful, conveys an invitation to identify that self with an attractive process of action. To yield to the invitation is perceived as a route of high satis- faction, even though (as in anger) there is involved an intense effort and possible pain. The instinct is a channel down which the current of life rushes with exceptional impetus; once committed to it, we reach our highest pitch of personal self -consciousness, our greatest sense of power and command. The self be- comes identified with its greatest passions. Hence a certain dread frequently felt at the brink of instinctive behavior, even when it appears as a path of satisfac- tion. .... To resume our view of this term, instinct, so com- monly invoked as a unit of human and animal nature. As a physiological mechanism, we have noted the m li ■ ■■ li m 44 THE NATURAL. MAN orderly and progressive sequence of reflexes that com- pose it, the contribution of this series, as a whole, to the vital interests of the organism or species, the cen- tral connection which marks its response as total, and its destiny to be modified by experience and to become an individualized habit. As a fact of consciousness, we have described instinct as accentuating the interest of certain objects of perception, endowing them with a meaning to be worked out in a course of conduct whose prompting is the essential part of the instinct, giving zest, momentum, and assurance to that course of conduct, — a zest not unmixed with the thrill of dread as something fateful for the history of the self, — and leading to a situation of repose whose value is the conscious justification for the whole process. Kjthe entire human being is originally a bundle of such instincts, this *self* which at any moment seems to. l)e contrasted with a given instinct may be regarded as the representative at that moment of all the other instincts. I doubt whether this will prove to be a wholly satisfactory account of the 'self,' or of original human nature, but it may serve us for the present as a working hypothesis. CHAPTER VIII THE RANGE OF INSTINCT IN forming our notion of instinct, we find at the same time the criteria by which an instinct is to be recognized. To external observation, the presence of an instinct would be indicated by the trend of the entire species into a distinctive mode of Uvehhood, by an untaught skill in pursuing these characteristic ways, and by the peculiar organs or organic contours that correspond to them. An observer would look also tor outward signs of the inner states which accompany instinct, for the expressions of spontaneous interest in certain objects, of desire or aversion, of characteristic emotions, and finally, of a degree of urgency and insistence in the behavior. For the impeding of instinctive behavior in animals ahnost infallibly excites first vehemence and then anger. To long continued observation other marks may furnish clues. Thus since instinctive action is an attractive experience, it is likely to be not alone recurrent, but also the basis of play, and in subtler expression, of the more enduring interests, bents, powers, passions of the creature But these criteria are not all equally serviceable or conclusive. For the most part, the identification of an instinct tends to rest upon the simple question whether there is an untaught skill, the other marks bemg i I i rt' m 46 THE NATURAL MAN merely corroborative. With these criteria at hand, what range of instinct can we attribute to original human nature! At first sight, the human equipment seems compara- tively slender. We have already referred to the rela- tive absence of fixed traits in the human infant. Berg- son has recently reaflSrmed the once current belief that man, with the vertebrates generally, has largely sur- rendered instinct in the interest of intellect. This ** running to intellect,'' i.e., an innate propensity to master vital problems by dissecting and reconstruct- ing, such as men take to with more or less of untaught skill, might with some justice be called the essential instinct of man, a substitute for all other instincts. In him, the vital impetus makes for curiosity, and for the invention of hypotheses, and of tools. It is true that many observers, from Darwin on- ward to Chadboume and William James, have been impressed by the number and variety of instinct- rudiments in man. But we are looking for funda- mental factors in the building of a mind, not for relics and fragments of an admitted animal ancestry. We Wish to know whether there are instincts which, as McDougall claims, provide the nucleus of all human values: we are less concerned whether there are vestiges that explain the peculiar ways in which we laugh or cry. In animals other than man, instinct attracts atten- tion partly because of the conjunction of apparently superhuman cunning with subhuman powers of thought; in part because of the remarkable bodily THE EANGB OF INSTINCT 47 structures which accompany them. Man lacks these striking organic instruments ahnost entirely. He has no horns, wings, humps, claws, quills, tusks, shell, or sting. His body offers no visible foothold for notable functions of offence, defence, or craftsmanship. He is a relatively smooth and unmarked animal. Inter- nally, also, his organs are undistinguished. Except that he is obviously neither fish nor fowl, his structure does not mark him for this or that habitat or diet, nor for special mastery over any part of nature. Physi- cally, he is as nearly as possible, animal-in-general. From what we can infer of primitive psychology, something analogous must be said of the inner man. He shows no great native skills nor passions. He is not strikingly social nor solitary, warUke nor submis- sive, benevolent nor selfish. Hobbes and Grotius were both in error, the one in representing us as dommantly pugnacious, the other as dominantly amicable. Mon- tesquieu showed greater insight. The natural human being, he thought, shows no conspicuous powers whether of loyalty, mastery, or achievement, inter- ested or disinterested. Sufficient evidence of this may be the wide disagreements of those who have ventured to draw up Usts of the principal instincts. Apart from fear, hunger, pugnacity, and love, few names com- monly recur in such Usts; and none of these can show a wholly undisputed title. Thus, psychically also, we seem to be dealing with a generaUzed creature, not with one specified in character by many instinctive traits But there are reasons why in the case of the human IHH M [ 48 THB NATURAL MAN being, the coarser criteria of instinct may not at once reveal what is there. Three such reasons occur to me: 1. The balance of instincts. If any organ or func- tion is inconspicuous, it is always possible that it does not exist, and this is no doubt the most obvious sup- position. But it is also possible that supplementary organs or functions have grown up beside it, balancing its action, and tending to conceal it. So far as human instincts are concerned, the latter supposition seems the true one. Anatomically, it is the balance of powers * rather than the lack of them that distinguishes the human type. The erect posture, for instance, implies not the lack of a ventral musculature, but rather the growth of an equivalent dorsal musculature. Like- wise with the instincts. If no one impulse is dominant in human behavior, it is not because the impulses are lacking, but because in any situation two or more im- pulses are likely to be concerned. Man is not fated to predation, nor yet to a life of fear and flight. It is not prescribed by nature that he should live in immense herds, nor in mutually repellent families, nor alone. Yet impulses in all these directions are present in him, and he is the field of their conflict and adjustment. 2. Variety of pattern. For the sake of simplicity we commonly picture the physiological pattern of an instinct as a triple arrangement of sense-stimulus, central adjustment, and muscular response, — for each instinct a complete individual set of these three parts. And where an instinct conforms to this simple design, following a path of its own and using a specialized THE RANGE OF INSTINCT 49 group of muscles as in eating, vocalization, locomotion, it will hardly escape detection. But few of our m- stincts have such clear-cut rights-of-way: for some of them few muscles or none are set apart. Thus, fear- and-flight and anger-and-combat are highly contrast- ing impulses : but they arise from similar stimuh, and the muscles as well as the visceral changes involved in one largely coincide with those involved m the other. To instincts of this pattern, structure will fur- nish no definite clue. And there is, unless I am much mistaken, a still more obscure pattern,-^ne in which the muscular changes involved are variable, and in some cases com- paratively unimportant, because the function of the instinct is to effect adjustments within the nervous system If there is an instinctive basis for aesthetic values, for example, it is probably of this pattern; surely there is no typical series of muscular events which can be said to be characteristic of our response to beauty ! An investigator whose eye is fixed upon the pattern of sensible stimulus and determinate mus- cular response will be inclined to deny the existence of such instincts ; but we cannot so dogmatically close the question. , 3 Coalescence of instincts. There is a tendency among instincts of all but the simplest patterns, not alone to share in the tracts of physical expression (as above), but also to participate in the satisfactions one of another, vicariously. Are we prepared to say, for instance, that a successful wooing provides satisfac- tion for the mating instinct, but none for the instinct i ' SSCS "C" I 50 THE NATURAL MAN of acquisition (if there is such) or of self-assertion (if there is such), or, for that matter, of self-abase- ment? If not, we must acknowledge that no enumera- tion of instincts in which one is supposed to be wholly different from the other in clean-cut division, is likely to do justice to the actual situation. When these sources of possible error are borne in mind, it will appear, I believe, that the human equip- ment of instinct is by no means a meager one. We shall now endeavor to make a rough survey of it. / Ml CHAPTER IX SUBVEY OF THE HUMAN EQUIPMENT FIRST, there are numerous clear-cut instincts of simple pattern which we may call 'units of be- havior,' because they are used in various combinations. In the human economy not alone are there few muscles that are used for only one achievement: there are few of the simpler instincts which appear in only one vital function. The operations of reaching, grasping, pull- ing, shaking, are such units. They are sometimes referred to jointly as an instinct of prehension. But evidently there are few of the major instincts into whose course they do not enter, as in the beginnings of locomotion, in climbing, food-getting, curiosity, love, pugnacity. It is as if in man the elaborate instincts of his animal forbears had been broken into fragments, or analyzed after the manner of human intelUgence itself, in order that duplication might be avoided, and new possibilities of combining realized. Instead of a one-piece instinct of locomotion, we have many partial instincts which further the co-operation of various groups of muscles in the numerous postures of which the body is capable, in crawling, standing, walking, running, climbing. Doubtless many of these innate connections have yet to be isolated: no one knows what instinctive hints and guidance may come to the aid ■ ggg. 52 THE NATTJBAL MAN of the first leap or of the first dodge or fall. Food- getting when it reaches the mouth becomes almost a specific instinct, though sucking, biting, chewing have a degree of separability, and so of other employment. The tendency of all careful study of instincts, guided by the formula of sense-stimulus and specific response, is to fragmentize in this manner the older instinct categories. "Curiosity" disappears in a group of instinctive movements of attention and of manipula- tion such as we mentioned above. The result is an elaborate gamut of units of behavior.' In the view of some writers, these units of behavior are strictly speaking the only true instincts ; the wider categories, curiosity, hunger, etc., should be recognized as convenient and misleading class-names, represent- ing no real unitary instinct.'' It is not evident, how- ever, why a combination of such units to a single ser- viceable end might not be prearranged by nature quite as truly as the units themselves. It is a question of fact whether such more inclusive instincts exist. Flight, for example, under the impulse of fear, seems ii thoroughly instinctive performance, making use with untaught skill of many units of behavior. It is noteworthy also that the order and variety of these units is not fixed : the end-situation to be brought about by flight is describable only in general terms, as well 1 See the lists of James and Thorndike noticed on pages 58-60. 2 A similar problem arises in the outlining of species. "In a handful of small shells the 'splitters' may recognize 20 species, while the 'slumpers' see only 3. Thus Haeckel says of calcareous sponges that, as the naturalist likes to look at the problem, there are 3 species, or 21, or 289, or 591." Thomson, Outlines of Zoology, p. 14. But instinct is less likely to be regarded a subjective entity than species. SURVEY OF THE HUMAN EQUIPMENT 53 as the means of reaching it. The end is to get away; and it is a secondary matter what place I reach, or whether I run away, creep away, or climb away. I should recognize flight as a genuine instinct, identified by its vital meaning or end and by the general char- acter of the process. And since both the end and the process are to be described in general rather than specific terms, this instinct might be called a general instinct. Most of the traditional instincts are general in this sense. Fear, which names an emotion rather than an instinct, expresses itself not alone m flight but in contraction, conceahnent, rigidity, etc. Yet it also has a definable end; and its unity seems further guaranteed by its genetic position at the head of a group of defensive reactions. I should recognize fear as the (rather inaccurate) name of an instinct of still higher generality. It is among these general instincts that the tendency of the human equipment toward balance is most readily recognized. Some of the units of behavior are paired, as pulling and pushing, taking into the mouth and spitting out, laughing and weeping; many again have no specific counterparts. But the general instincts fal naturally into pairs, as follows : instinct to general physical activity and instinct to repose (including the various modes of rest and sleep as units of behavior) ; curiosity and aversion to novelty; sociability and anti- sociability. This last named pair is itself highly gen- eral, including within itself such instincts, also general, as those of dominance and submission, sex-love and sex-aversion, and parental love,-which seems to have : !*■ 'SrSSSmSSm 54 THE NATUEAL MAN '1 no more express counterpart than a repugnance to children, which in most persons is a submerged trait. It is possible that all of these instincts are derived, as G. H. Schneider thinks, from a pair of primitive reactions, expansive and contractive in nature. I should, in fact, be inclined to group all the assertive and outgoing instincts under one highly general instinct of activity, or expansion, and all the negative instincts under a highly general instinct of aversion or fear. Pugnacity would be a general instinct, compara- tively late in development, uniting in itself the quali- ties of aversion and expansion. The most primitive reaction to opposition is contraction, withdrawal, fear : nature's second thought is that a reserve of energy may be devoted to remove the obstacle — and here pug- nacity, with its own characteristic units of behavior, enters the scene. In speaking of pugnacity, however, we touch upon an extremely interesting development in the system of instincts. In a wider sense of the word pugnacity, it may be said that every instinct is pugnacious ; that is, it is characteristic of instinctive action of all sorts, even of fear, to meet opposition with irritation and an increased appropriation of energy. Mr. McDougall has made this fact the defining character of anger and the instinct of pugnacity. That quality of spiritedness which makes an obstacle a spur rather than a discour- agement is unquestionably a more general form of the fighting instinct. But the point of particular interest in this wider form of pugnacity is that it is an instinc- live control of instinct, an instinct of the second order. SUBVEY OF THE HUMAN EQUIPMENT 55 There are other aspects of the instinctive regulation of the course of instincts. Play is a lightening of the instinct-pressure, so to speak, under control of socia- bility; as pugnacity is an enhancement of pressure, under control of anti-sociability." Every instinct may be expressed playfully as well as pugnaciously; and the preponderance of one or the other of these tenden- cies of the second order marks the difference in tem- perament between the gay and the serious-minded. It may also be said that every instinct is curious, for every instinct, in man at any rate, tends to lend inter- est to objects in any way bearing upon its own opera- tion; or, conversely, curiosity may be regarded as a function of control or guidance applicable generally to instincts of the first order. Curiosity as an appendage of food-getting, construction, sociability, etc., doubt- less precedes in order of development the curiosity which appears as an independent hunger of the mind. This latter kind of curiosity is typical of that ex- tremely important group of general instincts which in our last chapter we spoke of as central. These intro- duce a question so critical for our theory of instinct that we treat of it in a separate chapter. It will be in place here to throw into rough tabular form the survey so far as completed, while recognizing the impossibility of representing in two dimensions— or any other num- 8 Play and pugnacity, in this regulative capacity, furnish another instance of balance, and we frequently find them alternating. But their relation is not simply that of contrast and balance. As instincts of the second order, the domain of each includes the other, i.e., we often play at pugnacity, and are sometimes pugnacious in the pursuit of play. % SURVEY OF THE HUMAN INSTINCTS ii POSITIVE (ExpMBTe) Instinct to Physica] Activity (?) StretcUti^r Rvbhmg Eya, etc NEGATIVE (ContrMtire) Aggressive Prehension Onufing Reaching, JPuUhtg Shakng, ete» Locomotion ^ SttmSng, CrawSng^^ WttOting, Running ^ CHmbing, etc. Food-Getting ^ Sucking, SwaUowing Carryina^ Mouth Biting, wy Huntine.-* RovinO:^ Acquisition (?)V Constraction (?) 9M^fcr•mddng (TMUgtei) Curiosity (primM«t) Movements 80 THE NATURAL MAN of connecting these facts with others. We do not by this route penetrate more deeply into the nature of desire. If we wish to know what desire is made of, we should do better to seek it within the completer expressions of the will itself, as we know them. If we can anywhere catch a glimpse of the ultimate character of the will, it should be in our answer to the work of an artist. For it is his work to bring the deep- est things in us into active response to the deep things of the world outside. Recently I saw a drama which ventured to bring to mind the travesty which often goes by the name of Justice ; and I returned depressed and resentful and disturbed by what I had seen. There had been forced upon my attention a world of man-made necessity, the Law, in whose meshes man himself could perish both as victim and as adminis- trator. I saw the efforts of men to rise humanly above this their own work. I saw a world of blindness and futile sympathies, pompous certainties that are false, and sentimental certainties that are vain; and men going down in despair because no one but the poet saw fiercely enough the realities which should have outweighed the whole pretentious momentum of habit and routine. I knew that the poet spoke some untruth ; and also that he saw and spoke more truth than men are usually privileged to see. And I knew also what is important for us at this moment, that the feelings and desires of men (so many partial applications of will) are made by such perceptions as these. Desire, or more generally, feeling, is not something disparate from thought: feeling is a mass of idea at MIND AND BODY 81 work within us. It is a thorough fallacy to suppose that one can feel or care about anything without knowledge, or that feeling and knowledge are inversely proportional to one another. The theory of feeling has been seriously distorted by confusing feeling with more or less incontinent or futile or unstable types of motor discharge, ** emotional temperaments'' and the like. Feeling is an experience of '* making up one's mind," rising to an occasion, appreciating something to the extent of mobilizing the powers of action. The proper contrast to feeling is not thought but callous- ness; and wherever I am insensitive to an interest or concern which finer members of the race care about, I may know that the root of my deficiency is a lack of intelligence or vision. If we are right in this, feeling, whether in the form of uneasiness, desire, aspiration, or satisfaction, is thought more or less in control of things,^ and will, in 1 In terms of a common phrase, the common element in value is idea *' making good." It is easier to see that making good is a desirable state of affairs, than to see that it is the desirable state of affairs. To make good requires that one has first an idea of something worth making, something that has value independent of the process of realizing it. Then to realize it has the additional value of giving me a sense of validity, — ^my *idea' has come true. But what we want to find out is the quality of this presupposed value: what constitutes the desirableness of the object of my idea! Realism in the theory of values holds that the value is there, in the object,— an ultimate quality, and there's an end of it. Relativism holds that value is the relatiqp of the object to my welfare, or my instinct, or my desire, — desire, instinct, etc., being assumed as given facts about which nothing more can be said, except to analyze their physiological basis, as above attempted. I hold that either of these solutions, taken as final, simply gives up the problem. What we desire, we do not desire helplessly, because we are so constituted that a given object sets certain mechanisms tingling. What we desire has an account to give to consciousness itself, and, — as we have maintained, — F-a 82 THE NATUBAL MAN MIND AND BODY 83 the last analysis, is thought assuming control of reality. It would follow from this that human instincts, all of them, — ^while from the standpoint of physical theory they are such stuff as solar systems are made of, are from a metaphysical standpoint such stuff as dreams, ideas, and reasonings are made of. Pragmatic writers, in the interest of showing that all thought has an active meaning, have sometimes gone to great lengths in exhibiting the logical qualities of instinct and tropism. Charles Peirce does not hesi- tate to say that '*In point of fact a syllogism virtually takes place when we irritate the foot of a decapitated frog.''^ But the force of such interpretations is not an account which in general terms is identical in all cases of desire. We must penetrate the nature of the independent good as it appears to con- sciousness. For example, suppose I care for music and exert myself to be able to make music. There is satisfaction in the achieving; but there must have been a prior satisfaction in the music. It is this prior satis- faction of which I propose that it also is a case of thought making good. The value of music, I would maintain, is that it sets before us a world of which it would be too little to say that it was auspicious to our ears, or with Kant, to our imagination; the value of music is that it summons up through the vehicle of a mass of tone amenable to our thought the entire reality of our experience, in vaguely generalized situations and moods, with reflective or contemplative mastery. And I should say the same of our more organic satisfactions. On this basis we can do justice to both realism and relativism. To realism it seems that desire is defined by the good, the good being defined by itself; to relativism it seems that the good is defined by desire. From our point of view the good is defined not by itself, but in relation to us; yet not to us as beings fated to desire this or that, — rather as beings capable of thinking and knowing this and that, and the whole of things through them. To this extent, good is objective. 2 Instinct has sometimes been called an unconscious reason, not be- cause there are any actual syllogisms in play, but because in reaching what to consciousness is pleasant, it reaches what to nature is fit, as if I r to show that logic is permeated by psychology: it is rather to show that psychology is permeated by logic. That whic h from the stan dpoint of nature seems instru- mental becomes, when we take a truly psychological instead of a biological view of the object of value, the substance of the end itself. Instinct, too, in the last analysis can be understood as a wholly ideal activity, — an activity of ideas. If there is any virtue in giving a name to the ultimate stuff of human nature, it would be more like thought than like physical energy; and, if I may venture a final leap of speculation, more, I believe, like conversation than like solitary thought. What ideas they are that enter into this original stuff we do not here enquire in detail. But one ques- tion we can no longer postpone. We have made no place for a moral quality in original human nature; yet it is by this quality that man, according to an ancient tradition, is thought to be chiefly distinguished. This question is the subject for our next study. it knew and planned the utility of its behavior. It is hardly supposed by those who use this phrase that pleasantness is a dim recognition of the fact of fitness: this would be to reduce the value called pleasant- ness, to a function of a cognition, — a highly speculative procedure to say the least. . We certainly have no need to assume that what con- sciousness means by its end is coincident with what * nature' means; it may be far simpler, and yet none the less real. |. ! U I |»tiff :-l K". 1^ ii PART III CONSCIENCE ^ I I \ I iH \S-i \ CHAPTER XIII THE INTEREST IN JUSTICE WHEN Aristotle said that man is by nature a political animal, he did not leave this notable saying uninterpreted. It is the faculty of speech, he explains, which marks man for a civic existence; and by speech we are to understand not the simple power to make articulate signs as do many animal species, but the power to coin signs for general ideas, and particu- larly for idea8^j^datiiigLJii,4iistice and injustice. We may put Aristotle 's meaning in this way : the communi- ties which men make are political communities, as dis- tinct from simple defensive or co-operative aggrega- tions, because men are fitted by nature to frame ideas of fair and unfair dealing, of right and wrong, and to use them. The life of an idea consists in being recog- nized and applied in the concrete; a state is a com- munity in which the idea of justice has a chance for life. We need not debate here the question of priority,— i.e., whether political society exists for the sake of a morally reasoned life, or whether the moral reason exists for the sake of a political society. Biological interpretations of human life would prefer the second alternative, at least as a preliminary hypothesis. I shall simply point out in passing that a psychological gg CONSCIENCE interpretation would have much to say for Aristotle's way of putting it. For our social impulses, when we examine them, can be seen to depend to a large extent upon a need to put our various thinking powers into operation. We have spoken of sociability as if it were an instinct by itself, and of curiosity as if it were another instinct by itself. But if we should subtract from the natural interest in social life whatever comes through the enquiring sides of argument and conversation, and through persuading others, managing and planning for others, we should deal sociability a severe blow. And if we should sub- tract from our natural interest in public life— the political development of sociability,— whatever comes from the discussion of personalities, laws, principles, quarrels, wars, strands of history, legend, custom, on their ethical side, we should lose much of its normal motive. Political life is, as Aristotle later described it, an arena for distinguished action, a conspicuous jousting-place for contending principles and men hav- ing much energy to discharge. And if you will watch where the interest is hottest you will see that it is there where questions of expediency, of bread and butter and prosperity, have merged into questions of rights and obligations; or where questions of a man's ability and record have deepened into questions of his char- acter and honor. It is there where the responses of indignation, chivalry, applause, resentment, loyalty, condemnation, the responses of our ethical nature, have been called out. We are social and political creatures, at least in part, because we need to inject THE INTEBEST IN JUSTICE 89 our reasons and our moral perceptions into the world's work. We build states, at least in part, because of this will to power. So far we can follow Aristotle.* But here our question arises. If this particular form of mental activity is characteristic of the species, and helps to produce such distinctive products as laws and states (surely as indicative of man as the habits and homes of the beasts), we must find some place for it in original human nature. Shall we say that there is a native moral sense in man, a moral instinct ; or if these expressions are inept, what account shall we give of the untaught value which humanity places upon justice! It is usual for writers who view instinct in terms of situation and response not to include moral behavior among the original tendencies, but to regard it as derivative and composite. It could be thought to develop in the form of altruistic sentiment from the maternal instinct (Sutherland) ; or from pugnacity, as pugnacity becomes a 'disinterested resentment' (Wes- 1 And we may also agree in the place that he gives to speech. That impulse to ''vocalization*' which we included among our units of be- havior would not exist in us as it does unless it were destined to take part in a more comprehensive tendency. Thomdike very justly observes that it first appears as an aimless impulse (The Original Nature of Man, pp. 135-138); but it is one of the common facts of our more elaborate tendencies that their ingredients assemble themselves in sepa- rate and leisurely manner in the course of growth. It is quite compatible with its primitive aimlessness that the talking impulse should be a part of some more general tendency, be it reason, sociability, or 'the political faculty.' Behaviorism would read the relation the other way around. Thus John R. Watson (Behavior, 1914, pp. 321, 319) : "The lack of language habits forever differentiates brute from man"; remarking, "We say nothing of reasoning since we do not admit this as a g^iuine type, of human behavior except as a special form of language habit.'' ,*. 90 CONSCIENCE termarck) turned first outward and then inward. For McDougall moral judgment is a complex attitude in which the * self -regarding sentiment/ interacting with social likes and dislikes has the chief role. Thomdike does not positively exclude it from our native endow- ment, but so far fails to verify its presence. He says (The Original Nature of Man, p. 202): **No innate difference of response to * right' from 'wrong' acts is listed here, in spite of the opinions of a majority of students of ethics, and the authority of Lloyd Morgan, who says emphatically: Among civilized people conscience is innate. Intuitions of right and wrong are a part of that moral nature which we have inherited from our forefathers. Just as we inherit common sense, an instinctive judgment in intellectual matters, so too do we inherit that instinctive judgment in matters of right and wrong which forms an important element in con- science ('85, p. 307). So much, however, is clear: that no account of human nature can pretend to have touched the impor- tant points unless it shows, in terms of its own theory, how it is that a man can become what we call a moral agent, or a political animal. And we have a double concern in this subject, since the human conscience is at once, in some sort of germ, deposited in man's origi- nal nature, and at the same time one of the chief instruments in his remaking. What account, then, can we give of the moral aspect of human nature ? CHAPTER XIV CONSCIENCE AND THE GENERAL WILL THERE is no need to assume an original moral sense in order to account for the expression, **You ought,'' or at least for some closely similar expression. If human nature is equipped with instincts such as we have described, and with the preferences that go with them, and if these interests are mightily affected by the neighbor's behavior, a generalizing animal would hardly fail to perceive the value of an habitual disposition on the neighbor's part to consider the feelings of others ; and a language- using animal would hardly fail to invent a term to express to his neighbor his sense of the importance of that disposition. What most of us strongly prefer you should do would inevitably be conveyed to you by a phrase such as, **You ought to behave thus and so,"^ in which the 'ought' would imply that this line of con- duct is such as would follow from the fixed habit of 'consideration.' It would remind you simply of a 1* Inevitably/ I say: but note that this word 'inevitably' assumes that it would occur to us, instead of simply growling at your encroach- ments, to appeal to your inteUigence and self-control. This is a large assumption, and may be found to be the whole genetic question. Such an appeal is used only when the addressee is supposed free and com- petent, i.e., something of a psychologist, as we said. And conversely, only then can the members of a group be treated as free, when they can be approached with an 'ought.' 'I 92 CONSCIENCB certain permanent condition of peaceable living, that of being a reasonably good practising psychologist in regard to the interests of others. Every inducement would exist for an attempt on the part of your fellows to give your permanent habits a shape auspicious for them. For this work they would hardly be content with the pressure of the ordi- nary atmosphere of approval and disapproval, — ^if a stronger pressure were available. They would gather all possible prestige about this notion of *'You ought." They would presumably call upon the instinct of fear, heightened by such religious or other imagination as could be pressed into service, to aid in the shaping of the other instincts. There would be, as there is, a shade of menace in the attitude with which the * ought' bears down upon you. And there would also be, as there is, a vigorous enlistment of the *self regarding sentiment' through the general refusal to permit the man of refractory habits to think well of himself. Everyone would thus acquire a high interest in accepting the guidance of the social 'ought'; and if not everyone, yet everyone's progeny, would end by taking the interested spectator as well as the disinter- ested spectator into his own bosom, seeing himself habitually through the eye of the social judgment, and assigning a certain authority to that judgment, to- gether with his own. The moral Eubicon is crossed when once the question is admitted as legitimate, **What sort am It" And the persistent presence of social reaction, with a little generalization, would most reasonably be admitted to raise this question in the I i CONSCIENCE AND THE GENERAL WILL 93 mind of each member, and to keep it there, even if it succeeded in lodging no permanent standards for answering it. Given, then, a being with a social instinct, and under the kind of social pressure we have described, some vocabulary analogous to the * ought' vocabulary could be conceived to arise and something like conscience to emerge, without appealing to any original moral deposit in human nature. But would this socially moulded * conscience' be identical with conscience as we know it! The resemblance is, in reality, superficial. It is impossible that the * ought' as we mean it in its current use should be a social product, as will appear if we consider how the meaning of this word is ordi- narily conveyed. No doubt children listen with frequent perplexity to the abundant You-oughts which are offered them. No doubt they have to learn this word as they learn other words for invisible things : making the assump- tion that some meaning it must have, since the grown world uses it; noting the circumstances in which it is employed, the accompanying frowns, rewards, and other appeals and sanctions; then devising various hypotheses about its meaning until some one seems to fit the cases and survive. The history of the master- ing of this word is not outwardly different from the history of the mastering of other difficult words : it is late in finding a firm place in the mind. But when it arrives, there is a clear distinction in meaning between * * I ought to do thus and so ' ' and * * It would be prudent for me because others prefer it." This distinction 1 » 94 CONSCIENCE has been called out by something in the attitude of the person who uses -You ought'' not noted in the fore- going derivation. The -You ought'' is neither a command, nor an item of information concemmg the general will. The reaction to one who is supposed to have violated the -You ought" is not one of simple anger; it has an ingredient of regret. It addresses itself not alone to his future discretion, but also to his past decision: it deplores the process by which he reached his choice. It assumes, rightly or not, that he was capable of a better process, and that he knows it. In brief, the -You ought" addresses itself to an answering ' ' I ought ' ' within ; and unless the - 1 ought responds, it has missed its target. This -I ought, '^'^ since it is presupposed in the meaning of -You ought," cannot be conveyed from without by means of the -You ought." It can only find its way into our sign- language by being taken as understood.* While we ply our moral epithets, we wait anxiously and all but helplessly for evidence that our meaning has struck home : for we know that every new person must find this angle of vision for himself. The social use of the word is thus never purely instructive : it is also, and primarily, awakening. It appeals to a strand of self- judgment which is original with every individual, and in this sense belongs to original human nature. 2 In establishing a system of signs, there are always certain signs which cannot be mutually agreed upon, since in order to agree upon any sign, certain other signs must be used as already understood. These must be thrown out as hopeful ventures, and confirmed first by the nod of understanding, then by successful use. The sign for * ought' is in this position. CHAPTER XV CONSCIENCE AND INSTINCT IF the moral point of view must be achieved by each mind for itself, may the tendency to do this be regarded as an instinct among the other instincts! It is conceivable that the inner scruple, finally aroused by the moral batteries of our early environ- ment, is itself an inherited relic of ancestral expe- rience (giving Spencer the benefit of the doubt about the methods of heredity). According to Lippert, who certainly improves upon Spencer's psychology, the race has acquired a group of -secondary instincts," acting as counterbalances for the more violent of our primitive impulses, those of pugnacity, sex, and acquisition ; and these comparatively new tendencies to respect and refrain are the essential ingredients of conscience. From the Darwinian standpoint, it ap- pears reasonable enough that only men in whom these primary instincts were well mated and checked could form stable societies, and hand their natures down to us. Conscience would then be fairly regarded as the last touch in the process of balancing human instincts. Without doubting that certain specific inhibitions, such as shame or the indisposition to inflict bodily injury, may be accounted for in this way, conscience itself is certainly not this kind of instinct. Our sense I^t it; X, 9g CONSCIENCE of ought does not limit itself to any ancient categories of behavior. It does not behave Uke an echo of racial experience, but lights upon new types of action as keenly as upon old types : it impels the return of 'con- science money' quite as clearly as it provokes remorse for murder. It seeks out its own applications, and is capable of a development like the sense of beauty, rising in some persons to the point of genius. Fur- ther, it is not attached unchangeably to any specific types of behavior at all, whether new or old. Its demands have a more general character, and descend upon particular actions only through a process of sub- suming. The grain of truth in the wild assertion that '*the mores can make anything right" is sufficient to discredit the view that the moral sense consists of a set of acquired reactions to specific situations. If there is anything innate in conscience it must be sought in whatever about it is characteristic of the species, i.e. (in other words), unchangeable and uni- versal. And if all branches of the human family have a conscience, there is at least so much that is univer- sal, despite all variations in the particular scruples it adopts.^ And we should be able to indicate certain ilf one should answer the thoroughgoing relativist that amid all variations in the moral code there was always a moral code, the answer might justly be called empty and formal. But the criticism is irrele- vant: the answer, empty and formal as it is, is sufficient. To refute absurdities, one falls back on f ormaUties. So if it should be said that all moral codes have at least one common content, that of approving mutual benefit above mutual injury,— the statement would properly be called a banality. But the proper function of a banal truth is to meet a banal error, such as this that because things vary there is no constant element in them. CONSCIENCE AND INSTINCT 97 very general traits of moral behavior which are con- stant throughout these variations. Thus, while cus- toms vary enormously, conscience is generally inclined to set a value upon custom. And while totem gods and other gods give extraordinarily different com- mands, the tendency of conscience to respect these commands is always there. We should come near to stating a universal trait of conscience if we took what is common to both these cases, — ^the disposition to find an object of devotion, and to set this object up as authority in details of conduct, finding what one * ought' to do not directly but indirectly through suggestions from this source, — ^be it family head, totem, ruler, god, custom, or law. Thus conscience behaves somewhat like a general instinct, craving an object of loyalty. It finds these objects through its social context, and so is a close ally of the social instinct. Indeed, every associate is prob- ably to some degree a moral authority, though the dis- position to centralize the sources of suggestion is marked. But conscience is not identical with socia- bility. It is not seeking neighbors, but authorities: and while it seems to light on the objects of its devo- tion often with an unreasoned tact, and adhere to them with a blindness that savors of the tropism, it does not authoritatively accept its authorities. It chooses them with the same originality as hunger shows in the selection of foods; it chooses what satisfies itself, not what satisfies the tribe. It is convenient and usual that one can worship where his tribesmen worship, and eat where and what his tribesmen eat; but the H li : I f: ■'1 98 CONSCIENCE hunger in each case is one 's own. What the authority does is to eke out the resources of the spark of moral originality in each individual, so that it can perform the task of regulating a whole life-full of actions. In custom, law, and religious precept, we find not so much other men's consciences as the remainder of our own. The same motive that leads to the adoption of author- ity may lead to its rejection, and the setting up of conscience versus custom, etc. Thus, the authority- seeking trait is symptomatic of conscience, and is well- nigh universal ; but it is not conscience itself. The essential and universal thing about conscience, in fact, seems to set it apart from all other innate tendencies. For conscience is the principal inner agency for the remaking of human nature; hence it must stand as a critic over against everything that is to be remade, and so over against all instincts. It plays the part of censor, for the most part permissive, and hence silent : but de jure it is cognizant of every act of will, and of the total policy of the self. All that belongs to the will, including every form of the will to power, must be bringable under its scrutiny : it might appear, then, that conscience is not itself any part of the will, — certainly not an instinct, — ^but something outside of all these, like self-consciousness pure and simple. On this showing, original human nature would contain, beside all its instincts, something dif- ferent from instinct, a self-consciousness applying certain standards of value to the control of behavior. But if so, what is the nature of these standards, and what is their source! Are they something uniquely CONSCIENCE AND INSTINCT 99 different from the will to power, and possibly opposed to it now and then! Or is the standard simply the whole will to power itself in its most adequate and far- sighted interpretation f My own view is that conscience stands outside the instinctive life of man, not as something separate, but as an awareness of the success or failure of that life in maintaining its status and its growth. It is a safe- guard of the power at any time achieved. It inter- poses a check when an act is proposed which threatens 'integrity.' What conscience recognizes is that cer- tain behavior increases our hold on reality while certain other behavior diminishes that hold, consti- tutes what the old Southern Buddhist called an asava, a leak. The remark of conscience is: **That course, or that act, promises to build, or threatens to tear down, what you metaphysically are."^ Conscience is native to human nature in the sense that it is within the capacity of human nature to be thus self-conscious in perceiving and controlling its own cosmic direction. It is not an instinct. It is the latest and finest instru- ment for the self -integration of instinct. And it is an instrument characteristically human. If we are right in thus placing conscience upon the 2 Conscience can come into existence only when such an increase or decrease of being could itself become an object of perception. One can be stronger or weaker, fresher or wearier, without noticing the fact; if it occurs to one to remark on his own condition, that is a turn of expe- rience analogous to conscience. In structure, it must take a form such that some higher differential of the whole nervous process at the center becomes available in regulating that process. See an article bj the author in The Psychological Bulletin, May 15, 1908, Theory of Value and Conscience in their Biological Context. "I 1*1 ;? ' I '» %% II IQQ CONSCIENCB growing edge of human nature, we can understand the importance which men have assigned to its working. While the occasional ciphering of many another innate tendency passes without comment, the world has made a particular tradition of the failures of conscience, and has bewailed them as the essential failure of man. Intellectual blunders it adjusts itself to with compara- tive resignation. Against moral errors it renews its warfare from day to day. Our description of conscience so far has been rather to locate it than to interpret it. Our conception is stil vague. Perhaps we shall always understand our moral faculty better on its negative than on its positive side. For it is in dealing with 'sin' that the moral nature comes to its most vigorous and definite expression. CHAPTER XVI CURRENT FALLACIES REGARDING SIN IF a man is caught in a lie, the discoverer commonly feels justified in calling him a liar. There is obviously a large logical distance between the discov- ered fact and the appellation. It is something more than an inductive leap from the single lie to a lying habit: it is a reference of the habit to a flaw in the moral substance of the individual. To call a man a liar is to make a metaphysical assertion. If this logical leap can be justified, it is by aid of the premiss that unless the flaw existed, the single lie would be impossible. Character is a disposition which makes a person 'incapable of this and that: it sets up universal negatives. If a person lapses at any time, it is obvious that he was * capable ' of that lapse. Hence he who has ever stolen is a thief ; and one indiscretion is enough to establish a woman's permanent status. These fragments of moral logic are common enough in the form of unexamined attitudes, sentiments, pre- judices. We do not as commonly recognize them for what they are, — forms of the ancient Oriental infer- ence to the effect that he who has sinned is fallen, is a sinner. When we inspect this argument in its mag- nificent sweep, we incline to shrink from it. Many repudiate it in toto; though the repudiation is for the 102 CONSCIENCE most part rather a hygienic and educational maxim, — a pragmatic reaction from the morbid agonies of Cal- vinistic tradition, — than a theoretical criticism of the inference itself. Yet the healthier mind of our time would be dis- posed, I think, to reject also the theory of the argu- ment, **A sin shows a sinner." A sin may show an individual unduly strained or unduly depressed. The distribution of blame is at least as difficult a problem as the distribution of wealth. The head of a woman's prison tells me that her murderesses are, as a class, her best citizens. As men grow wise, the judgment of moral censure tends to be replaced by the judg- ment of misfit : if someone has gone wrong, it is very likely that he is in the wrong place ; give him the right work and the right neighborhood, and going right follows of its own accord. Or, what we call sin may be an incident in the normal process of groping our way into our place. Nobody can do anything righter, we think, than live out his powers, his instincts, con- duct strongly the great adventure, a soul-building process which must lead through an occasional swamp as well as over mountain highways. ** Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.*' When we think of **what you are," as Walt Whitman does, under the figure of a substance, the notion of sin reduces to that of aber- ration in an orbit, a quantitative matter, for the most part merely the extravagance of your virtues. In- stead of thinking that a sin shows a sinner, shall we N CURRENT FALLACIES REGARDING SIN 103 not say that a sin, taken by itself, shows nothing at all? In truth, there are signs of bewilderment in our cur- rent moral judgments on this point. We see clearly that there is something disproportionately dark in the thoughts of Augustine and his followers; we do not see clearly what to put in their place. General amnesty is hardly more successful than general con- demnation of the race. Let me try to get rid of the idea of guilt, substituting for it the idea of illness or misfortune. Let me take into my employ a man with a * record,' believing that society is part-responsible for every crime, — I find that I feel far more confidence for the future if my unfortunate brother condemns himself than if he chimes in too heartily with my own point of view. There is a margin of indulgence in the moral bookkeeping of society, perhaps also of the universe, and all of us profit by it; yet if anyone de- mands this indulgence as a right, he disqualifies him- self. If we think we can omit the moral sermon and substitute the hygienic measure or the change of place, we find the rebuke is still implied in the need for these measures: the * ought' is none the less active for not being verbally invoked. The sense of sin seems to have at least so much pragmatic force, — ^it does not quite work to omit it, as a prevalent modem attitude tries to do. I presume that both the Calvinistic and this modern attitude are wrong, and for similar reasons: one assun^es that wrong cancels merit, the other that merit cancels wrong, like the positive and negative numbers I' J()4 CONSCIENCE of algebra. This, I venture to think, is a fundamental fallacy. It is much as if we should balance off the black of one part of a picture against the white of another part and declare the whole a muddy gray. Nothing is more natural than to feel one is making up for a wrong by good offices of some sort, or than a misstep is destroying a good record; but the result of such a balancing process is that our moral self-con- sciousness tends to become nondescript. We tend to revert to the simpler state of mind in which we have no more moral qualities, but simply are. There is relief in this reversion, but as an abandonment of a theoretical difficulty it is not a place to remain in. The difficulty has a solution. The solution lies, I believe, in a simple distinction between the logic of physical things and the logic of consciousness. It is characteristic of physical nature that algebraic opposites neutralize one another: acid and base combine in a neutral salt. It is equally char- acteristic of consciousness to retain both components without neutralization: it is this which gives con- sciousness its * depth.' Thus, in the physical world, all that is real is present : the past exists only in the form of present traces, records, ruins, hereditary dis- positions, brain paths, momenta,— so many present facts. The geological past is typical, existing in the order and shape of contemporary rocks and scratches. But in consciousness the past retains its character as past: the glacial moraine calls up to it something which no longer exists in nature; and the depth of memory, the journey of thought as it reads its own CURRENT FALLACIES REGARDING SIN 105 strata, — ^the journey from the present to the begin- ning and back again, is one- of the dimensions of a mind. For physical purposes, two equal and opposite forces produce a resultant zero. For consciousness, two ecjual and opposite efforts remain two and oppo- site : in the state of deadlock or equipoise, the elements do not lose their identity. In consciousness there is many an a minus a, but never a zero nor a neutral. This principle holds good for the moral sense. When we fall into the dull optimism which ventures to hope that after all deductions there will still be a moral balance in our favor, we are transferring a physical calculus which our fresher judgments know nothing of. When a fresh wrong has to be dealt with, it is no one's first impulse to check it off against all previous right-going: it stands by itself whole and intact, — the right-going falls into irrelevance, for after all why should one not go right? And when there is a deed that calls for honor or thanks, where is the shabby calculator who brings to mind the offsetting failures or mistakes! On such a day, the critic fearing to be disloyal to his criticism is likely to join half-heartedly in the praise; unless he is set free by perceiving the fallacy of the process of balance. The deed of the hero is not dimmed by his crimes ; nor are his crimes wiped out by his heroism. Consciousness is not a cancelling ground: it is the region in which opposites are pre- served. Character, that mysterious entity which we surmise through single deeds, is much more versatile than the psychology of either Calvin or Augustine or Pelagius allows, 'capable of harboring many an un- .Qg CONSCIENCE and its logic remain as something to But our disinclination to hear mnch of sin has ot.^^ .oots than the fallacy of cancella^n. ^^^TiJi^^ to the fallacy of custom; by w^ch J J^ , usualness of a given type o^^^^^^s, and ^th the psychological sense «f f J^^^J*; '^f wrong- our increasing ^^f^^^'^Zle^eVe^l today is doing appear usual Our ^^^^^^ .^perience and longer the J-^^^Xll ^^ statistical Wsay; f ^^^«^^, %,ead broadcast by io.r- the necessities of ^ P^P^^^^^^^^^^^ ^,^ the other half every man responsible for knowing now i r And in dealing with sin through all our insti- lives. Ana in ueaii"6 :^ oll fhat we *^'''. I^ Z beTnTof Uke circumstances and Uke '*'". .h Mm rtrulh, the villains of the world are nhaTe -rcomp:::heUble to us than its saint. The tatted if we are cynical, we reduce to viUams m The latter 1 ^^^ ^^^ If we accept fhTas gTnuS;we account them somewhat m^ luTan and endow them with a halo of supemature. CURRENT FALLACIES REGARDING SIN 107 The real villain is remarkable chiefly for the absence of that nimbus of mystery which still enwraps the common man. He is one who has yielded to the obvious reason, the universal drag toward overt advantage, the material day of unmodified instinct. Evil is the thing we understand, through an unhindered partici- pation in its motive. But on the other hand, by a principle of human psychology, the very extent of our knowledge of moral evil teMs to rob of tragedy the statement that **all men are sinners. ' ' The sense of sin, which is at home in the solitude of individual conscience, can hardly survive in the universalizing atmosphere. There is no better balm for the conscience of the nouveau mau- vais than the assurance that ** everybody does it." Or if this cannot be said, then the more general, ^'We all make our mistakes,'' or *'To err is human," may be used. It is a general principle of values that what- ever introduces a wider horizon into an experience, such as conceiving it as the common lot, sweetens it and enhances its worth. It is for this reason, in part, that the mores have been able to do so much toward making the uncouth (an ancient) good. But beside this, every man, as we were saying, is something of a moral authority to every other; and whatever one can do in company, or in a mob, is partly removed from the sphere of private judgment. The principle, Judge not others that ye be not yourself judged, is inverted in its application : in order not to judge others, we refrain from judging ourselves. This checkage of moral judgment in dealing with 108 CONSCIENCE coLon errors has many expressions. The touch of nlTure which is said to make the whole world fan f re ::Xtakes the form of confessing a common weak- ness Does it not add somewhat to ordmary socia ngotiability to Uve genially with the --fJ^-J" I Ira speafang of psychological t-^en^es _ Men incUne to meet and enjoy each other 'at the si^ ot ;t .ntnally admitted ^^^f^^^^^J^^^To^t r:o%:r"rr^-tx^^^^^^^ Zirseem to thrive best in an atmosp^^ -f///^: Z mutual agreement that the censor shall be, to some -^ rrnoteans pure moral blindness. There is soundness in the common judgment before which the Pharisee has always come off less well than the nnbUcan The righteousness which has to be achieved C'nsulating one's sympathies is justly suspec^d o abstraction and so far of unrighteousness In the effort after virtue there is a genuine paradox: to be duly strenuous in the pursuit, and to -ta- perfect charity for the unstrenuous are attitudes difficult to ombine. By general consent mankind -ems^ pre fer the kindly soul-if mankind must choose-to he Lore consistent moral aristocrat. In Bohemia, the humane breadth of common weafaiess, its hbera mg and inspiriting fraternity, appear to deprive sm of its sinful QTiality. It is worth pointing out, therefore, that there is a fallacy here also, a fallacy which can be read plainly enough in the facts of our own experience. For CURRENT FALLACIES REGARDING SIN 109 Bohemia finds itself, after all, no universal brother- hood, but a region distinctly localized in our minds : we know by instinct the place for this abstract gaiety of forgetfulness and irresponsibility. It is in the world of art, of letters, of fairly distant history,— in brief, it is in the world of imagination (for remote his- tory takes on imaginative quality), that Falstaff, Aspasia, The Jolly Friars, Lucretia Borgia, Tarn O'Shanter, Don Juan, and all the other heroes and heroines of the morally unstrenuous life have their rightful sphere. They are the glorified fringes of our too sharp-cut and self-righteous ideals. Their human value lies in the respiration they afford to repressed possibilities within us, their conspiracy with our own genius and invention, not in the actual frailty or vice which they embody. If we enjoy them with a bad conscience, it is because we cannot accept them in this role ; we fear that this function of imaginative release will be mistaken (by others?); we fear the subcon- scious inference from the proposition. To err is human (which is true), to the proposition. Error is not error (which is false). This is the essence of the fallacy. But there is a third fallacy which lends support to the others, and is, perhaps, their more philosophical expression. It may be stated thus : Whatever is nat- ural is right ; Whatever is impulsive is natural ; hence. Whatever is impulsive is right. The common misdeeds of humanity, springing as they do from impulse, are to be dealt with not as moral wrongs, but as effects of natural causes : if the effects are unwelcome, they are ^^Q CONSCIENCE to be changed by changing the causes. As ^obody can do anything that cannot with equal reason be ^^f err«« to nature, fhis reasoning would at a stroke abohsh^e category of sin. If this category is to hold xts own we must be able to state what sin means, in terms of human instincts. CHAPTER XVII INSTINCT AND SIN THE early manifestations of instinct are crude enough; but crudity and sin are not identical. Many of the early assertions of natural impulse in children are inconvenient to ourselves; but they are not on this account anti-social. Some innate disposi- tions we may justly call dangerous; but this does not make them wrong. There is nothing in original human nature which taken by itself can be called evil. This principle may be understood to mean that any instinct is justified by virtue of its existence. Stanley Hall and others, on this ground, are wilUng to recog- nize such tendencies as lying, stealing, cruelty, greed, and maUce as right in their place. In the main they hold it advisable that these impulses should come to their natural expression, wearing themselves through on a principle resembling the AristoteUan katharsis, and paving the way for the more congenial impulses that normally follow them. One is reminded of the Sabbasava Sutta, in which it is held that some of the asavas, or native weaknesses of character, should be overcome by due indulgence. In view of these same tendencies, however. Professor E. L. Thorndike feels bound to hold that "original nature is very often and ^^2 CONSCIENCE very mncli imperfect and wrong.-^ And ^fj^^^' same view of human nature as that adopted by these observers, we should be driven to Thorndike's conclu- sion rather than to that of Stanley Hall. But we can- not agree that these particular impulses are^^^ura^, however characteristic they may be of childhood it begs the entire question to ascribe to human nature impulses to cheat, to steal, to bully, to torture, etc : the names chosen carry with them the ethical reproach. An impulse, taken by itself, is a promise of satisf ac tion, and so far, of good. We have a natural impulse to cUmb; and if we climb trees we may find other nat- ural impulses to take what is growing there. But this taking is not in itself * stealing': it becomes steal- ing only in relation to a social environment not involved in the first intention of the act. There is no natural impulse to steal. The same is true of supposed tendencies to deceive. Children have dramatic impulses which may acquire the character of deception by the entrance from with- out of a demand for facts. The moral quality lies not in the impulse but in its relation to this demand. So hunger may acquire the character of selfishness and greed, by the arrival of other claimants. It is not so obvious in the case of primitive fighting and sex im- pulses, in which other human beings are normally con- cerned, that the moral qualification can be denied; and doubtless it is these impulses that have had to bear 1 The Original Nature of Man, p. 280. He thinks the view that original nature is essentially wrong and untrustworthy to be ^'probably as fair'' as the view that original nature is always right INSTINCT AND SIN 113 the brunt of the traditional condemnation of human nature. Yet here, too, we have to take the ground of the primitive impulses themselves. And primitive anger and love, if they make any excursion into the minds of their objects, picture these objects to them- selves as pure enemy or pure lover, and in this light there is nothing in them to condemn.* Crude impulses must be described by non-invidious names. Further, we may notice that the apparent moral defect lies not in ^the impulse itself, but in the manner in which it reaches satisfaction. With an impulse are organized (to compose the instinct) cer- tain methods of procedure, not inseparably nor exclu- sively, but as the directest ways to the goal— the *' nat- ural ways," we may call them. Thus, it is more natural, at least for Anglo-Saxon boys, to fight with fists and according to the principle ** all's fair," than to fight with swords or arguments and according to rule and order. The ways which represent much social modification and technique are called ** better": the natural way is less adapted to the latest marches of society. If we have an instinct to hunt and kill, it certainly knows nothing of hook or gun: something 2 A wise critic puts to me this question: **Are not these forms of the will to power! Will not the self in its early stage, after finding that he can subject the inanimate world to himself, attempt also to assert his will on the living, as, e.g., in deception, stealth, pugnacity, cruelty! Is there not a natural antagonism and does not morality rightly arise through incipient immorality!" My answer would be that self-assertion is indeed a form of the will to power, and when tried upon fellow beings is frequently incipient immorality. But if it becomes, let us say, actual * cruelty,' it is because it goes beyond pure self- assertion and begins to be aware of a conscious and suffering environ- ment. Ui ^^^ CONSCIENCE n.uch more like Tolstoy's picture of the boar hu^^^^ or Fielding's picture of the Malayan sacrifice comes to Ld. In so far as the natural ways are unfitted^o contemporary social needs or sensitivities, or to the^r own conscious enviromnent, they are obDectively evL • But it is only as such unfitness enters the mental^hori- zon of the agent that a moral evil can be aUeged Admitting, then, that no crude impulse is sinful taken by itself, it does not in the least follow that crude impulses as we find them in human nature are there fore good. It does not so much as follow (as is often stated) that they are devoid of moral quality. For as we find them in human nature, no impulse is by itself. The moral quality of any impulse is due some- how to its mental environment not to its own intrinsic quality; but every impulse (after the hypothetical first) has an environment. It is particularly true of the instincts of pugnacity and sex-love, about whose natural rightness much is said and with weighty con- clusions, that the environment into which their full strength emerges is elaborate and compact, it is, therefore, thoroughly fallacious to argue that because these impulses taken by themselves are D^istified by their existence, these same impulses taken to- SI do not say that the perception of such unfitness is sufficient to consUtute a moJl quality; I say only that it i« --7^^^^^^ act a moral character, it is further necessary that *^« P^"^^/*^^"'^ th impulse should recognize an omi,aiion to -^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ han what is unfit, should perceive himself a. guahfiedhjh,B own actr- than wnax , reproach,-and should know, too, that ;:T M? yrfrtllowin'g^is Wmse in view of his obliga- Uon These elements may all be present, of course, without any power of analysis on the part of the moral subject. INSTINCT AND SIN 115 gether with the rest of a human mind are equally jus- tified in their original crudity. Nothing can be con- demned because it is crude ; but a moral question may arise at once if an impulse has an opportunity to be something else than crude. Sin lies, we judge, in the relation of an impulse to its mental environment. What in particular is this relation? In our analysis of human nature, we recognized two strata, that of the central instincts, and that of the more specific instincts and units of behavior. These central instincts, we thought, no matter how various their names, were in reality forms of a single tendency, which we roughly described as the will to power. As for the other, more specific instincts, it appeared to us that while each one had its own particular goal and its way thereto, none could be wholly independent of this central current of the will. Because every impulse of a given mind belongs to that mind, it must at least appear consistent with its central purpose ; more than this, it must more or less fully satisfy that central purpose within its special field. It is here that the moral issue arises. For any given impulse may reject the responsibility to carry any further meaning than that of its own direct goal. I may say. Hunger is hunger, it means bread, and nothing more fanciful ; or Fear is fear and its whole significance is that I make good my immediate escape, without responsibility to any other instincts, social or what not; or Desire is desire, and if any vague sense of my total destiny attempts to impose a further interpretation, so much the worse for the vague sense and its pretended claims. r, ' CONSCIENCE flirt between one P=«° ""''"t"' riven mind ; but between one impAe •■"■l.»«'^;";^ ^A tbe eenlral the conflict between a given '"P;''' "^ ^ „,„i„g ^11, or between the separate "^''"''^^ ^„3, 0, an inipnlee -a *« -- "^r^ *;. Sin, I of it, human ^oBpn^ ' J"^' ^„,, ^„^,e i. ^1%; .t :£«':"- «*««' - •" 'X ,e.p.n.ibi,it, o. the ^^'^X^^'^ZX -t 1" "tit * 'cTnU^f wi -a Z,rJ:U it be "*>«'*»»';.'"*'"„, giving Bubelanoe to, that ha. .i.0 '» -7/;;te';; the ilt .«inire, vigor central will, lor as we ^ , , x\ instinc- ^C aeflnitenee. of pohcy oriy 'j'J f «"„i„„„. to '"" ''K^^'Td" — en r'o I central trend. The gi,e .ohMy .^ CO— 2e and general nnity, ata- mind IB at flrst a very .™eroas impulses ehild what ita plans are tor lb« ^ay, t . future-, suflicient unto the h^nr^fo «« ** .^ TerlK ^^-"S^^is aiway. a ..ain |ir.^o::e"t:ern^dIn"-- eroTns i! ilv more or less what in the concrete he most SpTy wlr Bnt inst because of this rnore orless^ td because in administering our impulses we can con- INSTINCT AND SIN 117 trol the more or lesSfhximan existence takes on moral character. Sin, we may say, is the deliberate failure to interpret an impulse so that it will confirm or increase the integration of selfhood. Consider, for example, an impulse of anger. There is another will which opposes my own; and the ** nat- ural way'' of my impulse is to break down this oppo- sition by main force, destroying the opposing will if necessary. The will to power might seem to be in full possession ; and to some extent it is in possession— but not, for the human intellect, in full possession. For power is lost, generally speaking, when an opposing mind is treated according to the '* natural way" as a physical obstacle, or *Hhing.'' If that opposing mind survives as a mind, it exists (as a physical obstacle does not) as a force against the hostile self, and so far as a subtraction from its power. If it does not survive as a mind, there is so much less for the will to power to rule over: this will, in human form, has robbed itself of its normal domain. If, then, I allow my impulse to assume its primitive and separate meaning of destruction, I give it an interpretation inconsistent, in general, with as much of my will to power as I am capable of grasping. I sin. And I am aware of the fact, however vaguely :— this is my conscience. CHAPTER XVin SIN AS BLINDNESS AND UNTRUTH T N a sinful act, we were saying, one is aware of his I oL deficien;y of interpretation. If he were n^ thus aware, his act, though objectively ---g;-^^ not be sinful. Yet this awareness is kept obs«ureJ.y the strategy of the sinful consciousness itself: for pur- poses o^T-tective coloration, it endeavors to sup- r^rpqs the unwelcome knowledge. 'Sa^y full-fledged passion, as of wrath, we can read- ily detect this trait of wilful blindness. It is char- altenst of passion to exclude a part of the men a horizon. There is immense satisfaction in radical thought and radical action: by eliminating scruples or further considerations, our mental state gains at once St simplicity and unity in which we have a ' neces- faryTZest,'' for they ensure that added intensity in the process of living which is the object of the life In itself. The impeding call for the additiona meaning is at a disadvantage, because it appears as Z^l to more abundant life; yet as it is the achieved will to power that is attempting to assert itself, it cannot be banished: it can only be thrown into the margin.^ Sin, in fact, deals in margins. It involves, ji *•«« />f thi« account of moral consciousness over SIN AS BLINDNESS AND UNTRUTH 119 as has often been pointed out, an obscuration of knowl- edge ; but what it rejects is only the difference between one thought system and another slightly more com- plete. Passion is always highly intellectual and alert. The most primitive exhibition of pugnacity is full of such concepts as — **0n this issue (simple or com- plex) — ^you (with your view of it) — shall submit — shall regret— your obstinacy — shall go down — before this, my attack — longer parley intolerable, stultifying — all evasion shall be swept away. " It is simply that the marriage between the given course of behavior and its appropriate thought-system is so close that a read- justment in favor of a more complete, and probably less definite, thought-system is rendered difficult. We see that sin cannot be defined, except very rela- tively, as a preference of pleasure to reason : there are pleasure and reason on each side. There is on each side a satisfaction of the will to live — we have seen that passion presents itself as a more abundant life than its opposite; and on each side a satisfaction of the will to power, which all human actions must in some degree express. There is, in fact, no descriptive difference between the act which is sinful and the act which is not sinful : sin has all the psychological ingre- dients of virtue, and virtue all the ingredients of sin — even to the mental concentration, the limiting of mar- ginal thought. It is only the wholly individual situa- tion, the reference of a given impulse to an available naturally stronger motive loses much of its point. There is no need to appeal to the growing strength of a self -regarding sentiment. For the central will has as much of the strength of all the instincts as at any time the self has succeeded in lending it by its efforts of interpretation. ^^ CONSCIENCE Z,. of interpretative t.ougM, that furnishes the ^t'Ts'sertion of t- -^i.^tt irntatt^^ ...any excitesjj. ^- ^ ^lats^d statutes de organization with us CO ^gorderly conduct scribing murder, theft, ^^l^^*;'^ .^ possible,-* by definite and chiefly external "^^^^^^ J ^^.^ the question which we have later to ««-;f %j^^^, ,,« principle of the answer -«- ^^^^^^^l' ^ ,« far certain kinds of «^3ective behavior wh below the level of ^^^^l^l^Xjt:^^'^^ ceJ^ainty that we can assume with all du ^ that the objective wrong ^«^P^f . ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ allow- And for social P-P--j;7l:r"v den- might ing under liberal '^e^^-J^^'^^'^^ i«, in fact, far still convince -« ^f ^^^/^f^^ anti-social behavior safer to assume that an e^^^^^^ J ^^^^.^ny correct descriptive characters alone. ^^_ Sirpmel^Ttle ''meaning" which an act may '"S^erv day a great volume of money changes hands Jhout a word, the meaning of the transaction being r^^bll hed by ome understanding in the background^ ?S^lrstanding may be an agreement for work and SIN AS BLINDNESS AND XTNTETTTH 121 wages; then if, at the week's end, A pays money to B, the acts of A in giving and of B in receiving bear a definite meaning which could be expressed in the form of an assertion. B's act of receiving means, "I have done the work agreed upon, and am entitled to this return" ; A's act means, "I believe that you have done your work, and this is your earning." H B has not done his work, his act still conveys the same meaning; but this time, it is a false meaning. His act is equiva- lent to an untruth. The wrong does not Ue primarily in the untruth ; but the untruth points out the wrong. Suppose now that we have arrived at an understand- ing about the conditions which justify a decision in general, namely that I shall only then decide and act when I have fairly interpreted my impulses. In this case, any decision or act of mine would have this fur- ther meaning : that I have done my interpreting, and am justified in releasing the act, in saying "Now" to my impulse. And as my actions aim at some satisfac- tion, whether in the acting or in the end reached, it follows that my pleasures themselves acquire a mean- ing, because of the general understanding. PJeasure, to the moraLself, ceasesjo bejnerfi pieasure : ilmeans a justifiejjiastery; it_meaji3 that so far as J know my y owQ will, it is now being realized; itjnesms tiiat the material of' experience is becoming^subject to my ideas'and purposes. If I have accepted this under- standing, and take a pleasure without complying with the conditions, without doing my thinking and inter- preting, then that taking of pleasure means a false- hood. I sit down to meat, and my eating does no more SIN AS BLINDNESS AND UNTBTJTH 123 It * ^22 CONSCIENCE than satisfy .y appetite, when by the grace of God^I profess that it concerns my widest plans and p P also • in this case my eating becomes a he m action A Cays assuming the understanding, we ca^ agree - f aVwith Wollaston-a keen but little-noticed thinker- IZr^l has the character of -truth'^^-^- ^^^^ the unspoken assertions or meamngs of our acts. Wollaln h^ in mind the meanings which acts carry ~e of social understandings and convenijon. Thus if I beat my wife, or betray my friend, I treat S L if t%7;;^to^:;r tS^n^rT^^ t: 7^^. IhTrTack'Ln'^tlTociTnTa^^^^ in'tr^atYng wives or riends: it is found in the general recognition by human consciousness that human acts, at any rate^ must express a well-considered will to power From Teh a will, certain ways of treating wives and friends will follow by logical necessity. Sin with this understanding, appears as a reckless^ Now-saying, to the pleasure of action or enjoyment; ,The thesis that pleasure has a meaning is likely *» »-* /^"^J : *,„m those whose scientific conscience requires them to assert reception from '''"^J^"^" ^ primrose-and nothing more. Let me " ''LTrdo not a'enrrt P'~ is pleasure. What I deny is that say that I do »°^^«"^ ^ ^^ u^^t^g but pleasure." 'mat else the"" " - a matter of plain psychology! Psychologi- r Itu're wi^l be admitted an absorbing experience: it tends to caUy, f«!f";* ''jj*^^ within its own focus. But what, pray, does concentrate the attentum wU^ .^ ^^^^ ^^ . .^ ^^^^^ .^ ^^^^ Jo^rraUVle^f^h^t expe'rienc. it. But what is the self when [ :Cy t^si^^eant truth about pleasure. H^ woiUd^e J>eU- j" state the identity conversely-the pleasure is the self For the pleasure Is not a toed entity to whose measure the self shrinks; it is the self and hence as a false assertion that in that pleasure I am a complete man. I accept my wages ; I have not paid the price in labor, or in thought. which is a relatively fixed entity to whose measure the pleasure tends to expand. ChUd and man may find pleasure in the same object; but the pleasures are as the chUd is to the man. What does the self bring to the pleasure? Its meaning. The simplest meaning of pleasure is that it is what life is for. It satisfies the self; it becomes a guide. So much meaning biology is inclined to assert. But has it any further meaning! Experience develops further meanings. Pleasure is at first something discovered; it is not demanded, it is hit upon. It is an enlightenmg discovery; it seems to unlock the secret of life, and hence becomes, as we said, a guide. But what is at first a privilege becomes looked upon, just because it seems to belong to life, as a right. Pleasure begins to mean something due, and claimed, and perhaps rightfully fought for. The will to power takes the form that Hobbes so perfectly describes; it tries to "ensure forever the way of my future desire." Any particu- lar pleasure takes on the meaning of an element in a total Uferequire- ment. For human beings, experience passes through this stage, but does not stop there as Hobbes thought. lU? found that_plea8ure, a8.a_prwate right fails ta-satisfy- With prey in mouth the cat at once becomes a s*^it^ beast; and with every pleasurable absorption men also tend to loosen their ties with other men. Since pleasure satisfies my will, it tends to make me complete in myself; every joy has a centrifugal com- ponent, it tends to be a "joy apart from thee." Yet just this compo- nent makes the meaning of pleasure so far attained incomplete. To a human being pleasure seeks to take on the meaning, not of a private victory, but of a victory in which my social world shares, either actuaUy or by consent. Eating ceases to mean scurrying into the thicket with the snatched morsel; it begins to mean an opportunity for celebrating a common life. There is perhaps no limit to the meaning that a simple pleasure may bear; but even to plain psychology it cannot be caUed "mere pleasure." Thus, if one reflects upon the phylogenesis of our capacities for pleasure, he may light upon the view that every enjoyment in the human being represents a long history of self-denials on the part of our sub- human ancestors. Pleasure would acquire ajEurther meMiingJor juch a view; it would jjeanan^eritancepf ptahistarjc labor and sacrifice. Md~b^u8rof this i£anJBg,JlUcit. pleasure would mean, as _f or Mr. G. K. Chesterton, the expMtation,jif a. deposit, the yjqlation_of a trust, 1. -.24 CONSCIENCE We cannot forthwith define sin, however, as a pre- mature Now-saying to action or enjoyment; it is sxm^ ply an nnjustified Now-saying, and it may a so, though Lore rarely, be too late. In a difficult decision delay may itself become a momentary satisfaction: under the pretense of further thought, a lesser vohmie c.f thinHng may be accepted-too Uttle to win the right of decision. Thus sin may more completely assume the appearance of virtue, and obliterate the descriptive differences. Yet in this guise also, it corresponds to our analysis: it is the refusal to interpret; it is like- wise the false assertion, whether by action or by delay, that my action expresses my attainable interpretation. moy^tXJo an,ir5Elied compact wUh alUhe_elementaLyirtueJhat haa ffone into our human make. j«„4.:„^ ;« *-5r if the horilon to «hich our will has to work out its deBtmy « enlarged by thought, until it tries to conceive the 'f^" '••»!:' '';'^ « thif whole-viel perceives a quality in the world -^"^ -^J j^« called divine; then pleasure will appear as a symbol of «"«/'J«« onalUr possiily as a participation therein. If pleasure u. used m such wii^'toTlur or banish the holiness, or dignity, or beauty, or anflmtude Tf^e conscious hori«.n, it is false to tkat meaning. From thu. s.de, m 18 secularieation. CHAPTER XIX WHY MEN SIN IT is possible to analyze sin, and in a measure to ^ describe it. It is not possible to explain it. For to explain it would be to show it as the necessary or invariable consequence of certain conditions; and whatever is necessary or automatic is not sin. Sin implies that kind of freedom in which the fate and character of each conscious act comes for a moment under the control of ^self; and neither nature nor environment nor God decides what meaning the act shall bear. It is true that right-doing lies in the direction of effort; and that wrong-doing, as the easier course, has the advantage of the natural slope. Sin is likely to pose as the *4aw of the members'' and to claim the indulgence due to the natively stronger motive. The burden of explanation would thus be thrown upon doing right: we should rather ask how it is possible not to sin. But we have deprived ourselves of this recourse, since the will, as the central thread of our meaning, is on the side of the fully interpreted, or right, action.^ Doing right, however, requires 1 In a self there is no ' ' stronger motive ' ' except that which the self maices stronger. After we have acted it requires no great wisdom to tell which consideration was the prevailing one. But the wisdom which can teU this beforehand is still to be found. „„ CONSCIENCE . „ r.A if we were thoroughly necessitated ''trying"; ^".\f ^^^, ^''^he variable vigor of onr beings, we might explain tne v ^^^ trying by the varying ^^^^^^ ^Xier ^nd thirst , disposal, and the fi-tn^-- ^^ ^ l-endowed. Bnt after -^^^7^ "thTs t^^tf -planation, no expe- rhreStr^oS--"-^^^^^^^ of what trying we are able to CONSCIENCB , There « on. dilemma that attend. •"'^ J"^, J; izi >t i. "^rj^ir::^^^^ rirrrjoS'd:;r:«deu....on can be complete. nnvthinff but a rough For deliberatioji never reapbes an^bing^ ^^^ —1 .r- "rrhrmiffh experience every man nuu» ^^'ffJ^irSoeLniy which he regards as himself a degree oi j^g calls hunself sufficient for practical P^^«^''^ ^^^ ^^^ for the ♦certain' when this standard is J^^^' ^ ^^ this .est part his delibei-atw^P--^^^^^^^ ^,, level and passes into action witn ^^^^ he has fonnd that if he acts at a^he mu^^ ^^^ ^^^^ his action -^\f\^^i;^Z the time permitted. He possible -^^-^^^^121 o? what is universally true: is but occasionally aware oi w that no case 7 -;r:f r ^^,X\,sned in meaning And smce ^1 oit ^^ ^^^ ^^^ partial obscurity *^Ahe X^ fo' ^eflUion toward through the ^ark;/j\;;";^X^shes. Thus there the lurking ^^.^^^^.^ *^:d^^^^^ of an action's ;Sr:eSranryet the imperfect reflection ^r Notr c^i" Tz:^ ^- - ^ r "Ts J. jNo luttii V. ^iKonnpa- vet all alliauce is .ociety and it, -'"'"'K'^T'^Z U hard to .ay WHY MBK SIN 129 peril; and a cynic would have it, we suspect both It I evident, however, that growth Ues in the direcUon of belonging. It is at the cost of losmg all effect tha one refrains from attachment to whatever is historical and organized in the world. Institutions exist to lend to each individual member their over-individual dimen- sions and scope. It is not alone a practical but a moral peril if I reject their aid. It is equally evident that there are no perfect institutions. Whatever is historical xuhents the strength and the weakness of all the past from which it comes; and whatever is organized -^-f^^^^^^^ of concrete men whose virtues are ^^^.^^K^^^ vices. Is it possible to be an historical entity without mrtaking of the evil with which one must make IllI^T It is not politics alone that involves thi« threat of contamination and compromise : nothing historical is free from it, the church, the professional group, social traditions, societies everywhere -even friendship, if Emerson's dictum is right, 'Fnends descend to meet." It. is possible to be in the world and not of it ; but is it possible to work with tt and not 'l^'do not say that it is impossible: I say that there is a moral difl&culty in either alternative. I must ally myself; but I must vigilantly interpret that aUiance as Burke interpreted the social contract, as an aUiance with all the honest strivings of my comrades, to the reiection of the ease and profit of all guilty conformity. In all positive living, the morally necessary ends are perpetually pleading the justification of the means, WHY MEN SIN 131 ^'f ■toQ CONSCIENCE and who can avoid being carried from time to time across the evanescent linel Sin has no need to enter life as a separate deed:-it may be the simple pro- lonmng of a good deed. 3 The moral life must become social, we have said : growth lies that way. Among the necessary incidents of this socially moral existence is the nse of moral authorities, which we have already referred to as a natural habit of conscience. Perfect rectitude implies an art of preserving solitude of decision amid the mass of suggestion borne in upon us from o/^ J^^^^"* • the distinction between the good and the evil of the alliances we were speaking of requires and assumes this power. But we cannot escape the need of moral authority any more than we can escape the time- element in decision. And the dilemmajies not so much in the Ukelihood that we will choose radically wrong a;ith'oritie8 (for humanity has shown a smgular unanimity in its major selections, its heroes and saints) as,that wemU takej)ur„authorities yliqle. . It is doubtful whether any leader is. not liable ^t Ve p7int:to"become.a mkleader, At such a point clea7 judgment for the follower becomes pecuharly difficult, since it involves a plunge ouf of congenial company into solitude. Moral disillusionment is the severest of experiences. The habit of deference takes on the psychological quality of a secondary virtue: when the rift appears in the halo, it becomes necessary to choose either the distress of opposing an honored guidance, or that tacit complicity which is the parent of cynicism, and whose creed is, "All men, even the best, are at heart false." Such an experience is severe only because there was an initial error in the degree of reliance placed upon the authority in question. The will had been seduced into ease by the presence of an object of too great trust : sin was already there. For this reason, it is natural to plead for the alternative of rejecting authority altogether in moral matters, an alternative in which I do not hesitate to say there is an equal danger of moral faltering, ineptitude, and obliquity, even to the limited extent to which the discarding of moral guidance is possible. 4. If moral disagreement is one of the incidents of moral growth; and if it is the business of men to incorporate their convictions in action,— as it is ; there is no "escape from the occasional dilemma between fighting for your conviction and letting your convic- tion fail by avoiding hostilities. What I conceive as right I am bound to work for, and if need be fight for. The distinction between working and fighting is gradual: in either case I am opposing myself to what opposes my purpose. The difference lies in the amount of faith I have in my opponent, and in the time and effort I can subtract from my work to accomplish his conversion. There comes a time at which I must decide that he that is not for me is against me : to defer this decision is as evil as to hasten it. Yet wherever opposition enters, there is so great a Ukelihood of the entrance of moral WHY MEN SIN 133 I M '} ^22 CONSCIENCE wrong, .bat we .« ofto com-seUed rather to forgo the ^"wt'ot %hU for h„.ao Hghf. i. h^not -Uo ^ u.- f^v v,ia own! And when one figMs for ms S. i^ k° -. ..so aghting for hi. comfort.. rrztStttMrhr.::.o;e.p™at* S w"en It ve. L «.«ed, the warrior Ch harfflj ^ J ^ofident .boat the color of hi. o™ puj«. The )u.te.t warfare, ia it. hegimimg., « open to Tdtrther, however perfeoU. ^e «f »^ Jli^ . i. at fir.t in accord mth the neccitie" of honor, it. Imentam tend, to carry it heyond the pomt of the rowTtane The activity of fighting has .t. own ,S tt^TLight, and while the ««»»' -^«7, i. probably intended by natnre to make easier the "r.^ «:' from comparative sloth to «»» -^^ -^f, •+oi -qptnand it is at least as difficult for this l^ asTlers to hold itself witHn the Wds of this function, as means to an ulterior end. And loX, it iB more necessary that it should accept *'peZtft iB superfluous to point out the moral peril of warfare; yet it may serve a Purpose in measuring the moral peril of the alternative The InglrTof hostility are ohvious; hut those of peace are incomparably deceitful. It was Thomas Hobbes who adopted the maxim "Seek peace and pursue it" as the first law not of love but of enlightened selfishness. As the wrongs which I have not combatted and might have combatted are indefinitely more numerous than the selfish interests for which I have fought, it appears to me that incomparably the greater bulk of moral error is that which enters the will under the garb of peace. Fighting is hard and distracting work: peace, I say has easier victories. But what if this more ideal warfare does not take place? Here is my community, for example, in which I do not have to look far for examples of injustice, waste, maladministration which are bound to affect the health, happiness, or safety of myself, my children, and many others ; yet I do not take issue with them. There are philosophers in Europe who have been preaching for some time the gospel of the right of might, or of the strong culture which judges itself the best I l^-« ^«^ J^^^^J^ too, and have not Ufted a voice agamst it. Had those who knew of it risen in time, and had they faced the ills of which this doctrine was but a symptom, the world might well have been spared its last and greatest war. The test of an evil peace is that its fruit is discord and not unity; and conversely, any peace that eventuates in war is thereby shown to have been an evil peace. The moral seductiveness of peace hes m its method of dealing with wrong: it is apt to deal with it as an unclean person deals with dirt,-hy preferring not to recognize its existence, hence leaving it unmet and ¥' ^ fi' ■ 134 CONSCIENCB uncured. The clean soul is militantly eager to find the dirt : the true lover of peace with a similar obsession seeks for the spot that is unharmonized, and makes an issue of that spot until it is wiped out. He smells afar off the issues that threaten war, ferrets them out in advance, and tries to settle them.^ But the greater part of our vociferous cult of peace has become foul, stagnant, attempting to conceal in dark closets the underlying differences of interest and the unresolved dislikes of the world. Its policy is the policy of Hush. It is the cover of our deepest and largest guilt. 5. To generalize from situations such as the above, the only right ways of behavior are ways which with a slight change of inner adjustment become wrong ways. Conversely, to venture a wrong way is a condition of finding the right way. This much the search after righteousness has in common with the acquisition of skill. We begin, indeed, with something better than random movements; but we do not begin with a self -consciousness quick to discern the point at which the imperfect maxim usurps the nest of the perfect one. There is nothing to be achieved in the moral life except at a risk which is a moral risk. He who will not risk falling into egotism or undue self- assertion can hardly win an honorable effectiveness ; for the crude plunge of action, if it has the merit of vigor and decision, will rarely escape at first the touch 2 One of the best ante-bellum expressions of this genuine concern for peace that has come to mj attention is in a small work of the great German jurist, Josef Kohler, in those sections of Modeme Bechts- probleme which deal with international affairs. WHY MEN SIN 135 of insensitiveness. And he who will not risk a fall into cowardice or ease will hardly find the point of an honorably pacific will. I do not say that we must fall : I say that we must risk the fall. We must find our moral equipoise through trial and the risk of error. But behind the vagaries of such moral self-educa- tion, there lies the good-will to win this equipoise, whici is the redeeming feature behind many an actual sin. It is the total will, not the partial will, which gives the ultimate character to an act ; and so a career of moral adventure, if it is a genuine search for truth and not a covert lust for the joys of the taster, may be by conscience itself required of the soul. Or let me rather say, it is by conscience required of every soul; though it also is attended by the subtlest moral peril. For morality that is not original, is no morality. It is with this proviso of a genuine and ultimate will to win moral truth that we look if not with leniency yet with hope upon those statistically certain lapses which make of every individual a participant in the sins of his race. For given this good-will, the forces making for righteousness are twofold: the intrinsic attraction of the good, and the repulsion of the evil. Sin, when it occurs, enhances the force of evil, by channelling deeper the path already easier by nature ; but it also enhances the force of good, by awakening the reaction we call remorse. It is a part of our moral destiny, as a race, that we must work out our moral life by the aid of both forces, the quest of blessedness and the sorrowful ruing of our own guilt. In so far as sin is capable of explanation in terms of a balance I' 136 CONSCIENCE of forces, the explanation is this : that since we must win moral life through moral adventure, we need to add the push of rue to the pull of the ultimate good, in order to find our adequate and complete moral motive. CHAPTER XX SIN AS STATUS li I* [f! t * 11HEEE was an ancient theological conception which attained a large social importance, and even a political importance in the days when a wide- spread fear of future punishment was a factor in allegiance to institutions. This conception can be couched in terms of a rude syllogism, somewhat as follows : The wages of sin is death ; All men are bom in sin ; ergo, All men are, by birth, mortal. I doubt whether this argument has been refuted: in many minds it has suffered a severer fate, — that of being outgrown by the gradual wearing out of the belief in its premises. Upon the view of sin which we have so far developed there can be no such thing as *' original sin": every man is his own Adam. As for death, whether physical death or the cessation of personal existence, we have ceased to see any causal connection between this and moral delinquency. Sin of course has its consequences, both social and psychological ; the attention of ethical theory has been largely occupied with these, as is natural in a prag- matic era of thought. But the fact that these ascer- tainable consequences exist hardly disposes of the ■I'', f -.Qg CONSCIENCE question whether there are also -^^'-^^^'^''^^ quences. The idea of a moral causality -^"^ ™°« deeper than the surface of phenomenal con-- -ns i^^ both ancient and modern, a property of all great religions and of various philosophies. As a meta- phyTical notion it lies just beyond the range of our present enquiry. But it is human nature, and particu- iarly moral human nature, to make conscious con- nJions with ultimate facts; for thas reason, we cannot fairly finish our own task without stepping over this border. We may remind ourselves at this point that we have been speaking of sin in but one of its two tradUiona meanings. Sin has commonly referred to individual deeds,-and so we have understood it; but it has also referred to a status. As a status, or condition it has implied impurity, pollution, liability to banishment, eta, metaphysical outlawry. The word sinner refers to this status rather than to the particular deeds Eegarding it in this way we should have to say that so far from rejecting the notion that there is a sinful status, we should have to affirm one, so far, at least, as psychology can carry us. My moral status, as a fact of psychology, would be the condition of my pref erencesx-my character. And my preferences I cannot modify in any so immediate way as I can modify a deed. Suppose that, whether by birth or by acquired habit, I simply do not as a fact prefer righteousness,-at the price of moral effort. I might not call this condition depravity. I should certainly not call it holiness. SIN AS STATUS 139 And this, on the whole, seems to be the condition I am in. The necessary interest I have in blessedness is relatively faint; it appears to me rather as some- thing known about, or heard about, than of poignant, present, and compelling value. And while some shimmer of the beatific vision may lend a distant glow to the pursuit of duty, the actual work of righteousness has to deal rather with the raw materials of which happiness is made than with happiness itself. It is like a price paid in advance, sometimes far in advance : there is a strain upon faith, upon imagination. One ** walks out upon his idea", — ^not upon his immediate appreciation. Such is the balance of my nature ; it is this balance which makes it historically necessary that ruing should add itself to the lifting force of the good. And for aught I can see, this balance came with me into the world, as a part of my inherited being. From the first I willed the good with an effort; and so, perhaps, as Augustine argues, what I willed was never quite good. I do not say I should be condemned or punished for this; I am now speaking of statuses, i.e., of simple metaphysical facts. We need not, however, attribute this judgment to Augustine alone. If Aristotle is right, we are all of us more or less in the position of patients who cling to their illnesses, of those, familiar to psychiatry, who resist being robbed of their delusions, even of their persecutions. It takes the good wholly to prefer the good. The holy will, no doubt, is something to be acquired ; it is not innate. If this is what is meant by being born in sin, I do not know how I should deny it. !!■ 2^^ CONSCIENCE > I doubt whether this apparently somber judgment of ^ original human nature is primarily a vroA.etoi theological speculation, ^tj--^* ^^«*-^^^^^„ port in common experience. For quite apart from all Lories'; sIlf-coTdemnation, when it comes, has an extraordinary way of applying retroactively: b ame frequently reaches back over a past which seemed innocent of the moral question involved. A new insight tends to condemn all prior ignorance, not alone regretting, but accusing, the long persistence in the lower level of life. The lover enters his new ^1sta of consciousness with an embarrassment which is partly lral,-the symptom of a critical self-judgment which surveys the whole domain of past choices. He accuses that past self at least of a moral inertness ; it was dull, as -atheists are dull who cannot guess God's presence out of sight." , The argument of this retroactive judgment may be this. That my life has been, if not an active rejection of the good, yet a long acquiescence in something less than good. I have failed to shake myself awake to the conditions of my own welfare. I have accepted without protest enjoyments I have not earned : I have not enquired into the right of my own ease. Back of all my passivity was an awareness that life has, after all, its conditions; and I failed to force myself up to the exertion or hardship of learning them. There was a possible subconscious integrity in me which I was disloyal to, all the while there was no one to hold me to it I have not known in detail what I ought to do, and I cannot be judged for what I have not known, SIN AS STATUS 141 but I judge myself for living in an ignorance which my will knew could be overcome. I was not without that clue, nor that desire.^ Apart from particular deeds of sin, then, our common moral consciousness recognizes something like a sinful status. As for those deeds themselves, it is a matter of daily experience that they bring a new status with them. Debasement is not an act; it is a condition of choice resulting from a series of acts. Each abandonment of the effort for complete interpre- tation makes the next abandonment easier ; and what conscience is concerned about is not alone the issue of this act but also, and primarily, the psychological status which it creates. But what is the significance of this status, whether original or acquired! Allowing that we are justified in viewing it with regret, if not wholly with indignation, is there any excuse for the terror and guilt of soul, the ** anxiety neurosis" of the older theology? 1 In greater detail : There have been occasions in which I could not be reconciled with my brother, through lack of available sympathy at that moment. But I know that that sympathy would have been avail- able, had I apart from times of stress been perceptive of facts which it was my business to know, if I had been duly out-living, objective, alive. Or, I cannot think of the right thing to say at a given moment; and who can blame me for not thinking of the right thing! Yet I may well blame mvself. For this, too, while a result of present perception, is of a perception built on past alertness. Now I must prepare what I would say, if I am to appear well. But if I were what I would present myself as being, consistently and always, I need '^take no thought for what I shall speak''; myself would speak. What I am not accuses me. Even what I am not in intellect traces back to lapses from what I have been admonished to become. Admonished by what! By nothing except by the perception that ^^ife lies this way, rather than that, and for ■ the most part, in living in the object." Admonished, if you like, by the original synderesis, adequate to its own work. li 1. 142 '' CONSCIENCE We shall see more clearly if we eliminate the psychological element of blame, and ask again simply for fact. What does this status entail? I do not know. But I am not prepared to say that it entails nothing. If I were told that it entails a form of mortality, I should lend the assertion a respectful hearing. It would seem reasonable to me that a lesser status, in things relating to insight, idea, appreciation, should be a measure of lesser validity in point of reality. If ideas are the most real things in the universe, this would most certainly be the case. If life is to be measured in terms of intercourse with minds with whom I am fit to converse, I can see that this status of inferiority is one that must carry with it a lesser degree of life. Putting away all emphasis on moral ideals, let me look at things '* naturally." It seems in this sense natural to me that men should be sinful. It seems also natural to me that they should be mortal. It is not mortality that looks strange to me; it is immor- tality. I could not rebel if I were told, without prejudice, that my range of existence would be as the range of my own effective wishes. This, I should say, is obvious justice. Let those who care for immortality take the pains; let the others have their own finite reward. Let each have the degree of life which his own status — ^by its natural hold on reality — commands. This would leave us all in calm, were this the last word. For who could regard that a ** punishment'' which is simply a failure to attain an end that one does not want! You thunder at me that unless I SIN AS STATUS 143 repent of my sin, I shall perish. I reply, I am content to perish— indeed I had never aimed at anything else : I have not ** insisted on being immortal." But we are not thus left, by nature, at our natural ease. Having become self-conscious, we have no choice but to see life for the good it is, and to be restless at the thought of exclusion from that good. To lose life, to lose the quality of life, to lose the possibility of Responding to what we believe to be the best, and hence the possibility of being with the best, to be unable, as DostoievsM's Father Zossima has it,— to be unable to love, and to know this inability and this loss: this is a torment to man as it is not to the other creatures. If man must recognize in himself a status of natural finitude, we must also admit, as an element in his original equipment, an impulse which repudiates that status and demands a being at the level of his appre- ciation. This is not something different from the will to power ; but it is the deepest expression of it. It is the will to overcome death. Eeligion has had this service to render: it has co-operated with this human unwillingness to accept mortality. It has constantly reminded man how easily he may remain mortal, and how hardly he may earn immortality. It has made him pray with a touch of fear, **Take not thy holy spirit from me." There are those who refer to this state of mind as an 'anxiety neurosis': it may become such. But in substance, it is simply the original man in his wholeness facing the fact of his natural status. Others have called it the 'divine spark' which somehow disturbs our clod. m 144 CONSCIENCE Names matter little ; but the experience, I dare say, in some form could ill be spared from the armory of man's remaking. This completes our survey of original human nature. We shall now turn to the process of its remaking. PART IV EXPEEIENCE t : 0- *■' f SI: ■ M m ;»'4 ii CHAPTER XXI THE AGENCIES OF REMAKING IN studying original human nature, we have already begun the study of the remaking of human nature. For remaking is in large part a work of man upon himself, i.e., the gradual transformation of the frag- mentary and particular impulses by the central in- stinct, the will. The self-conscious being is inevitably a self-changing being; and what we have called the moral aspect of original nature is simply the self- conscious will taking a broad cosmic responsibility for the work of self-building, making itself a present partner with man's remoter destiny. The moral consciousness is not separable from any other aspect of self -consciousness. It is not necessarily a moral sense which may lead one to such reflections as '*I am awkward, or slow, or peculiar, or ineflScienf; yet in judgments of this sort, if there is a morale behind them, remaking processes begin. Wherever the human being can catch a glimpse of himself as a whole, self-judgment will emerge, and the central instinct will begin to impose its findings upon each impulse severally. And strictly speaking, nothing can transform a will but itself. It is easily possible to force a man to behave this way or that, by various sorts of coercion ; THE AGENCIES OF EEMAKING 149 ^1 ;i * 'y- -^g EXPERIENCE Jt^l o°t« occasion, .Mch tun,Uh the maten^ -r«r:rre/;;:^rrro,r^^^^ Pestalozzi and Froebel. ^nTifinucd a long imprison- ^%^-'''^T^^ZZTJS^^:^^of.^^^^r. YOU , ment, for example, will be '""'"'J / .. „ yo„ recognize a member „ay be able to '«««8"'^«/ ^o-^'^* "^.T'/o ^t Tbecau^ a degree of of the more liberal profess.oBS. »"\. '*'"'' -resumably freer people, c^ent ha, domesticated in h.m as >» the™' t^« P^^™ J The certain of the repeated details -"^ »*^"^f .f J*,^ Tone of hi* choice, point is, that ^o^^i^^'f;'^^:::;!7X^7i^^^^ *« -^ p*-''**-' rr •"A:d"„"tbUrmrof%ours^. ml.n little change in the deeper strata of character. ^ ^.^^ i^^^pablo ^ * "'? \ mr'urt b"^^^ this middle stage of habit; of permanent rebellion. It '^f ^^'^ "^ ^ ^^cessity will reveal variations for habits of any kind ^^^^^ ^^^J^^^^^ accepted by the more or less allurmg, and the ^^ ^"^"°^^^^^ \^^^^ ^^y develop into pUable cba;aet- - its o^^^^^^^^ 2:L:Z^ thU can safely seduction, for better or for worse, ana ^^ ^j^^t neglect the fact f^^^^^^^TA^t^^^ ^-1^ Lcause all remaking it wants to drxnk. We have ""^^f^ .^ ^^ education, obtaining must be founded on consent, that thereiore, consent is preliminary. we might be inclined to divide the agencies of remaking into two groups which we might broadly label, expe- rience and training; This distinction must have some justification. Otherwise there would be no meaning in the question whether social pressure, or some particular brand of social pressure, is helpful or hurt- ful to human nature. Such a question implies that there is a normal course of development which human nature, left to itself, its own data and reflection, would tend to realize. When, for example, Mr. Bertrand Russell says that ** those who have had most of * education' are very often atrophied in their mental and spiritual life''— and no doubt he is right— he implies that this mental and spiritual life of the individual mind has a natural growth and destiny of its own, capable in some way of being ascertained and used as a standard for judging the results of social action. We might then be expected to show what experience would do with human nature if there were no such thing as social pressure and education. It is obvious, however, that social experience is an integral part of individual experience ; since individual experience has neither its complete data nor its work- ing tools apart from social interaction. The various standards of self -judgment gain "certainty and vigor only in the give and take of the group ; there are no more impressive arguments for changing one's ways than the wholly spontaneous reactions of one's fellows ; and the private self hardly knows its own desires apart from the experiences that come through play, submission, dominance, affection, and the like. Isola- -a V- I 3 150 EXPERIENCE tion, actual or theoretical, would give us as distorted a view of the work of experience as of original human nature. There is thus no point in attempting a dis- tinction between the effects of solitary experience and the effects of companionship: the only distinction worth drawing would be between one's own reflection upon his entire experience, social and solitary, and his neighbor's reflection, especially when the neigh- borly views are enforced by artificial rewards and punishments. This is the distinction which we shall undertake to draw, meaning by * experience' simply that inner digestion of data of all sorts whereby the outcome of every essay in behavior becomes a basis for modifying the next similar essay, and excluding the influence of all deliberate suggestion and training. We shall first glance at the task which experience in this sense has to accomplish. CHAPTER XXII THE TASK OF EXPERIENCE THERE is more reshaping to be done in the human being than in any other creature. This is partly because in him the instincts appear in more numerous fragments, less fixed in their connections ; and partly because the central current of the will, which controls the reshaping, is proportionately stronger and more rapid in springing to a position of control. But it is also partly because the great middle group of instincts which we have called the general instincts are more general, so that there is more work to be done to fit them to specific circumstances. No creature can engage in f ood-getting-in-general : it must get particular items of food in particular ways. Even the most definite units of behavior, as grasping, biting, are generalities needing adjustment to every individual task. All instincts, then, and especially human instincts, have to be brought to earth by building a bridge from the universal to the par- ticular. The human being, so far as his original impulses are guiding him, is in the position of an agent under such widely general orders that he is allowed, and obliged, to use a liberal 'discretion.' It is in this gap between the broad thrust of instinct and the particular emergency that * intelligence' finds its first employment. li 152 EXPERIENCE When I say that intelligence— i.e., the idea of a total end regulating the ways and means to its fulfilment- spans this gap, I do not mean that it acts unaided. Nature does not fail to make specific suggestions in specific situations : in every circumstance there must, of course, be some nervous route of least resistance. Nature may produce a veritable magazine of handy responses, which may be run through more or less mechanically until some one suits the emergencv, as in the case of an animal seeking to escape from a trap. But the significant thing is that Nature herself draws the distinction between these suggestions and the major instinct: they are alterable, loosely attached, while the general instinct remains controlling the alterations. The law seems to hold for human nature that the more specific the suggestion, the more alter- able it is. Take, for example, an instinct to fly from danger— a highly general instinct. No highly developed creature is endowed with such an instinct without numerous auxiliary responses. When a special sign indicates a special danger — a loud noise, a ** large object coming rapidly toward one" — nature has one or more proposals to make, also comparatively specific — to shrink, to retire, to get closer to companions, to call out, to hide. But it is just these special signs (stimuli) and special suggestions (responses) which are modi- fiable.^ Thus, birds which by impulse take to flight at 1 McDou^U holds that it is the emotional core of the instinct which persists, while the two termini, the afferent and efferent channels, are subject to modification. But what persists is more than an emotion; it is the entire general tendency. As the instincts which McDougall THE TASK OF EXPEBIENCE 153 any loud noise may learn to sit through the passage of a railway train; while the mere sight of a man on foot will scatter them. The former special stimulus has ceased to have the general meaning 'danger'; the latter special stimulus has acquired that general meaning. A rabbit at large when alarmed will make for its burrow; in captivity, it will make for its box or kennel. The general meaning, 'escape,' can no longer take the former special route— the natural way ; the latter response has acquired that meaning. In such modifications of stimulus or response, or both, consists the education or self -education of the animal : they are the work of 'intelligence,' so far as they are guided by the persisting idea of the general end, that is to say, by a mind or self; we call them, also, the results of 'experience'— understanding, however, that apart from the 'intelligence' the experience would mean nothing, and therefore accomplish nothing. What is accomplished is usually something more, however, than a fitting of a particular response to a particular situation, as the examples given will show. For the new stimuli and responses that are brought under the general instinct are themselves general. The bird has an attitude toward 'walking men' which, though far more specific than its attitude toward ' danger, ' is still a general attitude. These acquired generalities we call habits. A habit might indeed be fairly described as an acquired (and usually compara- enumerates are themselves highly general, I should not hesitate to pro- pose that it is they, in their entirety, which persist, while the modifica- tion affects mainly such particularized channels as form the main object of Professor Thomdike^s studies. 154 EXPERIENCE tively specific) instinct.' It is what experience deposits when the mind has played long enough with a situation that is bound to recur ; has played long enough, that is, with its repertoire of responses and its own inventions, to adopt a general method as best, and to turn its experience-interest to other situations. Thus 'experience' moves through the growth of our natural impulses like a reaper's swath.-concerued at every point with the particular instance, while having before it and leaving behind it only the masses and bundles of grain, generalities of higher and lower level. The result of this reaping of experience is that nothing is left standing in its original relation to Mother Earth. Everything is now brought into relation to the purposes of the reaper. No natural impulse can become a matter of experience and remain unchanged. What we call memory implies that every new stimulus will be invested with all the meaning of what followed at the previous ventures. Every new effort is normally . As a connection between stimulus and response, habit has, as Watson justly remarks, the same structure as instinct. It is not impos- sible that instincts may have originated to some extent tlrough such deposits. But it is an error to hold that there is no essential difference between them (Watson, Behavior, p. 185). Habit differs ^-m instinct in its relation to the higher centers. Since habit is not flung off, so to speak, as a f ullblown bubble, until the self is satisfied, or,-let me say,- sfnce habit is never even relatively finished, until attention is relatively turned to other sequences, a habit is controlled by a central awareness of the meaning of its sequence as an instinct is not controlled An instinct, we may say, turns into habit just in proportion as it yields up to consciousness the secret of its destination. So far as action is instinctive, consciousness is increasingly aware of the articulation of parts into a total sequence; so far as it is habitual, the awareness of elements is on the decline, and the centers are dealing with the complex whole as a simple entity, whose meaning is sufficiently grasped. THE TASK OF EXPEBIENCE 155 more my own than any previous effort. And if a mind is equipped like the human mind with vigorous im- pulses of curiosity and play, the most favorable result of any item of behavior will not preserve the next following cases of the kind from experimental varia- tion, though it were always for the worse. But we must now look more particularly at the methods by which experience works in transforming instinct. CHAPTER XXIII THE METHODS OF EXPERIENCE WHEN we picture to ourselves experience as an active agency, working upon a passive and malleable mind, we think of it as wielding the tools of pleasure and pain. These tools are universal, fateful, and imperative,— especially pain : no man can ignore them, and especially, no child. And the figure of passivity has its degree of justice. I may launch what ventures I will : I cannot decide in advance whether the outcome shall be agreeable or the reverse. Here I am at the mercy of the world, and of my own constitution.^ And the general method of experience is not a secret. Whatever experiment of mine results in pleasure will be confirmed, and its occasion will be sought again. Whatever experiment results in pain will tend to be checked or much modified at its next suggestion. Pleasure heightens the rate and energy of experimenting, and so tends to increase the total volume of experience. It leads the will out, suppUes it with information of what there is to live for, and 1 To experience is to experiment and to read the returns of experi- mentation. Experimenting is an active element; also mountmg the results But if experimenting were sufficient to determine the results themselves, as certain forms of idealism suggest, experiment would lose its meaning. -t/^ THE METHODS OF EXPERIENCE 157 increases the likeUhood that new types of pleasure will be found. Pleasure is thus a type of experience which favors its own growth, and so becomes the sub- stance with which 4ife' does, or normally should, fill up. Of pain, in general, the reverse is true. Prob- ably some retrospective alteration of the nervous channel is being effected during the experience of pain itself, tending to occlude the channel, as the physio- logical side of that experience. But what this change is and how far back it reaches cannot be put down in any simple general proposition. It depends in the first place upon the mind that expe- riences the pain. The burnt animal, generally speak- ing, dreads the fire, and avoids it. But it is not true that the burnt moth ceases to approach the flame, nor either that the traditional burnt child refrains from further experiments. The phototropism of the moth persists; the interest of the child persists likewise. The child has connected tiie image of the flame with the experience of being burnt ; the moth has not. But beyond this quasi-mechanical linkage, with its inhibit- ing force, the child recognizes in its own approach to the flame differences of degree, of rapidity, of route ; and this recognition is a controlling factor in what its experience means to it. In an animal intermediate between moth and man the effect of the burning might be a blank and absolute negative toward all flames. For the human being there are no such negatives :— there are acquired cautions and discriminations. Such experience, in brief, drives a human being to Hhink.' Such thinking is still, like the first exercise of intel- 158 EXPEBIENCE ligence, a subsuming of means under ends ; but here it takes the direction of analyzing, and making hypoth- eses, — ^i.e., of induction. In the result it will, if it can, so modify its plan of action as both to gain the good and avoid the evil. There is at once a beginning of science, and of the economic virtues. But the nature of the change produced by experience depends, in the second place, upon the kind of pain (or pleasure)— for different kinds of disagreeable expe- rience give different kinds of thrust to the mind. While it is true that every outcome of an experiment must be either favorable or unfavorable, and that we may call all favorable results pleasurable and all unfavorable results painful, the names pleasure and pain are so restricted in what they directly bring before our thought that they give no adequate idea of the working of experience. * Experience' works in different ways according as the agreeable or disagree- able results are of one variety or another : it will be in the interest of clearness, therefore, to make a few simple distinctions in the kind of result we have to deal with. 1. Definite sense experiences, — pleasures and pains in the primary sense, together with other *^ original satisfiers and annoyers" of which Professor Thorn- dike speaks, such as bitter tastes, hindrances of motion, contact with objects of aversion or disgust.^ The relation of any such sensible annoyer to the course of action is a purely empirical fact. Nature might have made flame, so far as the child's insight 2 The Original Nature of Man, pp. 123 ff. THE METHODS OF EXPERIENCE 159 goes, as innocuous as incense. It might have made those unpalatable lady-bugs pecked at by Lloyd Morgan's deservedly noted chicks as sweet as corn. The attribute has to be learned as a fact, by the method of contiguity. It is imperative that objects of the attractive but dangerous class should thereafter be divided into the nocuous and the innocuous, and dis- tinguished by signs : the fate of our individual may depend on success in finding such a sign. But the imperative is categorical in the sense that it offers no reasons for its existence. 2. General depression or elation. Every vital sequence has its bodily reverberation as well as its sensible contents. A general sense of physical well- being or the reverse may accompany the end of a course of behavior, or may come as an after-effect more or less belated. This coenesthetic condition may be of the same quality as the sensible result of the behavior, but it may also be of opposite quality, as in the disagreeable after-clap of an agreeable indulgence. To bring these vaguer physical experiences into connection with the original impulse and its direct . pleasures and pains requires some mental span, espe- cially when they are of contrary quality. Thus, after any strenuous exertion there normally follows the depression of fatigue ; yet if the direct sensible results of the effort have been pleasant, fatigue seems to have no tendency to alter the sequence. In primitive self- consciousness, the flux of bodily conditions is taken for granted. The same is true in even greater measure of the remoter after-effects. Our orgiastic ancestors 160 THE METHODS OF EXPERIENCE 161 EXPERIENCE presumably suffered from their excesses more or less as we do ; yet there are few signs that they habitually put two and two together. But when the causal con- nection is observed, and the enjoyment (for example) is recognized as a deceitful enjoyment, there will be some modification of the next response to that invita- tion, whether or not the response is inhibited. And further, there will be a degree of insight into the meaning of this connection of effect with cause; for the beginning of seeing why a given cause should have a given effect, is the condition of seeing that there is any causal connection at all. Hence the modification that takes place will not be a wholly random one, but will take the direction of escaping that particular logical sequence. 3. Mental after-image. Distinct from all periph- eral consequences of a sequence is a central comment which may be subconscious or distinct, but is probably always present in the human being. It is most noticeable, naturally enough, when it is contrary in quality to either the sensible result or the general bodily condition; as when one succeeds in a competi- tion and finds himself somehow dissatisfied with his success, or as when one fails, and finds himself at peace in his failure. Such a mental after-image may appear at first as irrationally connected with my experience as the burning with the candle-flame. But it differs from the preceding types of experience in the circumstance that the comment is recognized as being not nature's comment, but my own. There is the same demand as before for analysis and induction ; but this time I am required to understand. This kind of experience has such a crucial bearing upon the process of revising my behavior that we must illustrate it in greater detail. I have a disobedient child ; and upon an accumulation of petty refusals to obey, I act upon the advice of a contemporary sage, *^ Never punish a child except in anger.'' I secure attention and compliance, and leave a fairly permanent impression; I go away satisfied. I suffer from no physical depression. But in time, perhaps, my sense of triumph abates, or becomes obscured by a counter uneasiness. And when I analyze the experience, I find that it refers to a defect in my achievement: I gained what I defined for myself, — namely, compliance ; but obedience I have not gained. When I gave rein to the pugnacious behavior, my will had defined its object as the destruction of a state of mind too little impressed with the importance of my own. But I have not conveyed to my child any positive conviction on that point, and so I have gained no genuine authority. My strategy has been in some measure self-defeating. The mental after-image of my result is a negative after-image. Such an after-image may have sufficient potency to reverse the judgment of the other types of experience. No one can engage in a brisk fight without incurring much physical pain, and experiencing subsequent depression; yet these circumstances are not in the least competent to deter an enthusiastic fighter. It would be false psychology to explain this as a matter of the balance of pleasure over pain ; it is a question 162 EXPERIENCE of the positive after-image. The pursuit of pleasure among young people is still more or less orgiastic and physically expensive; yet so long as the mental after- images are favorable, the efforts and depressions are judged worth the cost. If they become unfavorable, the degree of pleasure does not save them. We incline to estimate the human worth of a woman by the degree of the deterrent effect which the pain of childbirth may have upon her. By all the laws of effect, if pleasure and pain were the controlling factors, the first child should commonly be the last. It is the mental after- image which normally determines the destiny of that instinctive sequence. In fact, there are few of the vital experiences of humanity that do not entail a weight of pain and labor such as does in fact deter those in whom prudence is the highest virtue. And I do not ignore the fact that the mental after-image varies markedly with one's general theory of the universe. But I am here pointing out simply, a law of human nature as a fact to be reckoned with : it is the mental after-image which determines whether a given sequence shall be confirmed or weakened, and how it shall be modified. If the after-image is positive, any discomfort is prevented from eating into the allurement of the stimulus; if it is negative, any delight is prevented from enhancing it. The nature of this after-image should be evident from our previous discussion. It is the reaction of the whole will upon the partial impulse, when the full meaning of that impulse is perceived in the light of its results. It is not necessarily a moral reaction, THE METHODS OF EXPERIENCE 163 remorse, shame, aesthetic revolt, etc., are its clarified varieties. Its significance may simply be, "This is, or is not, what on the whole I want"; "I was a fool"; "I hit it right." In the imfinished condition of our instincts (and the slightness of our experience) every course of action is launched more or lesjs hypotheti- cally. It is my theory, as I make my decision, that this is what I want to do ; yet I am aware that there is some doubt about it, and that I shall not be sure until the returns are all in. The mental after-image is the answer to the question involved in this tentative state of mind. If the after-image is negative, the natural result will be a new hypothesis for dealing with a similar situation. And the transformation of instinct, under experience, consists essentially in the series of hy- potheses which a given mind adopts, — ^hypotheses about the ways in which impulses are to be followed in order to satisfy the complete will. This being the case, it is evident that the series of these successive transformations must approach, as a goal, an inter- pretation of the impulse in question in terms of the individual's own variety of the will-to-power. And inasmuch as each successive hypothesis is built on the error of the preceding one, the process might well be called, in analogy with Plato's method of finding true ideas, a dialectical process. The work of experience is the dialectic of the will. THE DIALECTIC OF PTTGNACITT 165 i CHAPTER XXIV THE DIALECTIC OF PUGNACITY WE have frequently referred to the effect of experience upon the instinct of pugnacity. I have been somewhat deliberate about this ; for I take it that pugnacity is one of the impulses which we par- ticularly at the present moment in history have need to understand. Let me, then, illustrate my view of the dialectic of the will by a series of transformations of pugnacity which may represent, somewhat symboh- cally, the experience of the race up to a certain point. In its original and crudest form, pugnacity makes for the simple and radical destruction of its object. This is what it ^ means.' If this impulse appears in a mind which is incapable of any social interest in its object, the slaying of the opponent may be an entirely satisfactory result. The mental after-image may be positive. But in most of the higher animals this is not the case. Destruction brings, as we have noted, a degree of defeat of one's total msh; there is at least enough interest in the survival of the opposed mind so that its chagrin, its acknowledgment of the victor, has a value. The hypothesis, ' ' I want destruction, ' ' changes into the hypothesis, **I want revenge/' Shand has collected a number of instances in which animals have with apparent deliberation refrained from destroying in order to take satisfaction in the suffering or dis- comfiture of the enemy. I wish to point out that this revision takes place quite in independence of any social constraint upon the fighting impulse. Though the successive interpretations of pugnacity are likely to retain their hold in certain relations while showing their defects in others, yet revenge, like destruction, tends to invade every relation of life. Within members of any given group when murder is recognized as undesirable, wrath is likely to take everywhere the form of revenge, whether in the *tit for tat' of children, or in the petulant relations of parents and offspring, or in the more deliberate and vindictive eye-for-eye quarrels among adults. Revenge has, however, an inherent inconsistency of motive which is bound to produce, in the regions of denser sociability, a further revision of hypothesis. For while revenge aims to leave such injury as to exclude the restoration of amicable feelings, and indeed, to gloat in the persistence of hatred and con- tempt, one has need of the presence of the despised and defeated adversary as a source of this satisfaction ; revenge squints toward the maintenance of friendli- ness. The solving of this puzzle turns revenge into punishment, which is the next stage of the developing perception of what pugnacity means. Punishment aims at inflicting pain, but without permanent injury. The anatomy of the infant verte- brate commonly lends itself to this interpretation ; and some of the animals, elephants at least, have acquired n 166 EXPERIENCE the same technique of punishment as prevails with human parents. Punishment makes a discrimination between the evil of a will and its essential nature, just as revenge made a distinction between the will and the life. Punishment is an interpretation of pugnacity as meaning the elimination of an evil element in the will of another while retaining the integrity of, and the regard for, that will as a whole. Punishment intends to reinstate the original amity of the disturbed relationship. When this discrimination has once been made, it is not a long step to a direct aim at the restoration of the integrity of that will, and a subordination of the effort to do justice to the defect. It may be an empirical discovery at first, that a soft answer may in some cases satisfy the whole aim of punishment, and have the further advantage of avoiding the bitter- ness of humiliating memory. It matters not how the hypothesis was arrived at ; so long as punishment left in some relations a negative after-image, this revision was bound to be hit upon sooner or later. This com- plete suppression of the destructive behavior in the interest of a resolute kindliness may not be the last word in the development of the pugnacious impulse: we shall have some further enquiry to make on this point.' But it is one of the views to which experience leads. And my point is that experience, given the human mind to work upon, would be likely to lead to this stage, quite apart from the disciplinary action of 1 Chapters XLI, XXXI, XXXII, XXVIII. THE DIALECTIC OF PUGNACITY 167 society, and quite apart from the teachings of religion, simply because the prior interpretations of the anger- impulse are not what the human being, on the whole, wants. I am intentionally omitting all reference to the contributions which various types of social pres- sure, economic, political, and others, make to this result. It is far from my purpose to ignore or minimize the extent of these contributions. I have excluded them here, because I intend to speak of them by themselves; and because we are interested here in finding a method of testing whether social trans- formations tend to distort human nature, and to carry it in directions which of its own momentum it would not follow. So far as pugnacity is concerned, my judgment is, — from the considerations here put down, — that this proposition is untrue. The dominant trend of the human will is, at least roughly, parallel with the demands made upon it by society. In a complete treatise each of the major general instincts should be examined for its natural dialectic. I must be content at present to indicate a method of work; and in a later section to sketch some of the tendencies in other instincts. PAET V SOCIETY CHAPTER XXV SOCIAL MODELLING IF human instincts, left to the teachings of expe- rience, would grow very much as society tries to model them, why not leave them more completely to their own growth! Our result so far supplies a good argument for greater freedom from social constraint, if not for anarchy. Social interference with natural growth is based, we know, upon a degree of distrust of human nature : and when we perceive that human nature has its own inward righting-tendency, its 'dialectic,' the distrust seems unjustified: social modelling appears as an elaborate social meddling. Attempts to steady an ark that will steady itself are worse than unnecessary: they prevent the finding of real reasons for preferring one mode of behavior to another. The social reason is always at one remove from the real reason, vitiated as it is by all the motives that play for or against conformity." And further, so far as society loses the invaluable guidance of that still, small voice, the mental after-image, which governs growth, how can we be assured that its trans- formations shall, in the main, be other than deforma- tions? Working, as society does, through 'sanctions,' iCf. Holt, The Freudian Wishj Herbert Spencer, Education, etc., for expressions of this ideal. 172 SOCIETY that is, through artificial pressures of reward and punishment, the amount of such pressure may be an index of the amount of warping which nature is likely to suffer under its control. The tabus under which we now live are indeed but phantoms of the ferocities which helped to create the first * cakes of custom.' Consequently we cannot point to any such mutilations or immolations of nature, such head-huntings or widow-burnings, such foot-bindings or soul-bindings, as cumber to satiety the annals of the folkways. Personal liberty has won many battles ; but is its work complete? If such natural expressions as laughter and tears, coughing and sneezing, are still subject to social regulation, what shall be said of the course of our deeper impulses, our antipathies, our affections, our fears? Society is not precisely hostile to our passions any more than it is hostile to our sneezing; but it asserts jurisdiction over the ways and methods of each. And it makes these ways and means so much the essence of the agreement that unless the impulse can be satisfied in the prescribed way, society inclines to demand that it shall not be satisfied at all. There are approved ways of earning a living, as there are approved ways of winning a bride, but who can recognize under the activities of shop and factory and office an expression of natural impulses to hunt, to fish, to gather where one has not strewn? In its ways of food-getting, civilization has listened to advisers more imperious than instinct; yet it insists that unless one follow these ways, he shall not have a man's living at all. SOCIAL. MODELLING 173 As for the weapons which produce conformity, if the social lash has lost its barbarity, it has not lost its sting. Fears of death and beyond-death are seldom invoked; yet the fears which spring from ambition and from multiform social attachments and dependences are hardly less powerful. Man's need of his fellows is so great, and increasingly great, that he will not willingly forfeit a large measure of their favor. Beside this, the knowledge and dread of our own ignorance in the management of life can be counted upon to herd the mass of mankind into the beaten path, while ease, certainty, and the feeling of at-homeness serve to keep them there. For the more adventurous spirits, the finer but not less terrifying punishments of ridicule and exclusion are held in reserve. Hence 'convention' is a word which still conveys a sense of enforced deviation from the natural. What society imagines it wants imposes itself upon what I want, and buries it. Our attitude toward convention is for the most part not only docile, but unreasoning. The modelling process, working by suggestion and imitation as well as by overt control, has done its work before the critical powers are fully awake. To many minds, it is something of a recommendation of usage that we hold to it, as to a religious mystery, with the blind adherence of faith. Yet we are destined to reach self- conscious judgment in these matters as in all others. We cannot hold a custom against reason, when once reason has become competent to deal with it. On the other hand, it would be a questionable procedure to 174 SOCIETY argue from the general unreasoning acceptance of any social habit or belief that there are no reasons for it. While we are bound to challenge whatever we can see to be unnatural or outworn, yet so deep are the roots of convention that most customs and prejudices deserve a second glance— he takes great risks who denies to any of them a meaning. To take one example from among many, I find this risk too lightly run in a recent chapter by that always informing and vigorous thinker. Professor E. A. Boss. He is dealing with a number of conventional beliefs which modify behavior.^ He cites, among others, the belief ^*that manual labor is degrading," a belief less surprising among the upper castes who profit by it than among manual laborers themselves. Yet these latter also give it an unreasoned acceptance, thinks Pro- fessor Boss, as seen in their ambitions for themselves and their children to escape from the ranks of toil into the ranks of the long-nailed mandarins. But why translate this conventional direction of ambition, so far as it is an article of faith rather than a desire for greater income, as a belief that manual labor is degrading? Why not recognize in it a highly reason- able belief that a man should by all means have a mental survey of his own work, and that the particular kind of manual labor which is robbed of all mental interest is degrading. There is a false note in the desire to get away from toil; but beside it is a deep and true note in the desire to live, as man was made to live, by a union of toil with wit. As a second mean- 1 E. A. Boss, Social Psychology, ch. vii. SOCIAL MODELLING 175 ingless convention, our author mentions the belief that ** pecuniary success is the only success." No doubt society, less by what it says than by the turn of its eyes, instils an admiration for the man who has made his fortune. This value-attitude, if not exclusive among us, is certainly overdeveloped ; but can we say that it is essentially unreasonable! If command of the fruits of the earth is the normal and destined position for man, why should one who has achieved such a position, and in so doing has shown large powers of one kind or another, not receive the recog- nition that he, in so far, has succeeded? It is a man's work to make a fortune, and under normal circum- stances a measure of ability. It is not the only kind of work that can be called a man's work, but it is typical. It has the appeal that the qualities it calls out can be understood by everybody. We must define this convention rather by the values it justly appre- ciates, if there are any such, than by its myopic aberrations, its exclusion of other values. And unless we are prepared to deny that the normal result of economic effort, the mastery of nature, is a good, we must expect to deal, for all time, with a disposition to admire the man who has become ' ' ruler over many things.'' Another meaningless convention, according to Boss, is **that the consumption of stimulants or narcotics by women is unwomanly." But I desist. There are few prejudices or ceremonial observances for which the users are entirely ready with their reasons. If they were, these elements of mental usage would forfeit the thought-saving merits of custom. 176 SOCIETY But if we forthwith pronounce an observance unrea- sonable because it is unreasoned, we forgo all possi- bility of penetrating into its often subtle and sub- conscious grounds. Rebellion we have always with us, and we need it. It trims the dead wood, and summons latent reasons into the open. Of the rebellion of today, it is perhaps significant that it complains less of the common customs of the tribe, so far as they affect the majority, than of the incidental hardship which any custom, by its uniformity, may work in special cases. Society t yrann izes le.8S by^mistaking the conditions^ for the welfare of the mass of men, than by classifying individuals, who never quite fit the categories.* f We may approach our enquiry, then, without antecedent bias either hostile to convention or in favor of it, simply as a question of fact. How does society tend to modify individual behavior! 8 See, for example, Elsie Clews Parsons, Social Freedom. CHAPTER XXVI MAIN DIRECTIONS OF SOCIAL MODELLING FOR the sake of proportion, our first duty is always to the obvious. We must remind ourselves at the outset of the most general way in which social rules bear upon the development of instinct. Gener- ally speaking, then, custom continues the direction of development struck out by individual experience, and facilitates it. More in detail : it abbreviates the tedious process of learning from experience; it saves from experiments too costly for the individual, — such, for example, as might cost him his life, or his health; it speeds the whole process of interpretation, through its own acquired skill in imparting its maxims ; and on account of all this economy, it carries the process farther than personal experimentation could hope to reach. It also preserves a common direction of growth, and at least a minimum level of achievement in a great number of individuals. Society is to each of its members a store- house of technique : and as little as the learner could spare the mechanical technique of the socially trans- mitted arts and sciences, could he dispense with the accumulated capital of wisdom in the ways of behavior, the folkways of his own tribe and time. That is, he /^ 178 SOCIETY Hi K".' could not spare them if what we call 'progress' is to continue. To say that social action continues the direction of the work of individual experience understates the case : it continues the whole work of organic evolution. Let me mention two ways in which this continuation is marked. 1. The * vestibule of satisfaction' is prolonged. By the 'vestibule' of a satisfaction I mean the series of preliminary processes which lead up to it. Through- out the animal series, we can trace a growing elabo- ration of instinctive processes, and hence a prolonged period of suspense between the first stimulus and the final satisfaction. Consider the food-getting pro- cesses, and the satisfaction of eating. An amoeba ' eats ' immediately upon contact with a food-particle, — if this activity of surrounding and absorbing may be called eating. The sea-anemone has to observe a preliminary or two : it must use its tentacles to waft the food-bearing water into its body-cavity. When organs of smell and vision exist, they imply that food (as well as danger) is to be discerned at a distance, and usually that the animal thus equipped is to go and get it. Organs of chase and combat indicate still more elaborate preliminaries; with hunting, stalking, and killing, the vestibule is prolonged many fold. An instinct to lay up stores for winter shows that a farther step has been taken in the same direction; and all this is accomplished without appealing either to experience or to social instruction. Individual experience not only retraces the phylogenetic journey : DIBECTIONS OF MODELLING 179 it carries farther the interpolation of means and conditions in the form of labor and foresight between hunger and consumption. If society, then, intercalates further conditions and complexities, it is but exceeding Nature at her own game. The prolonging of the vestibule goes with a greater reserve of tissue, and a finer balancing of the stimulus; so that the period of suspense is not more than the organism is fitted to sustain. The general principle holds good, that the farther the stimulus is from the satisfaction, the less its intensity, the more it is negligible, and therefore the inconvenience of delay or even of ignoring it is negligible, in the vital economy. What is true of food-getting is obviously true like- wise of mating. If society has interposed apparently artificial conditions, such as the consent of the partner, the approval of a social representative, a ceremonial wedding, it is but embroidering upon the theme which Nature had, in the practices of quest and courtship, already inserted as preliminaries to the mating. This conspiracy of all the phases of evolution in prolonging the vestibule of satisfaction, can hardly be looked upon as an end in itself, from the biological standpoint, though it implies the complication and development of the animal body. It means simply that the organism is fit to live in a more complex and extended environment, in which the time-factor and the ability to wait are highly important factors in survival. But from the psychological standpoint, the scope of the process, and the fact that satisfaction is hemmed in by an increasing number of conditions, I 180 SOCIETY imply an immense development of the meaning of each part of the long sequence, together with enhanced powers of self-control at its beginnings. 2. Limitation of the range of objects with which one deals. The protozoon must deal with the whole world so far as that world impinges upon it ; it reacts to everything with like thoroughness of attention. The same organs that imply a lengthening of the vestibule bring also a power of selection. The higher animal reacts to a very small proportion of the total objects that come within its range of perception. The law is analogous to that of the increase of power in an optical instrument; the field is restricted as the reach increases,— except that in the case of the organism this restriction, being under the consent of the actual perception of the whole, is not in the same sense a restriction. This discrimination, society carries further. It prescribes to some extent what I may not eat, whom I may not fight, and whom I may not marry. And this element of artificiality is in continuance of the direction of phylogenesis and of experience, as before. These circumstances do not sanction the social process in detail. But they make it altogether prob- able that the gross normal effect of society upon individual behavior is not only of biological value, but favorable as well to that gathering of meaning which is the business of individual growth. For a more accurate knowledge of what I want, a better under- standing of what any instinct means, could only be gained by better excluding what it does not mean; DIRECTIONS OF MODELLING 181 and such exclusion would naturally be made effective, in society, by setting up preliminary conditions with which I must comply, and by defining certain objects to which I shall not react. If all custom were good custom, it would in this way add to the meaning, or value, of all behavior. And we are justified in inferring that, of its own nature, society is not primarily repressive. But whether all custom, or any custom, is normal custom these facts can give no hint. In actuality society has been and is repressive; and especially in three ways. (1) The standards and ideals it sets up for me to follow are shaped to its own interest rather than to mine, — for society, like nature, must look first to the group and only secondarily to the individual; (2) the material equipment and scope which it offers me is curtailed by the competing needs of others, — and there are too many of us for the supply; (3) the permitted modes of behavior fall into fixed institu- tional forms, and hamper the movements of any life that grows beyond them. Social modelling can be good, from the standpoint of the individual, only if all these tendencies are corrected. The old theory, then, that ' ' the interests of the indi- vidual are identical with the interests of society" we shall not unconditionally accept. Our argument so far may be taken as a confirmation from a new angle of approach of the notion that in the main these interests tend to agree, but not of the notions of Hobbes, Burke, Hegel, and others which seem to sanction any pressure society might choose to impose upon its •4 I 182 SOCIETY members. We have set up the individual life, with its natural dialectic, as the standard to which social pressures must conform; and by the aid of this standard we propose now to outline what none of these thinkers has given us, namely, a set of tests whereby we can distinguish a good social order from a bad social order, considering in turn each of the three ways in which societies are likely to go wrong. > CHAPTER XXVII IDEALS AND THEIR RECOMMENDERS A MAN in the midst of a society which is trying to shape him is not to be thought of as sur- rounded by pure altruists. Whatever behavior is recommended to him will bear some trace of the con- venience of the source of recommendation. The virtue of labor in the eyes of its employers is a * faithfulness and industry' which smacks of acqui- escence in statu quo. The ideal citizen, for the stand- patter, is the 'loyaP vessel of party authority and routine. The ideal child for the overburdened school mistress is by almost physical necessity the 'good' boy, not too beloved by his fellows, more docile than enterprising. It has been said that the excellence of wives as defined by husbands shows similar traits. In proportion to its self-satisfaction, — and the tendency of all aggregates is to be self-satisfied — any group is prone to condemn its most vigorous as well as its least vigorous members: if it must move forward, it keeps a mean which it calls golden ; it learns but slowly the truth of Aristotle's saying, that the best rule is rule over the best. It inclines to shape its members to its own ease, not to their advantage ; it supplies them with a set of ideals visibly colored by its own idler interest. ., ft 184 SOCIETY I* '* li ?f But all conversation assumes an ultimate equality, even that between master and slave, or between society and the individual. What is required of me must come professing to be for my good. Slaveholders, Aristotle himself, tried to think slavery beneficial for slaves. Interest may warp the particular judgment; but the form of the apology reveals the principle at stake. The interest of society by this involuntary confession, is seen to have no authority over me unless it is also my own interest. This is the primary and original 'right' in the relations of whole and member: a man's right is to his own development; the right of society exists only where its own interest and that interest coincide. And structurally (not historically) these interests do coincide, not more because the member needs the society than because no society can prefer the less developed to the more developed member, other things equal. Not even society, then, has a right to make use of a person as a mere means to its majestic ends.* The test of a good social order, then, will be this : that I am not obliged to adopt any rule of conduct because of what others prefer I should do or be, unless I also have or can have that same preference. Let us 1 There can, of course, be no legal right against political society, by the definition of a legal right as something created by society (how mighty are definitions!). By the same sign it would be inaccurate to speak of political society itself as having legal rights, since legal rights aie something which it confers on its members. But those who thus areue from definitions sometimes forget that the legal right is a specified form of a more generic relationship; and that under this generic sense of right, questions of right may arise between two such unlike persons as state and individual, or society and individual. IDEALS AND IHEIB KECOMMENDEKS 185 state this test in the form of a postulate or demand which every good society must, and can, comply with : What others wish me to be must be identical with what I myself wish to be, — r . a principle which we may call the postulate of identical ideals. It may be that no society, no actual society, complies with the requirement : but I venture to think that no actual society despairs of complying with it or fails in practical ways to aim at it. The conditions of social life everywhere assume that however wide the original disparity between what I think I would like to be, and what my environment thinks it would have me be, such an agreement can be found by some effort of thought, or by the slow working of social arrange- ments, or both. In point of fact there are arrange- ments apparently as natural and as old as society itself which help to secure precisely the agreement required by the postulate. I shall mention the most important of these. 1. The direct impact of social requirements comes to the individual through the most altruistic part of the social shell. This is especially true of his most plastic years : he is born among his well-wishers. And while the egoism of parents has also to be reckoned with, the danger of social tyranny lies rather in their lack of originality than in their lack of pride in the personal growth of their child. It is always possible that, as filtered through the medium of the family, the demand of society will strike with too little force rather than too much. For the identity required in H .4 Sii I ■ i Ni* * I " I* ■ ' 1 186 SOCIETY the postulate calls for an effort on the part of the individual as well as upon the part of society, espe- cially as the individual cannot be said to know without much drastic trial what in particular he wishes to be. 2. Recommendership, If society were sufficiently self-conscious to perceive that this immensely impor- tant ideal-making function is everywhere muddled and adulterated by short-sighted egoism, its own included, it might be imagined as referring this function to a carefully chosen and disinterested third party. Such an imaginary arbitrator it would be difficult to realize in the flesh. He must be no member of society, either in its capacity as impressing ideals or in its capacity as receiving and using them. He would nevertheless have to know human nature to the bottom, and the necessities of social order. He would have to understand all parties, all social conflicts, and all occupations, and yet participate in none of them. Political theory has now and again attempted to define such a functionary, inasmuch as the logical problem of a liberal government in preventing the warping of laws by political tyranny is very much the same as ours. This problem is: so to organize a public body that to every possible pair of parties there is always a third party to pass judgment between them, even when the two parties are the public as a whole and any part or member thereof. John Locke tried, in effect, to provide a perfectly general solution for this problem, and all but succeeded. His * legis- lative' is a good third to every pair of parties that can be defined among the people, including executive IDEALS AND THEIR RECOMMENDERS 187 and people, and also including itself as part of the people. He only failed to provide for a third party between the legislative in office and the people, which is precisely the point at which we, in our own problem, need relief. Here Locke had no recourse but the 'appeal to Heaven.' And we look in vain in any subsequent writer or political device for the general solution of our problem. But Eousseau, approaching the problem from the other end, that of protecting people from their own idleness and ignorance, saw far more clearly than Locke the conditions for finding just social standards. **In order to discover the social rules best suited to peoples, a superior intelligence would be required, which should behold all the passions of men without experiencing any of them. This intelligence would have to be wholly independent of our nature while knowing it through and through. Its own welfare would have to be secure apart from us; and yet it must be ready to concern itself with our welfare. And lastly, it would have to look forward in the march of time to a distant consummation, and working in one century be willing to put its enjoyment in the next. It would take gods to give laws to man."' Surpris- ingly like what we thought necessary to protect men from society is Eousseau 's view of what is necessary to protect men from themselves; and on the lips of the supposed believer in absolute democracy, the sentiment is striking. But if we ask what provision Rousseau would make to secure this ideal giver of 2 The Social Contract, Book II, ch. vii. 1 p* 188 SOCIETY laws we find no answer; for such a legislator is an anomaly in Rousseau's state, and if we may judge from his words, in any state. It is but a fiction, called upon to do the work of a reality. **This sublime reason," he says, almost cynically, '*far above the range of the common herd, is that whose decisions the actual legislator puts into the mouth of the immortals, in order to constrain by (the pretence of) divine authority those whom human prudence could not move." Thus Rousseau also is driven to an appeal to Heaven, but to a merely dramatic appeal. To impute in this way an unreal divine quality to what is after all but a humanly conceived standard of behavior might well provide the needed force; but unless we could also ensure the divine wisdom and justice, this appeal would only deepen the tyranny, as the course of history may show. Nevertheless, the arrangement which is so diflScult from the standpoint of practical statecraft exists, and has existed from time immemorial, in ordinary social structure. It makes use of a common property of the self-conscious mind, — the capacity of being, while immersed in the stream of events, at the same time reflectively aloof from them. The man who recommends to others what were good to be done without having to follow his own teaching, or being in a position to do so, is not an unknown person, nor on the whole an unwelcome person. And it has been found possible to devise circumstances which give his announcement of rules and ideals so much detachment from the usual cares and fears of the casual disin- IDEALS AND THEIR RECOMMENDERS 189 terested observer, that the ''appeal to Heaven" would be a phrase not wholly unwarranted in his case. Society, in short, has never been without its pro- fessional 'Recommenders'; and it has never failed to accord them a position of such imAiunity that their words are as nearly as possible the words of the freed 'spirit. In ancient times, they were the elders, the shamans, the medicine men, the prophets, the priests. In latter days, these also, and with them all whose work is the liberal reflection upon human life, — the scholars, the men of letters and of art. Such men live voluntarily both within the society and mentally without it; in the theological phrase their mental position is both immanent and transcendent. At times they have lived in security and freedom both political and economic ; but always they have survived only so far as men have found in them an actual per- formance in some measure of the momentous function of delineating the man who is at once fully himself and fully the servant of the social order. They have done their work more or less badly, turbidly, venally ; but in spite of the men, mankind has valued the func- tion. In so far as it tolerates them, organized society bears witness to its own self -abnegation ; through them it secures the unhampered force of its own severest self -judgment. The original moral nature we found attaching itself, as if by instinct, to its chosen ''Third Parties"; these it finds naturally among the Recom- menders, and the powers they represent. From both sides, then, that of society .and that of the individual, the Recommender is an agent of progress in the ! '' t: 'f 11 H '••■i'. H: 190 SOCIETY direction of realizing our postulate ; and so far as it can make use of this (free and unofficial) triadic structure, society succeeds, as it were, in lifting itself by its own bootstraps. The ideals under which men perforce live thus tend to approximate the ideals they would choose for themselves. 3. The particular advantage gained by the detach- ment of Eecommendership is the correction of the interested ideal: but like every advantage, this one also is bought with a price ; and society needs always to be saved from the besetting vice of its Eecom- menders, that of abstraction. Since Aristotle drew his sharp-cut pictures of the philosopher and the states- man we have progressed far in the art of combining the contrasting careers of reflection and action; but we are still far from knowing how to be wholly im- mersed in affairs and at the same time adequately to reflect upon them. Hence we need protection from the abstract ideal, as well as from the interested ideal. Contemporary consciousness is keenly aware of this need. We see that by the circumstances of their origin our inherited magazine of standards is likely to fit the men of fiction better than the men of reality ; and there are many signs of the inclination to attribute the difficulty to * philosophy' or to idealism,' when it is simply the difficulty of reflective self -consciousness everywhere. Biography encounters it in the form of an apparent dilemma : that between being on the one hand realistic and disappointing, and on the other, abstractly heroic and unreal. All history, all art, all reflective description of mankind encounters it. IDEALS AND THEIR RECOMMENDERS 191 One of the class faults of the Recommender, an expression of the penchant for keen and sensitive listening that makes him useful, is an over-valuation of the aesthetic elements in our necessary interests, — the unmixed, the clear, the simple, the orderly, the systematic, the 'pure.'^ Our aversions to dirt or to disorder are not profoundly natural, and in this case nature may be partly right : certainly a highly success- ful patternism and purism produce distrust by their very clarity. Mature worldly wisdom is quick to detect the shop-product of Eecommendership ; and not uncommonly it adopts an indulgent superiority to the whole business of 4deals,' as a necessary but always transitory incident in the process of growing-up. But there is a natural corrective for the tyranny of abstractions, less easy than this superior realism, but more honest It is found in the circumstance that abstractions breed their own critics in opposing abstractions ; so that individual judgment is summoned to select between them or to combine them. The over- burdened school mistress we were speaking of has, no doubt, an abstract ideal. But the contrasting ideals of the boys' gang, administered through that fear of being thought afraid which makes the life of a small boy with his fellows a chronic, if subconscious, hazing party,— these ideals also, with all their flourish of substantiality, are abstract. So, too, are all the maturer realisms abstract. Whatever common sense 3 Sir Henry Maine 's attitude toward the ideals of an equity based on * natural law' well illustrates the revulsion from this defect. Ancient Law, chs. iii and iv. H] r M 192 SOCIETY any boy or man achieves as a guide of his life must be won by composing for himself the half-truths of his opposing abstract authorities. And in this process of composing, he will be guided by that same mental after-image which directs his individual experience.* 4. By the play of one authority against another, authority thus sinks to its rightful place as an element, a necessary element, in the circuits of individual growth. But after all, what assurance have we that this playing with authority is not simply a com- promise? For the sake of living in society, I bargain away, as by an implied contract, a certain amount of liberty, that is to say, of myself. Eecommenders help to make the bargain less costly for me ; and their own differences and competitions still further lower the price of the social commodity. But is not the trans- action at its best after all a sale, a relinquishment of my free nature? In fact we have not shown that our postulate can be complied with; that any real identity of what I want and what others want of me can be reached. The missing link in the logic, however, may be supplied; and perhaps conveniently by considering the anatomy of admiration, from which sentiment any ideal must come. In the boy's desire to be a man, amounting at times 4 It is in such situations that the dialectic of experience, at first of the simple Platonic form, tends to fall into the Hegelian pattern, the opposing Eecommenders standing as thesis and antithesis, while the self undertakes to reinterpret their ideas in a synthesis of its own. Many of HegePs triads are fair formal accounts of social experience; fewer than he thought express common or universal experience. IDEALS AND THEIR RECOMMENDERS 193 to a ruling passion, society finds the need upon which many a hard bargain can be driven. If the Spartan boy thinks that to be a man involves enduring much pain without flinching, no theory of his interest will prevent him from submitting to torture. He is gov- erned not by ideals alone, but by his concrete admira- tions. His principle might be stated : What I admire in others I wish for myself (naturally with the under- standing that what man has done man can do again). It is logically impossible for him to detach his thought of himself from his thought of others ; because in every instance, including his own, consciousness shows him at once the individual and the type. In every human event, he is perceiving man. But this general prin- ciple, that what one admires one admires universally, applies also to the admirations of others : they cannot emancipate their admirations from their experience. Hence admiration is held within the scope of the possible; and it tends to be true of all fundamental values, that What others admire, I admire. The connection with our postulate is therewith complete. What others would admire in me tends to agree with what I actually admire in them: and what I admire in them I must admire (and wish for) in myself: hence, what they would admire in me, I must wish for in myself. It is true that admiration is capable of drinking up much sediment with its cup, imitation being the most indiscriminate of all human proclivities. It is also true that I cease in time to hope to realize in myself all that I admire. I find that I can be neither r II 1 14^ ^1 'J 'f * 'lit 194 SOCIETY Lincoln, nor Napoleon, nor Plato. Yet in any such relinquishment, I forgo only the detail and the degree ; I persist in demanding of myself that I transplant into my own work and upon my own scale, the most general quality of my admiration. For at bottom, admiration is a form of appetite. Men can only admire where they can have interest and possibility. No amount of recommendation can make the ideals of mediseval art an object (in toto) of my desire for myself: no hunger of mine leans that way. The individual need is cared for by the spontaneous emphasis of his admirations. I can admire what others admire only so far as I do in reality belong to their species and to their clan. But this organic basis of desire for quality is perhaps the best security that the authorities within one's own age and society will be roughly the authorities meeting one's major needs. In many simple passes of daily experience we acknowledge clearly enough that the social eye intrudes upon our own more private life not to alienate, but to recall us to ourselves. Imagine, for example, that in that wild place, that arena in which primitive motives are free to appear and be wrestled with,— imagine, I say, that in the family circle some explosion of primitive wrath takes place. And suppose that by inadvertence an honored guest becomes witness of the scene. This accidental intrusion of the disinterested eye is likely to come not as a disagreeable reminder of a false convention; but as lending new vigor- through the chagrin— to certain languishing maxims of self-control which personal experience in the IDEALS AND THEIR RECOMMENDEES 195 dialectic of pugnacity had already suggested. What my friend wishes me to be, and what I would appear to him to be, is without doubt what I also demand for myself. In this instance, at least, I am recalled to my own freedom. And this is the natural destiny of all the arrangements by which society foists ideals upon individual lives. I ■•i " v^ If ; CHAPTER XXVIII LAWS AND THE STATE IN the making of ideals there is no necessary com- promise of individual welfare. But in managing the materials of existence, some compromise is inevi- table. If men live together at all, especially if they live close together like trees in a forest, what happens to the trees will necessarily happen to the men also. It is idle to suppose that their side branches can reach full development. The total burden of scarcity in room and wealth, society in political form usually undertakes to dis- tribute. Apart from political rules and distinctions, men usually adopt the plan of equal sharing if they wish to preserve the peace : this is the thought-saving justice of ' nature. '" Social rules try to secure first the least total suffering, and then proportionate suffering according to some usable principle of dis- tribution. But all laws, rules, understandings, assume some suffering,— an insuflBciency of competitive goods, the consequent existence of unsatisfied instincts and imperfect growth. iHear the anthropologist on this point: *' Among the savages of the upper Orinoco, one of the most primitive of extant peoples, whatever eatable is discovered by one of a pair is immediately divided, with much care for equality of division, though there is no political authority among them," etc. LAWS AND THE STATE 197 In this respect, then, the political condition obviously takes the form of a bargain or contract. The much maligned ** social contract'' has certainly no truth as a description of political origins (and was never so understood by its more distinguished expounders); but as a formal expression for a natural preference it is an entirely valid way of stating the case. Better is partial hunger **and quietness therewith" than the slim chance of a full stomach with hostility to all neighbors. Security, peace, and their corollary, ''a. calculable future, ' ' are worth to most men the sacrifice of the fighter's chance together with the privilege of free fighting itself : and this, to Hobbes, is the essential preference which sanctions the political state. This is, indeed, no adequate account of the two sides of the bargain. The insurance aspect of social order has been overdone in all these contract formulae; and is still overdone in contemporary theories of the State."^ The growth of cities shows, among other things, that to most men the hazard of a large gain is still more attractive than the assurance of a little; and the weight of preference for unsalaried over salaried occupations suggests as much. To all that Hobbes sees of value in the civil condition, we must at least add the disinterested satisfaction of social instincts and of the insistent hunger for self-knowledge. But whatever the terms of the exchange, the truth remains 2 As in Bagehot's phrase just quoted, ''a calculable future"; or Royce, War and Insurance; or J. Kohler, Philosophy of Law, **It is necessary for the progress of culture that chance be conquered'' (p. 28). The conquest of chance is an important, but by no means the primary, value of social order. ' ♦ -. ^\ i ' ,1 V r ■ hi "i M if 198 SOCIETY that we must surrender something for the sake of being social; and so, in spite of the high polemic against the historical reality and the legal status of a social contract, no one really questions the psycho- logical truth of its central idea.' The question is always pertinent: *'What is the cost of organized society to its members?'' and '*Is such society worth the cost?" For our purposes it is necessary to estimate this cost not in terms of pleasure and pain, as particular satisfactions, but in terms of instinct and will and their full development. To Hobbes it seemed evident that our instincts are doomed to be seriously hampered, inasmuch as **the laws of Nature, as * justice,' * equity,' 'modesty,' * mercy,' and in sum * doing to others as we would be done to' . . . are contrary to our natural passions, that carry us to partiality, pride, revenge and the like."* Here our study of the dialectic of pugnacity comes to hand: we can state that *'our natural pas- sions" of their own motion carry us well beyond revenge, and well into the region of justice, equity, 8 The discussion of the social contract theory from Hume to the present is one of the least creditable chapters in modern scholarship. It illustrates too often how seekers of Truth can ** darken counsel*' by stooping to refute a position defined by themselves only. This is much easier than attempting to discover what the opponent actually meant. Even Kohler, who is everywhere substantial and wise, has allowed himself to nod on this matter (Philosophy of Law, p. 10, Eng. tr.). « Leviathan, ch. xvii. LAWS AND THE STATE 199 and even of mercy. This dialectic presupposes con- tinuous social experience, and would not take place apart from social order; but the point is, that given the social order, such modifications of behavior involve no curtaihnent of individual growth. The same is true of many other repressions that begin from the outside, and become adopted into the indi- vidual constitution. Could we examine here the dialectic of each several instinct we should find that none come from their social-legal baptism unaltered, or untaught. In general, law, which at first is con- trary to the state of a person's will, brings about the state of mind which justifies the law. In Eousseau's judgment, it is at least possible that every human impulse should submit to its social compression, be ** yielded up to the general will," and yet the individual ** still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before." And to Hegel, the action of society is so fundamentally informing and liberating, that social mutilation is not so much as considered. L*aws and institutions act purely to interpret to each member of the State his own deeper will. But the rosy views of Eousseau and Hegel seem as excessive on one side as the more savage views of Hobbes on the other. While to Hobbes every social repression is a pure loss, a necessary tax on natural liberty, and none an ingredient of my own will, for Hegel every such repression is a part of my will, and none a pure loss. This latter position seems rather to describe an ideal than an actual or possible social state. If every privation incident to orderly social life, t • v I ' \ ■. u \\ ?j i 'h t\ 200 SOCIETY including the loss of the liberty either to judge or to avenge my own injuries, — if every such privation were just what I, with full insight, would freely impose upon myself for the sake of more inclusive and significant ends, it would mean, would it not, that all competitive relations in society had been transformed or absorbed into non-competitive relations ? In so far, for example, as the scramble for food becomes an incident of a wholly non-competitive interest in im- proving industrial technique, I can truly say that social necessities are ministering to the freedom of my own major desires and for so much of a spur I may be grateful. The criterion, then, of an entirely free social existence would be (and this we shall call our second postulate) : Every competitive interest must be so transformed or interpreted as to be non-competitive, or an ingredient in a non-competitive interest. And we must enquire, as before, how far social ar- rangements facilitate, or make possible, the meeting of this demand. II In the large we may say that the primary economic needs, those for food, shelter, etc., are competitive and always will be competitive; because the material objects which they require exist in limited quantities as compared with the demand, especially when quality is taken into account. LAWS AND THE STATE 201 On the other hand, what we have called our neces- sary interests are normally non-competitive. When you satisfy your interest in unity or rhythm or order you help to satisfy my interest in these same objects. For these objects are neither limited in quantity nor are they capable of being made private possession in such wise that the more you have the less there is left for me. In adding to your own wealth in these goods, you add to a common fund. Taking the *will to live' as a typical necessary interest, it is true that there are conceivable situations in which it is ** Either your life or mine,'' — chiefly situations in which life hangs on some physical condition. But when I regard life as a human life, i.e., as a process of thought, a constant exchange of ideas and appreciations, the disjunction, ** Either your life or mine" becomes absurd: I can have no such life unless you are there, and the more you have, the more I have also. With such goods all property runs to a common fund ; and in all exchange both parties gain without losing. Necessary interests may appear to be competitive if made to simulate the economic pattern, as when one claims a monopoly of an idea, and patents it. And there are simple devices whereby economic needs are made to appear non-competitive. They are arrange- ments for simulating the common fund and the process of exchange which are characteristic of the non- competitive interest. If we oblige each member of a group to get what he wants, not directly, but by way of a common fund, it is evident that he will be con- cerned to add as much as possible to this common f^^ ) 1 t 1 1, ■ i ' 6 202 SOCIETY fund, and so seem to have common cause with all the rest. And if we oblige members to pursue different tasks, so that each can get what he wants only by trading with somebody else, it is evident that each will be concerned to produce as much as possible for the use of the rest. But it is clear that these indirect methods of getting are artificial and must be enforced : they conceal but do not alter the competitive nature of the underlying interest. But social life must always be a union of both types of interest. And the union is to this extent inseparable, that there are no interests, however general, which do not require the private and exclusive use of some material objects, and so far take on the economic type. The will to power will thus have competitive and non- competitive ingredients. And the fate of our second postulate will depend upon whether these competitive ingredients can be subordinated to the non-competitive ingredients. ** Power,'' as Hobbes has accurately pointed out, quickly becomes the representative object of pursuit, as a symbol for all economic goods. Instead of working for them, we work first for power (or for wealth, as its measure) as a means to them; then as an end in itself. In spite of the contumely heaped upon the stock *' miser," this is a valuable transformation of crude instinct. **In itself,'' says Kohler, **the instinct for food is brutal. . . . This state of things does not change until the instinct for food is ennobled by becoming the instinct for wealth, and a certain system and order enter into the acquisition of material LAWS AND THE STATE 203 > ^ goods. '"^ But this transformation still leaves the competitive quality dominant. Non-competitive rela- tions are but simulated, as in the director strife for existence. I can gain power over a fish only by first offering it a service; but the tender of a meal to the fish is not an accurate index to my ultimate purpose. In human society as well, power is best gained indirectly, through proffers of service: you control me, f or the^ost^gart^jonly;^ by cjpntroUing what J. want, or think I want. But the phrase **Ich dien" only names the indirect route through which you mount to ascendency. Such power, in fact, is more essentially and more unremittingly competitive than any other motive, because while it is always finite in amount, it has no quantitative maximum. However much I have, another may have more ; and indeed the best way for \him to get more, if I have much, is by controlling me. ^Could ho-but-be sure^f this control^, he -^ovld have ievery interest to add to my own power; the greater (niy power, the greater his, — just as the greater the Ipower of a tool or machine, the greater the power of 'the owner. Thus the simulated identity of interests jmight come as close as you please to an actual identity jin appearance, while, remaining as far as possible from 'identity in actual motive. And it is ju st at this point, as thejqu est o f competi- tivje powers giawfi^- without linait^ that „ the sunulj^ed identity jnay_becpme_aA actual identity, and, ta ke on a genuine^n^iiHBompetitivejehara^^ For clearly the 5 Philosophj of Law, p. 46. » ■« :i ■ii 204 SOCIETY only way in which a finite being can ride to infinite or unlimited power is by finding that power in another being, or an unlimited number of others like himself ; and the only way in which such an unlimited number of others can be brought under his control, is that they shall freely come under it because he can actually serve them. And the only way in which he can serve an unlimited number of others is by providing them something unlimited in space and time, something of the nature of idea rather than of matter for consump- tion. One must perforce enter the field of necessary interests, end of funds naturally common, in order to win an infinite ascendency. But in entering this field, not only does his own power become potentially infinite, but so also does the power of every other. For every man has an idea, a view of things, which distinguishes him by birth from every other person; and the value of that idea, or * point of view,' to others is his chief excuse for existence as a human being. And while the work and thought of every man do in fact leave so much less for other men to do, the sum of things to be thought and done remains infinite, so that there can be no competition for new ideas. It is rare indeed that the workers in ideas so much as fancy that another has usurped their territory and stolen away their crown ; but if they fancy this, it is because they have not yet discovered their own territory. Jn ter ms of his .idea,_the^owerj3f each individual is potentialljjnfinite^^agd^on-i^^ The total accumulated power of mankind in terms of * ideas' (under which head we include conceptions LAWS AND THE STATE 205 M of beauty and of utility and technique as well as of scientific law and psychological insight) we call (now somewhat diffidently) ' ' culture. ' ' Any idea which you or I may have wins its control by entering into this growing body. And the exercise of any such power is instantly reciprocal. For to say that your idea controls me, and to say that I control your idea, are but two ways of saying the same thing. Your power is identically mine. Thus, so f^.^^ JL.substantial,and living culture exists, the^ will Jp. power_pf ,jany ijadi- vidu aLmay tgke^ og. a jwin-CQmp^titive^ meaning. Ill But ** culture" does not exist by spontaneous generation, any more than history, — the mental con- tinuity and totality of men,— exists by itself. Non- competitive interests of course exist in some measure wherever two or three are gathered together. But if we seek for a non-competitive form of power which shall be substantial and compelling enough to take up into itself all the competitive forms as subordinate ingredients, we can only find it if history and culture are created, that is to say, if by some positive effort the race is mentally held together. It is this necessity which produces the political State. The State is the objective condition through which a non-competitive satisfaction of the will to power becomes possible. The State is the condition under which alone our second postulate can be satisfied. It is no psychological accident, therefore, that the first business of the will to power in the order of time has been the creation of 't. :1 i tS- -i ^^1 r^ ■ ■'i u* . 206 SOCIETY political rule, and therewith of history and culture. By that deed, however violent, the crasser and com- petitive forms of this will have paved the way for their own subjugation under the more human forms. It is not altogether surprising that men have been somewhat mystified at the degree of importance which they themselves have ascribed to political entities ; nor that, becoming critical, they have often adopted, as Tolstoy, skeptical or anarchistic conclusions. For the deepest needs are the last to become completely self-conscious; and States have satisfied needs far deeper than the conscious purposes of their founders, which have apparently been for the most part of the competitive type, far deeper, too, than any economic interest. The dialectic of the will might not, of itself, have led to the creation of the State; for the State must appear as a fact to many minds at once, and not as a discovery of individual experience. But the State having been made, the human will can recognize it as that which it does in fact want: this subconscious recognition is the feeling of patriotism. It is the perception of necessary discontent with all ephemeral satisfactions, of the hunger for a permanent effect, and of the truth that the value of any human effect is measured by the dignity and scope of the tradition in which it lodges. Of themselves as units, men could not create, but only receive such a tradition: history and a culture are objects which no human being and no simultaneous group of human beings can manu- facture at will. Yet without them, their own worth sinks below the human level. It is for this reason. m LAWS AND THE STATE 207 whether they have known it or not, that they have placed the value of the existence of the State above the value of their own personal existence. To offer one's life for the State is simply to make the existence of the State one's first earthly business; it is to take part, whether early or late, in the foundation of the political entity, without which no man's will to power can find fully human satisfaction. Thus all men require the State, as a Third Being, whose power is their power, whose immortality is their immortality, whose total mind and appreciation is theirs, and of their works. It is only through the existence of such a Being that Weltgeschichte can in any measure become das Weltgericht, It is only through its existence that the race can come to com- plete self-knowledge, and individuals to their own through the self-knowledge of the race. It is not the will to power alone, but every instinct, that apart from the social order finds itself bewildered, not free. Its controlling canopy of meaning is feeble. Habits cannot take root and give way to habits better inter- preting it. In any community, instinct may find itself opposed to custom and law; but it still perceives its own meaning, perhaps the clearer because of the opposition. Destroy, however, the custom, the perma- nence, the regularity, the social requirement, the force of the authoritative dictum, ^*This is what you want and mean,"— destroy these, and instinct gropes in emptiness, condemned to many futile hypotheses. In a choice of evils, it is better to know yourself at odds with your social order than not to know yourself at all. :1 1^ j ■ It'. ,1 I h '4 1 la J, # 208 SOCIETY The State, I say, is required by all men, as a neces- sary object for the will to power, and therewith for every instinct. It is the feeling of this necessity and its logic, I take it, which makes man the zoon politikon: this is the anatomy of his so-called political instinct. I do not say that the State, and certainly not any specific State, is a sufiicient condition for such satis- faction. For there are States enough which neither welcome ideas nor admit the logic of non-competitive power. It is the necessity, not the sufficiency, of the State which I assert ; and thus a necessary preference for life within a State rather than apart from a State. And since a preference which is necessary is unanimous, we may translate the psychological neces- sity, if we like, into a unanimity of decision, whether self-consciously understood and admitted or not. And herewith we have the answer to the fundamental question of the social contract. All men must prefer the State; all men are consenting to the existence of the State. And the primary unanimity necessary to the sanction of any majority is thus established. IV The existence of the State allows the competitive form of the will to power to assume non-competitive shape. And through this fact the transformation of the more special desires from competitive to non- competitive forms may begin. The economic struggle for existence, and for better existence, becomes sub- ordinated to what is now, not merely as a pious wish but actually, of common concern, and is interpreted by > Ki LAWS AND THE STATE 209 it. Thus the division of labor and the process of mutually gainful exchange cease to be purely me- chanical advantages with egoistic background; they become an opportunity for individuality and unique talent and for thought-filled loyalties (Durkheim).* Competition is not abolished: it cannot be dispensed with, even as an instrument of my necessary interests in self-knowledge and self-measurement. But if in any contest for material goods, I fail, while you gain, it now becomes possible for me to say, with some degree of sincerity, **I will this result," on the same principle that a sportsman, while preferring the success of his own side may still wish, on the whole, that the best side should win. The only condition under which he or I can define our wish in this way is that the dispelling of illusions has become significant : there"are real powers to be gained, and in order to gain a real power, I can heartily wish the destruction of all power of mine that is accidental an4 fals^. And whatever I gain through any such system will have 'aT value Beyond the fact that it satisfies an « The polyhedral limitation of man hj neighboring men has long been recognized as the condition in which the awareness of his ethical qualities best springs up. '* Remember/' said the Stoic to himself when jostled in the crowd, ** Remember what it is that you want. At such price is sold your f reedomTTrom perturbation. ' ' Remember, we might add, in the pinch of specialization, at this cost must be sold your own knowledge of your destiny. Here again, the law brings about the situation that justifies it, the distribution of tasks out of which contract can arise as an expression of personal freedom. **For human civilization is only conceivable if there is a system among mankind that assigns each man his part and sets him his task.'' Kohler, Philosophy of Law, p. 4, Eng. tr. In America we might have written, **a system which incites every man to find his part and to take up his task." L^ :i :f pi l\i, I , J tl. ^ 210 SOCIETY economic need; because it comes as a recognition of my vaiidityT of my being on th^ right track, of the common consent tp^my^enjo^jpaent^t is mterpretedjn terms pf_my non-competitive will to power .^ Such transformation, however, would be gradual in an ideal State,— still more so in any actual State, where the results of competition are still governed by many factors irrelevant to personal worth. Where the game retains the general character of '*grab,'' competition will keep its predominantly exclusive quality and its primitive meaning: my gain is your loss. Hence the defgrraity of human nature in^ the State is not a niyth : we can only say that it would be still more deformed apart from it,^an^ Q»jy.bx.ikmd can it become less deformed. 7 In this way I should express Hegel 's meaning, in placing the stage of ** Contract in his system of right beyond the stage of *' Property. ' ' CHAPTER XXIX INSTITUTIONS AND CHANGE IDEALS and laws are fragments of institutions: institutions are permanent clusters of ideals, customs, laws. An institution, like a law, has to meet two needs and not one only : it must be serviceable to society ; it must also inform a groping individual what, according to racial experience or national experience, he wants, and hold him to that meaning. The insti- tution of property must make clear to him the com- pleter sense of his acquisitive and grabbing instincts. The institution of the family must interpret to him his instincts of sex and parenthood. Individuals do not always take kindly to the discipline of the institution, any more than to other discipline ; nevertheless, when the postulates we have set up are complied with, the hardships of this discipline have a meaning : they are part of the normal remaking of man. But the postulates are never complied with. The specific social arrangements we have described which tend to hold our institutions to their rightful purpose are but partially successful. We cannot say that social strains as we find them are pre-eminently informing and full of meaning. If it should be whispered of our institution of property that the results of competition and its hardships are largely »■'=' if* ' 1 'i ■^\ Ir' i;i^ 't ■f. 212 SOCIETY without human significance, I should not know how to refute such a judgment. Hegel was never truer or more illuminating than when he said that property and contract are essential ingredients in development of personality. Yet Hegel was surely a false prophet when he said that personality has no interest in the quantity of property a man has, its only concern being in the fact of having some property.^ As long as opportunity lurks in spots and is given chiefly to him that hath; as long as there are dearths of common mental food if not of other food ; as long as barrenness and absence of beauty and the burning out of health destroy spiritual hunger itself; as long as man power can be reckoned as horse power, intellects and loyalties flung into the hopper as trade assets, and women and children weighed in the scales of their present eflSciency without regard to any future, not to say sacred or immortal possibilities, — so long personality has a ^ stake in the amount of property one has and not in the fact only. And one who calls for * discipline,' in the sense of a hearty **I accept the social universe" and its rules, may find himself deservedly crying in the wilderness, if he blinks such residual deformations of the social order. Social unrest and undiscipline are founded on something more than untidiness of mind; they are built upon a belief that what has to be done had best be done by rebellion, overt or • — -"■' _ ^^^^^^ syndicalized. 1 Eechtsphilosophie, % 49. The whole attempt to eliminate quantity from the realm of spirit, in which Bergson is at one with Hegel, seems to me unequivocally mistaken. INSTITUTIONS AND CHANGE 213 ) But the worst enemy of a real grievance has always been the sham grievance; and the important thing is to aim our shaft at the right target. We dare not assert that these residual deformations are wholly without meaning for the freedom of human nature. It is a curiously distorted and unreal picture of human instinct that appears when we imagine each craving satisfied as it arises. Though such Utopias have often been tried, and are the food and drink of our super- ficial rebelliousness, t he thing is — I do not say prac- tically, but intrinsica lly — ^im possible . I venture the statement that the chief evil of most of our social hardships is not that they exist, but that they persist beyond their time. They play their part in a process which elicits the most subtle and most characteristic aspects of human nature; we can only estimate this nature rightly if we grasp this process in its entirety. / A satisfied man is certainly a man whose instincts are satisfied; but yet we cannot satisfy a man by satisfying his instincts in their severalty. H istory is an immense laboratory for this expggiment. The cushioning of human nature is always proceeding apace, according to the means and inventiveness of a social order. It is accelerated by the high premiums paid to one who finds new ways to minister to old wants, or who finds new wants to cater to. Whoever discerns a bump in the cushion, or what is as bad, a point of non-support, is made wealthy; and his device .If' fct 'h I .V V 214 SOCIETY swiftly runs the gamut from luxury to necessity. Thus the self -consciousness of all tends to the level of the most epicurean (though there is always a privileged region of society which receives first aid in this elimination of discomfort). The history of all this careful study of ease is everywhere the same: the /more our satisfactions, the less we are satisfied. Accordingly there is everywhere a contemporary criticism of the results of this ** progress," a criticism taking many forms, — often of ascetic practice and moralizing, or of a pessimistic denunciation of life itself as an embodied illusion, a cosmic hoax. Or another alternative dominates : the active satisfactions of instinct are set up at odds with the enjoying end f a gospel of active rather than passive self-sacrifice is preached, a gospel of work or of heroic Uebermensch- lichkeit, a call for the strenuous life, for ^energism' rather than hedonism, or even a clamor for war itself as an opportunity for venting the energies of men. The suggestions are many; but for us, ong^inference is clear. s The human being is adapted to maladaptation. This ( is perhaps his supreme point of fitness to survive on this planet. We are better fitted to walk over rough and rolling country than over the dead level of city pavements; a day's continuous marching over this artificially * adapted' footing leaves us with a greater fatigue than a day's tramp across country. Endur- ance and patience are not in the first instance Christian virtues, or even virtues at all: they are biological 2 As in Holt, The Freudian Wish, p. 132, etc. INSTITUTIONS AND CHANGE 215 qualities (closely related to the * delayed response'), fitting us for dealing with the unfit. A dog can hold for a long time the memory of an injury, cherishing without loss the unappeased impulse of revenge. What is sporadic in the dog, is distinguished in man, and applies to all his major passions. Man is the animal that can wait, the animal fashioned for sus- pended satisfaction. This power makes it possible for him to live in an uncomfortable situation while deliberately surveying it, and selecting the thrust most fitted to remove it. The extent of this power makes him in effect a divided being, who enjoys in the present knowing his enjoyment to be partial, while harboring a larger hunger, destined to indefinite deferment, yet identified most closely with himself and hence not suffered to decline.^ The man is to be found in his SehnsucM, his longing or yearning, rather than in his accomplished ends. Were it not for this capacity to retain wholeness of prospect in the midst of very fragmentary satisfaction (aided by a large power for vicarious enjoyment), it is hardly conceivable that we could tolerate, still less take as a matter of course, the actual suppressions of talent suffered in the ordinary specialization of activity, or even in the necessity (suffered by man alone) of choosing among many possibilities of action merely because the narrow time- channel is overcrowded with our plans. No being is so domiciled in mutilations as man. Whatever shape institutions must take to give completest vent to the possibilities of his nature, it would certainly not be 3 See Brown 's poem. The Eoman Women. i| 'M / i h j'i V3 216 SOCIETY a shape which allowed him nothing to criticise or to /reform. His fitness for the unfit must have its scope. 2. A completer view of the meaning of this paradox is gained, I believe, in what we have already learned of the structure of human happiness. The happiness of man consists in the satisfaction, not of his primary instincts in their severalty, but of his total or central will,— the will to power. And power, while it need not be competitive, can only exist where there is some- thing to push against, and will be in direct proportion to such resistance. Now the most humanly satisfying type of power, so we thought, is the power of an idea, whether in persuading other men or in shaping institutions. The exercise of any such power presupposes that in insti- tutions there are changes to be made; the^same type of maladjustment which might dispose us to pessimism may, from thfs standpoint, appear as a necessary condition'^'of "complete welfare. An unwitting, and hence all the more cogent, testimony to this fact may be found in the biography of pessimism, in the curious circumstance that when pessimism becomes a doctrine or propaganda, it brings with it the first stages of its own cure. And for this reason. That wherever 1 pessimism assumes poetic or philosophic garb, it has (already lifted its head above its preoccupation with instincts, and has begun a campaign in the world of ideas, if only to decorate with a cosmic frame its own sense-experiences, as did Omar Khayyam. The dis- satisfied spirit has begun, in its fancy, to be a creator of other worlds, having well shattered its own to bits, — INSTITUTIONS AND CHANGE 217 a creator of other polities, natural laws, monopolies, markets, pieties, scenes, adventures. And as within itself, the eternal Ideal plows up the field of a sodden humanity, it discovers in the career of its own con- demnation of life, as a form of thought, a life that is worth clinging to. For the pessimist, it is just his pessimism and its preaching that is of value. For this is his edition of the will to power through ideas. A world in which there were no institutional misfit v^i^T' would be a world in which such a wil]Jta.j[S2&r, or V indeed any other, would be as nearly as possible without human occupation; itjQaightj)royide.„a type of_happiness bovine^ or 3ng^c, but certainly^ not human. It would be natural, but still perverse, to infer from this psychological truth the desirableness of preserv- ing or courting or importing a degree of evil in order that human nature may gain full satisfaction. Men find, or once found, for example, a certain happiness in war : war is one way of bringing the will to power into operation against social evils, changing institu- tions, or at least leaving one's mark upon them; and there are occasions when because of abnormalities in political growth, social construction must take, like sur- gery, the paradoxical form of destruction. Yet no folly could be blinder than that of prescribing or seeking war as a remedy for the maladies of the human spirit : for no war can act as such a remedy unless it is just ; and no war is just unless it is inevitable. The place of a just cause of war, or of any other evil, as a pou sto in the process which makes our happiness, does not logi- i , n ■■■' •, I Ji^ rh' 218 SOCIETY cally admit it to any other place. The knight errant without a dragon or other foe may be a melancholy figure ; but he must still kill the dragon when he meets him, and not coddle him along to keep an exercise for his mettle. Likewise with our social misfits: he who should counsel others, or himself, to put up with such an evil because it affords pleasing activity to contend against it, is guilty of something more than a bull. Evil has its own sources; and there is no cause for anxiety lest there should be enough of it to make permanent opportunity for the powers of all men. For. a larg e part of evil is an incidental product of social progress itssJf. III The improvement of institutions, and social progress generally, is responsible for a certain amount of our awareness of misfit. For progress enhances sensitivity and desire, and both of these bring an increase of suffering. Everyone has noticed the ineffective efforts of children to place and diagnose their own pains. They are slightly cold ; they do not know that they are cold, but only that they are ** uncomfortable'': an older person must interpret to them their own restlessness. If we think of the child as more sensuous than the adult, we are mistaken. The adult is much more alive to sensations ; he has keener discrimination and keener enjoyment. Only an adult can be an epicure, or a colorist, or a musician. The child is incapable of being ** dissolute"; for nature entrusts only by degrees INSTITUTIONS AND CHANGE 219 the more poignant experiences of sense. The fitness of the arrangement is that the appeal of sense should increase only as the policy of the self develops to judge that appeal. The adult is defined as the person who can let things hurt, while keeping them subordinate to his central will. On the march, knowing that water is not to be had, one is able (as the child is not) to put thirst out of mind; busy, one forgets his hunger; conversing, bodily weariness drops away. Yet the same sensations, when they get their hearing, have a definition and force proportionate to the force of the central will. Mature self-consciousness means that every impulse of a many-stringed nature has a more perfect individuality. The organism can afford to be plural because (and only so far as) it is firmly one. This is hardly a merely happy adaptation of unrelated forces : it is more likely that the added mentality and horizon are direct agents in promoting the keenness of sense-experience.* A similar relation holds good between earlier and later stages of culture: the race is but gradually let down into the pit of the knowledge of evil, for it is an incident of the same process which, increasing goods and their appreciation, we call progress. Primitive culture is by definition a culture preoccupied in the external struggle, hence little free to delve into itself. The same changes of occupation that have brought economic power, have brought separateness of interest and the self -consciousness that is bom of contrast: 4 This is in accord with our view of the nature of pleasure and pain. See above, pp. 81 f. and 123, note. m ft ii. V I-'-; m :l 'Ivf •t i i 4 i i t ■;■. •Si •i' 220 SOCIETY ; herding and agriculture make occasion for setting my labor and its products against your labor and its products, bring private property with its relative solitude and concentration upon self, generate the scheming Jacob and the thieving Hermes. Division of labor likewise means a relative privacy in the midst of the day's work, and promotes comparisons of value and pains. Money, as a medium between production and consumption, means the necessity of enquiring into my wants before I set about purchase and enjoy- ment. All these things together mean increased atten- tion to pain and desire; quite apart from the similar result of gathering wealth, leisure, and the hastening of the cu shioning-proces s above referred to, with its inequity, bitterness, and reflection. Those who fall behind in the uneven social movement are hardly worse off in the physical life than in the wealth-less stages ; for the most part they are better off — thereJLa no. new sufferinig^ except^in^ status and pride. But old j)hysical evils have now become social wrongs, and hurt with a new pain ; the social difference sharpens self-aware- ness, and those who lose share as equals with those who gain in the added consciousness of the risks of fortune in goods and evils. Thug^maladjustmeiits v^j^h were tolerable and relatively unnoticed, because kept in the obscure margins of the mind, become intolerable, and begin to press upon the shapes of institutions. The very process by which discomforts are relieved creates the capacity for new discomfort.* 8 This is the social form of that endless chain which Schopenhauer found in the life of individual will. But it is not a treadmill. The INSTITUTIONS AND CHANGE 221 IV The circumstance of the origin of a part of social misfit, created as it is by growing social good, sug- gests that at least this part of evil is such as human nature is well fitted to cope with, and to take up into the activity of its own will to power. And this will be the case if institutions are plastic to the pressure upon them. The very misfits of the social order will be grist for human nature provided this postulate is complied with: Whatever in institutions tends at any time to deform human nature shall be freely subject y to the force of dissatisfaction naturally directed to change them. Any residual dissatisfaction with social arrange- ments may, in point of fact, be regarded as a constant force acting upon these arrangements, and sure, in the course of time, to have its effect upon them. There is an old physical experiment in which one is to put into a glass vessel a mixture of shot, com, sawdust, iron filings, etc., and place the vessel on a window stool subject to constant jarring by passing traffic. In course of time the mixed contents stratify them- selves in order, with the densest at the bottom. It requires no great force, but only a constant force — if there is sufficient motion — to ensure that any ten- evils are in new places. And old issues — some of them — are perma- nently settled. We have — as the flux-philosophers tell us — ^a perpetual movement, self -renewed : but it is not as they suggest a meaningless and directionless movement. km m i.-'. ^il 'if *i i » - ■ I, i , ii-i- ni % I'l 222 SOCIETY dency shall reach its goal. And so, wherever social shiftings take place, there is the opportunity for the \ edging forward of human nature. And as this chang- f ing and shifting has been going on for many ages, the probability is great that all the coarser and more serious maladjustments have been remedied, and that we have in our present institutions a fit in sketch of human nature in general. If institutions have not always submitted themselves to this pressure, it might seem that in our Western world at any rate, where all complaint is legitimate, every idea has a hearing, and the art of representative, if not of popular, legislation has appeared, a miracle and a godsend, legislation participated in by the consumers thereof, — ^it might seem that all institutions, after ages of cakedness had now finally reached a state of suflBcient flux. A nd in truth, the chief impediment to a free human nature is now, not social unreadiness to entertain remedies that are certain to cure, bjit ianorance, — ^imorance of its own desires and how to secure them. Legislation must, indeed, always lag behind the market-place in its part of the cushioning process; because its inventions, as distinct from the commercial kind, must be so far thought through as to take their place at once in an imposing system of ideas. The Laws, and must be suited to universal and compulsory consumption. In both cases we must get on by making multitudes of experiments and selecting from the results; but experimenting with a law must always be a graver thing than experimenting with a new / INSTITUTIONS AND CHANGE 223 breakfast food. Law-making is a most philosophic undertaking,— or should be. Otherwise it is either entangled in its own technique, and becomes a sinecure for all the self-interest and intellectual viciousness of its promoters ; or else, thrown wide open to the direct popular argument from sore to salve, it loses itself in temporizing, inconsistency, and rudderless drifting. Laws can only be competently perceived through institutions, institutions through history, and history through human nature. Nevertheless, a radical with a conscience and an intellect even moderately equal to his task has at this hour the world before him, a world desirous as never before to do justice through its institutions to all human needs. This world requires to be convinced only (1) that his remedies will remedy, and (2) that they will not at the same time destroy more than they create. And as a guarantee for this second and greater interest, it will require in him an under- standing of the history of institutions which sees in them something greater than shifting arbitrariness or rough expediency or folly and oppression, — which appreciates their slow tendency to bring humanity into the full birthright of its own freedom. For if society is conservative, it is so, at least in part, because it has something to conserve. If nature could not allow the growth of sensitivity in individuals apart from their growth in will, neither !. I i i ii«Qin'n' aI' ^^os.i\f.r^ {-^J^ midst of a book on the remaking of huma n nature must anticipate the end,^nd in some degree ^iFror-^ha- \ entire undertaking. But deliberate ed ucational ef fort has its own specific partto pl^; i55^;^r less separab le from othefpar ts of the rem aking process. -Sending *\ over the you nger generation during the long years fk^s^ be fore the full impact of lawand institu tionjsuallowed / ^ to_reach them^ transmitting its wishes throjo^ the protecting (and no dfoufet refracting) media of fa mily J ;1 t ' ;1 If] ' 'i ffl It. 228 SOCIETY and school, speaking at least as much through what it is as through what it tries to say for itself, society in e(}uciLtisg^is„je2JBrciaiiig. a function whose jpturcfisei like that of most natural organs, we but gradually become, fully aware of* In our day education affects the technical ; it becomes highly doctrinaire ; it is the jousting place of all the new realisms, pragmatisms, behaviorisms, psychologisms of all brands. We need to think anew of the nature of this organic function and of its control. There was a time when we might have defined educa- tion as a continuation of the reproductive process. Physical reproduction supplies more of the same species : social reproduction supplies more of the same tribe or nation. From the beginning of organized social life, each people has regarded its own folkways as an asset, distinctive and sacred; in imposing them upon the new brood it has supposed itself to be con- ferring its most signal benefit. And the newcomers, most of them, seem to have adopted this view: they have as little fancied it a hardship that the social order should impose its type upon them as that their parents should have given them their physical image. It has simply completed the definition of what they are. We have not outgrown this conception of education. We still speak of it as a * preparation for life, '"under- standing by 4ife' a cert^^n kind of life^ that which marks out our owiLgroupjoxLiiation. It still seems to us the essential failure of education that our children EDUCATION 229 should find themselves a misfit in *life'; so we steer them toward the existing grooves of custom as a matter of duty — I do not say of duty to society, but of duty to the children themselves. Discussing the place of classics in Prussian schools, Kaiser Wilhelm II said (December, 1890), ''It is our duty to educate young men to become young Germans, and not young Greeks or Romans." And what do other nations expect of their schools, if not to bring forth after their kind! What are the facts of our own practice! We certainly do not put all traditions on the same level, any more than all languages or all sets of laws. But neither we nor any other modern nation limits-its offermg to its own type. We tram our wards to some extent to become young Greeks, Romans, Britons, Frenchmen, Germans, Asiatics, as well as young Americans. We teach them history and geography, not indifferently, but still to a liberal distance from our own center of splace^ahd time. We pave the way to literatures other than our own. We discreetly announce the existence of other religions. Better than tnis, we offer them at the outset the free and primitive worlds of fairyland and legend where all desires find satisfaction. We give them poetry and drama, dealing with social orders invitingly different from the actual order, such as must set tingling any cramped or unused nerve in growing nature, and so give voice to the latent rebel in our youth, or the latent reformer. jQiir Jio mes and schools habitually look out upon 'tiie j^rorld' not as a decorous and settled place, but sfe a comparatively perilous and unfinishe d pla ces ciffliii^ * mi ll I I T IIIIMUMBUHBI M.. !!■ .-...» ^ g- fj t' s ■ ■,-. n 1 : % J: i^ hi * 230 SOCIETY for much courage and chivalrous opposition, requiring much change. The career of the hero who redresses an untold number of wrongs still hovers as a wholly accessible destiny before the fancies of our childhood. To this extent, we warn our success ors-to-be against our own fixity, put the world before them, and set them free from our type.^ Andlothis"^ extent, we recognize that educatiogJlAS two functions and not one only. It must c ommunicate thelypi, and it must provide for growth beyond 'the "^e. It is not ajpaere matter of spiritual reproduc- tion, unless W.lak^ reproduction in the wider sense as an opportunityjo begin over again and do better, IheTocus not alone of heredity but of variation and of the origin of new species. ' But why insist at all upon the reproducing of the old type? and why limit to *Hhis extent" the scope of the liberty of choice! Why do we not display with complete equableness all views of the best way of life and say, **Now choose; think out your course for yourselves"? Instead of teaching our children our morality, why not teach them ethical science? instead 1 Admitting all the abuses of mechanical and wholesale popular schooling, I must decline to believe as the primary truth of any modern nation that *at is not in the spirit of reverence that education is con- ducted by States and Churches and the great institutions that are sub- servient to them'* (Bertrand Russell, Principles of Social Reconstruction, p. 158; reprinted in America under the misleading title. Why Men Fight). I know of no society which fails to wish its children a better life than its own. And especially at this moment, in the war-ridden states of Europe a deep and pathetic tenderness toward childhood is evident, as if to say, *'We have made a mess of our world: yours must be a better one. ' ' This spirit is making itself felt in thorough revisions of the plan of education in France and England. EDUCATION 231 of religion, metaphysical criticism? instead of our political faith, political philosophy? instead of our maimers, the principles of aesthetics? In short, why not make thinkers of them rather than partisans? Why not abolish the last remnant of that ancgjstor- worship which 'awaife;:tt re^Ttew^lifrlgy^ theTmsSingTife? The answer is, we have no right to aim at any smaller degree of freedom than this, nor, for the most part, do we: but before a completely free will can be brought into being, iris first necessaryirHmiig^into beingirw[II.TrEe manifest absurdity of asKng a child to choose his own moral code and the rest is due not £tt6fl6 t(r the fact that he lacks the Materials to choose from, but still more to the fact thaiNie does not know what he wan ts. The first task of educatldn is io hrmg ^ hjs jull w ill into existence': And Ihly call UUly bU dOlift'"'?^^ bya pro6(*yH HU Intitrm^'tEat in doing it the type is inevitably transmitted. The whole meaning of educa- tion is wrapped up in this process of evoking the will ; and apart from it nothing in education can be either understood or placed. 11 The will can develop) only as the several i^^jtincta wake up and supply exampleapfjhe goods and evils of experience.. To bring instincts into action,^ ll that any social environme3rTr^a"d6 (anTalmost all it can do^) is to supply the right stimulus^ together with an .4 2 Noting in passing that the exhibition of instinctive behavior often acts by suggestion as a substitute for the direct stimulus; and in gre- ■P«WW» j.t! . (H if '■' '' t '■ 1' 1 4 - J i 232 SOCIETY 52^ indication of what the stimulus means. A response cannot be compelled ; for whatever is compelled is not a response. No behavior to which we might drive a child would be play: if playthings and playing com- rades fail to bring out the play in him, we are all but helpless. A response can only be e-duced. If we were dealing with an organism whose instincts we did not know, the educing process would consist in exposing that organism, much as one would expose a photographic plate, to various environments to see which ones would elicit reactions. And in dealing with a new human being, always unknown, the work of educing his instincts would likewise consist mexposin g him to those stimuli which may appeal to him,— to "speech, toTKngs^graspable or ownable, to color, torm, music, etc., to the goods of cleanliness, truthfulness, and the like. W^hat powers any child has of respond- ing to these things, whether or how far they mil take in his case, neither he nor we can know until^e has ^een exposed— and perhaps persistently and pamfully exposed— to specific examples of these goods. TM s exposure isj hf fir^t work of education. And the first peril of education is not that the child's will will be overborne, but that throiJgh no exposure or ina deq uate exposure to the objects that would call out his best responses, he achieves onlj^alf a will instead of a whole one, a will partly-developed^ garious animals as an alternative stimulus. And further, just as artificial respiration may lead to actual breathing, so a mechanical repetition of instinctive behavior even under duress may sometimes work backward, as if breaking a way though an occluded channel, to set an instinctive impulse free. See above, p. 148, note. EDUCATION 233 and therefore feebly-initiative, casual, spiritless, unin- terested. If I were to name the chief defect of con- temporary education, it would not be that it turns out persons who believe and behave as their fathers did — it does not : but that it produces so many stunted wills, wills prematurely grey and incapable of greatness, not because of lack of endowment^ but because they have never been searchingly exposed to what is noble, generous, and faith-provoking. Mr. Bertrand Russell voices a common objection to immersing the defenceless younger generation in the atmosphere of the faiths religious and political that have made our nations.^ Has he considered whether in these faiths there lies anything more than the wilful choice of an unproved theory, anything of human value such as a growing will might, for complete liberation, require exposure to? Politically guided education, he feels, is dangerous, and so it is. But I venture to say that the greatest danger of politically guided educa- tion, particularly in democracies which feel themselves obliged in their educational enterprises to cancel out against one another the divergent opinions of various parties, is that the best places will he left blank, because it is on the most vital matters that men most differ. The pre-war experience of France in secu- larized education has furnished a striking instance of the principle that in education a vacuum is equivalent to a negation. In one case as in the other, instinct is robbed of its possibility of response. Children have rights which education is bound to/ 8 Principles of Social Eeconstruction, chapter on Education. .!f *S', i & till tiki ^ W« il I' 11= 234 SOCIETY ^ The first of these rights is not that they be left free to choose their way of life, i.e., to make bricks without either straw or clay. Their first right is that they be^jKemUomethins positive, the best th e group haT^o far found . Against errors and interested EDUCATION 235 propaganda the growing will has natural protection : it has no protection against starvation, nor against the substitution of inferior food for good food. No social authority can make pain appear pleasure. No social authority can make a stimulus of something which has no value. But it is quite possible, through crowding out the better by the worse, to produce a generation which thinks ** push-pin as good as poetry," prefers bridge to sunsets, or worships the golden calf. Ill But there is a radical and obvious difference between exposing a plate to the light and exposing a human instinct to a possible stimulus. Anybody can expose the plate, a machine can expose it : the operation and the stimulus are alike mechanical. But for the human being there is many a possible stimulus which lies partly or wholly outside the world of physics.* In these regions of experience, neither a machine nor any random person can achieve an exposure. It is true that for most of the * units of behavior' which men have in common with the rest of the animal 4 As an example, the stimulus of the * instinct of curiosity'; see p. 62, above. It is important to bear in mind through this discussion that the 'stimulus' of an instinct is understood to be *the perception of the end as the meaning of the initial situation ' ; p. 42, above. kingdom, the stimuli are strewn about in such profu- sion that exposure takes place with little or no need for social guidance. It is a commentary upon the artificiality of our urban society that a Mme. Montes- sori is required to remind us of the need (among other things) of suflficient and varied tactile stimuli in early years. Haphazard encounters with strings, stones, and sticks, now kept carefully * cleaned up' and out of reach, aided by personal struggles with the more exact weapons of toilet and table, once provided most of the stimuli which we must now measure out with . psychological ingenuity. Hereby we are making no doubt essential progress in self -consciousness ; butiox-. vounff children, country life nnri nrlf Ijglp arn fltill ^iiieuimiatched educators of their primary instin cts. ^ •"-But for the specifically human developments of instinct, the stimuli are commonly either non-existent or imperceptible except through the behavior of other human beings who are actively responding to them. Of these, the principle holds that no one can expo se a child to that stimulus unless he himself ap preciates jf . Ima^he to what experience an unmusical person might expose a child under the name of music. Consider what it is to which many a human being has been exposed under the name of mathematics. To many the true statement that number is an object of pro- found instinctive interest' would appear a mockery because, having fallen into the hands of the Philistines in the days of their initiation into the world of number, BAs an ingredient in the satisfaction of various central instincts; see above, p. 64. , 236 SOCIETY they have never so much as come into view of its peculiar beauties. But it is especially with regard to those modes of interpreting instinct which constitute our moral and religious tradition that this principle becomes impor- tant. For no one can so much as present the meaning of an idea of this kind,— let us say of a particular way of meeting pain or injustice, a Spartan way, a Stoical way, or some other,— unless he himself finds satis- faction in that idea. And then it follows, since sat-^ isfaction and happiness are highly convincing states "of mmd (understanding by happiness not temper a- InentaTgaiety, but the subconscious and hence serious affirmation of life as a whole by the will as a whole),— it follows that children will tend to adopt the beliefs ofthoselirhom they^ instinctively recognize as happy; I > W »— im j < . »,^„^ and of no others. This is both a protection to children and a danger. A protection: for surely the child who has found no hero in the flesh from among the supporters of the existing order is in no danger of being overborne by that order. If a tradition can get no great believers, it will die a natural death. If the wilder people are genuinely the happier, — ^Bohemians, declassees, gay outlawry in general, — ^it is they who will convince and be followed. If sobriety, self-restraint, all the * * awful and respectable virtues" have a value, whether as necessary nuisances on the way to some great good, or as goods on their own account, they will find a following through the persons of those who are EDUCATION < 237 enamored of those goods, so far as such persons become known. If the social group is simple, any genuine values it has will be likely to find their way into new minds. One of the most marvelous examples of social con- servation has been the transmission of folksong; yet if any tradition has been spontaneous and unforced, this has been. But in our mod ern complex and split-up societies, the chances grow large that many children are never reached by our best ideas, trans- mitt ed through an overworked and not markedly i^>»,^appy teaching body.* In any case, what is transmitted is that intangible thing we call belief, the effective belief of the teaching surface of society. And since the type of any society ^ If the chief excellence of teachers in a parsimonious democracy is to spend much time, teach as many as possible, make neat reports show- ing high averages of prize-made punctuality, and 'prepare* their charges for the enjoyment of something else than what is before them, we shall produce and deserve little else than a constitutionally weary and common- place citizenry. The idea of ' preparation, ' an indispensable workshop notion for those who consider educational systems as a whole, is a disease when it be- comes prominent in the minds of the children. What children, and poets, never forget is that **Life is now! the center of the universe is here! the middle point of all time, this moment ! ' ' If children are led, for example, to read good writers in order that they may hereafter enjoy good writers, their chance is lost. The only justifiable reason for putting a good writer into their hand is that he is good and can be enjoyed then and there. I do not say understood: for children have great powers of living on a future understanding. That the first qualification of a teacher is to be happy has perhaps never been propounded as an educational doctrine. Yet it is a fair question whether truth has been more harmed by those who are wrong but happy (if there are any such) than by those who are right but unhappy. 238 SOCIETY is chiefly d efined by its prevale nt beliefs, we see why it is that thTprocess of bringinga wiU into existence inevitably tends, as we said, to reproduce the type. "^Perhaps it is the best of our values that leaTThe most perilous lives, are most easily lost or defaced in the relay of the generations: but determination and system will not save them. Ethics and religion must be removed from set courses of public instruction 'iinless the believers are there ; for mechanical teaching oTthese things is worse than none. Every society has, IBeside its rebels who are frequently persons of great faith, many members who have dragged themselves barely to the edge of a creed ; what such persons trans- mit is hardly that creed, but a pestilential belief in the moral painfulness of one's intellectual duty. But given the belieyer^ the more vigorous and affirmative his belief , the better. Life becomes worth living according to the greatness of faith, not the lack of it. If any element of a great faith proves wrong, its greatness survives as a standard to be reached by what displaces it. According to this measure will be the dimension of the wills we develop. IV But beside the dimension of the will, Hnepropoftion of the will is also a matter of importance ; and to this ^ end it is the business of educatiqn^toseethat none of the more gen^Minstinc1^r'?^^raa^*^instm^^ have an inadequate exposure.. There is in the human being, as we saw, a large EDUCATION 239 power of substitution among the instincts, and this power increases as the central current of the will grows strong. Hence as children get older it becomes less and less important that all the possible * units of behavior' should be proportionately called forth. It is a pity, to be sure, if the climbing period goes by without a fair exposure to trees, fences, staircases, shed roofs and the like ; but the loss is not irremedi- able. If however any of the more general instincts lies long latent, as in the case of a delay in the use of language which might retard the development of sociability, the loss is more serious. Let me speak of some of the questions of proportion which present conditions of life more especially raise. A fair balance ought to be kept between the instincts that deal with persons and those that deal with things. The small arts developed by handling, exploring, controlling, making, and owning things must furnish all the themes for the give-and-take of primitive sociability : only through the administering of such all- important privileges as those of * hollering down our rain bar '1' or * climbing our apple tree ' can the various shades of amity and hostility be realized. The chil d 's social life will run shallow unless his physical interests ^re vigorous. It is true that the deeper his roots strike into the material world and its mastery, the more occasion there is for pugnacity, the more difficult the personal problems aroused; but also, the more significant the solutions when they come. It is a mis- take to try to impose a premature altruism upon these concerns in mine and thine. The two sets of impulses. / 240 SOOIETT competitive and non-competitive, must grow side by side and to some extent independently before they are ready to recognize their relationship. Meantime, the instincts occupied with things indicate by their strength the degree of mastery over nature we are destined to; and the qualities developed in their exer- cise are the most primitive elements of 'character' and the foundation of all likeableness.' Thus what these instincts seem to take from social quality, they pay back again. But between the pnsseaaivejgd masterful interest in things and the friendly interest in persons there is Being 'alone' has pSsiibilili^r^f (iiMi^ation "tiiat a compamofM come not merely from hands and senses but from thought and fancy. A child's fear of solitude is an evidence that his imagination has already begun to work in this direction ; and what is needed in order to reassure him is not that nature should be deper- sonalized, but that his instinctive personifying tr^t/^/ should be made a resource. The growing self, if it is to acquire depth, has need of a region not intruded upon by other human personalities, not even by such as move across the stage of history and literature. 7 What attracts us in another, old or young, is- always the sign not of animal vitality primarily but of validity, the quality of spirit which is challenged and evoked in the elementary struggles with the inertia and refractoriness of physical things: resourcefulness, persistence, grit, integrity, fertUity of design. Power over nature is the most summary expression of what a spirit ought to have, and does have in proportion to its degree of reality: it is this degree of reality which we most imme- diately perceive in another, and which is the foundation of Ukeableness. '^'^. EDUCATION 241 While he is in this human company the initiative of his own thoughts is perpetually broken : the impulses of mental play, as sensitive as they are precious, may easily be discouraged and weakened unless an en- vironment is found which is at once an escape and a stimulus. Our over-socialized city-bred children often lose the capacity to be *by themselves' without intol- erable tedium. Normally, however, 'nature' means much more than permission to ruminate : it is a posi- tive educing force. For nature appears to humanity everywhere, and early to children, as (more or less cheerfully) enigmatic: it is deceptively quiescent, or it is eventful but with invisible agency; it teases out essays in interpretation. Society drives away the muse, — it * amuses ' us : but in the presence of nature the thread of our fancies is drawn at once into the living'TaFfic^ of the world, making connection in the freest, and I believe not untruest way, with the spirit that dwells there. Thus the foundations are being laid for a thoughtfulness more than literal in its quality, which may ripen in one direction into scien- tific observation and hypothesis, in another toward merging with the poetic and animistic gropings of the race.® In any case, since the imagination is actively, not passively engaged, and the mental furniture is 8 In making this plea for the encouragement of an anthropomorphic imagination, I am shamelessly favoring what Professor Thorstein Veblen has called the *' self -contamination of the sense of workmanship'* (The Instinct of Workmanship, pp. 52 ff.), a deliberate mixing of the per- sonal and impersonal phases of the world which it may prove difficult later on to resolve into a wholly naturalistic deadness of attitude toward the physical. I do so with my eyes open. What and how much solitude may mean to any child cannot be told 242 SOCIETY one's own, oTiPj;£ turns to his so ciaLworl d a little mo re than before a self. An individual /-«iinfc is growing whTch in time mgJyTiave^ j^^ own contribution to the We-think of the crowd. ^ But whether we thus deal with the ^-think,' or as above with the ^-own,' it is clear that we are at the same time dealing with the ^ I-can. ' TiiodlUopower, because of its central position, i^ l^eing e ducated m e^ll education.. But this fact does not imply that the will to power needs no distinct attention. It has its own technique to acquire, and its own interpretation to find: and everything in the child's further career depends on how these problems are solved. Like all the more particular forms of instinct the will to power needs to be developed by deliberate exposure to its S^Tind of stimulus, — difficulty , and to its own type 'qt good, — success. Play, we have said, may be regarded as practice m success. The play obstacles are so chosen as to be surmountable; the play-things oppose no ultimate resistance to their owner. But that which seems the in advance: education can only effect the exposure, not at first without guidance, and certainly not without noting results. Let me quote from a letter written by Sir Eabindranath Tagore to Mr. Frederic Eose, Stockton Heath, England. ** Mornings and evenings (speaking of his school in Bolpur) fifteen minutes^ time is given them to sit in an open space, composing their minds for worship. We never watch them and ask questions about what they think in those times, but leave it entirely to themselves, to the spirit of the place and the time and the suggestion of the practice itself. We rely more upon the subconscious influence of Nature, of the association of the place and the daily life of worship that we live than on any conscious effort to teach them. ^ The same principle in a different mood is found in John Boyle O'Beilly a poem ''At School.'' EDUCATION 243 opposite of play, the set task, is needful to provide the complete stimulus for this instinct. We need not open the old debate whether the will is best trained through what one spontaneously likes or is 'interested' in or through the opposite. Kant and William James are far apart on many matters; but in this they seem to agree, that for the sake of habitual freedom from the domination of feelings it is well to do voluntarily a certain amount of what is hard or distasteful. But I presume that they would equally agree that there is li ttle value in effort for effort's s ake : there is as little (o be gamed from pure diflSculty as from pure^e ase. The right stimulus for any instinct is *the perception of the^^oftlF^Hfthe meaning of tke begin ning' ;^ the right stimulus of the will to power is tne gi immel^-g gl possible success, which is another name for hope. The only significatit difficulties, for purposes of education, are those accompanied by hope. It is thus as idle a procedure to exhort the child halted by an obstacle to *'wo rk it out for himse lf as it is to do the work for him : there is no more dehumanizing state of mind than the perpetuation of directionless effort in a despairful mood. Education in such a case consists in supplying the halted mind with a method of work and some examples of success. There are few more beautiful miracles than that which can be wrought by leading a despairing child into a trifling success : and there are few difficulties whose principle cannot be embodied in such simple form that success is at once easy and revealing. And by increasing the difficulty »P. 42, above. 244 SOCrETY by serial stages, the small will, under the cumulative excitement of repeated and mounting success, may find itself far beyond the obstacle that originally checked it. S uch use of mental momentum is a practice wh ic h I believe all instinctive teachers resort to. And it shows incidentally how false a guide 'interest' may be in education when taken as we find it. Lack of interest in any subject depends, for children, far less on the nature of the subject than on a persistent thwarting of the will to power in dealing with it; interest accom- panies any task in which a mental momentum is estdB- Ushed. But momentum can l)e gained only when 'difficulty can be indefinitely increased, so that the very conditions which may discourage, drive'away interest, ahd even induce loathing of a 'subject, are conditions which make great interest possible when the will to power is called into lively action. We may put it down as a maxim of education, so far as interest is concerned,— Without difficulty, no lasting interest. But after the education derived from play, and from the set task with its relatively prompt conclusion, the will to power has still to learn to deal with the situation of indefinite delay. If it is hard to point out what instinctive satisfaction can be found in a deferred success, it would be hazardous to assert that there is no such satisfaction, when we consider that the greatest of human ends are such as are never finally achieved. The imagination, the I-think, would be cramped in any house narrower than infinity ; and it is through them that the will to power can be led to its next stage of development. By the aid of imag i- BDTJCATION 245 nation I can count it a success to have made a definable approach to a distant end ; and thus increasingly long series of means thatlie between initial effort and attainment can take on the meaning of continuous successes. If our view of the State is right," it is.anly_ as we become capable of taking an interest in perm a-i nent and ciimulatlve objects that the will to powe r can^subordinate its competitive to a non-competitive charac ter and so become thoroughly social And it musFbe seasoned to delay, before the problems with which adolescence confronts instinct can be even fairly well met. v-^ The strain upflninatinctat adolescence is d ue largely^ to the~3e^^Jinposed on the J.ing^dggaLilf. acquisition-- and^sex. The vigorous ways of primitive food-getting and property-getting have to recognize their trans- formed selves, if they can, in the devious routine of labor and exchange. The sex-interest, under any set of customs so far proposed, must learn to express itself for a time in partial and sublimated forms. The circumstance that children usually grow up in fami- lies is nature's simple and effective device for im- posing on the powerful current of sex-feeling its presumptive meaning: every child starts life with a prejudice to the effect that its affections will lead it sooner or later to found a family resembling (with improvements) the family from which it came. But when sex-interest becomes a practical personal im- 10 p. 205, above. f-d-d-^^vc^r^y 246 SOCIETY i pulse it outruns the restricted possibilities of family^ founding; it meets on every hand the unexplained check, the unexplained inner compunction quite as much as the unexplained social ruling. Inhibition and prohibition alike mean delay; and the tendency of alDT delay is to cast the energies of impulse upward into the region of dream, romance, speculation, substitution. ^ Here the will to power should provide the great natural resource ; and will do so if it has been linked with imagination. Delay becomes supportable if imagination gives the * prolonged vestibule '^^ the shape of a conscious plan, with the many possible successes of approach : and for the acquisitive impulses this may at least ease the situation. But delay becomes mo re than tolerable, it becomes significant, if ii affords lee- way for the creation of the plan itself, enlisting the inexhaustible plan-makhig^ impulses of the youthful brain. Here the possibilities of the imaginative will to power are so great that it may assume an actual equivalence for the satisfaction of other instincts ; and in particular the creative element in the sex-impulse may be largely absorbed or *Bublimated* in the new preoccupation. For at adolescence there is at least one such task ^>f^ . ^ 11 III W I III 'I .ii.--<-~— »"■«- creation which the will cannot escape, that of construct- ing one's philosophy. The youth finds himself, at his own estimate, for the first time an equal among equals. There is a change in the order of authority. Children have an appetite for authority corresponding to their mental unfinishedness and rapid growth; with_ado- 11 p. 178, above. EDUCATION 247 lescence comes a sense of competence a nd a dispositio n ^be critical. "TTie"conceit of opinion in the adolescent is not empty: it is base d on a readiness to assum e responsibility, and on an actual assumption of respon- sibility in the work of mental world-building ii not"of physical world-building. He appreciates for the first time that he has his own life to lead| he finds himself nioraliy alone; he can no longer endure to see things through the eyes of others. In dealing with this readiness to assume respon- sibility and with its accompanying conceit — the in- stinct of self-assertion' as it is called by McDougall and others — ^we commit some of our most serious educational blunders. We customarily put the boy into continued schooling where his powers of serious action beat the air, and we rebuke his co nceit by external pressure: the first wrong brings the second afterit — eontihued schooling is inevitable and not necessarily unnaluraTnG>uFt he"onIy correctiv ejor the conceit, or rather the only right environment for ^.^X^ this new_ development of instinct, is the acliial respon.- r- Ability it craves. ^Our school" days and years ^ve their intervals ; and those intervals should be, at least in part, intervals of earning a living. The boy who passes his adolescence without knowing the feeling of doing a day's work for. a day's wages is risking not only a warp in his instinctive make-up, but a shallow- ing of all further work in school and college, because of_a lossjofjco.ntaci-3rith this a.ng1ft nf reality at the, moment when his will was ripe for it. The mental helplessness of many students who cumber the colleges If 248 SOCIBTT ^ \ of this and other lands.jthe^disp ositional snobbery an d self-saving of many an oveF-confident and over-sexeH ^outh sent out as^ educated > to justify once more the spirit of rebellion against the mental and moral in- competence of those who assume to lead and govern, has much of its_„ explanation in our_f aUH§_aO jg^ST' The marvel is not that such misshapen births occ^; the marvel is that young human nature shows such magnificent self-righting qual ities wTien its will ''to power is once thoroughly engaged. But whether or not the concrete re sponsibiU ty he craves is permitted him, the responsibility for mental^ world-building cannot be refused the adolescent, and lb will take it. This is the natural moment for tearing down and rebuilding the beliefs absorbed during the era of his subordination to authority. Youth is meta- physical not because metaphysics is a youthful malady but because youth has metaphysical work to do ; it has been attached to the universe through the mental veins of its authorities ; now it must win an attachment of its own. The old structure of Jbielie£ will not be wholly abandoned,— it may not be so much as altered ; but it must be hypothetically abandoned, surveyed from out- side largely by the aid of the materials" furnished the imagination in early years, the young Greek, the young Utopian we have implanted in the young modem. That to which one returns is th en no longer anothey ^s, but one*s own.' Originality is not measured by the amount'orc^ge, but by the depth of this re-thinking. It is originality of this sort, another name for 'individuality,' which is chiefly at stake during ado- EDUOATION 249 lescence. J[f ^the will to power cannot takejhis meta- physical direction, individuality will be curtaiJedlnri ts ^ ffl*owth. If self-assertion takes the form of rebellion against restraint of sex-impulse, individuality win be the loser not the gainer. For sex-expression is the merging of the individual in the currents of the genus ; and early sex-expression signs away just the last and highest reaches of individual development. It ensures mediocrity, and by a curious paradox, conventionality of mind: nothing is so uninventive as ordinary sex- rebellion. Only deferment and sublimation can carry individual self-consciousness to its own.^^ VI If the instinctive life of adolesce nce is to be domi- nated by the will to power in the forin of creative tMnMng^lEeTmpuTse and power to think must be well gro^nr- "whereas originality of this sort is the rarest ^iinltlCl of our education. The abundant will of childish curiosity which should now be brimming into the channel of explorative thought, we are commonly compelled to see running dry, Is it necessary to stand helpless before this serious failure of the attempt to educate ? 12 There is a similar loss through hasty self-assertion in the direction of the acquisitive instincts. To win the early attention of the market it is necessary to offer something new. Novelty is a natural product of thought; but premature gathering of this crop has a biological reaction on the root. The normal source of the new is not direct attention to the new, but attention to the real; the novelty that comes as a result of the painful quest for novelty will prove in the end to be a mere variation of a conventional pattern, like the scenarios of our movies, and so in time to pall by its tawdry repetition. V4 250 SOCIETY The difficulty does not lie primarily in the fact that explorative thought is the most arduous way of mee^ iZ life whether for educator or educated. It is :^t^^ much simpler for ^f^f^^^^^^^^^:^ fied solutions XT^T^^t^^^r of the manuals of casuistry, tnu actual hypothesis in favor of \^^^'f\^''^'^Z But the difficulty is that -^h the besi^of j^^,^^ of Explorative thinking c^^|3eJ^sSi2L^te.°* krf In ^ttexnptrng to c^SS^t^^S ^s a solution, never the mental process that reacnea if In our laboratories we iride'rtake to teach saen- ffic'metLd, the method by which ^^^^r^:^ successors made their discoveries ; but our typical Toduct still lacks something that was in Galileo Sr Bernard ShawVas^Yevealed to mankind these^e ffE^din's art; yet no one _t_akes_ Boding place _Th altempt to tranSimt"onginality, and the attempt to transmit tradition are in the same case: if with the >'Z^n could be given the power that cr^atedj tradition would have few enemies. ^^^f2.iZZ\ quite imitates; education never educes the most vite power. ,'Platonism produces no other ^^^^^^l^ iianity yield,. 90 pther Jesus nor P^"^; J* ^^l^^^^^;* trying to Unserve itself, every society and every tSon puf out all its efforts to make new prophets new iconoclasts, it would still find itself conserving the S unless th; spring of that unteachable power can "^'itttr; that we realize most keenly that ed^on i^^ lalt llysis mustbe on the part of the edu cator EDUCATION 251 a study of self-elimination . It has throughout a para- doxical character. In those beginning s of independent thought which we found in the * companionable interest in nature, 'TBFnrtijf^cxpfmttT^'in^ of sociely by society, a self-effacement which must gradually become complete. It is the moments of loneliness that are critical for the spontaneity of the inind ; and they can T)e to some extent procured~for the growing self by increasing the opportunities for learn- ing through one's own mistakes, through experiments In opposition, and through attempts at the solitary occupation of leadership. But s elf -eliminating is not a purely negative pro- cess ; for explorative thought has never been a purely disconnected fact in the universe: it has had its sources, and the last rite of the self -eliminating art would be to point out those sources so far as we know them. We may at least conduct our youth to the farthest point on our" own norizon, to the point from which all that is tentative is seen as tentative, all that is small as small, all that is human as merely human. **For each man,'* we may say to them, ** there is a region of consciousness more nearly just and free than others, looking out toward absolute truth, if not seeing it. In all ages men have sought out this region, and have found there a promise of freedom from all residual tyrannies of custom and education ; and from this source innovations without number have made their way into social life. What men have called their religion has been the inertia-breaking, bond-breaking power, the mother of much explorative thought. It 252 SOCIETY has at times exercised a, tyranny, of. it8..0A«ii^a^^^^ but you may be left with good hope to win it, for truth is no dead thing, but is itself a spirit." Society, I dare say, has never been wholly false to this self-displacing conception of education: even its most hide-bound orthodoxies have produced characters capable of social and political resistance, revolution if need be. And the modes of conduct which it has attempted to transmit have been derived seldom from a direct study of its own welfare, chiefly from its own view of the dictates of this more absolute consciousness. i, „^ For this reason, in our own study of society we have given littie attention to specific transformations of EDUCATION 253 instinct. If anything is discoverable more adequate and final than a given stage of social transformation, it is that which social education reaches toward, and which alone can concern us, even as social beings. But our view of society as an instrument of remaking would be incomplete without some account of its nega- tive action, its dealing with the rebel and the criminal. CHAPTER XXXI THE BIGHT OF EEBELLION SOCIAL pressures are not unlike physical pres- sures. They consist usually of a push and a pull acting in concert— a vision of good and a fear of evil. In a given society every member is subject to the same general pressure,— and though some will be nearer the fear of pain than others, all will be cognizant of, and governed by, the prevalent social punishments. For punishment is but the realization of the threat implied in all pressure ; discipline and punishment are insepa- rable and co-extensive in their domain. "Whatever justifies the one, justifies the other also. Our position has been that social pressure, and therefore punishment, is justified by the fact that it tends to realize the individual's will as it could not otherwise be realized,— i.e., in so far as our four postulates are complied with. And if there were any part of institutional life of whose value to individuals society could be absolutely certain, it would be justi- fied (by our last postulate) in conserving that part with all possible force, i.e., in resisting with its whole force any rebellion against it. But taking our human ignorance and need of per- petual experiment well into account, is there any part of our institutional life which can claim such wholly THE RIGHT OF REBELLION 255 certain and irreplaceable value? Nothing, unless what is necessary to meet a necessary interest. Such a necessity we have recognized in the simple existence of a social order, and of a political form thereof. • But we cannot argue from this necessity' that any given society or state is necessary; it is only that some particular state is necessary. Nevertheless, existence in such matters is a great merit ; and under the condi- tions we have named the existing society and state are always the best,— the conditions, namely, that it is willing to become the best and is offering itself in good faith as agent for this becoming. The good faith of the critic of society is tested, then, by his willingness to use society as agent for its own improvement; he is willing to criticise from within, not from without. The individual bearer of progress has always this in common with the enemy of man- kind, that he attacks existing custom. But the vital difference is that the former works through such political good will as is extant, accepting in full the obligation to replace what he rejects,— the latter rejects the obligation with the custom. The former knows that there may be one point of absolute worth in a mass of evil, namely, good faith in abetting reform. If this good faith does not exist, he might seem justified in rebellion. But the good faith assumed in this theory is not found either in the social order or in its critics. On both sides the interest in justice is mixed with what- ever malice, greed, lust, and callousness still lurks in 1 The logical error of Hobbes ' theory of sovereignty lies here. >i 256 SOCIETY human character. The art of social life, and of politics in particular, is to deal not with perfect beings, but with fallible and defective wills. The question is never simply. What exists! but rather. What can be made to exist? And the issue of rebellion, and of its* treatment, is not simply, Does good faith exist! on one side, or on the other. It is the presence or absence of faith in a possible good faith that decides the issue. This issue, by its very statement, lies in regions inaccessible to observation. The last relations of individuals and societies are found in the darkness of solitary judgment. Here lies the perpetual and un- avoidable opening for tragedy in history, the mutual condemnation of wills who with like rectitude are unable to reach either understanding or trust. It is idle to suppose that any legal formula can be laid down to determine when a rebellion is justified ; it is equal folly to infer from the absence of such a principle that rebellion is always unjustifiable. The issue does not lie within the legal order, but it is a definite issue. Within myself I know whether I must condemn and attack the order in which I live as an order so far corrupt that no good will of mine can hope to mend it. And my society, and my state, know likewise whether they can still have hope of me, and whether, therefore, they shall take my outbreak as a rebellion, or as a common crime. CHAPTER XXXII PUNISHMENT IT is important to make this distinction between the rebel and the criminal. The rebel is he who is consciously and hopelessly hostile to the social order. The criminal is he whose deed implies a rebellion ; but this implication is not the conscious and avowed intention of the deed — ^the man has simply taken what he wanted in disregard of socially declared rights.' The act of the State, in each case, is to make the external status correspond with the internal status. The rebel by his overt deed has shown himself inwardly condemning his society, and so external to it in will: society makes the exclusion visible, and as final and irrevocable as it conceives his will to be. It has not first to enquire what the rebel's rights may be; for he has rejected his rights under that order: the rebel is the lost soul, and in excluding him society is but dealing with facts, and pursuing its own duty of conservation. As for the criminal, the act of societv is first to compel him to face the ignored element of rebellion implied in his behavior: he is ** arrested,'* — i.e., at once checked in his policy and compelled to 1 To this extent all crimes come within the legal category of 'negli- gence.' They have, of course, the psychological character of ''sin'* — the rejection of meaning — ^but here the meaning in question is limited to the idea involved in the defined *' rights" of the social or legal person. 258 SOCIETY reflect and decide in full consciousness of the meaning of his act. The social exhibition to the criminal of the meaning of his act is ^punishment.' Punishment is thus a hopeful policy; it argues ^ faith in a possible good faith.' It exceeds the criminal's right, in so far as society might have insisted upon the implied rebellion ; but it does not exceed the right of the human being regarded as changeable. The converse of this proposition is also true : the only hopeful policy is a policy of punishment. It is a prevalent sentiment that the treatment of crime should aim only at the future, heal the disturbed mind, and drop all thought of retribution, which looks vengefuUy to the past. As if we could deal with the future of a human mind except by dealing with its maxims; and could deal with its maxims except by dealing with the deeds which those maxims have produced ! It is only when we give up a person as hopeless that we cease to take issue with the decisions that reveal him ; he then becomes to us, in fact, a determined Thing, and is excluded from our society as effectually as if by some magic curse we had transformed him into an autom- aton. By such self-contradictions false sentiment never fails to reveal its own unreality. Punishment, I repeat, is an expression of social hope— the hope of remaking or saving the man, by revealing to him in the language of deeds the meaning of his own deed. Thus the typical punishment of crime takes the form of simulating the treatment of the rebel, the rightless man : it is an exclusion from society, within society,— an incarceration,— an exclusion that may be revoked PUNISHMENT 259 when the argument has its effect. The argument is clearer in proportion as the element of physical suffering is minimized. The suffering of punishment should reveal the worth of what the criminal has ignored: his liberty, his free companionship and friendship, his political powers, his ability to make and execute plans in the community at large, his right to build continuously on an achieved degree of power and station, however modest. Discontinuity is a suflScient argument, — ^if any argument is suflScient. And if none is sufficient, the criminal is indeed the rebel; and must be so treated. The exclusion must be as permanent as the unconvinced will. The truth is that society cannot punish unless it can create a *^ conviction." For as long as the criminal retains the maxim of his deed, his suffering is a mere hardship, — not an argument. The hardship becomes punishment only in so far as he perceives and accepts its meaning. There can be no retribution without reformation; this is the true principle underlying modern changes in the treatment of delinquency and crime. And the same principle reveals the inherent difficulty in the whole theory of punishment, as an incompletely transformed exhibition of social resent- ment, or pugnacity. For society fails to convince, and must always fail to convince, unless it actually has in itself the good faith and good will of which it would persuade him. It must be able to point beyond those maladjustments which have borne hard on the indi- vidual, and have made society itself a partner in his crime, to the only pure and eternal element possible 'if 260 SOCIETY in a hmnan society, the will to correct with h^ help its own errors. But punishment, having the «.^t«^°^ Ipe of revenge, and administered by something less than holy wills, runs counter to thxs revelation and obscures it. The punishment of crime is, in form, torr crime. Th! act of punishing aWs^ntams elements which tend to defeat its own «^t«^t^«°_^; the executioner and the warnor, though their offices were sanctified, have been «««f ^^^^^f T' "^ he hands of those that have carried -^^^^^^f^^ ^'^ necessary meeting of evil seems attended with the fatality of participating in the evil. The same motives which in the dialectic of expe rience drove individual expression of pugnacity from purhment to forgiveness thus have their force in pic action also; but the State cannot follow the dialectic to this point. The State must pumsh. It 1 y and does exe'rcise clemency; but clemency can be Srective only as following upon that conviction which s te essence of punishment, and which invokes arrest and trial-or forced discontinuity of action however brief. The State, speaking as it must to the inner intention through the medium of deeds }.a. no ^ay of distinguishmg a clemency prior to all pumsh- lent ram a meaningless passivity. Further since the criminal while possibly citizen, is al- possibly rebel the State must recognize both possibihties. The State "trZ-and this aspect of the matter has not been forgotten in theories of penology, but has seldom been rightly placed-the criminal is not the only one who PUNISHMENT 261 is to be punished for his crime. We have said that every member of a society is under the same pressure ; we may now say that every member is under the same punishment. The only justification for treating the criminal by the educative method of punishment is that he is, after all, of like mind with the rest of his group; and they, in turn, are of like passions with himself. It was this which, in primitive society, made crime a common menace, calling for public, and not merely for individual purification. The theory that the gods must be propitiated was a mode of expressing an actual condition. For in all minds, and not in a few only, the goods which constitute a common culture retain their persuasiveness only by perpetual contest with the superior obviousness of the material goods and the direct ways thereto. The deed of the unper- suaded man, painted on the imagination of all who know of it, conspires with the natural gravitation of the human will. The relatively defenceless and vulnerable fabric of the necessary good has been attacked in all minds ; the plague spot which appears must be taken as symptomatic. A white slaver appears in a public tribunal, and unblushingly expounds his occupation as a form of business ; and as I read his testimony his * point of view' penetrates farther than my ears, and I must take thought to revive the sources of my indig- nation. *^When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst with him and hast been a partaker with adulterers." The community has thus a work to do which is not limited to the person of the criminal. This work is sometimes spoken of as '* deterrent, "—and so it is. m ^ p 262 SOCIETY but this is a partial and an after-effect ; in its imme- diate force it is punitive,— "^i is the share of the entire community in the suffering and purging which belong to the thoughts of crime. It is not that the criminal is suffering for the community; it is the community which must suffer for and with him, must have its sympathetic share in the argument of his punishment because of its equally sympathetic share in his crime. Hence the language of the State must be stern, unmis- takable, public, and awakening ; the State must punish, to remake the souls of all. II The Dialectic of Punishment Dealing with crime thus involves a dilemma: it is necessary to provide crime with its argument ; yet in doing so, society provides it with an unintended argu- ment against itself. Whatever is defective in the spirit of a community will show most clear in its treatment of crime whether harsh, malicious, brutal, sentimental, or simply callous. Public resentment is never a holy reaction, unmixed with impatience, contempt, and a desire to be undisturbed in its own more decorous selfishness. The man who is caught feels through the net the cunning eyes of the uncaught. By a deep-wrought law of nature he attracts the worst side of the social temper to himself : the pursuer of crime adopts the arts of the pursued, and becomes like him in quality and habit. It is hard the dialectic of punishment 263 to deal with evil except evilly. Even expletives of condemnation vulgarize their users: one who employs much vituperative language becomes assimilated to the images he habitually invokes. In condemning the vice that most tempts him, the hypocrite has commonly found a subtle way of self-indulgence. The extreme hostility provoked by crimes of sex is due in part to the participation which their cognizance imposes, and to the sense that resistance itself has forced an unwilling consciousness upon their victims. As administered by human beings, punishment contains a self-defeating element. The history of criminal law shows mankind early aware of this difficulty, and devising various ways to meet it. Blood vengeance, which speaks in the name of the sacred spirit of the family, is an advance upon individual vengeance. Something exalted and heroic may enter into it ; adversaries in feud may recognize in each other the requirements of spirit and honor. Yet the deed of honor fails to convince the family spirit which is its victim; it simply transfers the necessity of honor to the alternate member of the feud, whom it has treated as an equal. Hence it fails to punish. And it cannot punish, unless it can escape from its simple opposition and equality into a region inclusive of both members and their passions, a region in which it can appeal to the criminal as endowed with a right not alone to judge and punish, but to close the argument by restoring the disturbed status. Such a region was provided, by a true social instinct, in the ancient places of asylum, which were not merely t ' 264 SOCIETY places secured from violence, but also places whose sanctity could overawe the minds and passions of both accuser and accused. And that sanctity to which the culprit might run for protection, having shown itself so far beneficent to him, would be more nearly convincing in its condemnation. The issue of such an interval of security, with the advantage perhaps of the passionless judgment of the guardians of the place, would partake of the nature of a true punishment. But neither the interposition of asylum, nor of judgment, nor of ordeal, nor of more rational trial procedure,^ could offer the convicted person much hope of restoration, at least as an intact individual, if given over at last to the mercies of his accuser. To this extent, another device, that of payment or compensa- tion, to be accepted in lieu of death or mutilation, more nearly conveyed the meaning of punishment. It also tended to temper by reflection the passion of revenge ; but this time by a calculating reflection instead of a dominating religious dread. The spark of valid resentment was certain to be somewhat diluted in the desire of gain, and most patently to the accused, whether the payment was taken over by the accuser, or appropriated by the common or lordly purse. The demand for a preliminary confession and apology, while it mitigated the venality of the transaction and 2 It must be remembered that criminal procedure becomes a part of punishment inasmuch as it determines the meaning and temper of the punishment. It is the subject and verb of the 'sentence.' THE DIALECTIC OF PUNISHMENT 265 made the criminal a party to his own condemnation, hardly secured the sincerity of the conviction. The experience of the Greeks, embodied in their legends, well shows the logic of the situation and carries the problem a step farther toward solution. The iniquity of vengeance would appear at its height when crime broke out within the family, and so involved the curse of repeated family crime, such a curse as befell the ill-fated house of Atreus of Argos. Atreus, the wronged husband (according to the version of ^schylus), had no choice but to impose banishment upon his brother Thyestes. But Thyestes taking refuge in the city sanctuary keeps alive by his presence the element of rancor in Atreus; so that at last the outraged spirit of family honor vents itself in a counter-outrage upon the remaining spark of sacred feeling in the outcast himself, his affection as a father betrayed into eating the flesh of his slain children. Thus Atreus, in punishing, injures that which in punishing he seeks to preserve ; and so with each new step in the tragic history. Orestes alone, driven rather by the command of Apollo than by personal bitterness to the matricide which avenges his father, seems to have acquired an honesty of spirit that might reconcile Clytemnestra to her death. But the deed of vengeance is greater than his consciousness of it ; its objective impiety he cannot overcome in an adequate sense of its divine necessity; he, too, must be tormented by the Furies. He has not been suffi- ciently inspired to convince the guilty woman, hence \rc t^ 266 SOCIETY his attempt at punishment is not free from gmlt^ Apollo, apparently helpless, discharges ^^^^ f "%«f responsibility by appeal to the guardian go/^ess of a very human civilization, Pallas Athene. And she in turn, finding the case "too passionate for a goddess still further humanizes the solution by mstitutmg the court of citizens, the court of the Areopagus whose first work will be the judgment of Orestes. Judging as men, however, they can but find both for him and against him: no act of human justice can solve the riddle and discharge the Furies from their work. It is Athene who must turn the scale,-and apparently hy an arbitrary touch, whose meaning remains a xnystery even in the work of ^.schylus. She neither sanctions the act of Orestes nor condemns it; she regards it-so I interpret the legend-as an incident of a faulty social structure from which no perfect solutions can come. Orestes has the benefit of the historic chance that he stands on the threshold of a new order, which no merit of his could have created. And what is the principle of this new order? It is the dissolving of the family group, within which all pas- sions are so strained that no guiltless punishment is possible, in the political community. Under the auspices of its divine protector, this commumty can bring a perfect passionlessness into the judgment and punishment of crime, and purge the process of the barbarism of personal impulse. The wrong done to the individual, and to the family, is sunk in the wrong done to the city-state; and the city acts by reason without wrath. The Furies are therefore freed from THE DIALECTIC OF PUNISHMENT 267 their mission and from their character; they become henceforth the "gracious goddesses," enshrined within the precincts of Athene's sacred hill. Punish- ment at the hands of the State unites the solemnity and refuge of the sanctuary with the rationality of measure. Ought it not to convince the criminal, and so solve the problem? Our solutions are not fundamentally different from those of the Greeks; and our experience in view of these historic experiments may reveal the defect of its principle. The great success of this political process is that it localises the hurt, saving the accuser from a further crime; it has shown no great power to persuade the criminal. Indeed, the impetus of the accuser 's resentment is so far cheeked that the accused seldom feels in public custody the element of asylum which might provoke in him some sense of approval toward the auspices which judge him. Perhaps this resentment is too far impersonalized. Wherever feeling runs high, there is still a tendency to evade the circuit through the public court, and to appeal to the "unwritten law" — which means the primitive pro- cedure — or to the duel, or to the summary process of Judge Lynch. The theory seems to be that the culprit should not be spared the sting of feeling. The practice is at odds with the theory, because conviction cannot be produced in a medium of either fear or pride. But the criticism points in the right direction: the State has cut away too much of the meaning of ancient law : it is passionless without spirit; in becoming official it « 268 SOCIETY has lost the co-operation of the presiding goddess. The family could not be official : hence it must give way to the State. But in losing the solemn concern of the spirit of the family in the apathetic equanimity ot Pallas, that spark of feeling has been eliminated which alone can positively persuade. The State cannot import feeling into its procedure; though in its own dignity, if it has any, it may make contact with the sources of feeUng. The State must use the language of the external deed. If this deed is to become an argument, it must be interpreted by the criminal himself; and he will so interpret it only if he sees in it the deed of an august beneficence such as commands his reverence as well as his fear. He must see it as the deed of an ideal social order not wholly identical with the order in which he finds himself entangled. What the State alone cannot command must be supplied by those free elements of society which continue the motives of the ancient family bond and the place of refuge.' It is only through a pervading activity of a consciousness such as reUgion in times past has called out in men, both accuser and accused, and working in con- junction with the official procedure of the State, that a genuine punishment, and hence a genuine restoration, can be accomplished. .Attempts are made to proviae this missiBg element by personal indulgence as a mitigation of punishment, in the hope of humonng men back into good nature. This is a false hope, not m what it adds, but in what it lets go. The test of success is that in the midst of punish- ment, the State itself (and not an indiyidual warden) commands respect and good-will. THE DIALECTIC OF PUNISHMENT 269 ' Thus in the negative work of punishment as in the positive work of education society in remaking human nature seems to depend, for the last quasi-mirax5ulous touch of eflSciency without which the rest of its work has the ring of hoUowness and sham, upon an agency or agencies beyond its own borders. To the quest of these ulterior agencies of remaking we must now turn. >9 r\ PART VI ART AND RELIGION J.J^iT. ? * f m CHAPTER XXXIII VOX DEI IN the transforming of man, society intends to civilize him, religion to save him. In these terms there is a suggestion that the work of society is more or less superficial, that of religion more radical and thorough. Man conforms his mind and habits to social requirements and becomes 'polite': he submits his soul to religion and becomes *holy.' But there is reason to question whether this tradi- tional distinction can be maintained; or whether there is any legitimate distinction at all between the work of society and the work of religion on human nature. To make man a social being, to lead him out of his egoism and barbarity into the liberal interpretation of his interests afforded by civic life and its destinies, is not this to make him a religious being in the only sense of religion that has valid meaning? In the early days of human organization, the dis- tinction between the social and the religious could not have been drawn, not because all religion was social, but because all social requirement was religious. The setting-up of ideals, the defining of customs, the giving of laws were understood as the voice of God to the people. Vox populi had no other existence than in vox Dei. If the interests of society were at all diver- gent from those of religion, there was little oppor- 274 AET AND RELIGION tunity to discover the fact : for when the ordering of life is singly and simply from above, there is no comparison of standards, and hence no rebeUion in the name of a social value. But the time was bound to come when the two rules, the sacred and the secular, should fall into contrast, if only because of their diverse methods of origin, the sacred relatively a priori, the secular relatively em- pirical and pragmatic. And when this opposition has occurred, history seems to show that the destiny of the sacred is to yield to the secular. Tabus accumulated beyond endurance ; were long protected by faith and fear; but they have been swept away. Holy men tell into the way of announcing counsels of perfection such as would mutilate or destroy human nature,-the sacred books are full of such counsels: for these, practice provided an interpretation, such as all la^s need- and the interpretation quietly superseded the announced ideal. The establishments and ordinances of religion became extremely costly to society, m men and time and treasure abstracted from social use, and not infrequently too, in moral integrity: neither socia utility nor social ethics would sanction many ancient forms of sacrifice. But the race has believed in its social standards as against the oracles, and these extravagances of religious requirement have dmndled or disappeared. Today it is frequently asserted by the exponents of religion themselves that our best insight into the will of God is the verifiable welfare of society. Our religion seems to become, in effect it not in name, the religion of humanity. vox DEI 275 ; Thus the question has become acute whether the reference to God is any longer significant. Is it more than an imaginative widening of the horizon under which the same acts and qualities are required, a changing of names, as from * goodness' to * holiness,' or from 'crime' to 'sin'? The tendency of history is unmistakable. From ''The voice of God is the voice of the people" we have come to "The voice of the people is the voice of God"; and it may well be that the time has come to drop the "voice of God" as otiose, frankly acknowledging our final insight into human standards as "from below," i.e., from expe- rience, socially transmitted. If we any longer main- tain a separate place for religion in the work of trans- forming human instinct, the burden of proof is upon us. I accept the burden. And I begin by pointing out an error in the logic of the argument we have just reviewed. The course of history seemed to show that the will of God has tended to coincide with the weal of society ; the inference was that the weal of society is the inde- pendent fact, and hence the only fact that need be considered. The inference is hasty. We may accept the proposition. Nothing contrary to the welfare of society can be accepted as the will of God. But the postulate that A must not clash with B does not in the least inform me what A is. I must plan my house so as not to destroy the trees on my lot: this condition does not supply me the plan of my house — ^would it did! Religion must not tear down social values: — 276 ABT AND BEUGION this condition does not supply me with a reUgion. • What history suggests, at most, is that the welfare of society has a negative or critical bearing on the inter- pretation of the religious standard. We may be negative pragmatists in the matter.^ But there is not the slightest evidence, so far, that the will of God is deducible from the good of society as an independent And there is a large volume of evidence to the contrary. Let us make the questionable admission that we know and can define what social utility is ; it is still true that the socially useful has never been reached by directly aiming at it, but has always come as a result of aiming at something else, as an independent object. Social cohesion, loyalty, lawfulness are dispositions upon which every social structure depends, but which society cannot directly produce. Already in the speculations of Plato and Aristotle we find a deep anxiety as to what education, what myth, what music, what lie if need be, will be likely to generate the spirit from 'which socially useful be- havior would naturally follow. Arguing from history, ^ it looks rather as if there could be no social good, unless there is something more than social good as a primary object of pursuit. In point of fact, society has always had its religion in some form,— a principle of devotion which has pervaded the social tissue, acting more or less like an enzyme in furnishing energy and loyalty at points 1 For the meaning of the phrase 'negative pragmatism' see my book, The Meaning of God, preface, pp. xiii f . vox DEI 277 ^-.•JLk needing support. Law-abiding behavior could not be reached by the separate attention of each citizen to each law: it has to be reached for the most part through a disposition which of its own motion is *'the fulfilling of the law," or the major part of the law. The man who measures each step by the law is not the good citizen; he who watches the law, the law needs to watch. There is a ** spirit of the laws," something which one might call a moral substance, which shows itself in a spontaneous faith in current institutions and ideals and fellow citizens, a willing- ness to serve them and work with them, ajpirit which society can neither give nor take away, and yet without which there is no society.^ I prefer to describe this spirit a s a mor al substance * because when we look into it more closely it is not simply a subjective temper but also a world of objects engaging each individual's interest and will in logical independence of his social entanglements ; and in this world of objects we recognize the accumulated goods of both religion and art. These goods do not arise 2 Mr. Graham Wallas has shown, in a fascinating study, how the practical art of politics is concerned with what is instinctive and emo- tional, not alone with what is reasonable or reasoned. He regards it as somewhat ominous that this art betakes itself so frankly to ''exploit- ing the irrational elements of human nature which have hitherto been the trade secret of the elderly and disiUusioned ' ' (Human Nature in Politics, p. 177). The chief peril, as I see it, is not that political mana- gers will address themselves to the unreasoned, but that they will make a wrong guess as to the nature of the unreasoned sentiments they have to deal with. When one leaves the rigorous path of influencing the will of one^s fellows by argument alone, everything depends on what passions one attributes to them. If with Bolingbroke (to use Mr. Wallas 's illus- trations) one fancies himself dealing with 'that staring, timid creature, > I w^ 278 ART AND RELIGION apart from social conditions, and are commonly reck- oned as social products; but they appeal to the indi- vidual as an independently appreciating being, as an original self. Because this substance has always per- vaded society, its real relation to society is obscured; and an attempt to define society apart from it would be felt as a mutilation of society. But this circum- stance only makes stronger the contention that social good, defined apart from religion, is not self-sufficient. And I shall try to indicate a method of comparing the relative functions of each which will admit the comparison with justice to both sides. It is characteristic of the development of human beings that the will to power tends to assume from time to time the character of some leading interest, which becomes the center of values for the whole life. This leading interest may rise to the level of a passion. In a boy's growth to maturity we can trace a series of these absorbing concerns, seldom coincident with the tasks set for him by his elders, but merging at last (generally speaking) in an * ambition' which at some time or other struggles for supremacy with a personal man, * the result is likely to be supercilious and deceptive political action. But if with Disraeli one realizes that *Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions, never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination,' there is room at least for a generous interpretation of the unreasoned motive. Benjamin Kidd seems to have been near the ground of experience in judging that the unreasoned element in politics, in its last analysis, is a loyalty of religious character. The ebullition of national feeling at the outbreak of the war showed, especially in France, how politics in times of public stress tends to avow a lurking religious ingredient, while patriotism tends to coincide for the moment with religion. VOX DEI 279 affection. To these two major passions, ambition and love, correspond two major groups of institutions, those of the public order and those of the private order, as we shall name them. These together con- stitute 'society' in so far as society has a definable entity apart from religion and art. Now what society does for human nature depends on how completely it can satisfy the individual will. A man can be said to be saved (to adopt the religious terminology for the sake of our comparison) not alone when he is reclaimed from rebellion or criminality; he is saved in so far as he is 7iot wasted, in so far as the human material in him gets a chance at self-expression and utilization. In this sense the question for society is how much of each member it can save, not merely how many it can preserve from disaffection and rebellion. Putting the question in this way, it is clear that society never does save the whole man. In general, society saves, or conserves, as much of a man as can, at any time, find a valuation. It saves as much as it knows how to use or esteem. The remainder is wasted. And it may easily be that the better the case any set of institutions can make out for itself as a whole, the worse the plight of that portion of human nature (if there is such a portion) which it cannot satisfy, because it does not understand. We shall attempt to estimate what part of human nature can be thus 'saved' by the public and the private orders, at their best. CHAPTER XXXIV THE PUBLIC OEDER AND THE PRIVATE ORDER POLITICAL and economic institutions we have recognized as the particular playground and home of the will to power, so far transformed that the success of one does not necessarily mean the weakness or defeat of another. These institutions may be described as the * public order'; and in this form, the will to power may become the passion of * ambition.' To realize his ambition an individual must market his talents, i.e., put them into a form in which they serve other men, or seem to do so. Hence just in so far as a man can be summed up in his marketable talents, he can find satisfaction in the public order. The world grows catholic in its power of appre- ciation; a greater variety of talent finds its market. The man who today may be a poet — and make a li^dng by it — ^might once have been by necessity a minstrel, a priest, or a cobbler : the public order has not always had a place for poets. Even now, the public judgment of beauty is so far uncertain, and therefore imitative, that the artist risks the fate of being either neglected or lionized ; there is not as yet a firm, discriminating, and sober estimation of his worth. Apart from those who despising the public refuse to join to their art THE PUBLIC ORDER AND PRIV^ATE ORDER 281 the effort to be intelligible (I am not speaking of that vulgar inversion of motive which seeks advertisement in conspicuous violence to common standards), there are presumably always a number of lost poets, prophets, philosophers *'of whom the world was not worthy": in the nature of the case, their existence must be conjectural. It was not until Greek times that the man whose gift for pure science was not conjoined either with religious inspiration or an inherited fortune could find a footing : and even now, for the most part, he must unite this gift with the interest, or at least the occupation, of teaching,— usually a natural and most helpful union, sometimes a disastrous one. Individuals may still go astray; but at least the class has come to its own. We have names for *poet,' * artist,' and the others; we know the type of service, and value it; almost we have conventionalized the hardship and poverty once associated with it, as a bungling penance. But what of the services for which as yet no category exists? Is it clear, a priori, that I must fit into any of these traditional rubrics, ''doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief"! If none of these is tempting, the public order still bids me ''choose"; — or invent and persuade. The category itself becomes something of a menace through the type it attracts, a type which may repel the finest quality in its own kind. Francis Thompson was a poet by nature, if ever there was a poet; yet not even his own self -consciousness could find its rightful certainty and pride until the many judgments and pressures of the world had harried him into a course of slow self-destruction. \ ■ ;' , 282 ART AND RELIGION The marketable man is never the complete man in his uniqueness; and conversely the whole man is never marketable. But where the public order thus largely fails, the private order wins a measure of success. The private order comprises the institution of the family with the quasi-institutions of friendship, amusement, and society in the specific sense. Here it is anything but a man's market-value that determines his survival. He is valued as much for what he cannot express as for what he can. It is the * pilgrim soul,' unar rived, that is perceived and esteemed. The private order has its dominant passion; it attempts to satisfy the whole man by satisfying his sociability— or, more particularly, his love. The instinct we call love, whether in its special or more general forms, is mani- fested in a craving which relates precisely to this unexpressed, or * subconscious' region of the will. Its language is the language of signs and symbols rather than of words ; and where it adopts words, it imposes on them, through poetry, the character of symbols, with the task of carrying unreachable meanings. This is the interpretation which society puts upon the instincts of sex and parenthood. What love wants is a mutuality of life in which each appreciates in the other what he in substance is, rather than what he does. Thus the private order is adapted to save much that is lost in the public order. As the self of imme- diate expression can reveal more than is seen in the self of marketable technical expression, love does not make its judgment or its choices primarily from what THE PUBLIC ORDER AND PRIVATE ORDER 283 it finds in the sphere of work; it looks to the self of play, of art, of bodily beauty, of manner and carriage, emotion, aspiration, religious feeling. In the economic virtues, the ability to endure hardship and to use common sense, love is not unconcerned; negatively speaking, the beloved person must not fall below the average standard of prudence, competitive spirit, persuasiveness, eflSciency. For these are essential parts of the definition of a human being ; they are, like the courage expected by chivalry, a test of the quality of the self of sentiment. It is for this reason that love must be * practical,' and takes ambition itself under its control: but these things have no part in defining the principle of selection itself. The family envisages the public relations of its members within its own inclusive understanding of them; it presupposes the results of their activity there; it uses these results. But it subordinates them to what it alone can see. So far, the family is more inclusive, more satisfying to human nature, and in this sense greater than the State, together with all the professional and indus- trial groups or guilds within it or beyond it. But it is also less than the State, in so far as the public order remains to it a mystery. The family is unable wholly to follow in thought the self that is valid in the public order, and estimate its achieve- ments. The man who goes to work, goes 'out,' — and into another sphere of thoughts and standards. What the family grasps and uses of that self is its total achievement, not the method and articulation of its work. It is sometimes, in the complexer activities, ^\ 1 1 I. 284 ABT AND RELIGION unable to estimate even the moral quality of that public person ; we have grown used to the picture of the crook who remains the moral hero of his family circle and perhaps of his friends also. It tends to make its own loyalties and amenities the measure of the whole character. Hence the public order sets up counter claims ; and requires that all love shall show its value for ambition or pubUc service. It has its opinion of the over domesticated man. The State has allowed the family its great privacy and subconscious develop- ment, less because of the satisfaction its members found there, than because of the fact, noted by Aristotle, that the strength of the private relation is a measure of the possible strength of the public interest, and that private intercourse brings certain necessary contributions to the life of the State. The direct question : Which is your more real self, that of the public or that of the private order? most persons would find it hard to answer. It may be that the sexes differ in their natural finding of the dominat- ing order. But for both men and women, both orders are necessary to a complete personality, and in the arrangements of life, each order, and each passion, takes its turn at hegemony. The honors are divided by alternation, and not by a disjunctive choice. But this solution by alternation is not a solution of the psychological problem: neither order is capable of including the other,— are both together, in their alternation, capable of freeing the entire man! CHAPTER XXXV SOCIETY AND BEYOND SOCIETY EVERYONE'S daily program falls into an alter- nation between the public and the private order. This is not a matter of convenience alone: it is a psychological necessity. And the necessity is more than a need of supplementation. It is true that each order does, in the way we have described, compensate the individual person for the lacks of the other order, and forms a refuge from it. The life of the family is narrow, over-personal, and subjective, and creates a need which the public activity in some measure appeases. The public order is hard, over-impersonal, mechanical, superficial, relying overmuch on the suffi- ciency of analytical intelligence : it drives back to more complete and intimate realities. But the relations between the two orders are deeper than this of supple- mentation. For neither, without the other, can success- fully do even its own part. Each to some extent pre- supposes the other, — a fact which is not wholly ob- vious, but which can be made evident by considering what each order requires. The tendency at present is to distinguish sharply between a man's capacity for marketable service and his private life. It is in the public order that the maxim. Business is business, holds good : we ask what r. i ^! jll il 3 iMi I *! I I I" 286 ABT AND RELIGION you can do, and if you do that well we ask no further questions, and assume no further respon- sibilities. There is a great relief and freedom in this ; ** toleration'' wins more by it than by any other drift of the time. Because of the cash-nexus, with its impersonality, a man may now sell his labor, as Arnold Toynbee pointed out, without selling himself. Yet in all this it is not ignored, but assumed as under- stood, that the success of any man's service depends on a state of mind which the private order keeps alive. I do not mean simply recreation and rest, though this is part of it: I mean confidence, independence, and originality of mind. What any man brings to market is something which he, as a total and responsible agent, can perform; he brings his inventiveness and powers of discretion. The least of public servants is expected to exercise a degree of mother-wit. If at any moment the motive force of the public order should be reduced to the momentum of its own definitions, its wheels would stop.^ It is an undefined contribution, the life conferred on the mechanism, including the power of seeing things whole and judging them soundly which, on the psychical side of the account, is exhausted in the course of a day's work: and it is this which the private order must be counted on to restore. Success in the public order presupposes a state of mind given by the private order. 1 1 am told that syndicalism in France and Italy knows a mode of strike in which, instead of refusing to obey rules, all rules are literally obeyed, — and no more: the employer, it may be the government, is deprived of nothing it has contracted for, but only of judgment and good will. SOCIETY AND BEYOND SOCIETY 287 But does success within the private order presup- pose a state of mind given in turn by the public order? What corresponds to success in the private order is simply the winning of love, i.e., being acceptable or prized as a companion. And in judging acceptability the private order is indeed likely to ask few questions about the nature of the day's work. Yet acceptability builds on that work with the same tacit understanding. Here again I do not refer to the visible or invisible *' means of support" which the private order con- sumes: I mean, again, independence and reality of mind. Although instinctively one expects that his own liking will find response, one is always more or less aware that this response is conditional. It is not an axiom that one must have any friend at all. If such fortune comes, it has a kind of corroborative force : to be loved is a high order of validation.^ And if this private world of mine does not respond, I am left curiously uncertain of myself, as if I were somehow unreal, and for that reason unable to love rightly. Love ought to be a form of the will to power ; and my love has no power. I find myself willing to suffer anything, forgo anything for the sake of that accept- ance : I am willing to forgo anything except just that companionship. Yet this state of mind is the symptom of false instinct. I should know, and if I were a real 2 Current speech has phrases which suggest more or less vaguely that some objective affirmation is contained in the sentiment of personal liking. Perhaps the vaguer ones are more nearly accurate, as ** There is something to him. * ' The prestige of soldierdom in the eyes of maiden- hood is of course the most conspicuous instance of the psychological principle. ffl ■p-i 288 ABT AND RELIGION person would know, that the companionship I value . must come as a result of first being independently real. Hence I cannot have it except at the price of being independent of it. I must be in truth, and not in atti- tude simply, '^free as an Arab" of my beloved. And this independence can only come through having an object sufl5ciently absorbing and responsive, a valid power in the public order. We are speaking of the logic of our commonest social attitudes, a logic which we breathe, not analyze. Its sum is this : that each order accepts and uses persons who are assumed, and must be assumed, complete and real in their lives in the other order. The alternation into which life falls means not alone that we are finding a freedom in each order not found in the other; it means also that we are becoming in each order what is necessary that we may have any right in the other. This is a highly effective alternation; and, so far as we can sustain ourselves in this world with becoming, rather than being, it is a self-sufficient routine, pro- viding within itself for all its own necessities, — and also for its own growth. To this extent, society is an organism. But the same analysis will show where the organism fails. The fact of perpetual alternation is itself ominous: it confesses not alone the constant under- mining of satisfaction that Schopenhauer pointed out ; it confesses the persistent crumbling of our qualifica- tion; — that qualification we must renew by returning to its source. And at its best this qualification is, as SOCIETY AND BEYOND SOCIETY 289 we said, mainly a hope and a becoming. Your guest appears in your circle as one who presumably has done his day's work, and has done it well. You intro- duce him as Mr. Blank, engineer, or as Herr Ge- heimrat, Dr. So-and-so : he at once receives credit for all that engineers or Geheimrats are supposed to be. These categories have their function: they impose upon individuals typical characters which may fit so loosely as to amount to caricatures, but they also im- pose upon them ideals which they find themselves bound to serve. No sooner is it understood that M. is a * scientist' than the imagination of his new acquaint- ance finishes the picture, surrounds him with records and apparatuses, adjusts the symbolic microscope to his eye, and spreads upon the pages of learned journals the announcements of his discoveries. And he, how- ever exasperated or amused by the inept trappings of this vision, finds himself obliged to respond to the essence of the faith it represents : he sees that it is in substance a.n appeal to his good faith as a member of that social world. Whatever is vague, idly classifica- tory, and vain in that picture may be corrected or ignored ; it still searches out what is merely empty or merely promissory in himself. He has no right in that place unless somewhere he has some stable character, founded on achievement not merely accepted as such, but real. He must bring to that social life a validation of spirit which not even the public order can furnish him, dealing as this order does partly in coin and partly in approximations and hopes. He has need of an absolute. fe I 290 ART AND BELIGION I conclude that in two ways the social world, at its best, fails to satisfy, and hence to release or save the human being. It fails to provide within its own resources the reality and independence which it de- mands, and in fact uses; it is living upon borrowed capital. And given this capital, it still fails to satisfy; because while the public order lends to the private order a scope and expression that the private order lacks, it does not provide scope and expression for just that part of the human being wherein the private order supplements the public order. What the public order fails to see is perceived and appreciated in the family,— that is true : but the family is unable to give this part its needed currency, or set it to work in the world. This residue, perhaps an infinite residue, is hence imperfectly set free. And we may also see the conditions under which these defects could be made good. As the instinctive life of man everywhere demands an environment within which it can be active, and as the rule prevails that the most inward and hidden capacities demand and respond to the widest environment,^ there must be an objective arena of unlimited scope for the lost powers. And this arena must be one in which a veri- table and unqualified success of some sort is possible— a sufficient guarantee of reality; and such a success as might enlist a more comprehensive passion than either the public or the private order calls forth— hence a genuine independence. There must be, in brief, an 3 Cf . The Philosophical Review, May, 1916, p. 490. SOCIETY AND BEYOND SOCIETY 291 adequate and attainable object for the human will to power. And in two ways also, experience has attempted to supply such an arena and such an object. First, there are parts of the world more plastic than others, more amenable to wish and fancy ; in these, men have learned to create a career both of sense and of idea, in which their desires at once chained to the real and expanding into the infinite find rest in the midst of their own motion. Play first opens this vista, giving as we have said the habit of success : and then play is transmuted into art as the growth of idea outruns the literal possibilities of the material. Art is the region which man has created for himself, wherein he can find scope for unexpressed powers, and yet win an absolute success, in testimony of his own reality. One who merely conquers a world may still wish for more worlds to conquer; but if, as artist, one has created a world, the will to power has reached an ultimate goal. Second, religion, whose mission is continuous with that of art and which some conceive as a. developed poetry. But religion intends to transcend the imagi- nation, and to reveal a world which has an independent reality; herein it exceeds the scope of art. More completely than any part of the private order, religion promises to recognize all the resources of subconscious capacity: ''AH men ignored in me, That I was worth to God." It intends to save the entire man, without remainder; and if it can offer to this entire self the kind of scope, actuality, and permanence afforded by the State, it may fulfil its promise. « i lit 292 ART AND RELIGION Art and religion have their own institutions, and arc commonly included, as we said, among the resources of 'society.' But both appeal primarily and directly to the exploring and originative self which social inheritance, authority, and imitation can help only after it has engaged for itself with its own realities. Art and religion are always in this sense 'beyond society'; and dealing with them, the individual also (not in his private capacity) is beyond society and beyond the State. V CHAPTER XXXVI THE WOELD OF EEBHtTH IT would be a mistake to think of religion and art as arriving late upon the scene of history, as high and last products of evolution, to take care of those fragments of human nature left unsatisfied by the social order. We would better not try to date their arrival unless we are prepared to date the rise of reason; but in any event, they arrive early: as soon as man is ready to contemplate his experience 'as a whole' they are there. They undertake to provide for the whole creature not for remainders: and as the various social interests and institutions set up inde- pendent menages, religion and art take care of residues simply because they continue to be responsible for the whole. And while in their earliest identifiable forms they may seem simply to be playing about the horizon of consciousness like so much heat lightning, it is because the forces at work everywhere within the horizon become visible there. The rim contains all that is inside; and if the human world-picture or the scheme of human purposes has a conceptual rim, it is their work. I say their work, because at first religion and art co-operate in providing that ** objective arena'' we were calling for, — an arena adequate for the whole 294 ART AND RELIGION human spirit, and so by implication for any possible lost powers. Myth, for example, is such a joint product, neither pure art nor pure religion, repre- senting a domain largely imaginary and yet partly coincident with reality supersensible and super-social ; and in the world of myth the human mind may be regarded as occupied in staking out cosmic claims wherein desire and hope can expand without limit. But myth affords a rather meager diet for the will; and although it contains in symbol the promise of the literal achievement of the future, it would hardly have flourished as it did had there not been a more concrete satisfaction behind it. This more concrete satisfaction was found in the direct regulation of social life from above by conceptions whose origin was at once reli- gious and aesthetic, conceptions in which every man could share as he could share in the ideas of the sacred epic, but in this case he could share actively, and not only as one regulated, but also as regulator. I am thinking of the stage in which all custom was sacred custom and all law sacred law. And I am think- ing of the fact that these bodies of regulation were not simply as we commonly picture them a mould cast over men's lives, but a career for their wills. As a matter of course the law is something which men in general obey, for the law has power behind it; but then, law is also something which men transmit and interpret, even if they do not make it, and so far every man shares in the wielding of that power whatever it may be. Now when the power behind the law is a religious power; when as the divine 'word' the law THE WORLD OF REBIRTH 295 has mana in it; when learning it has the value of communion with the divine thinker, and sometimes confers the power to work miracles by the sacred syllables alone, then to stand at the source of the law, whether as authors or transmitters, is to touch an instrument of unmeasured potency. There was a time when every man was expected to assume this position, though there were also specialists in the law; and to this end, every man must receive a legal education,— he must be 'initiated' into the sacred traditions of his tribe. As compared with our own, this educational process was brief, solemn, and intense; and further, it left an abiding mark. The boy emerged from it a man. It was his second birth.^ He was coming into his social powers ; but he was coming into them through first reaching a more ultimate power. Looking upon the law as we now do, it might not be wholly easy to see in it a sphere for a passionate ambition transcending that of the social order. Still less, if we adopt the prevalent view of early law as a thing dealing chiefly with terrors, consisting for the most part of tabus, prohibitions accompanied by iThe conception of rebirth first appears in history in celebration of this event. In the law books of India we have the developed account of a conception already ancient. '* Their first birth,'' says the Vasishtha Dharmasastra speaking of the three upper castes, **is from their mother; their second from their investiture with the sacred girdle. In that second birth, the Savitri (verse of the Rig Veda) is the mother, but the teacher is said to be the father. Through that which resides above the navel his offspring is produced when he initiates Brahmanas, when he teaches them, when he causes them to offer oblations, when he makes them holy.'' (Sacred Books of the East, xiv, p. 9.) I m 296 ABT AND BELIGION threats, and consistent with the theory that religion arises in the instinct of fear. But it is not alone in the Hebrew songs that we find declarations of love for and deUght in the law inexplicable by any such views, yet seeming to have something more than a rhetorical basis. We have to remember that this initiation con- centrated into itself all the new vistas and liberties that come with the advent of maturity. The physical transition of puberty is, in warmer countries, com- monly much rapider than with us ; the mental liberation is felt with corresponding keenness. But the expe- rience is not merely subjective. Law presupposes a very substantial form of human self-contemplation. The learner's eyes are opened: he looks out into a world of objects which have always been around him, but uncomprehended,— the shapes of tribal life in its cycle of generations, and the principles of its structure, not tangible and transitory but intelligible and perma- nent. He sees himself a responsible agent in a tribal destiny which may have had a beginning in the dawn of time but which has no terminable future. And he is an irresistible agent so far as he himself can give birth to thoughts such as all members of this undying community are bound to worship and obey. He finds himself emerging into the only domain in which unlimited power is possible to a finite being, the world governed by ideas. Through the weakest and dimmest part of his nature he is becoming strong, because he is becoming partner with his gods and perceives, though faint and far-off, the principle of their omnipotence. THE WOELD OP BEBIBTH 297 It is thus not wholly without reason that he claims to have found in the law a moment of absolute satis- faction. His second birth as contrasted with his first may with some justification be described as "real, exempt from age and death." (Manu, S. B. E., xxv, p. 57.) This transition is in substance the same as that which we now often speak of as conversion. In all ages, adolescence, recapitulating race history, finds religion betimes on the scene, offering its own career to the will in terms of a law of life that runs deeper than the law of the land. Conversion, let us note, is possible only when one can get a reflective view of human existence in its natural round, its cost in labor, thought, and pain, and its margin of aspiration. It comes to adolescence because adolescence has for the first time the data for this reflection and the capacity of full self-consciousness.'' To be mature is to see the pleasure of life in the setting of its labors; to be adolescent is to have sufficient vigor to welcome it all. To be converted is to achieve this welcome, to catch the spirit of the world in full view of both its hardships and its allurements. It is to perceive the law of the whole process in such a light that to live by it and to promote it takes immediate precedence of every other 2 This is just about all the truth there is in that dictum of Paulsen's that conversion presupposes the world-weariness of a blas6 civilization, — with the conclusion that the Germanic peoples have never been truly converted. Ethics, Book I, ch. iv. He was speaking, however, of con- version to Christianity, a somewhat different matter, of which more later on. What conversion presupposes is the power of self-conscious reflexion on human destiny. 298 ABT AND BELIOION f satisfaction, and especially of love and ambition, the passions of the social order. We may still learn something of the nature of our 'moral substance' from early forms in which this law was cast. ;iP^p ^ V I. f CHAPTER XXXVII THE SACRED LAW A RANDOM page or two is sufficient to convince any reader that the flavor of the sacred law books of the world is unique, whether or not it is to his relish. As compared with any modern statute book, one is impressed by the mixture of the solemn and the trivial, and by the absence of reference either to individual rights or to social welfare as deliberate ends. The modem law is largely an embodiment of the social motives: the ancient law is largely an embodiment of that wherein religion and art differ from society in their appeal to the will. It is just this which makes it particularly valuable for our present enquiry. As typical of what to our consciousness are the least profitable elements in the sacred law, let us take this list of the duties of a Snataka, a twice-born man who has finished his studentship : Let him not beg from anybody, except from a king and a pupil ; Let him not dwell together with a person whose clothes are foul; Let him not step over a stretched rope to which a calf is tied; Let him not spit into water; 300 ART AND RELIGION Let him eat his food facing the east ; silently let him swallow the entire mouthful, taking it up with four fingers and a thumb; and let him not make a noise while eating; Let him not dine together with his wife, else his children will be destitute of manly vigor; Let him not ascend a tree ; let him not descend into a well ; let him not blow the fire with his mouth ; Let him not ascend an unsafe boat, or any unsafe convey- ance ; , Let him disdain assemblies and crowds ; Let him not pass between the fire and a Brahmana, nor between two fires, nor two Brahmanas ; Let him not cross a river swimming ; Let him not set out on a journey when the sun stands over the trees; When he has risen in the last watch of the night and has recited the Veda, he shall not lie down again. It might be straining a point to call this a mixture of the solemn and the trivial. Apart from sporadic traces of ancient tabus, it belongs to the later, metic- ulous stages of law-making, and the gravamen of profound human issues is lacking. The primitive decalogue, or the Twelve Tables of Eome, would give us a different proportion; but in no case would we find a basis of social utility. Most certainly, religion was regarded as highly useful: it offered itself as a means to the ** great prac- tical ends" of life, — subsistence, tribal increase, suc- cess in war and other enterprises : any god worth the name would be of help in such matters. Eeligion had no scorn for utility. Yet I repeat my belief that the sacred law books of the world are closed with seven seals to those who try to see in them social instru- THE SACRED LAW 301 ments, however crude, for reaching social goods. Eeligion had ends of its own : its utility was a conse- quence. All the social, even the physical ends of life, once caught in the perspective of the sacred concerns remain incidents in the profounder economy. When eating and food-getting have once become implicated in the circuits of mana, they never quite return to the status of simple physical satisfaction.^ Eeligion undertakes not to disregard utility, nor yet to follow it, but rather to give laws to utility, by conferring upon all subordinate ends the quality of its own inter- pretation of the will to power. What this interpretation is, early religion itself had no perfect way of expressing. When it tries to give reasons for obedience, it commonly presents its case in highly utilitarian fashion: as a system of rewards and punishments often frankly material in quality, religious law not infrequently proclaims the advan- tages of holiness as the best-found way to social goods (and especially to esteem) or to the joys of heaven, 1 The same may be said of evils and wrongs as of goods. A crime does not lose its basis in physical injury, nor does the punishment of crime cast loose from the feeling of resentment; but the whole situation acquires a wider meaning when the interest of the deities is involved. Speaking of the sacred law of early Rome, Professor Henry Goudy says : **It punished murder, for it was the taking of a god-given life; the sale of a wife by her husband, for she had become his partner in all things human and divine; the lifting of a hand against a parent, for it was subversive of the first bond of society and religion, — the rever- ence due by a child to those to whom he owed his existence; incestuous connexions, for they defiled the altar; the false oath and the broken vow, for they were an insult to the divinities invoked; the displacement of a boundary or a landmark, not so much because the act was provoca- tive of feud as because the march-stone itself, as the guarantee of peace- ful neighborhood, was under the guardianship of the gods." 302 ABT AND BELIGION or to both. From the standpoint of a wise social philosophy it seems obvious enough that the sacred law is but making a shrewd appeal to the ingrained love of approval to drive with the developing indi- viduality of the self-conscious animal a good social bargain; it is arranging that his egoism and vanity shall turn the social mill. I shall not debate the matter at length. But I may point out that in the midst of the welter of banal motives, it is clear that transposing the prospect of reward to the transcendent alters its psychological quality. One who daily recites the Savitri verse during three years, untired, is assured by Manu that he **will enter after death the highest Brahman, move as free as air, and assume an ethereal form"; the pitiable bathos and inadequacy of this dazzle of supernatural potency stamp it as an attempt less to describe a literal result than to encourage an adherent germ of some- thing different from the visible and material satis- faction. And while the esteem of the multitude seems to have been in the eyes of the Eastern saint a most impressive reward, so much so that his type names, the ** princely man'' of Confucius, the Aharat, etc., were names of social distinction as well as of religious attainment, the law occasionally hits upon a clear statement to the effect that it aims less to provide respect than to make men worthy of respect. **He who knows and follows the law is a righteous man: he becomes most worthy of praise in this world and after death gains heaven.'' Such is the opening and wholly typical appeal of the Vasishtha Dharmasastra. THE SACRED LAW 303 II If any evidence of the non-utilitarian basis of the sacred law were needed beyond the character of the laws themselves, it might be found, together with some positive light upon the religious end, in certain inklings of its psychological origin. The law is sometimes said to have its source (or organ of reception) in the 'soul' as distinct from the prudential reason. Now the human being, if we bring together the testimony of ancient religions, is provided with a great variety of souls. But in general, the soul is that part of a man which holds conversation with the supersensible world : and only a being with a soul can either receive the law, whose origin is in heaven, or appreciate and be governed by it. One of the best literary instances of the soul engaged in devising and promulgating the law is found in the sayings of Ptah Hotep. For Egypt had an especially usable development of the soul-idea (and it would be hard to say how much of moral progress depends on the discovery of usable concep- tions). Among the Egyptian souls there was one, the ka,^ which was particularly concerned with moral and SBsthetic discrimination. To ** offend the ka" was about the same as, with us, *Ho offend the finer feel- 2 The Tea is defined as the immaterial self or double, having the form of the body, but being without the power of acting upon matter. Its action therefore must be wholly persuasive or advisory, and perhaps for this reason it was at the same time the object of a somewhat chival- rous regard, and a source of the degree of chivalry attained (if I may be allowed the anachronism) by the ancient Egyptians. The personal affections centered about the fca, and it received the chief tendance after death. 304 ABT AND RELIGION >> mgs"; and reverence for the ha implied a careful listening to the dictates of a religiously sensitized conscience. The ka takes under its protection the otherwise defenceless rights of persons and occasions, even to the requirements of courtesy. For example, Ptah Hotep, not himself a priest but a wholly com- petent interpreter of the moral tradition of Egypt, gives instructions to his son thus : Do not pierce the host at table with many glances : it is an abomination to the ka for them to be directed at him. . . . Diminish not the time of following the heart (i.e., of recreation) for that is an abomination to the ka, that its moment should be disregarded. . . . The washing of the heart shall not be repeated: it is abomination to the ka, . , . (The washing of the heart being words uttered to give vent to feelings angry or otherwise.) , It is the ka that openeth the hands of the host. . . . It is evident that the ka is the guardian not alone of the uncodified obligations of loyalty, but also of the generous and outgoing impulses, and of the more intangible demands of the relation of guest to host, etc. It is clearly, too, a function which can be appealed to only with some maturity of experience. Yet it acts dogmatically ; it judges the quality of an act without regard to its experienced utility; the standard of judgment seems to be at once religious and aesthetic, — an undistinguished union of the two in which now one and now the other is predominant. This is not a type of judgment with which we are unfamiliar. For good or ill, this ancient religious legislation is the first great extension over human life THE SACRED LAW 305 of the sway of a priori reason, — ^that is to say, the assertion of thought, in advance of trial and error, that something will necessarily be found true or valuable within experience. If anything is true a priori, it is, of course, true for all time and in all circumstances. Accordingly, a sense of unrestricted validity enters into this legislation, and accompanies it unflinchingly into its profoundest absurdities. Questions of scope aside, it must be agreed that if the human will is to find any spot of complete mastery, it can only be possible through some such grasp of values that endure: to adapt a phrase of John Locke's, men can only be born free as they are born thus rational and prophetic. Whether we can grasp any such durable principles is a question of fact not here in debate. But it is clear that so far as a people had in common the same type of sensitivity, the same ka, the same . necessary interests at the basis of the aesthetic judg- ments therein uttered, the pronouncements of any ^ healthy ka would tend to be good for all others. And a prevalent respect for such utterances would tend to make people plastic toward them, and so to lend to one who spoke authentically in the name of the ka the power of an artist over his material. The life- forms of a social group under these conditions would become the medium for an art in which nothing desir- able could be excluded as impossible, and in which everything desirable could be expected to last. Such seems, in fact, to have been the position assumed for itself by the sacred law. And in Ptah Hotep himself I find the most ancient expression of 11 t>: 306 ART AND RELIGION the prophetic consciousness with regard to his own precepts. **The quality of truth," he said, '4s among their excellences. Nor shall any word that hath here been set down cease out of this land forever.'' Ill In the amenity and chivalry of the Egyptian spirit it would be hard to say whether the aesthetic or the moral motive is dominant. But in the laws of Persia and of India there are frequent passages in which the aesthetic sense, the regard for decorum, the desire for purity amounting at times to inconceivable squeamish- ness, is in control. The list of duties of a Snataka above quoted is an example of such almost purely (esthetic apriorism. These alleged duties are largely dictates derived from a notion of personal dignity, a form of art which decrees what external carriage shall be taken as a symbol of an internal ascendency. To step over a stretched rope to which a calf is tied will be admitted hazardous if dignity is to be preserved; and perhaps an exceptionally holy man would need to be reminded of the contingency. Such rules would have the incidental utility of keeping countenance with the bystanders; but as is always the case in aesthetic judgments, the feelings of the bystanders have a dis- coverable and defensible basis. By undertaking some- thing beyond his physical powers the holy man brings discredit both upon himself and upon his oflSce; for nothing more quickly disproves the divine quality than an inability to recognize one's own sphere of validity and its limits. Climbing trees, swimming rivers, THE SACRED LAW "307 ascending unsafe boats and the like, are for the experimental stages of youth, not for high-caste house- holders with a tradition to sustain. With us, dignity is a far less vulnerable essence and so requires no such scrupulous protection ; but we have had the advantage of learning from the Stoics that ^'freedom from per- turbation" may be a purely internal accomplishment. These beginnings had their own justification. But they were justified also in another way. The aesthetic standard has a hospitable nature and protects the early stages of many another budding ideal. To exclude the jarring and unfit is to give every voice of inner protest, from whatever source, a chance to be heard. And after all, it is not a matter of surprise that the first efforts in law should have been innocent of the argument from effect to cause as we understand it : legislation based on social utility is not yet a fully accepted practice. The surprise is rather that, referring itself to independent principles, this ancient law should so frequently have hit upon the useful. Without declining to recognize in men only a few centuries earlier than ourselves a kindred common sense, it seems fair to judge with most recent students of the history of law that the rules regarding purity and purifications, in the midst of much that is over- drawn, have unwittingly anticipated important prin- ciples of general sanitation. ^Esthetic regard for * decency' has always been an important factor in racial health and soundness. (But let me say in passing that it seems to me an open question whether «i 308 ABT AND BELIQION I the aesthetic standard in the conduct of sex-behavior does not to this day contain more truth and meaning than the hygienic and eugenic utilities so commonly regarded as ultimate tests; — to my mind these tests fall into the logical position of * negative pragmatism'.) The significant tabus which center about the feeling that blood is a substance of mysterious potency have probably an aesthetic basis; but they have had an immense utility, as in fixing social attitudes toward murder and suicide, in the treatment of blood-kinship, in the care of women, and in the treatment of disease. A great deal of disutility has accompanied this utility and in time outweighed it. But this fact does not cancel the primary fact that the aesthetic judgment tends to find the useful long before the power of causal reasoning is sufiiciently developed to find it. It must be remembered, too, that these utilities were not superficial, but the radical utilities of human life. If the struggle for existence has eliminated the groups which lacked this happy correspondence of intuition with vital expediency, the fact remains that in those that survived the intuition itself has operated as an independent organ of judgment. Even when the causal connection is invoked in the sacred law, it is frequently a postulate of the fitness of things rather than a result of empirical observa- tion. Certain types of behavior ought to have certain results; and such results are forthwith ascribed to them. Thus, upper castes may marry only upper castes; otherwise, **the degradation of the family certainly ensues, and after death, the loss of heaven." THE SACBED LAW 309 Buying a wife is an undesirable way of acquiring one, because **she who has been bought by her husband afterward unites herself with strangers.'' And, as in the rules already quoted, if one dines with one's wife, ''his children will be destitute of manly vigor." Causality of this sort implies crediting the objective world with a structure akin to one's own principles of preference. The idea of karma is the most complete expression of this trait: for karma means that the world is at bottom a moral order in which whatever ought to result does result. Here the aesthetic apriorism gives way to an ethical apriorism. IV In the demands or supposed demands of fitness it is never easy to detect the point at which the aesthetic disappears in the ethical. The many rules which dis- tinguish lawful from unlawful occupations, or clean from unclean foods, may have little behind them apart from the whims of feeling except historical attitudes associated with the several materials dealt with. If the Brahmana trades he must not sell stones, salt, hempen cloth, etc., through a long list; nor must he lend ''like a usurer." But to this last named rule there is an exception which introduces a new element. The Brahmana must not lend "unless he to whom he lends is exceedingly wicked, neglecting his sacred duties." There is some justification, it appears, for dealing foully with the foul if one deals with them at all. The principle of balance here is no longer pri- 310 ART AND RELIGION marily aesthetic, the elements of the picture are the wills of free men in noetic interplay, and appeal is made to a sentiment of a priori justice. Upon such a sentiment of ethical balance early equity was built. The symmetry of the lex talionis rides rough-shod over the psychological differences of actions outwardly similar. It ignores intentions and circumstances. Its simplicity is thus specious ; and with all * natural right' it must fall under the suspicion of historically minded thinkers like Sir Henry Maine. But the psychological observer sometimes forgets that the main facts in the psychology of any situation are the facts which to the minds concerned seem objective. We dare not forget that the force of a law is in the mind that interprets it, not in the actual circumstances or motives which breed the occasion. Ideally speaking, the only real situation is the situation as felt and understood by those that take part in it ; and simple minds will con- ceive their own deeds and interests simply. The symmetry of early law is the very quality which, by its obvious give and take, is fittest to serve as a lan- guage. The punishment which has the saving grace of fitting the crime as the perpetrator conceives it is the only punishment which has any chance of seeming right to him. He can be reconciled if at all only by a reaction which he can read at once as meaningful. The sacred law may well have had in this respect a literal * saving grace' such as more carefully studied measures might wholly miss. This primitive equity of balance is not incapable of progress. Any growth in understanding the nature THE SACRED LAW 311 of the act to be balanced will be echoed in the treat- ment ; hence primitive equity, so far from being fixed, is highly variable. According to the Jewish law, if a son were to strike his father, he must be put to death (Exodus 21. 15) ; the code of Hammurabi pre- scribes that he must lose his hand. Fitness may be claimed for each rule; the deciding factor is to be found in the conception of the offence, and this con- ception is capable of indefinite refinement. And I doubt whether any degree of progress will do more than perfect this refinement. The principle of equity we shall not outgrow. Deficient as the sacred law is in legal insight, it was not astray in its first principles. Indeed its special and only proper function was the finding of first principles ; and it may be well to attempt a summary of what is permanently valid in its work. The sources of value are to be preferred above all specific values that flow from them. This is not a maxim of prudence, dictating a wise regard as for the goose that lays the golden eggs. It is rather a prin- ciple of value-experience. It shows itself not only in the recurrent demands for the honoring of the gods, the ancestors, the father and mother, but also in the claims for reverence toward the sacred law itself, and its trustees. It is sometimes thought that the law of sacrilege, containing much interested legislation and offering the best foothold for priestly corruption, is pre-eminently the outgrown element in ancient law. But this will not be the case until the sentiment of national honor, an object of vague, frequently fanati- 312 ART AND RELIGION cal, but essentially religious devotion, and the idea of regard for parents as a fundamental duty are out- grown. Respect for law is still deeper in the human consciousness than interest in any particular law. And no advantage could compensate any community for the vanishing of the spirit of reverence out of which all justice and all culture must come. This principle of the ancient law is still valid. Personality is to be set above property. This might be regarded as a corollary of the above principle, if we assume that the value of property depends in any respect upon personality. That this is the case is broadly hinted in various passages of sacred law, thus : ** Whatever exists in the world is the property of the Brahmana ; on account of the excellence of his origin the Brahmana is, indeed, entitled to it all." (Manu, I, 100.) But apart from the somewhat over-simple theory of distributive justice here promulgated, the meaning of the principle is seen especially in three ways : the regard for the dignity of the person as worth every necessary sacrifice of utility; the indisposition to accept a compounding for personal injury by fines alone, so long as the law remained sacred law ; and the attempt, in the clash of personal interests, to ignor^ property differences as irrelevant. When a suSicient number of differences among men have been set aside as irrelevant to the concerns of justice, the principle here stated will blossom out in the form of a theory of equality before the law, — ^in which form, the ancient principle vigorously survives. And we have had recent occasion to reaffirm the judgment that crimes THE SACRED LAW 313 \ > against property are not to be weighed off with crimes against persons and against humanity. In such ways as these the sacred law makes good its claim that there is a rule of life which gives laws to utility. It is always true, human nature being what it is, that nothing can be useful which fails to satisfy equity, personality, honor. So long as Russian peas- ants believe as they have believed about methods of agriculture, it is not a useful procedure to introduce mechanical reapers and binders among them: dissi- pate these beliefs and a new market is open to the world ; but in no case is utility freed to stand as some- thing independent of the preferences and faiths of human nature, whether true or false. And so long as we hold the belief that a man is worth more than his property, it will be impossible not alone to compensate murder with a money-payment, but to hold slaves, or to equate man-power with horse-power, however advantageous the procedure from the purely economic standpoint. Hence it is not true as Maine asserts that the in- fluence of theocratic legislation disappears with the advent of kings. But it is true that with the advent of kings another type of judgment must enter as co-operative with this one. The abuses and crudities of the sacred law are so much in evidence that they almost usurp the attention of observers ; and it is necessary here to advert to them '^K'l It: ' 312 ABT AND RELIGION THE SACRED LAW 313 cal, but essentially religious devotion, and the idea of regard for parents as a fundamental duty are out- grown. Eespect for law is still deeper in the human consciousness than interest in any particular law. And no advantage could compensate any community for the vanishing of the spirit of reverence out of which all justice and all culture must come. This principle of the ancient law is still valid. Personality is to be set above property. This might be regarded as a corollary of the above principle, if we assume that the value of property depends in any respect upon personality. That this is the case is broadly hinted in various passages of sacred law, thus : ** Whatever exists in the world is the property of the Brahmana; on account of the excellence of his origin the Brahmana is, indeed, entitled to it all.*' (Manu, I, 100.) But apart from the somewhat over-simple theory of distributive justice here promulgated, the meaning of the principle is seen especially in three ways : the regard for the dignity of the person as worth every necessary sacrifice of utility; the indisposition to accept a compounding for personal injury by fines alone, so long as the law remained sacred law ; and the attempt, in the clash of personal interests, to ignore property differences as irrelevant. When a sufiicient number of differences among men have been set aside as irrelevant to the concerns of justice, the principle here stated will blossom out in the form of a theory of equality before the law, — ^in which form, the ancient principle vigorously survives. And we have had recent occasion to reaflfirm the judgment that crimes > against property are not to be weighed off with crimes against persons and against humanity. In such ways as these the sacred law makes good its claim that there is a rule of life which gives laws to utility. It is always true, human nature being what it is, that nothing can be useful which fails to satisfy equity, personality, honor. So long as Russian peas- ants believe as they have believed about methods of agriculture, it is not a useful procedure to introduce mechanical reapers and binders among them: dissi- pate these beliefs and a new market is open to the world ; but in no case is utility freed to stand as some- thing independent of the preferences and faiths of human nature, whether true or false. And so long as we hold the belief that a man is worth more than his property, it will be impossible not alone to compensate murder with a money-payment, but to hold slaves, or to equate man-power with horse-power, however advantageous the procedure from the purely economic standpoint. Hence it is not true as Maine asserts that the in- fluence of theocratic legislation disappears with the advent of kings. But it is true that with the advent of kings another type of judgment must enter as co-operative with this one. The abuses and crudities of the sacred law are so much in evidence that they almost usurp the attention of observers ; and it is necessary here to advert to them 314 ART AND RELIGION only for the sake of due proportion. Those who regard the connection of religion with morals as on the whole unfortunate for morals — and there are many such — ^have in mind the insistence on a blind obedience, the diversion of thought from the experiential and social basis of righteousness, and the tendency to con- done the humanly pernicious if the religiously correct is preserved. These are grave evils. The nature of them might be comprehended, per- haps, in the statement that religion is prone to exag- gerate its primacy into a separation. It finds a true absolute, but is apt to set it up as exclusive of the relative and pragmatic instead of including and co-operating with them. In artificial restrictions upon human intercourse, in the cultivation of mistrust and aversion toward the unbeliever, in depriving heretics of privileges and even of fair play, in inculcating an artificial terror of the beyond so great as to obscure every useful motive and so to retain intact the most preposterous customs, in hostility to novelty, the custodians of the sacred law have done incalculable harm both to mankind and to religion itself. In face of all this, it may be said that if mankind could have won its hold upon a region of absolute satisfaction only at this cost, it was worth the sacrifice.' But human nature outgrows the need of any such sacrifice. Indeed these abuses are incidents of a middle stage in the development of law, the struggle 8 1 may remind the reader of the remark of Walter Bagehot 's that at a critical point in the development of hmnan societies it was more im- portant that there should be law, than that there should be good law. It was the religious temper that made law possible. THE SACRED LAW 315 of the secular principle to secure recognition. The original tendency of the sacred law is not to reject the aid of secular principles but to make place for them. The jus of the Roman comitia was regarded as under divine auspices, and a natural supplement to the sacred fas. Likewise under the wing of theocratic law there grew up in many regions a body of worldly wisdom based on experience and taking the form of proverb or fable, the first humanizations of ethics, so little conscious of antagonism of principle that the sayings of Solomon could find their way into the sacred canon. The antagonism existed however, and was bound to appear because the a priori vision of the human mind cannot safely proceed much farther than first principles; the detail of the law, like the detail of the body of science, has to be built by the aid of pragmatic considerations. The rubbish of over- wrought aestheticism had to give way to the pressing utilities. Eeligion had to learn the lesson of content- ing itself with the right of giving to all second prin- ciples their final meaning. We shall have recovered the original and normal relation between the secular and the sacred when we can treat murder, adultery, perjury, breach of contract, etc., on the ground of social expediency without feeling the need to deny that they are also ** abominations to the ka" and ''to the Lord.'' Meantime religion and art, relieved of social burdens to which they were only partly fitted, were free to assert to the full their specific natures. To these we now turn. CHAPTER XXXVIII ART AND HUMAN NATURE UNSATISFIED wishes press in all directions, and seize on every promising object. They find the stuff of dreams and day-dreams most accessible and yielding : the imagination is the infinite space in which endless flimsy exploits occur at will, pictures and promises of the unrealized satisfaction. But apart from their lack of substantiality, these easy private conquests have the disadvantage which always attends non-resistance. They fail to mark the distinction between a passing fancy and a profound need. They fail to leave the marks of a genuine experience; they arouse inadequate after-images, and so give little aid in learning what our real as opposed to our apparent wishes are. Hence in the world of dreams, taken by itself, primitive expressions of instinct flourish, interpreting power flags, and the unsatisfied will necessarily remains unsatisfied. For where every desire is appeased as it arises, or where every impulse assumes full sway, at least one large human need must be permanently repressed, the need for self-knowledge. In dreams, individual personality is at a minimum. The will to power requires a stiffer medium for even so much as a picture of its residual need. ART AND HUMAN NATURE 317 Such a medium it can only find in that same physical world which, by hypothesis, is refusing literal satis- faction. If the will cannot enjoy, it can still depict enjoyment: and the effort to depict gives substance and consistency to the dream. And as in remembering an experience, one contemplates one's self engaged in the experience, so in depicting enjoyment one de- picts one's self enjoying. The war dance which dramatizes the victory not yet won is not a mere representation of fighting and winning: it is a self- portrait of man as victor. It is a real experience, and may be the basis for progress in interpreting the will. Such physically embodied dreams are 'works of art.' The work of art is the dream made objective, permanent, self-conscious, mutual,^ The work of art is mutual or social partly because as a physical object it cannot help being public, open to common judgment. But it is social also because it intends to exert a power of its own. It may or may not be the conscious intention of the artist to announce any new gospel regarding the human will, though he is quite as likely to be the rebel or the prophet as to be the spokesman of any established social order. His art is * beyond society' inasmuch as its source is in his 1 The Freudian view of art is composed of an axiom and an tmtmth. The axiom is that repressed wishes express themselves in art forms. For if man makes anything at all, how should he make except in such wise as to satisfy himself? The work of his hand will necessarily reveal any craving analyzed or not which is given liberty to assert itself in that work. The untruth is in the answer to the question, What wish is expressed in art forms! The Freudian answer is pcirverse in its empha- sis. The true answer is, Not any one wish, but the total wish of man, — the will. 318 ART AND RELIGION ART AND HUMAN NATURE 319 private dream of precisely that good which society so far fails to supply.^ But he intends none the less through his art to speak across to the similarly unsat- isfied wishes of his kind. In displaying his work, it is as if he said, ^*This is my wish, — ^Is it yours also? — Has it man in it?'' The satisfaction offered by art is symbolic, not actual; hence the power of art to satisfy is limited by the scope of symbol. Yet the region which art opens to the will is not one of pure fancy or illusion. As the unrealized wish is a wish for something veritable, the art which appeases it is bound to convince, not to mock. It conveys to the mind some account of reality ; it is never the mere projection of tlie subjective longing. The tie between art and reality is seen in the path which leads from imitation to certain forms of art. Imitation is not art, but the imitation of selected parts of reality may be the beginning of art, as narration at first accurate may, by a well-knoAvn process, insensibly grow into fiction under the pressure of the idea of the happening, as one would have had it transpire. To find its subjects in a world of common experience is a necessity for an undertaking which, like art, proposes to be commonly imderstood; but it chooses from the world of actuality such parts as 2 For this reason I must dissent in principle from one of the most living and fundamental of contemporary views of the function of art, that of Mr. Ralph Adams Cram. The era of individualism in art which he deplores is not a pure retrogression, it is a necessary * awkward period' on the way to better things. Art must be democratic and win its own clientele of free admirers; it must never again be the mere out- growth of an authoritatively united community spirit. It must serve as one of the main paths to the future and the unborn. foreshadow a happy solution of some problem of evil or of resistance to will. It picks out objects or situa- tions in which we can see or surmise the raison d'etre of ordinary and challenging facts, — of inertia, in the repose of a majestic peak; of flesh, in the face of a girl; of human bonds, in the Madonna; of suffering itself, in tragedy and music. Bergson was essentially right in saying that the artist like the metaphysician must, through the disinterested vision of synipathy, perceive the real. The objects which art portrays are individual objects with a penumbra of universal meaning; they are objects which admit us to a per- ception of the way in which reality, while resisting our wishes, may yet satisfy the will. The original intention of art may well be, not to satisfy the will, but to prefigure its satisfaction. As in mimetic dances, which are at the same time prayers, art may serve as a sort of first aid to thought, giving a more vivid grasp of the goal of desire. Such art is frequently a collective activity; collectivity heightens emotion ; and heightened emotion intensifies the imagi- native presentation of the objects wished for. But the characteristic thing about art is that in this process of imaginative presentation, it discovers a secondary satisfaction which eclipses the first. The one who contemplates and enjoys a work of art may equally with the artist find his insight aided; but the artist has found the joy of authorship in an object which partakes of his own ideal. There are many objects which can hardly be enjoyed except by physical 320 ABT AND BELIGION possession : to the hungry man, a picture of food would bring little pleasure whether painted by himself or some other. But art, whose mission is to the unsat- isfied wishes, may safely assume that it has to do with the hungry man only in so far as he is also a hungry soul. The objects which it has to present are objects whose nature is to elude physical possession. The most general name for the specific objects of art is the beautiful; and the beautiful may be defined as that which demands to be possessed by reproduction. It has often been said that the contemplation of beauty is quieting to the will; that it must be disin- terested, free from the clamor for personal enjoyment. And this is true with regard to every activity within the private or the public order: for beauty is the presence in a particular object of a value which cannot be possessed by any social instinct. But the cessation of these activities is the initiation of another. The perceiver of beauty, quite unreflectively, begins the effort to produce it out of himself, as one who has heard music he enjoys may find himself trying* to whistle it. Nothing can be consciously reproduced unless it has been thought through; and as the pos- session of beauty must be a possession by conscious thought, the work of reproduction may be regarded as the act of taking complete possession. Art could thus be described as the completion of the possession of the beautiful. And so far as the element of value in beauty is a metaphysical element, a solution in idea of some problem of evil, it is in actuality, and not in symbol ART AND HUMAN NATURE 321 only, a finished satisfaction. The will reaches in art an absolute goal. Hence it is that art opens to some minds a career whose passion is capable of replacing all other passions. The artist has all that the meta- physician can give him, though he has it not in con- ceptual form. He has all that ambition and love can give him, though he has it not in the coin of actual recognition and affection. As a man he will need to possess his object also through the way of concepts and words, and of recognition and personal attach- ment ; but as an artist he has already stood at the end of these paths: he has anticipated the attainment of his will. And whether or not he is indifferent to the public'— his immediate public— he is conscious in his achievement of the necessary and permanent per- suasive power of a vital idea. n If this is a true account of the nature of art, we can understand its twofold effect upon human instinct. Since, in its first intention, it presents the objects of desire with added vividness, it strengthens the im- pulses to possess, is capable of heightening the pas- sions, social and unsocial. Upon the spectator, the first effect of the enjoyment of art is the enlivening of his wishes, restoring a perhaps jaded faith in their achievableness and in the general worth of living. And since he has been led into a world in which success is not alone possible but actual, immersion in that world as a spectator might easily tend simply to 322 ART AND RELIGION heighten the rate of living, to increase eagerness and demand, while lowering patience with the restraint and postponement imposed by the slow processes of the social order. It is not an accident that communities of artists and art-lovers tend to develop occasional antinomian or Bohemian traits. But while every artist is a spectator, every spectator is also at least an incipient artist ; and to that extent the first effect of art is superseded by the second, — the heightened energies of action are transmuted into energies of creativity. The full and normal effect of art is to turn all impulses into the channel of the creation of persuasive beauty, making this form of the will to power their ultimate meaning. In this role of interpreting instinct, the passion for art is likely to find itself in partial opposition to the passion of the public order. Concern for the quality and beauty of an industrial product is not always com- patible with concern for maximum quantity or ex- change value: one finds in France today a dread of the transformation of national life which may be imposed by a new-born pressure for *efl5ciency' as a result of the war. With the passion of the private order there is no such opposition. Sex-love in particu- lar parallels and in part fuses with the impulse of art- production; for sex-love includes within its meaning an impulse to take possession of the beautiful by reproducing it, though this meaning does not rise to the same level of consciousness as in art. And art may be regarded as a mode of creativity, in which the will to power not alone controls its object, but ART AND HUMAN NATURE 323 fashions its very substance and form. Hence no form of activity so completely and directly sublimates the awakening instinct of sex as activity in creative imagination. Art is particularly fitted to introduce the instinct of sex to the central element of its own meaning.' Ill But beside the direct effect of art on instinct by interpreting it, there is another and reflexive effect upon the form of all instinct-expression. The artist does not intentionally generalize the beauty which he finds in a particular object and depos- its in another. But the meaning of beauty is universal, and cannot be confined within any one object, nor within any one medium. Beauty transfers itself, within the mind, from one medium to another ; its tendency is to impose its principle upon every output of the person. It may not be true that every painter some time writes a poem. But behavior, the continuous product of the will, cannot escape the impress of the spread of the impulses of art. Through art the force of analogy in the mind is immensely increased. It has become a prevalent doctrine in educational theory that skill acquired in one department of knowledge is not trans- 3 Miss Jane Harrison relates that * * an artist deeply in love with his friend's wife once said, *If only I could paint her and get what I want from her, I could bear it. ' ... He saw that through art, through vision, through detachment, desire might be slain, and the man within him find peace. *' Should we not rather say that desire might thus find its own meaning, not so much through detachment as through creative possession, and the entire will of him find what it wanted? Art and Ritual, p. 218. 324 ABT AND RELIGION ferable to another; and this is likely to be true if we deprive the mind of all aesthetic interest in the activity in question. But interest in beauty reaches the central current of the will, and when this interest is awakened all transference of skill and discipline becomes natural. It is the nature of beauty to overflow departments and to make the man of one piece. Hence it is that the most common impressions of physical form are translated (so naturally that we seldom think of the metaphor) into expressions of character types, — straight, crooked, upright, sharp, square, devious, etc. The words rude and refined, taken over from artisanry, summarize the series of these indirect effects of art on the expression of instinct. It would be possible to particularize these effects for each of the instincts and passions; but a few sketchy outlines must suflBce. 1. Since art trains enthusiasm to the performance of definite work, it illustrates the paradox of force acquired through restraint, to the direct advantage of all social life. The subordination of dancers to the common rhythm and music is a condition of their free self-expression; and public life if it presents a more complex subordination may yet benefit by the analogy. The will to power is easily led, in simple community life, by the subtle argument of * harmony' into the assumption of a permanent identity of interest between the individual person and the State. This assumption, as was natural in a people so deeply steeped in beauty, was the genius of Greek social life. Increasing con- sciousness of individual self-interest must always ART AND HUMAN NATURE 325 come into such a scheme as a disturbing element ; and once the central harmony is broken, no good will of separate individuals could restore the identity of interest. The principle is not a sufiicient bond for political life, as the tragedy of Greece may show, but the appeal to a common consciousness of beauty is an aid which our bald democracies cannot afford to ignore. Public architecture, public pageantry and masque, the reverence for beauty in all public enterprises, furnish an indirect argument for public solidarity of incalculable scope. 2. In private relations, the interest in beauty has something more than decency to demand. It tends of its own accord to invite an equality between the part- ners, since harmony is disturbed by the weakness or suppression of one of the voices. Society in the narrower sense of the term may be regarded as human intercourse carried on under the dominance of the demand for beauty, as the most complex of the improvisatory arts. And all society creates for its own purposes a limited world from which extremes of inequality are excluded. But the standard of beauty demands no permanence in any human relation- ship. Art embodies its meaning within finite and f ramable objects ; and it has no other disposition for the history of love. The tale will find its end: its passing may have its own melancholy beauty. Taken by itself the standard of art would make for temporary unions. It is not reasonable to expect from this indirect and formal bearing of art on instinct a suflBcient guidance 326 ABT AND RELIGION of life. Taken alone it would subordinate the matter of behavior to its manner, preferring to believe that **A11 vertus be closyde in curtasy.'* It would insist on suavity when the situation might well demand indignation or even conflict. It has no place for the prophet, the revolutionist, the reformer; and it has but feeble contact with the more pressing problems of the * common man.' It fits no one for dealing with the as yet unharmonizable aspects of experience.* Its tendency would be to seclude itself, build for itself high garden walls, and in the midst of a world small enough to be perfectly controlled, forget the ugly, the squalid, the disordered, the just causes for warfare and rebellion. If made an exclusive object of devotion, beauty would fail at length to satisfy the capacity for mal- adaptation. When it so far assumes leadership in the mind as to dominate the religious consciousness, it loses its power. The gods themselves become plastic figures and lend themselves to the fabrications of myth and legend. Their severity wanes in an Olympian sunshine; and the gibe of Epicurus holds good, that these gods can no longer be supposed to wrinkle their brows in concern for human affairs. To exclude in this way the cruelty and hardness of fact from the view of an aesthetized consciousness is but to invite the day of wrath, when reality will burst * There is probably nothing to be done in the world which cannot be done with entire decoroueness, ideally speaking, but for men of imperfect skill, promptitude, and invention it is sometimes necessary to choose between decorum and the demand of an occasion, between futility, even dishonor, and rudeness. - *S^ . il> ..'t(>«u'^> ART AND HUMAN NATURE 327 down those walls and turn the unearned paradise to a place of loathing. The real artist knows that to yield to the aristocratic impulse in the aesthetic consciousness is to cut off the sources of his own art. For beauty, let me repeat, is reality offering a glimpse of the solution of its own problems of evil : its soil is in experience. It must lean against its own luxury, its sensitiveness and finesse. It must return from time to time to the school of asceticism and religion. m CHAPTEB XXXIX RELIGION PER SE AS art becomes secular and declares independence, and as law becomes civil and increasingly chary of the remnants of priestly jurisdiction, religion is left with the sphere of the supernatural as its special province. It deals with what is behind, beyond, beneath, and within the w^orld; standing in contrast with all that is apparent, finite, and controllable by systematic thought. When the divine element, formerly fused with science as sacred lore, with law as sacred custom and precept, and with art as sacred rite, song, and story, is thus set forth in its separate character, it seems a strangely empty essence, a mystery, a mere nothing, — for which nevertheless, the most extravagant claims are made. When an attempt is made to describe or deal with it, it is necessary to fall back on fragments of thought, command, and symbol, and yet to deny that these con- tain what is intrinsically uncontainable in such vessels. With better understanding it becomes known that these words of contrast, ** behind, beyond,'' etc., indi- cate the relation of a life to its manifestations ; as the life of an animal might be said to be behind its behavior the invisible and elusive source of its mani- festations. The divine is empty as the self apart from \ m RELIGION PER SE 329 its * experience ' is empty. The domain of religion in , fact is a divine self, a Spirit which is as Subject to all / -^^'o^-^ finite things, persons, and arts as Object, and presum- ably to much else that these categories do not include. The significance of religion comes from the assumption that all the forces of the world are drawn together in foci which we call personalities or spirits; and these ultimately into one. It would be possible to deal with the whole of force, the Supreme Power, as religion proposes to deal with it only if this immense reality had its simple center, its I-am and I-will. In religion the will of man seeks union with the simple center of power which is * beyond' and * within' the world as the will of the world. The extravagant claim of religion has been that union with God is itself a good, and indeed, the supreme and sufficient satisfaction of the will. But even if we can catch some hint of the metaphysical mystery of the religious domain, this claim is a new mystery. It is not obvious that union with anything is a supreme good, unless union means an alliance with the power therein vested. But religion has set its j good in opposition to all other goods; it has turned its back upon the world in which the power of the gods themselves is manifested. It has renounced the world ; and it has testified to the literalness of its intention by the most thorough asceticism. In its separation from art and from society, religion appears as the hostile critic of both, competing with them for the centering of human affections. Despite all this, some human beings have found in religion, as others have 330 ART AND RELIGION found in art, a career animated by a passion able to displace all others. It is of course impossible for any one to live in the world and maintain a complete enmity toward the goods of the world, the natural objects of his instinctive wishes. To live, hating life, even if for duty's sake one continued to eat, would be a slow suicide. There is strictly no such thing as * thorough asceticism.' Externally, the position of the religious devotee is anomalous: he renounces society, family, the State, yet he enjoys the wealth, the friendship, the peace, provided by others. His position has therefore been called parasitic and insincere. On Kantian grounds he is immoral — so it might appear — for he cannot universalize his own maxim. So it appears; but the appearance is mistaken. It is plausible only because one forgets that all living things have to renew their life from time to time by turning away from life, as one turns from waking to sleeping for the sake of being the more awake. If it is true that art and all social activities make use of a kind of capital whose source lies outside themselves, it would follow that one who had no other interest at heart than these would still be obliged by the nature of things alternately to pursue them and turn away from them.^ Not alone individuals, but all art and all institutions must save their lives by losing them. And 1 The theoiy of this necessary alternation is worked out more fully in **The Meaning of God,'* chapters xxviii, xxxi, xxxii. See also R. C. Cabot, What Men Live By, part IV, Worship. RELIGION PER SE 331 he that apparently renounces them all may be the one who is doing most for their conservation.^ As for art, we have already seen that it depends upon an eye for realities. The artist lives by what he can truly see; and his eye for reality needs to be quickened now and again, not by gazing harder into his work, but by turning to a region in which the perception of reality is simple and immediate. Such a region the individual artist is likely to find in social intercourse; for the most part, persons are the rela- tively real and relatively available sources of all restoring of vision. But personal intercourse itself wears thin and shallow unless it reverts to its own basis; all harks back at length to the absolute, to religion. Whether at first or second hand, the artist is pensioner upon the bounty of the mystic, and not vice versa. The great ages of religion have preceded the great ages of art, and of science also, for they were attending to the fertilization of the ground. As for society and the State, it is the death of every institution when it begins to regard itself as self- suflBcient or worthy of devotion in its own right. The only State that has a chance to survive upon this planet is the State that knows that its power is not in itself, nor its right. If the Sabbath was made for man, so is the State. And the only obedience that can serve any 2 The argument is that there must be a distinct place in the economy of life for the cult of the absolute in its contrast with life, and if religion is the name of this place, the instinctive motive of religion would be a specific craving due, whether so understood or not, to the atrophy of social and aesthetic values, a craving for the restoration of creative power. 332 ART AND RELIGION State well is the obedience of men who are servants of a Greater. If religion taught men how to be independent of the State, in an age when the State was everything, it might well appear anti-political ; and yet from the spoils of this rebellion it has generated the modern State, the State of free individuals, which is a far greater thing. The Roman type of State has lost its life in trying to assert it, as such States always will— but the State lives— the State that has learned to subordinate its sovereign I-will to the will of God, which under certain conditions may be discerned in the will of the people. For let us not mistake the meaning of liberalism and democracy: they do not mean that atomic indi- viduals and their inherent rights are to be put above the community and its welfare, nor that any and every majority is right. They mean that the individual who finds and worships his God stands at the source of the community and its welfare. It is to the God-fearing individual and no other that the State must defer. And conversely, democracy without religion is neither a true nor a secure principle of social structure. We thus recognize that religion, just in so far as it understands its own business, must insist on its con- trast with all social goods, must have its asceticism and other-worldliness, can never come in the guise of a social code. Those who accuse Christianity, for example, of having no social code, may be bearing indirect witness to the fact that it knows the proper work of religion per se. Religion has no choice but to place the child in man, the total unexpressed self, RELIGION PER SE 333 above the institution; and to provide for that self a kingdom not of this world. For, after all, this Child is the strongest thing in the world, and no human interest can be strong or even safe which does not first do it reverence. The sacred law already perceived that the weak in man must control society. Religion cast loose from the law singles out this divine spark as that upon which every human value depends for its life. It is because of this relation to creativity that religion, in the mere * union with God,' has been able to satisfy the will to power in those who have under- stood its paradox. And for the most part asceticism while renouncing power of one sort has been regarded as a way to power of another sort. It has been a repression of partial expressions of the will in the interest of the whole; hence its total effect has been one of sublimation, not of repression of the will to power. In the history of religious asceticism this fact has been more or less clearly perceived : the devotees are not historically describable as men devoid of ambition; they have aimed at that supreme sort of power which works without tools, without violence, without self-assertion or competition, yet irresistibly, because all other powers are derivative or relatively unreal. Thus in Vedantism. Brahmanism in this form abandons its interest in the deed and the law, and, as in the religion of Spinoza, empties all passion into the will to know. But the will to know is, in this form u * 334 ART AND RELIGION of religion, equivalent to the will to power ; for, as it teaches, there is no power in the world save the power of knowledge sub specie ceternitatis, the power of knowledge that I (and every particular being) am Brahm. This is the power that can strike off the chains of reincarnation; in it all lesser powers are believed to be included. Buddhism still more completely and subtly defines the goal of all passion as a passionless transparency of seeing. It attacks the self-element in all desire, demanding that the individual organism shall become the instrument of a perfect universality of indiffer- ence, to which neither existence nor yet non-existence shall appear as an object of strife. For even in the determined rejection of existence by the Brahmanic ideal a love for being lies concealed. It is evident nevertheless that this position is attractive to the Buddhist because of the initiation which it represents into the very moving principles of the cosmos; the love of power has not disappeared into something else, but has taken the form of an aspiration for meta- physical status with all the power over one's own destiny (and over other men's minds) therein implied. MedisBval asceticism is at once less philosophic and more self-conscious. It has classified its own enemies — its tempters — with greater social insight, if not with keener psychological discrimination. It is driven to its aloofness neither by Paul nor by Plato, but by its own original self-scrutiny as we find it, for example, in Augustine. It was bound to declare war on the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of RELIGION PER SE 335 life, because of its own knowledge of the inadequacy of these goods to define the good of their own spirits. And if we may venture to interpret the recesses of the consciousness of the mediaeval saints, as they made their painful and glorious itinerarium mentis in Deum, it was not without its own form of the will to power. Francis of Assisi has admitted us far into the mystery of sainthood in his confession of his unwillingness to find any beggar more poor than he. For he was the jealous lover of his lady Poverty ; and through this devotion he claimed the devotion of others. Asceticism for these men, as for the ascetics of all ages, had the value of a demonstration in which the surrounding souls were necessary adjuncts. It intended to demonstrate that the religious satisfaction is an adequate substitute for all others ; and therewith to announce a power of which the conquest of ordinary desire is a natural expression. To be able to endure is the badge of the entrance of the divine into the life of the flesh; it was a symptom of a metaphysical achievement which carried with it an ascendency over the spirits of men. This ideal is sufficiently discredited ; what we need to point out is that its errors are errors of insufficiency, not of a false direction. So far as human lust, greed, pugnacity, and the quest of social power were con- cerned, the religious ascetic has moved as one not seeing them in others, not admitting them into him- self, and so not solving the problems which they raised. In the community which punished guilt he could with difficulty play his part, for the logic of c^ "1 i 336 ART AND RELIGION pugnacity had been put behind him and forgotten. His religion had too far lost the sense of the insti- tution and of the law to have part in their development. Hence religion in his form alone could neither leaven the community nor sustain itself; and so it largely failed of the power which was its own inward nerve and passion. It did not entirely fail. In the forms we have mentioned, it has afforded much of the independent reality and freedom which the will needs; it has not been infertile. But worked-in as it has always been with the social life it has rejected, its organic relations thereto have been obscure, its 'moral sub- stance' thin, and the 'objective arena' for the will to power evanescent. It is an essential part of religion, religion per se in its contrast with the rest of life : it is not the whole of religion. What religion may mean \ for the transformation of instinct must be sought in a more positive religious type. 'X PAET VII CHRISTIANITY ,. ,% CHAPTER XL WHAT CHRISTIANITY REQUIRES MOST rules of life, secular or sacred, undertake to regulate behavior: they are addressed to the expression of instinct in action. But when original Christianity sums up its rule of life, it addresses itself to the feelings or affections. Its language is. Thou shalt love . . . ; or. If any man come to me, and hate not his father . . . yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Men are enjoined to 'abhor that which is evil,' to 'set their affections on things above.' It attacks what McDougall calls the second, or middle, region of instinct, not the third: the emotion, not the response. The command of love to God and to neighbor is not new in Christianity : it is taken over from the code of Deuteronomy, where it occurs among many other precepts. What is new is the selective principle which lighted upon this requirement as the central and essential thing. And such a change of focus is a new moral venture ; for one is committed to all the corolla- ries that can be drawn from one's first principle, and it is in them that its novel power and bearing will first appear. The sermon on the mount may be regarded as a mass of such corollaries. Many of these sayings deal 340 CHRISTIANITY directly with expressions of pugnacity, others with the love of the sexes, others vnth ambition. And they retain, for the most part, the peculiarity of the first principle; their author regards himself as departing from tradition precisely in this, that the requirement is transferred from the outward appearance to the heart. Adultery is defined not in terms of conduct, but in terms of wish; murder is defined in terms of anger. And by way of hedging off the instinctive tendency to evade self-examination by relying on social approval, it is particularly enjoined that all supposed righteousness be kept hidden from the admirmg eyes of men,— including oneself. It is commonly taken as characteristic of Christianity that it is concerned first of all for the * inside of the cup.' But there is something psychologically awry in a command to feel It may be taken as evident that a person cannot at will love his neighbor, still less, his enemy. My feeUngs, of course, are my own, my most intimate property, and most property I can exchange or revise : but these possessions are not alienable nor directly alterable; they are closely identical with what I am, and hence appear to me as something given, inevitable. What I dislike, I dislike, and there is no help for it. Spencer accepts this fact as marking the limit of human freedom. If freedom means doing as we please, then we have freedom without limit; the trouble is (as we see when we reflect) we can do nothing else,— and we cannot please as we please. Hence a command to hate or to love seems, taken literally, to require the impossible. WHAT CHRISTIANITY REQUIRES 341 The interpreters commonly surmount this difficulty by giving the words for feeling a practical meaning. To love one's neighbor, it is said, has nothing to do with subjective or pathological states ; we are simply called upon to perform those acts and assume those attitudes which would express good-will if we had it. We are to behave 'as if ' we loved our neighbor. The rule of love is a rule of service. If I want to know what love would do in any case, the golden rule sup- plies complete directions without calling upon any feelings except those of natural egoism : let me think what I would want; then imaginatively reverse the situation and act accordingly, ' ' for this is the law and the prophets. ' ' Thus the new principle becomes, like the old, a matter of conduct : the stroke of genius lies in the induction which finds the single simple principle, and establishes it in supreme control. It is through this philosophic mastery and sweep that the new righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. Thus the law of love is interpreted pragmatically ; love is as love does. Is it possible that this pragmatic interpretation may exactly miss the characteristic thing about Chris- tianity by pouring back into behavior that which the new idea proposed to lift out of it? Can I with any great success assume toward my neighbor a type of action in independence of my feeling? Granting the James-Lange theory of emotion its utmost, I may acquire a genial and kindly habit of mind which will serve to overcome social friction; but I should fear It M . 342 CHBISTIANITY the moral result of a determined benevolence of bear- ing. Have we not seen enough of the officialized Christian manner? Certainly, in the extreme case, to force a mould of philanthropic action over a rebellious gorge could hardly claim for itself the sublime spon- taneity of soul which is represented as saying in surprise, *'Lord, when saw we thee an hungered and fed theer' Strangely enough, this whole pragmatic interpretation smacks rather of Kant than of the sage of Nazareth. What if the demand of Christianity were intentionally and literally addressed to the affections! The apparent psychological impossibility, I confess, seems to me quite in harmony with the general temper of this religion. Under the guise of extreme simplicity, it repeatedly demands the unattainable. Thus in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, one has but to become as a little child. Eebirth, or conversion, for Chris- tianity, means a recovery of something which children have not yet lost. It might not occur to us to regard a child as a lover either of God or of man, but the child is certainly not a pragmatic servant : what can be said of him is that he has not crossed the Eubicon of that analytic and utilitarian intelligence which can think of persons as means and means only, — ^with all his puny self-assertion, his original sympathy with his enveloping personal world has not been broken. But we have crossed that Eubicon, and to recover the directness of relation of the child is not more easy than to 4ove' in any other sense. It is hardly more easy than to be perfect,— and it is written, **Be ye therefore perfect.'' WHAT CHRISTIANITY REQUIRES 343 As I understand Christianity, it needs little inter- pretation, for it means as nearly as possible what it says. It intends to state its requirement in terms of a complete transformation of the instincts; it is on this account that it has for us an extreme theoretical interest. We shall consider how it proposes to deal with the major passions of the private and the public orders. f in 1 I I' i I CHAPTER XLI CHRISTIANITY AND PUGNACITY THERE is no better test of any rule of life than its way of settling accounts with pugnacity. For pugnacity is the instinctive agent of readjust- ment, especially of the deeper and abrupter readjust- ments : if human nature were so far transformed that there were no more readjustments to be made, within or without, pugnacity would of necessity disappear. The last conquest of pugnacity, before reaching the ideal state, would be the conquest of itself. In society as we find it, the dialectic of experience has made a certain level of transformation of pug- nacity habitual. It was only as the disposition to rush into strife was tamed that society on an ample scale became possible. And society abets this dialectic both by its rules and by making an adequate provision for all. Where there is plenty, men may be persuaded to accept their allotment in peace (so long as they have faith in the fairness of the allotment) ; but where there is scarcity or the suspicion of injustice, there is a ten- dency to revert to the primitive methods, with their risks and hopes. But the most orderly and successful society is still surcharged with pugnacious behavior in various 'moral equivalents.' Apart from competi- tion, discussion, and various sorts of peaceful rivalry, CHRISTIANITY AND PUGNACITY 345 there is the pervasive activity of the critical judgment. Wrath against defective persons and institutions, by being circuited through the processes of conceptual thought, is made over into an energy for their repair rather than their destruction. Criticism, armed with various weapons of peaceful eflSciency, is the social ultimate in the transforming of pugnacity. I say the social ultimate, for the injunction of Chris- tianity, ** Judge not," cannot be observed in human society. Not alone because progress depends on the perpetual work of this negative impulse, with others ; but also because to be accurately judged and measured is a vital interest of every self-conscious being. He who wants power wants self-knowledge; and he who wants self-knowledge wants criticism, whether or not he likes it. It is an essential ingredient of that craving for intercourse with our kind which we sometimes dub the * instinct of sociability' that we anticipate this mutual appraisal, ** sizing up," incipient locking of horns, the Carlylian question, * ' Can I kill thee or canst thou kill me r ' ; though all such valuing and appraising implies placing in a series, a denial of absolute worth in the respect measured, reduction from an end to a means. It is in the 'hard' public order that the activity of the critical judgment is most evident; for there the standards are most objective and definite. But the critical judgment of the private order is most search- ing. Here it takes a form which, for lack of a general name, we may call education in its widest sense. Education, in this sense, is not simply a deliberate 346 CHRISTIANITY transaction which takes place between one generation and another. It occurs whenever two human beings are associated, and without necessary intention. It is the transaction through which, by a hundred avenues of expression, A's total consciousness of B becomes a part of B 's self -consciousness. This trans- action is always selective, always critical, and always mutual. Ideals of education are held before us in which no adverse criticism should appear, but all be positive and encouraging. And so far as the expressing of our judgment is concerned, it is a principle of the greatest use (because it is nearer the truth) to dwell on what persons are rather than on what they are not. It is also a valuable principle to express few judgments rather than many. But these are questions of art, not of substance: and in regard to the substance of the social judgment, it is vain to evade the negative element, however it is conveyed. For the negative element is there; we must be true to our own aversions. And further, we cannot outwit the need of it in the dynamics of education: to be conscious, sometimes acutely, of what we are steering from, is a part of our knowledge of what we are steering to; and the ele- mental spurs of fear and rue and pain are the ever present obverses of our hope and confidence. An assumed uncondemning or wholly beaming attitude, unless it retains the permanent possibility of instant challenge, becomes an affectation of the godlike which departs more or less from the veritable and evokes a CHRISTIANITY AND PUGNACITY 347 like departure in the addressee, robbing intercourse of reality and minimizing the meaning of all language. The most effective educating agencies known to us are free from all conscious scruples on the score of criticism. They are the spontaneous activities of those who have just emerged from some stage of relative defect, and take a corresponding intensity of interest in denouncing that stage in others. The boy who has just now learned to swim cannot sufficiently emphasize the contrast between himself and those who still flounder in the water. Without this temper and its sting, the world of boys would be robbed of its immense develop- ing power, and at the same time, of its attraction : it is this temper that creates around the horizon of effort a surcharged sense of the importance of just this achievement. Under this pressure the latent powers rise sufficiently high to leap the barrier : a little less concern may mean permanent failure to meet the last inch of the requirement, and hence to find what one's powers actually are. Nowhere could society afford to dispense with the zeal of recent converts, with their unsullied sense of the magnitude of their achieve- ment. Their estimate is probably truer than ours who look on from a greater distance; for who most justly appreciates the length of a mile,— he who remembers it after a day's rest, or he who has just finished the last of twenty? We cannot always secure for our own efforts the notable spur of necessity, nor do we forever need it ; but if we are deprived of the lash of a sufficiently critical social judgment, we instinctively try to replace it by invented task-masters IW Kl lU 348 CHRISTIANITY within ourselves. And until we shall have finished our , education to the extent of ceasing to be social beings, this replacement is never quite complete. Thus society expects its members to be critical of one another, both in personal and oflScial relations, while conscious of the dominant power of the positive social bond. The health of social movement depends on the maintenance by individual wills of a certain distance or alienation from all that invites to total acquiescence, or absolute social satisfaction.^ Nor is there any necessary kinship between an aliveness to defect, which is the very engine of personal growth, and a cynical temper. But it remains true that the critic feels himself to some extent, and somewhere, criticised by his own criticism. It is only in the ironical mockery of a Socrates or in the denunciations of a Christ that the separative judgment loses the quality of a cry of pain. This is not the final trans- formation of pugnacity. We may well long for a world in which *' Judge not'' were possible. n Christianity reveals no solicitude for the neces- sities of the social order. Its precepts are explicit, 1 No account of the philosophy of change is complete which refers it alone to the 61an vital with its perpetual creativity, nor yet to the Unmoved Mover that beckons all men to its absolute good. To these must be added the driving power of the standards and systems which are due to the action of human analysis and concept -making ; and which by ceaselessly reminding man of what he is not, through criticism, exclusion, and negation, spur him in infinite sequence toward their own goals. CHRISTIANITY AND PUGNACITY 349 and Tolstoy understood them : resist not evil, love your enemy, judge not, recompense evil with good. These precepts define not so much a transformation of pugnacity as an abolition of it, together with the whole process of social measurement and of justice itself. And so far as these commands are provided with a commentary, they seem not alone to admit but to assert an abandonment of justice. For the com- mentary explains that these principles are one aspect of the perfection of *^your Father which is in heaven," which perfection we are summoned to make our own : and this perfection on God's part is manifest in this, that **He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." In other words, that which to some minds appears as the total moral indifference of mechanical nature is here held up as the perfection of God. What is this but to make the absence of justice, the indiscriminate treatment of good and evil, the supreme law of the spiritual world? To argue thus is to forget that what is mechanical behavior in the inorganic realm is no longer mechani- cal in the realm of stimulus and response. The ocean responds neither to the blandishments nor to the threats of Xerxes; but the mechanisms of his own menials would react to the one by smiles and to the other by signs of terror. So the response of amiable- ness to the amiable approach, and the response of enmity to the inimical approach, while it has the semblance of justice, and the sanction of the aesthetic sacred law, is the type of a moral mechanism. And >A t «« i"! i 350 CHRISTIANITY to refuse to respond in kind, while it may seem to return to the indifference of nature, may be the precise opposite of a mechanical attitude. The attacker expects your resistance; if you do not resist, your rejection of his challenge may enter the situation with the force of a new idea. Like all surprises, the absence of resistance where resistance was expected, would necessarily arouse some new idea in the aggressor by way of reviewing the situation in his mind. His new idea, however, might be one of several: he might conclude that you were too dead to fight, or that you were too much alive to fight. Christianity depends on the possibility of putting significance into the latter idea. And the persistent refusal to criticise or to retaliate can be a sign of more life, rather than less, only when it is a response to a greater degree of truth. It must mean that the self which has defects or which does injury is seen to be other than the real self; and the non- resistance constitutes an appeal from the apparent self to the real self, or from the actual self to the self that may be. In this case, it is not injustice, but it is justice to the living and changeable. It is a type of justice undiscovered by the Greek, for it is based neither on equity nor on proportionality to any self that exists. Greek justice, distributive or retributive, took men statically, as they presented themselves. This type of justice refuses to take a man at his own estimate of himself; it insists on the self of a more nearly absolute estimate, the self that must be, and which this resolve of the non-resisting will will help CHRISTIANITY AND PUGNACITY 351 to bring into being. It is a justice done for the first time to the plasticity and responsiveness of human nature toward our own wills: it is an absolute, or creative, justice. And this is the only type of response that can finally satisfy pugnacity itself. For what pugnacity wants is not simply the destruction of evil : it wants the evil will to hate and destroy its own evil. The element of hate in fighting and punishment and criticism is directed toward making the guilty consciousness con- sume its own iniquity; and to this end the instinctive ferocity of gesture and grimace make for forcing the evil-doer by suggestion into a momentary abhorrence and fear of his own crime. But the evil will will not hate itself, unless it first becomes the good will : hence pugnacity is not satisfied unless the replacement of the evil by the good takes place. And when it takes place, that which was to be hated has disappeared. Hence, what pugnacity wants is to make the man over: it wants to create the conditions for the free self- rejection of the evil. And for this act of creation, the absolute justice of **Love your enemies'' is a necessary demand. Ill Christianity intends to impose upon pugnacity the interpretation of a creative impulse. This is its final transformation. And if we have rightly discerned the meaning of these precepts, we are in a position to judge whether they intend to do away at once with social criticism, or social justice, or war. Let me mention 352 CHRISTIANITY two or three principles which will govern our decision on these questions. 1. The forgiving, or non-resisting, or enemy-loving attitude has its entire justification in the 'new idea' which it conveys to the wrong-doer. It is a language : and the whole virtue of a language is that it is under- stood. The attitude itself, we saw, was outwardly indistinguishable from apathy or indifference : it must by all means distinguish itself from apathy or indif- ference, or it is a failure. He who so uses non- resistance that it is mistakable for passivity, weakness, cowardice, or folly, uses it unworthily ; and shows thereby that he knows not what it means. Letting myself be cheated or abused through lethargy or lack of time or courage to make an issue cannot be claimed as an exhibition of divine perfection. Unless I am, as a fact, so much a seer as to be a lover of my enemy, it is both futile and false to assume the behavior of love : we can generally rely on the enemy to give such conduct its true name. And love of this sort is seldom possible in the more transitory and impersonal relations of life : it is in the quieter contacts of man with man that this creative language has its best chance of being heard. In the dealings of a composite national mind with another composite national mind, I believe that there is a possibility of using the language of creative good will: but the conditions are harder to realize, and the penalties for an enforcement of falsely affectionate conduct deservedly severe. 2. Not only must the user of this language consider CHRISTIANITY AND PUGNACITY 353 whether he can use it honestly ; he must consider also whether he has a listener. It is sometimes necessary to induce a quiescent frame of mind in the other before any language can 'get across.' There is such a thing in the world as persistent and self-assured cynicism; and there is such a thing as determined bad will. It is chiefly these which make wars necessary. War is not to be understood as necessarily a negation of the principle of Christianity; a just war is an attempt to create the conditions under which the opponent is disposed to listen to the language of the still, small voice. 3. The creative attitude is not meant to displace but to subordinate the critical attitude, and its varieties, the competitive, the punitive, the warlike attitudes. Antagonism is not an intrinsic evil ; it is an evil only when it is not included within a fundamental agree- ment. If it is understood that the contestants have shaken hands, they may attack each other With entire good will. What would become of the game of chess under the rule, *'If any one would take away your castle, give him your queen also"? If an abstractly devised era of good-feeling destroys the era of good chess, or of any more serious competition wherein men are fairly tested, it will not long remain an era of good feeling. Politeness may be regarded as an artful assumption of universal benevolence for the purpose of a restricted social undertaking : it does not rule out all contests, but it rules out those that would disturb the predominantly aesthetic character of the limited 1i 354 CHEISTIANITY occasion. Just in so far as politeness oversteps its sphere, it becomes the covering of the bitterest hos- tility, that which fences from beneath the cloak of formal friendliness. Amenity without opposition becomes empty; even lovers weary of it. The force of the rule of love in common social interchange is directed, not to eliminating the critical judgment, but rather to making firm that prior understanding according to which we unite in the will to stand or fall by the rules of the proposed contest. Thus, the world must have both systems. Contest is a peril to the soul ; criticism cannot exist without some self-condemnation: but the salvage of human nature lies not in abandoning them, but in giving them the true setting. Eeligion has the office of referring men to the absolute ; not the absolute which removes them from the relative, but the absolute which by establishing a point of rest within the flux of change, gives all change, with its effort, and its hostilities, its total meaning. For this reason I cannot agree with those inter- preters of Christianity who say that Christianity sets up an ideal for an ideal state of society, not for the present. Christianity is never more clearly a rule for immediate adoption than in its dealing with pugnacity. It expresses the final satisfaction of the will of the fighter in the midst of every good fight. CHAPTER XLII CHEISTIANITY AND SEX-LOVE NOT a few lovers of peace are now reminding us of the doctrine of non-resistance in Christianity, urging us in its name to forget the arts of war. It hardly occurs to these persons to carry the same logic into the region of sex-morality. The more consistent abstractionists, like Tolstoy, perceived that the letter of the new law is not less hostile to the family and to the State than to the use of force. If pacifism quotes Christianity, it may well learn from Tolstoy either to renounce sex-love together with physical resistance, or to find a place for both. On the meaning and destiny of sex-love Christianity has little to say. But if we read together with the documents the tendencies that worked themselves out in the early communities, there can be no question of its preference for virginity. The monastic ideal is implicit in its standards. The sword which it brought was to divide between a man and his family as well as his possessions: ** Leave all" for the sake of the new kingdom, — ^this injunction was meant and taken in deadly earnest, and without this intense singleness of purpose early Christianity would not have done its work in the world. It would not be untrue to the sense of Christianity to set up beside the ** Judge not," i.e., f: m 356 CHRISTIANITY Know not enmity or defect, a corresponding precept, *^Know not sex," i.e., Eegard all persons as persons, and never as men or women. We cannot say in advance that it is impossible to comply with such a precept. The life of sex, in the social order, is hardly as inevitable for the individual as is pugnacity: there are those, and their number increases, who seem to make out a complete life without it. It is true that the psychological function of the family must somehow be performed if men and women are to retain their normal balance. But it is not at all obvious that this function must be performed bij sex- love itself; for while sex is the deepest of the hungers, it is also the most versatile in its capacity for substi- tution or sublimation. The Freudians are doubtless right in saying that such a need cannot safely be re- pressed. But we want to know what it is that may not be repressed. We would do well to enquire more care- fully what sex-love in its own natural self -teaching, or dialectic, means. It would seem the first point of wisdom in dealing with this question to be clear that the need which we call sex-love has a meaning, like every other instinct; and that to find this meaning requires an effort of interpretation. The use of the word ^instinct' here is likely to carry with it the greatest volume of sophistry; for it is so easy to assume and so far from the truth that we know off-hand what an instinct wants. It is impossible to read the psychological meaning of CHRISTIANITY AND SEX-LOVE 357 any instinct in its biological context, and more par- ticularly the instinct of sex. The biological meaning is more likely to be found from the psychological end. What the psychological function of sex-love is we have already vaguely outlined in describing it as the passion of the private order, corresponding to ambi- tion in the public order. It is the life of the residual self, unexpressed in the public order. The sexes are fitted to recognize more of the subconscious and grow- ing in one another than can ordinarily be appreciated between members of the same sex ; they are drawn into a protective attitude toward whatever is groping and 'unsaved' in the other self. An extension of 'sym- pathy,' love appears as a premonition of a power to confer and to receive life at a profounder level than that of words and services. Thus the craving of sex on its psychological side might be roughly described as a craving for subconscious respiration. In this respiration, the quest of power, visible as an impulse toward bringing the ineffective self into effect, is paradoxically mingled with an impulse toward com- plete self-abandonment. Passion always means the reference of the whole of life to a new focus, and hence a thoroughgoing abandonment of rival foci ; but in the case of love, the distinctive joy of abandonment is pre- pared by a recurrent need which no one escapes. I mean the need to denounce from time to time the expression one finds, not alone in public service, but in all social activity and in the language of all conven- tions and of all intellectual concepts, — ^to denounce these not as false but as inadequate, and to break i m 358 CHBISTIANITY through into a region of expression which is imme- diate and entire, and yet a language, a communion with another self. Such a subordination of the rela- tively futile to a relatively adequate language, the life of sex with its symbols seems to promise. Intimacy and the symbols of intimacy, the throwing together of all concrete fortunes,— the fortunes of thought, of the plans, labors, and economies of life, and of the physical being also,— radicalism of this sort offers a prospect of complete release for that deeper will which is forever brooding over its visible career and finding it vanity and vexation of spirit, — as taken alone, it is. This prospective release of the deeper strata of personality in the lover is due to a discovery — the * stimulus' of his love — an item of knowledge, if you will ; for like all instinct, love has at its core a char- acteristic perception or intuition. This knowledge is, in the first place, simply his own newly awakened perception, his * sympathetic intelligence ' of what the beloved being, apart from all acquired excellences, is. This knowledge is presumably not scientifically new, except in so far as it is a knowledge of that unique individual. What makes the experience one of love is that this unique acquisition of the gift of sight with reference to that unique person is simply the lover's initiation into an old and well-known mystery. What is it, then, that he seest The answer, so far as it is general, may be found in asking what, after all, that being, or any other con- scious being, is. And what is such a being if not a process of thoughtful and active intercourse with its CHRISTIANITY AND SEX-LOVE 359 own environment! To perceive such a being would be to perceive a process of dealing with the world, and thus to see the world through that being. What love sees does not stop short of the realities: its horizon, its stimulus, is metaphysical. The truth seems to be that the minds of men and women are so made that each, by the aid of the other, may see farther into the universe than either can see by itself or by the aid of others of its own kind. And what one seems to see in the other is largely seen through the other : what ap- pears to be a quality of the individual turns out to be a quality of the world. This is not to deny these qualities of the individual, however; for the beauty and worth of a person are not separable from the world of objects into which that person habitually looks. But whatever the content of this half -personal, half- metaphysical vision, the first impulse and meaning of love, like that of art in response to the beautiful, is to possess what it has seen by reproducing it. It under- takes to edit, portray, proclaim, give out in some way its discovery, and preferably to a worthy rather than to an unworthy audience, hence (with the character- istic inward-turning of love) commonly to the beloved person himself. Thus the will to power seems reduced and tamed to the idle form of praise, and spends the energy that might have moved the world in adorn- ment, idealization, and numerous busy offices called into being not for their utility, but solely for the ele- ment of praise which they embody. But praise, it may be noted, under the guise of service, is still a subtle taking-possession, an assertion of comprehension and /' CHEISTIANITY AND SEX-LOVE 361 ■1, ., !! 111! !i! 360 CHRISTIANITY right. And all taking-possession in the progress of love may (with allowance for feeble terms where aU terms are feeble) be described as a development of praise: with increasingly intimate care and service there is consistent enlargement of that assumed right until it ventures to include in its scope the entire gamut of the being of the beloved, from thought to immediate existence, and to render back this entire gamut as something known, comprehended, praised,— and yet with the imprint upon it of that once alien will, the consciousness of the lover and knower. Especially in dealing with the meaning of love, the notion of * power' threatens to become inept. For it is precisely in love that the whole conscious interest in power seems neutralized and rendered latent by the dominant interest in mutuality, in getting rid of all distance and otherness. No doubt the lover comes into a kind of incidental power or confidence toward the world at large— if he is accepted ; he may even be said to taste greatness : but the greatness is conferred upon him, the power is borrowed rather than his own. Between the lovers, also, there is a wholly mutual sense of dignity which comes from the awareness of validity : with their other metaphysical knowledge, the lovers also know that between them— not in either of them— the tribe is present; the promise and potency of humanity as a self -continuing stream of conscious life is, if not in their keeping, still within reach of their conjuring. But what thus seems their power is not their own : it is the power of nature and of society. But I would still say that just because of this vica- riousness and latency, the will to power here notably comes to its own. For power is realized not primarily in self-assertive exertion, but rather in taking advan- tage of the hierarchical arrangement of the powers of the world, affecting large issues by touching their springs. The technique and strategy of love is just this, that it works back, so to speak, toward the focus of the world's forces, the tilting point of the avalanche. It touches the curve of life at the moment of its bend- ing from the rise to the decline, where but an increment of strength suffices to work the miracle and hold life away from the gravitation of mortality. Thus, in- stinctively, love finds itself assuming for a brief mo- ment the actual work of a god: it undertakes, while acting as a channel for universal life, to be an original maker of life. II These undertakings, I say, are incipient in the first impulse of love. But in carrying out its primary ambitions, love finds subjective satisfactions and pleasures, and on account of these, love, as a matter of racial and typical if not of universal experience, suffers a fall The fall is that it adopts as an end the subjective joy that it has discovered. It limits its horizon; and mingling an overweight of sense in its meaning, it becomes selfish. It draws circles, creates an imaginary world of two, and thinks that all the sufficiencies of the universe are contained within it. No love begins by seeing in love primarily a natural 1 3g2 CHRISTIANITY desire ; but some loves end that way, and most at some time or other tend to. What forces love out of this circle as a rule is not abstract idealism but simply the experience of self- defeat, i.e., the natural dialectic. It finds that it cannot retain even its own narrow type of satisfaction, because it has mistaken its meaning. It is forced to break out of that circle for the very breath of life it sought there. This is a critical juncture in the adventure of love. For while love now knows beyond peradventure that it has been disappointed, it may not see clearly where the repair of its fortunes lies. One of the most inviting of hypotheses is that it has chosen the wrong individual as an object of devotion. What it thought it saw in that person is clearly not there. It may ac- cordingly betake itself to wandering, as a cure for its confinement in what is subjective and poor of meaning. Fickleness is right and 'natural' in all that it denies,— it denies that that was satisfying. But fickleness is more than likely to be false in what it affirms. It has a negatively pragmatic value in the course of the dialectic of experience: that which does not work, is not the real thing. Ill It is at this point that social pressure comes to the rescue. The office of social pressure is to force dis- illusioned love into another inference than that of natural wandering. Its satisfaction was lost, not because its first vision was deceptive, but because it has by its own self-will obscured that first vision. CHEISTIANITY AND SEX-LOVE 363 What it first saw was an independent soul ; and that soul has now been reduced to dependence upon itself. What one has wearied of is the limited and cUnging lover, having no independent grasp on absolute reaUty and value, and therefore opaque to what was once visible through him. To that first spirit it could minister with pleasure, or rather, by necessity; to the present being it can bring only requests for its own satisfaction. It is not that the person has changed, but that the horizon, from which all personal worth is derived, has shrunk. The only being you can love is the being who has an independent object of worship, and that holds you out of your self-indulgence to a worship of that same object. The health and meamng of love depend on that common devotion to a common divinity. Now society insists on a part of this horizon ; it reminds marriage of its responsibiUty to the pubhc order; it takes hostages against too easy wandering, providing that any retreat shall be as public and as well considered as the original commitment. It thus compels a fickle impulse at least to re-examine its theory of the case, and so provides for a time the ex- ternal form of loyalty, in the good hope that the pair will supply the substance thereof from their own hvmg resources. But of itself, society cannot provide this substance, and its pressure in favor of its conventional family Ufe, helpful to great majorities in the quest of their own individual meanings, leaves the few without a guide and empty, mere rebellious conformists, or non- conformists. Society cannot revive a dead or comatose t 364 CHBISTIANITY affection ; it cannot so mucli as explain to the arid ex- lover what it is that he wants. Such explanation is the work of the philosopher ; and Plato came nearer to fulfilling this office than most other thinkers of ancient or modern times. All love, said he, as it becomes aware of its meaning, is a demand for immortality through ** creation in the medium of beauty." Ignorant love forgets that its horizon is immortality : enlightened love realizes that its meaning is only completely found when personal and family relations are left behind; it is found in that metaphysical element which all love more or less dimly reveals, in the quest and transmission by teach- ing of the knowledge of what is absolutely real. It is in the giving of that second birih of which the Brahmans taught, rather than in the giving of the first birth, that the full satisfaction of love is to be found. Thus sex-love, completely understood, has no psychological need of physical relationship nor of marriage; and Plato seems to speak in total accord with the voice of early Christianity. But there are few today who accept the interpre- tation of Plato as complete. Nor does it seem to me complete, nor equivalent to the purport of Christianity. IV To reach a completer view of the meaning of love, I must recall that in that stage of the dialectic which we described as the 'fall of love,' there is a gain as well as a loss of meaning. And the element of meaning here gained is not included in Plato's interpretation. CHBISTIANITY AND SEX-LOVE 365 For when, by self-indulgence, the circle of love narrows, the beloved is at times within the circle, a fellow conspirator in the limitation; and at times outside the circle. And when the eye tempered by self-interest sees the other in this external fashion, it sees him impersonally and critically. His defects are visible, not at all for the first time (for love is not blind, it is merely confident), but in the new Ught of a problem,— a problem which the private order must share with the pubUc order. These defects are likely to become the object of a suffering criticism, the type of criticism which condemns the critic, but which, none the less, has its own measure of truth. In brief, the evolution of love begins to include within itself, more or less unavowedly, a segment of the development of pugnacity. And pugnacity always deals with the concrete; it is a highly contemporaneous and indi- vidualizing impulse. It does not permit the growth of love to take a Platonic direction from the more material to the more ethereal objects of contemplation. It reminds it of its highly particular historic task. Whatever its meaning, it must include all that a com- pletely transformed pugnacity means: it must learn the art of recovering in the other the absolute self disposed to reject its own imperfection. Love is the best agent for the instruction of pug- nacity; but pugnacity, in turn, is (in some form or other) a very fit agent for the instruction of a flagging love. What it has to teach is no more than what love all along knew, namely, its own interest in the removal of defects from the beloved, its uncompromising i it^- 366 CHRISTIANITY jealousy of all such defects, its wholly sufficient power to overcome them. This is love's responsibility; but let me say that in the integrity of the natural impulse of love, it is an ingredient of love's enthusiasm. Love does not want a perfect object : it wants an object to be made over, fit for its own power of re-creation. The meaning of the great passion is not found pri- ^ marily in bringing forth a race of new beings who shall reaUze in time all that was lacking to their progenitors. Its meaning like that of religion itself is a claim upon present experience. It means nothing less than the destruction of what is recognized as mortal— I do not say in the other, but in both, and in their mutual life— and its re-creation in the light of whatever beauty it has seen. But its impulse to de- stroy that mortality and to reproduce that beauty is no more one of abstract immortalization than is the work of an artist: it is a very concrete and present aim. More than this, such a transformation is what love actually, though subconsciously, and more or less permanently, achieves. Thus the dialectic of love reaches an interpretation more active than Platonic and more absorbing of the entire soul-and-body entity. Love is that region of Uf e which exists in giving life ; and this means develop- ing the possibilities of a mutual existence both of sense and of idea. It is satisfied only when its power can work in a completely historic form. It ministers to the soul, but always by way of body and estate. Its first impulsive certainty of power it must replace by a more conscious and responsible certainty. But if the CHEISTIANITY AND SEX-LOVE 367 interest in Ufe-giving sinks into tolerance and habitual modus Vivendi, love is hibernating or dead. It is better that it should remain consciously critical. For love is by necessity aggressive and originative. . V . Christianity sets itself at the goal of this dialectical development, careless as always of the relations of the goal to the usual social process. It sets an absolute standard for the relations of men and women; but it hardly suggests that this standard is to be reached through any such course of experience as we have depicted, still less through the ascent of the Platonic ladder. Its teaching may be stated somewhat as follows : ^, 1. By assuming, as Christianity does, the non- necessity of marriage for complete satisfaction of the will, it teaches by implication that love is capable of complete 'sublimation.' But it is noteworthy that in the typical transformations of love adopted by Chns- tianity, the element of physical 'ministration' is never lost It is through the washing of feet, the tendance of the injured, the breaking of the box of ointment (not in any sense a useful social service), the cup of cold water, that the repressed wish finds an outlet. As a matter of history, the notable trend of Christian energies into philanthropic efforts during the first few centuries is the manifestation of a humamtanan passion sufficiently profound to drain the entire life of affection into its channel; and philanthropy is not Platonism. f 368 CHKISTIANITY CHBISTIANITY AND SEX-LOVE 369 !l But it is likewise characteristic of Christianity that the personal ministration was never allowed to shrink to the level of purely objective and useful service. The cup of cold water is given *in the name' of some- thing believed to be of cosmic importance and impera- tive upon the completer will of the person served. The situation is given its own horizon of meaning, unob- trusively in the main, by a sign, by the wearing of a uniform, or by nothing visible at all ; but the purpose is never relinquished of remaking the mind while remaking the body. Love, to Christianity as to Plato, means the will to confer immortality. And apart from that intent, the legacy of * charity' imposed upon our present social order begins to appear as a wretched substitute for justice, and a mockery of all honest love. The justification, and the only justification, of charity is its metaphysical import. The future lies rather with the useless gift, the box of ointment, i.e., with the increasingly adequate sublimation of love in art, the disinterested, but yet physical, tendance of the im- mortal in man. Philanthropy and the production of beauty, both creative activities, are the two chief social equivalents of sex-love. But Christianity proposes them as com- plete equivalents only when they are elements in its own form of the religious life. This form is one which involves a concrete union of * ministry' with worship, and an alternation between the two. In the usual treatment of the subject by psychologists of religion it is commonly assumed that the ministry is the sub- stantial, and worship the insubstantial, idle, and perhaps harmful element. But without worship, both philanthrophy and art merge too completely with the public order. Worship is the recollection of the spirit and the renewal of that consciousness of meaning which is to be carried into the ministration. It is an effort to shake off the dust and iUusion of a partly secularized consciousness, and to recover a sense (not a ^mere idea') of the quality of value, of beauty perhaps, in the ultimate reality of the world. It has no other object than that same metaphysical truth that love catches glimpses of— this objective truth is the primary bond of identity between them. And if wor- ship attains its end, it is the realization of what love through its symbols perpetually seeks. Thus we confirm the existence of an analogy of the life of religion with the life of sex, which has been much dwelt upon of late as though it were a new discovery. But what it means is a very ancient insight ; and that insight is not that religion is nearly identical with sex, but that sex, as it finds its own meaning, approaches identity with religion. The same is obviously true of patriotism, and only less obviously true of ambition and of every other positive human impulse ; but the relationship is particularly direct in the case of sex- love, first because of its occasionally clear and con- fessed metaphysical horizon, and second because of the natural rhythm or alternation in its life, akin to that of religion just pointed out. A right understanding of this truth has distinct social importance at present, when marriage as a career is increasingly a matter for deUberate choice •pi i imk 370 CHRISTIANITY or rejection, and still the absence of marriage is felt as a loss of selfhood. The right understanding seems to me to be contained in this simple proposition : that the only thing about a human will that needs to be satisfied is the whole will; and that religion is the satisfaction of the whole will, the will to power in its inclusive form. Apart from this fact, one can under- stand that it might become a social theorem claiming psychological support that no substitution for the life of sex is possible, and that the social evil or evils are necessarily always with us. With this fact, the con- sideration of any desirable social changes is at once freed from the false and intrusive note of * necessity.' It may be remarked in passing that particularly in this matter what we imagine to be necessary is the chief agent in creating a necessity; and conversely a presumption of non-necessity, supported by a psycho- logical understanding of the principle of * interpreta- tion,' may well be the first step to emancipation. 2. But the absolute which Christianity prescribes in this field, like its other absolutes, intends to live with the relative, not to displace it. The final meaning of sex-love is one which is to be held within marriage, and within all the other relations of men and women. There are a few religions (think of the religion of Schopenhauer, of the Shakers, of Tolstoy's later days) that have attempted to exclude the life of sex; but Christianity is not among them. The possibility of sublimation which it asserts is such as to set indi- viduals free to choose their own destiny, celibate or CHRISTIANITY AND SEX-LOVE 371 not, as otherwise they would hardly be free. It is certainly not such as to prescribe either type of destiny. In the relations of men and women, what Chris- tianity explicitly demands is not defined in terms of any given type of behavior; it is the meaning it is concerned with. It is a question of how one '^looketh upon a woman." And the sense of its legislation seems to be this : that any behavior is right behavior which is consistent with looking upon her as a person having a destiny of her own to work out, a possibility of immortality which depends in part upon your own attitude. Any behavior is right which is consistent with this : no social constraint need deflect the conduct of one who sees always as far as the *' pilgrim soul" in the person of his neighbor. But an attempt to bring this meaning into the relationship will quickly exclude many varieties of behavior. There is more room for self-deception here than in most other regions of behavior in declaring freedom from particular social rules for the sake of an alleged general meaning or spirit. But the meaning proposed by Christianity supplies a test with a cutting edge if one is disposed to use it. All of love is right when it takes for its meaning the giving of life, i.e., such life as can satisfy a human will. ^ CHAPTER XLIII CHRISTIANITY AND AMBITION EARLY Christianity had no overt hostility to the regular business of State life. It paid its taxes and its debts, observed the civil laws, baptized centu- rions and magistrates without expecting them to abandon their callings, and on occasion appealed to Caesar. As to the public corvees, it proposed that if any man, i.e., an officer, compel you to go with him one mile, the proper spirit would pay a double stint. Yet it would be vain to read into these occasional signs of acquiescence any adoption of the purposes of the public order. Whatever are the ordinary objects of ambition, — precedence, wealth, office, public power, — they are relegated with an almost contemp- tuous gesture to the unimportant: **for after all these things do the Gentiles seef A new ambition, however, enters upon the heels of the old. The spiritual life of the universe has its own structure, its own focus, and as it were its own court and order of nobility. And for him who would be first in that realm there is a maxim : let him be servant of all. Ambition is recognized, and in the same breath annulled. It is by lighting on the existing paradoxes of the will (not by inventing them) that Christianity was able to carry the art of life beyond the Greek level. CHRISTIANITY AND AMBITION 373 A Ambition faced with this reversal of its natural aim is compelled to undergo a metamorphosis and acquire a more stable meaning. But does the change amount to anything more than translating into another world the essential aims of the present? A longer aim may easily reverse a present policy. Treasures are to be laid up, as usual, but in a safer place. One is to become cosmically intelligent and therefore cosmically prudent. A motive in which one detects strands of instinctive self- assertion and instinctive fear, stirred by perceiving the perishableness of all finite goods, is to lead men to seek in an imperishable good the absolute security of the soul. I am not among those who find prudence an objectionable virtue ; nor who reject the interest in personal survival as unseemly in a mortal. One who loves life at all is forever becoming more deeply involved in it; and the self-conscious lover of life cannot otherwise than will his own continuous exist- ence. To desire the saving of one's soul in this sense is a necessary desire ;^ and under these circumstances, it is no high merit to remain indifferent regarding ways and means. But prudence is not the noblest of the virtues, nor the last word of Christianity. Buddhism had long ago detected the moral danger of an indulgent heaven- quest, and had sought to make ambition commit 1 A fact which is not altered by the results of any questionnaire, especially of a questionnaire circulated among the more sophisticated and self -challenging members of the community, as in the enquiry by Professor James H. Leuba, reported in **The Belief in Gk>d and Immortality. ' ' 374 CHRISTIANITY suicide in a selflessness without desire. It sought dispassion; and it^ sought it by way of compassion, because thereby the root of individuality was best killed. But it is no easy task to destroy in oneself all desire, or all the skandhas that attach to individual existence ; and if one enters upon and persists in this noble and arduous * eightfold path, ' it must be through some powerful impulsion. In truth, ambition is the essence of religion. There is always possible to men a life of least resistance, taking oneself and the world as one finds them, accepting the horizon of nature. If one repudiates this and takes upon himself the pains of a Buddha, it is through some deep-laid passion, which the goal of Buddhism, as defined to our Western ears, hardly explains. If religion destroys ambition, it destroys itself. The solution of Christianity perceives this prin- ciple. It recognizes as does Buddhism the faultiness of heaven-seeking; but it seeks to remedy that fault by proceeding in the opposite direction, — ^by carrying ambition to the limit of its own meaning, giving a final answer to the question. What does ambition want? The dialectic of experience has shown us from many angles how the quest for power tends to revise its aim ; how the pursuit of power-over becomes the pursuit of power-for. As po wer must have its object, it is so far dependent upon the existence of the object, and must seek its welfare. At th e limit , the exercise of power is^indistinguishable from service ; i t con sists in giving or in adding to the being of another. Christianity places itself at this point and defines, as the goal of CHRISTIANITY AND AMBITION 375 the transformation of ambition, the conferring of spiritual life. The compassion which in Buddhism is the corrective of the self -centered bent of the will is present here also, but with a different meaning. The compassion of Buddha looks on the world of men as caught in the error of individuality and its consequent suffering, and in releasing them wins its own release. The compassion of Christianity looks on a world of men as lacking individuality and hence unable to meet suffering, and in confirming their selfhood confirms its own. Ambition in this form is the most characteristic product of Christianity in the field of behavior. It is the passion for the historic spread of the new com- munity, or in more personal form, the '* passion for souls. '' Nothing is more dominant in the early history of this cult than the willingness to suffer, to be despised, to endure all things, if by any means some could be persuaded to become members of the com- munity, the kingdom of heaven in the guise of a militant church on earth. In this transformation, ambition does not lose the other-worldly sweep of the transcendental prudence we were speaking of. It is still laying hold on that other world, but with more radical power than is implied in simply attaining future status there. It is indeed far more ambitious. It lays hold on that world with the intent of so much present mastery of its quality and principle as to weave them into the fabric of human history. This passion for souls we have described as the final 376 CHRISTIANITY transformation of the ambition of the public order; but it is evidently more than that. It is the same form of will as that which gave the final meaning to human love, the will to confer immortal life. It is likewise the last transformation of pugnacity, the will to displace evil with good. It is, in truth, the point in which the meanings of all instincts converge. It is the positive meaning given by Christianity to the human will as a whole. ' Saving one's soul,' so far as psychology can deal with the matter, is the achieving of this passion. 'Conversion,' or the second-birth, means the trans- lation of natural impulses into terms of this form of the will to power. It is this change which gave Words- worth his maturity in that moment when he became a Medicated spirit.' It is visible, in more or less veiled form, in the final insights of Goethe's Faust, of Browning's Paracelsus. But it is in more literal and potent fashion the force behind the careers of Jesus and Paul, and, apart from their unfinished meta- physics, of Buddha and of Socrates. And it is more or less obscurely the motive of all our more honorable efforts in education, social reform, and other expres- sions of parental instinct. The fact that these several instincts come together in this meaning is circumstantial evidence that the meaning is a true interpretation and final for them all. And as tested by experience, it has been a successful interpretation. It has become for many men an absorbing and satisfying purpose. And from the standpoint of those who look on and estimate the results in terms of character, there is little disposition 111.! CHRISTIANITY AND AMBITION 377 to question that in those men who have most embodied this passion human nature has touched its highest points. But unless the direction of this passion had been concrete and historical, it would not have been success- ful in winning ascendency in a human will. It is successful only because and so far as it retains all that respect for the circumstances of the physical and social being that we saw to be characteristic of affec- tion and of pugnacity. The community with which it concerns itself is never merely an invisible church of all the loyal, such as Professor Eoyce had in mind as the ** beloved community." It is this; but it is also an institution among institutions, having its own work in the world and its own aims. It is among other institutions somewhat as the State is among them, while in its purposes it includes them and reflects upon all of them. Its purpose is to hold out precisely this interpretation of their wills to all men as being the adequate interpretation ; to bring all plans and goods into subordination to this; and thus, while nominally undermining all other institutions, to pave the way for the most subtle of common understandings, the inter- racial and international understandings which are crystallizing in the shape of a world culture and an international law. Thus Christianity becomes a cor- porate body having an ambition of its own : it becomes a propaganda, breaks across the provincial boundaries of its origin, and aspires to universality. Like Bud- dhism it is by its own principle a missionary religion. And if by being *true' we mean among other things. 378 CHRISTIANITY being awake to the nature of one's business in this world, we may say that no religion is a true religion which does not in this way aspire to be corporate and universal. For the most part, it is the Catholic Church, rather than the Protestant Church, which has kept to the concrete view of its undertaking : it has more consist- ently approached the soul through its physical and social entanglements. Protestantism has been more intellectual and abstract. But there are not a few men in whom both types are united, as in the work of Livingstone, or in that of Dr. Grenfell, in whom the medical mission and the community mission are combined. All tendencies at present make for this concreter conception of the undertaking in which, when it completely understands itself, all human ambition culminates. r CHAPTER XLIV THE CRUX OF CHRISTIANITY IT must be said, however, that the growing concrete- ness in the form of missionary effort among Protestants is not due wholly to a deepening percep- tion of the meaning of the enterprise. It is due in part to a sort of embarrassment in the intellectual preach- ing of religion as propaganda. The mission begins to be regarded rather as an educational or philan- thropic than as a religious undertaking, as it were a gift of culture, sustained mainly by the desire to be serviceable in a pioneering way. The attitude of the prophet or evangelist, keenly conscious of the vital import of religious differences, is felt to be less natural of late, as if the human spirit had entered upon a new phase of self -consciousness. The causes of this change are many, but among them I believe we may recognize an element of diflSdence in assuming the role of the propagator of religion, as if that role were somehow presumptuous. And is not this the case? Is it not true that this entire interpretation of instinct as a will to power, and of the will to power as a will to save souls, or to re-create or reform or educate mankind, has in it more than a trace of pre- sumption! What it amounts to seems to be this, that 380 CHRISTIANITY if the complete salvation of an individual will requires the transformation of all its instincts into the will to save others, we must be saved by saving; and it is very doubtful whether in our unsaved condition we have any right to suppose ourselves competent to save. We might as well assume the right to forgive sins. For when in our current criticism we recognize sin, and when we subordinate this criticism (as we thought we should) to a spirit of creative justice, what is this but an attempt to displace a will defined by us as evil by a good will likewise of our own definition? But can we be certain either that that evil is really evil, or that which seems good to us is absolutely good? An attitude in which one detects himself subtly usurping the functions of Deity, while wholly vigorous and unblushing in the activities of an Earlier genera- tion, has become all but impossible to a large part of our contemporary self-consciousness. There is an evident disinclination to walk out very far on any venture of moral judgment, through a sense that this judgment is most likely to mislead when it is most conscious. There is a preference to acknowledge quite frankly the tendencies of the less ethically effortful self, to confess one's egoisms, one's ambitions, one's enjoyment of praise, to let one's tempers, dislikes and affections have their say, because after all one must be sincere and what one is does the talking in any case. In all speculations about what human beings finally want, our formulae are likely to do violence to hidden impulses while they satisfy the obvious ones. And this moral self -propagation which we have reached as THE CRUX OP CHRISTIANITY 381 m the best meaning of the will seems to do violence to an intuitive hesitation to regard one's moral self as ever quite worthy of being propagated. We have not, however, been asserting that our ideal is practicable ; we have been asserting that it is what Christianity demands, and that if it could be attained it would satisfy the will. The difficulty we have just encountered affords additional evidence that our interpretation of Christian requirements is the true one. For original Christianity encountered precisely the same criticism of its aims, namely, that they are presumptuous. Was it not this very charge that led to the crucifixion, and from the point of view of the judges perhaps justly so? For did not this man pro- fess to forgive sins, and in other ways make himself equal with God? And did he not hand over the keys of heaven and hell to his followers ? He professed to save others, and it was a pointed gibe, regarded as equivalent to a refutation, that he could not save himself. In political translation, the offence of the man was in his pretended kingship, the true substance of which was his self -asserted mastery over the souls of men. Historically speaking, the crux of Christianity is its element of presumption. For the same reason Christianity aroused the antagonism of the Eoman State, hospitable to nearly every foreign cult. For the Christian community regarded itself in a wholly unique and arrogant light : it presumed to provide a salvation which made salva- tion in the State unnecessary, and supreme devotion to the State impossible. It claimed to be a kingdom tS ^ 382 CHRISTIANITY in which the whole world could, and eventually would, find refuge. It compelled choices, and announced a competition for allegiance, whereas other religions were content with combined loyalties. In brief, it assumed to be right, to possess the Way; and the pretense of divine right implied in its passion for souls was as little palatable to Eome as it is to the ethical diffidence of the present hour. There would be Uttle or no fault to find with the standard set up by Christianity, if it were only re- served from being professed and administered by human beings. Eeligion can hardly do less, perhaps, than demand the complete transformation of instinct; and the definition of the goal of human nature is not refuted by the feeling that no human being is quite qualified to adopt it. And further (if we are right) it is not Christianity alone, but the dialectic of our ovm experience, that leads to the requirement we have stated. The only thing we can justly demand of Christianity, if it makes itself responsible for this ideal, is an answer to the question, How is this transformation possible! f CHAPTER XLV THE THEORY OF PARTICIPATION USAGE has identified the word Christianity with a type of disposition, — one whose main ingre- dient is a sentiment of human charity, embedded in a metaphysical faith and hope. And when scholars began to address themselves to the question. What is the essence of Christianity? many of them accepted this usage and assumed that the essence in question is to be sought in some standard for human character such as we have been considering. But if this assumption were true it would be hard to find a sufficient reason why the ideal in question should be called by the special name of Christianity. For quite apart from the historic fact that many elements of the Christian ideal have been found in other places and traditions, there is no good reason why the ideal in its general form should not become a common possession of psychology. So far as it is the outcome of the dialectic of experience, which is the same everywhere, it must in time become such a common possession, enriched indeed by the various historic modes of approach and expression, but the better domesticated in the human family for 384 CHBISTIANITY being, in substance, free from any special channel of communication.^ It is not in any set of moral precepts, nor in any view of the transformation of instinct, that the essence of Christianity is to be found, but rather in its answer to the question. How is this transformation possible! Or to put the question in Kantian form, How is ethical experience possible? Every religion makes its demands ; but its special obligation, as a rehgion, is to show how these demands may be met. The religion is to be identified not by its ethics but by its theory of salvation and by its actual provision for saving human individuals in their historic context. The necessity for such a theory lies in the fact that, as we have seen, the demands themselves involve a practical dilemma. This dilemma, the fundamental problem of Christianity, we may restate somewhat formally as follows. We cannot satisfy our wills, nor the demands upon them, without adopting the attitude of creative artist toward our milieu. This attitude, however, for human beings, is presumption. It is such an attitude as only a divine being would be fully justified in taking. As for us, no demand could be more reasonable than that we should first cast the beam 1 It has been said, as by Professor G. B. Foster, that the characteristic thing about Christianity is not its stateable ideal, but the embodiment of this ideal in a person. And it is certainly true that such embodiment makes any type of disposition more available and impressive than any possible theoretical statement could be. But what this personality mear^ to men is in any case a universal, and one which the founder of Chris- tianity tried to state as well as to exemplify; and any such universal meaning must be capable of theoretic statement and verification and so, in the end, be detached from the accident of its historic emergence. THE THEOBY OF PAETICIPATION 385 out of our own eye, before undertaking to give light to others. But the difficulty is that we can only get rid of the beam through this very undertaking. To be dis- posed to save others, we must first be saved ourselves ; yet to be saved ourselves we must be disposed to save others. On the ground of the moral order alone there is no way out of this circle. But Christianity proposes a way out. It relieves the individual at once of the burden of supposing that it is through any merit or power of his own that he can save others ; the power is conferred upon him by way of a loan. It is nothing inherent in us that is to do the work, but something in which we participate. What this means may appear through analogies from the field of knowledge. One who knows an object becomes to some degree a partaker in the quaUties of the object. Knowledge has for its special business the reaching across from self to what is not-self, and making that not-self, so far as its qualities can be appreciated, an appurtenance of the self. What I know of any real object is never the object in full, but a selection of my own : I know as much of it as I can Hake in,'— the phrase is accurate. Any quality which I appreciate enough to remember and name has already begun to be a permanent source of change in me ; but even if I merely gaze on an object, all that I succeed in taking in is at that moment an element in my being. What we call an 4dea' is a quality of an object in so far as it has become a property of a self. Participation of this kind' is par- 2 In the Platonic theory of participation, it is the object that par- ticipates in the ideas. According to the view here proposed it is the Wi 386 CHRISTIANITY ticularly natural and direct in the case of personal qualities and values. I may witness an heroic deed and be no hero nor become one: but if I appreciate its heroism I become at least momentarily a partaker of its quality. The psychology of masses and of political movements frequently exhibits this principle, which is more fundamental than that of imitation. Mazzini gave Italy an army of heroes ; but their valor was not at first an intrinsic quality of themselves. It was a quality of their leader, and became theirs through their knowledge of him. With another leader it might well have remained not alone latent, but non- existent. Much of the hope of democracy lies in the fact that no set of psychological tests can ever tell what any man or body of men is capable of. All men rise to the level of their leaders in so far as they under- stand them and believe in them.^ Through this participation of the self in its object there arises the paradox that the same act of appre- ciation which confers greatness upon a self reveals to that self its habitual littleness. It was Socrates who burned into our memories the truth that the beginning of wisdom may be the knowledge of our ignorance. self which through the idea participates in the object, without enquiring whether the object itself has an original or a communicated being. Ideas in this sense are not conceived as eternal patterns but as living processes of osmosis between self and not-self. 8 It is this factor of belief, with the implied act of affirmation, that marks the distinction between the effect of knowing the good and knowing the evil qualities of things. There is a degree of participation involved in the knowledge of evil, even for scientific purposes. But the non-consent that goes with such knowledge, if deep enough to remain in subconsciousness with it, limits the area of its remaking of the self. THE THEORY OF PAETICIPATION 387 But in another form this same truth has been the common possession of all the mystics. For their insistence upon the inadequacy of concepts and defini- tions is another way of saying that a true knowledge of reality makes all prior ideas appear as so many limitations or negations. Likewise in the world of the will: if one finds and appreciates anything holy in the world, the participation in that holiness is at the same time a destruction of moral conceit. And this, I believe, explains the emphasis of Christianity upon humility. Humility is not a virtue; but it is a condition without which the kind of virtue demanded by Christianity is not possible : it is an infallible result of perceiving in any adequate way what kind of will it is that is needed to do a man 's work in the world. It is a result of beginning to participate in that will. Now to possess goodness in this participatory fashion is not to be good, but only to begin being good. But as long as the appreciation is alive (and this is vital to the whole matter) the incipient possession of goodness may do the work of goodness itself. What the man sees becomes the working part of the man. This principle explains and justifies the tendency which we found general in society of taking men on the basis of their hopes rather than of their achieve- ments : what men reach out to will do some part of its proper work through them, if not by them. This is especially true of those who labor, as poets do, to bring to earth an insight which is still marginal and vague to themselves. The men who dimly perceived ''Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," had their effect in 388 CHRISTIANITY spite of the haziness of their vision: this effect was certainly not due to the haze, nor much helped by it, but neither was it delayed until their insight was perfectly defined. There is some ground for thinking that no idea is wholly definite until it is dead. Those books and writers appear greatest to us who make connections with the surmises of our minds, because they have been able to give substance to the surmises of their own : we can only on this ground understand the effect, not alone of most of the great seers and of most of the bibles, but of many a writer within the period of the world's '* enlightenment," of Bunyan, of Locke, of Kant, of William James. In this there is no glorification of an obscure idea because it is obscure; for the only justification any idea can have is that it makes connection with objects as they are. But it suggests that waiting for finished neatness may have something unduly cautious about it. The appre- ciations we have should begin their active march when those appreciations arise as convictions within the mind. There is an element of vanity in waiting until we think we are all that we admire before we allow ourselves to communicate our admiration. To know that we work less through what we are than through what we worship is a great economy of pride. And it is also an economy of time. For to wait for fitness would mean in most cases to wait till the end of eternity. The only indispensable fitness is the capacity for appreciating or reverencing the object- as the greatness of a Boswell or a Tolstoy lies less in personal force than in what we are pleased to call THE THEORY OF PARTICIPATION 389 immense '* objectivity'' — and this capacity for rever- ence is often greatest in the newest or remotest initiate. This is at least part of the meaning of the doctrine (5f the Incarnation. The perfect dwells in the imperfect now, in so far as the imperfect takes the perfect for an object, and it does now the work of the perfect. Thus, the fact of participation makes it possible to act as gods without presumption. With every element of self-assertion in the work of education, or propa- gating a national type of mind, or laboring for any causes such as involve persuading men, or loyally holding to instead of turning away from someone whose fault has become patent, or with whatever other form of saving human nature, comes in the same in- stant its antidote: **Yet not I, but whatever I have found visibly divine in the world, worketh in me." If the reader has found himself irked by our constant (and admittedly faulty) use of the phrase 'will to power,' the sting of that term is now finally drawn. There is power in the world, and such power as I must wield if I am to find what I mean by living; but that power, even if it resides in me for a moment, is very little mine. Far from a testimony to my ability if I accomplish something with it, it is a comment on my culpable lack of faith if I fail to work miracles with it. But while this principle furnishes a partial answer to our question. How is this transformation possible? it is not a complete answer. For to participate in the nature of God, it is, by this principle, first necessary 390 CHRISTIANITY to see God. And it is only those who are already pure in heart that can see God. Participation would remove imperfection, or begin the removal ; but the imper- fection obscures my vision, and so bars effective par- ticipation. This dilemma is not one that we can banish by ignoring it, or living complacently with it in our ordinary will-to-muddle-through. We have said that ambition is the stuff of which religion is made ; it is, if you like, the instinct to do one's living well. It is characteristic of animal life to live in accommodations, and piece out by * vitality ' the inconsistencies of ideas : it is characteristic of religion to seek out all rankling roots of dissatisfaction and clash of meaning, to drive latent problems out from cover rather than cloak them, to declare relentless hostility to our animal and ^ vital' ease.* It is religion that compels us to face this logical impasse. Nor can we escape the difficulty by placing the vision of God, as Plato does, at the end of a long ascent in the dialectic ladder, with a fine gradation in the stages of the journey. For at each stage the dilemma, in 4 One of the most unfortunate results of letting 'life' take care of this particular puzzle is the adoption of a properly humble attitude toward all enterprises which might imply faith in one's own type of mind i.e., faith in one's faith. This type of humility is seldom socially obnoxious, because it is for the most part amiable; it is not often observed that by its irresponsibility it is the dry rot of all democracy When it appears in excess, we recognize in Uriah Keep the epitome of all that Nietzsche properly hates, and mankind with him. But whether or not in excess, the moral and logical fault is the same. To take humility as the essence of Christianity is to mistake its symptom for its essence, and to fancy that because the poor in spirit are blessed, one can become poor in spirit at will. The true relation of things is that the THE THEORY OF PARTICIPATION 391 principle, recurs. The next step in approaching the vision of the Good, wherever you now stand, requires as its precondition that very purity which is its own natural result, and which the relatively impure will cannot put on for itself. The question is the ancient one. How can a man know God? pure in heart catch a glimpse of God, and they who see God become humble. All other humility is hypocrisy. And the problem then recurs, How can the imperfect mind see God? This problem is not escaped by letting it heal over. CHAPTER XLVI THE DIVINE AGGRESSION LET me resume the logic of our situation in terms of an experience common in principle. In recent years playwrights have once more ventured to bring upon the stage the miracle-working divine character; and the reception accorded such plays as **The Servant in the House,- ^*The Passing of the Third Floor Back," shows that human nature is ready to recognize and respond to its natural destiny. What one sees there one admits without parley as the strongest thing in the world; and further, in so far as one is moved by it, one is for the moment participating in that type of power. Suppose that the conviction were deep enough to disarm the habitual playgoer's defences, and to persist into the life of the next day. It would meet certain obstacles which the playwright had not included in the difficulties, let us say, of the Servant in the House. For in the first place this Servant is steadily in the right, and knows himself for what he is • but when criticism must both be given and received, the role of the divine can with difficulty be sustained. This is one of the embarrassments I should encounter. But looking deeper, I should find the fundamental difficulty to be this : that I do not, as a fact, care enough for either God or men to play this part with success. THE DIVINE AGGRESSION 393 I certainly do not see them in a light that compels my complete affection. This is due to the fact that, being what I am, I find in my dealings with the world hindrance, deprivation, pain, to an extent that leaves me highly unreconciled and at heart protesting. Being what I am, I say, — ^because it may well be that if my instincts were completely transformed I should judge things differently. If I could love God, I might over- come or understand deprivation and suffering; and if I could accept deprivation and suffering I might love God. But as it is, I remain a critic of the divine economy and hence of God himself; and the vision that might transform me is closed to me. It is the unresolved problem of evil that stands in the way of the saving of my soul. I am unable to see the divine as an object of admiration, not to say adoration. God, if there is a God, is a blunderer, or a malicious play- maker, or finite and helpless, or callous, or blind. Such is the summary value-judgment that without consulting any deliberate thought of mine my instincts, in their present state, are incessantly reaffirming. And apart from what our lips or our theories tell us, this is perhaps the commonest of commonplace atti- tudes toward the universe. The socialized human being looks with a natural skepticism upon any propo- sition to the effect that there is a wholly good God. So far as we can see into the structure of the world, it is a place in which our instincts are not alone unsat- isfied, but unsatisfiable. If religion has been blind to this situation, religion might as well quit the stage. t> 334. CHRISTIANITY But religion is not blind to this situation; it is the first to announce that there is nothing - the Wd of men or nature, as we naturally see it, that can justly claim a complete allegiance. It sides completely with our civilized skepticism on this pomt; and xt no only admits, but asserts, that of ourselves we canno see things in any other way. It adds, -mp y, that what we cannot do for ourselves another ntust do for t,8- our reconciliation with reality must be brought to us from outside. The salvation of a soul requires a divine intervention. II The idea of salvation from outside is offensive to our sentiment of moral independence. It is offensive, however, chiefly when we think of righteousness as a course of right action or decision such as every man must effect for himself, rather than as a state of right valuing such as no man by solitary effort can reack Experience should throw some light on what men need and can use in 'working out their salvation. The experience of India is especially worth considering because it is in India that the greatest religions of self-help, Brahmanism and early Buddhism, have run their course. It is not without meaning that while on the soil of India Brahmanism has declined and Bud- dhism has largely disappeared in favor of religious teaching divine help and human dependence, both have taken on as it were departments of supernatural aid THE DIVIKE AGGBESSION 395 foreign to their original logic' And farther West, from the sixth century B. C. onward, the spread of the private mysteries whose purport was to bring the initiate through various sacraments into effective union with a god who had suffered and was disposed to redeem his soul, may be read in the same Ught. The vogue and earnestness of many of these mysteries certainly imply a development of individual self- consciousness and cosmic anxiety such as the corporate national reUgions were no longer able wholly to appease; the race was then beginning to recognize in a groping fashion that the self, so far as society could help it to its own, was inadequately helped and in much danger of being lost; it had begun to define the prob- lem which religion in its distinction from the national life had to solve. And we may regard Christianity as X Professor J. E. Carpenter quotes a modem Hindu P^^^^^^^! shows well the spirit of the predominant piety of H"'^"'^";'-*^';^'"'^*;, Dietr which seeks an influx of divine power such Bs endows the soul rUh 'nTast ry over ite earthly nature not essentially different from the „u,na of aboriginal and eternal human piety except m its prmiarJy morri impact: "0 Lord of the Universe, O AUConsc.ousness pr^idmg Deity of all, Vishnu, at thy bidding and to please thee alon* I r.se this moling Ink enter ;n the discharge of my daily duties I ^r^J'^^ TrTghteous, yet I feel no attraction for it; I know what .8 not righteous yet fhave no repulsion from it. Lord of the senses O Thon seated fn the heart, may I do thy commands as ordered by thee ui niy con- science." Comparative Eeligion, p. 158.) The Krishna of the Zg'ad-Gi a m^y be regarded as the Brahmanical form of the divme- humln deliverer from passion and all earthly attachmente. And Buddhism has produ<=ed such conceptions as that of Avalokite^vara, who made a vow not to accept his own release until the demons themselves r weU as all men should be enlightened and saved, the Am.thabha Buddha "of boundless Light," who, carried to China and Japan be^ comes the holy Amida, by whose exertions alone new hearts are conferred upon men. 396 CHBISTIANITY THE DIVINE AGGRESSION 397 I one of the latest of the solutions of this problem, containing the kernel of all the other mysteries, and surviving them because it was fit to survive. Read ' in this way, religious experience gives strong support to the view that salvation from outside is needed. But we may also read all this, as Professor Gilbert Murray is incUned to read it, as a symptom of political disintegration and a colossal and widespread ^* failure of nerve." The facts of history never yield a con- clusive principle for their own judgment. For such a principle we must look to psychology,— that is, to our own knowledge of ourselves. And certainly the idea of salvation from outside is not without psychological support, or for that matter, biological support. For life itself, so far as experience yet shows, always comes from outside, from prior hfe, as something conferred, not acquired.^ It is not out of natural order that certain parts or ingredients of Ufe should come in the same way, as by a mental epigenesis. Such an addition from without can fre- quently be verified in the transition from one level of value to another, at times when a person seems unable to accomplish that transition for himself. For example, I am told to cheer up and take things with a grain of humor. But how is humor possible to me, if as a fact I am morose? Probably it is not possible by any solemn effort I may make for it; but there are 2 Pichte, for whom the moral will is the supreme reality, tried to explain the emergence of a personal self into existence as an act of its own freedom; but not even Fichte's ingenuity succeeded in giving the hypothesis a footing. persons whose entrance can make it possible, and all but force it upon me. Or, how is confidence possible, if as a fact I am afraid! It is not possible, and my efforts to reassure myself, by confessing my fears, confirm them. But I can do a great deal to 'take' heart at the summons of one who has it, or even at the memory of a voice that is charged with it. These processes may be processes of participation ; but they are frequently of a more active sort on the part of the other mind, like an intentional and aggressive imposing of a state of mind upon me." They appeal to the con- sent of the self -to-be rather than to the consent of the present self, though unless something in that present self gave consent the state could not be imposed. These facts imply that the self is not a closed monad in its moral life any more than in its mental and physical life. Just as there is a mental hunger for new data to be ingested into our mental substance, a hunger which we sometimes call * curiosity,' and some- times the * empirical attitude' of mind, so there is a moral appetite which has as yet no name, but which makes a part of our social appetite. For in social intercourse we receive here and there not alone new data, but new inductions already well grown, new ideas ready to transplant and mature, new attitudes toward experience as a whole, — almost, one might say, new selfhood. We remain ourselves in all this, because we choose what we admit ; but we become as it were the spirit of a living society of included selves, 8 This process is doubtless akin to suggestion, but it is more direct and avowed to the subject than suggestion is. .» I 398 CHRISTIANITY receiving constant accessions not alone by germination from within but also by adoption from ^ithont It is because of this openness of mind on their part that our neighbors, if we were competent might be saved bv us (as we have all along assumed) ; and it is by this same openness of mind that we if there were a competent other, might be saved. The q-;«f -' ^ow is love to God or to men possible if as a fact I do not have it? would be answered if there were, as the moving spirit of the world, an aggressive ^ojev ^Ue and disposed to break in upon my temper of cr tical egoism and win my response. This would seem to be a'necessary, if not a sufficient, condition of 'salvaW ; and thus far psychology lends support to on^ jeading :rthe history of religion, namely, that m the develop- ment of the private mystery, religion was finding its way to a knowledge of the actual needs of men. How Christianity proposes to meet those needs we may state in our own way. Ill Plato and Aristotle represented God as that abso- lute good which, unmoving and change ess in itself, the soul pursues and longs for. To Christianity, t is h soul Lt is pursued; and God ^^ ^^^^^^ ^^f^l in quest of what to him is lost. The God of the Christian is one who invades the earth in order to bring men to themselves : to every soul of man he 'stands at the door and knocks.' He does not forgo the power of silent attraction found m the non- THE DIVINE AGGRESSION 399 assertive Tao of Lao Tze, or in Brahm, or in the Unmoved Mover of the Greek; but it is as one who has known finitude and is 'lifted up from the earth' that he will draw all men unto him. He disguises himself, takes the form of a servant; he comes to his own and his own know him not ; he is despised and rejected and done to death. And all this is the foil and background, of his great joy. For he has his moment when to some mind, more honest than usual to its own need, there comes a presentiment of recognition, and the awed question. Who art thou. Lord?— to which he answers, I am he whom thou persecutest. No assertion could be more empty than the Christian saying that God is love, if that love were simply a subjective disposition on the pari of a being forever inactive and unseen. If God exists as a good will, that will must do its work in the world of time and event as a will to power not wholly unlike our own, and so coming to itself as we must, through the saving of others. Christianity is right in holding that such a God, if he exists, must somehow appear in the temporal order. And it seems- to me that it is also right in saying that he must suffer; and not alone with us (as any god must who knows what is going on) but also for us, and at our hands. For the 'hardening of our hearts,' i.e., their alienation from reality, due to our preoccupation with our own suffering, could hardly be overcome except by seeing that in the actual mesh of our own experience the brunt of our selfishness has fallen upon Mm, and that he, in this sense, bears our sin in his own body. It is such a god, active in history t: n il 400 CHRISTIANITY and suffering there, that Christianity declares as the most important fact about the world we live in. To believe in such a god would give history a mean- ing over and above any visible or experimental meaning it may have : it would have to be read as the drama of God's life, his making and remaking of men. His concern for them would have to be thought as Uteral and individual as they themselves are literal and individual. Love, as Eoyce has said, individuates its object; but it is equally true that it individuates its subject: it takes an individual to be a lover. And every human being, if these things are true, must be able to discover as the sense of his entire experience a direct address of the absolute being to him, as if the world were made for him alone. The universe becomes suddenly, not ego-centric, but multi-centric. Just as in infinite space, the center of reference may be assumed in any point ; so in history, as Christianity must see it, the center of the universe is everywhere that the divine interest finds a person. *^ Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you that you be my poem": this is the point of tangency between Whitman's semi-pagan genius and the spirit of Chris- tian history. Without excluding a movement in history toward a goal or toward many goals, there is in this picture no meager one-way teleology, but loss and supreme attainment are everywhere. It is not unlike the world of the child, who has not yet learned to doubt that all things exist for his sake ; and to the end it requires something of the spirit of a child to enter the world of Christianity. The strain on belief n THE DIVINE AGGRESSION 401 is at a maximum; and this religion does nothing to relieve it. Judicious heads, having seen much of the world's actual indifference, might incline to ease the burden of so much faith by reducing God's alleged love to a general disposition, a kindly wish and effort toward a far-off good available to the ultimate denizens of time. A finite or mildly benevolent power, struggling as a sort of elan of life against the perpetual resist- ance of matter, and like a cosmic council of war so lost in vast designs that the private fades before its view into the mass, seems much more probable to those whose metaphysics is a distillation of the mixed essences of experience. But probability has no place in metaphysics; and the probable God is a very unlikely God, in the sense that he solves no problems. Whether the world we live in is or is not the world of Christianity is a question of fact. m '^r THE LAST FACT 403 CHAPTER XLVII THE LAST FACT I DOUBT whether philosophy can affirm the exist- ence of this fact. It can show that if such a fact were extant our dilemma would be solved. It can show, further, that certain characters of the world are in harmony with such a fact. Thus, the dialectic of experience, as we look back upon it, may be understood as a part of the strategy of '^The Hound of Heaven.'' The world is so devised that *^A11 things betray thee, who betrayest me": the will, apparently driven by dissatisfaction in its own false definitions of good, may to a deeper knowledge be seen as driven by the wind of a god's desire. And as for all the irregularly distributed individual deprivation, it is at least con- ceivable that it is part of the individual appeal of that same god : All which I took from thee, I did but take Not for thy harms, but just that thou Mightst seek it in my arms. . . . I am he whom thou seekest. But the power of so understanding the dialectic, or so interpreting evil, is retrospective. The force which could lift the mind into a position from which this reading seems the truth does not lie in the dialectic itself. It must come as a positive datum, something itself personally experienced or * revealed. ' It is here that religion takes the issue out of the hands of philosophy. For religion in its historical forms is empirical: it appeals to the realistic temper: it deals with facts. Its function is not to prove God but to announce God. For this reason, its doctrine is stated as dogma; and the fundamental dogma of religion is Ecce Dens, Behold, This is God. Such a dogma certainly appeals to the reason of every man, for it can mean nothing to any one except in so far as he is capable of under- standing his own needs; but beyond that, it appeals to his power to recognize what he needs in what is real, Eecognition is an act of the mind which thought can lead up to, but never quite enforce. Hence religion calls upon every man for an individual and ultimate *^I believe,'' which means, ^^I recognize this to be the fact," or, more simply, **I see." In the last resort, it is by his own vision that every man must live : — ^when we call a man an individual, we are thinking of the solitude of his ultimate relation to reality. He must live by what he, for himself, can recognize ; and his power of recognizing is an integral part of his instinctive equipment. For as hunger may be trusted, for the most part, to recognize what will serve as food, so all instinct may be trusted to recognize what it needs in the world, if what it needs is there. Animal instinct will recognize 404 CHBISTIANITY its needed physical facts, human instinct its needed physical and metaphysical facts,— if they exist. Conversely, whatever beliefs, or metaphysical find- ings, men have lived by are to some extent corroborated (certainly not by ^general consent,' but) by the cir- cumstance that they have formed part of the vital circuit of human instinct, have been the feeders and shapers of instinct. The more durable of these beliefs are not wholly illusory : 'Taction ne saurait se mouvoir dans rirreeV But in the composition of these working beliefs, fiction and mere hopefulness may mingle with positive metaphysical finding in unknown proportion. The mystic in man, the original seer of ultimate things, learns but slowly to discriminate between his percep- tions and his dreams. The critic in man, the judgment based on experience and self-conscious reason,^ rises but slowly to the task of releasing what is significant and true in dogma from what is irrelevant and false,— condemning sometimes too little, quite as frequently too much. r The individual, then, who realizes that his meta- physical questions are questions of life and death for instinct and will, can give no exclusive credence either to the mystic in himself or to the critic; he will require them to act in co-operation. He will be satisfied neither with pragmatic beliefs, chosen for their prom- THE LAST FACT 405 ise of satisfaction (ghosts of human desires offered as substantial food to these same desires), nor with true general ideas (entities which taken alone make no difference and do no work). He will realize that his instinctive appetite for knowledge is an honorable appetite. It is in the exist- ing world that instinct must grow and work out its meaning; and the existing world is distinguishable both from pragmatic dreams and from true general ideas: it is a union of general ideas with matter of fact in a living fabric of historical movement and change. It is to this living mesh that mystic and critic must direct their vision. Whatever is real and signifi- cant for instinct must in some way exist in the active surface of history, — some of it no doubt built into history at various points of the working edge of time in such wise that we could not now unbuild it if we would. As an inseparable part of the question, What sort of world is it that we live in? he will thus be driven to enquire, What sort of world have we been living in? What have been the metaphysical foundations, real or supposed real, for those qualities, those instinct- shapes, which characterize our present human type? The qualities which have made and are making our contemporary civilization are not qualities of intellect more than qualities of character : they are such quali- ties as integrity, reliability, legality, practical force, love of liberty. At the root of them is a capacity for 406 CHRISTIANITY facing and absorbing the increasing pain which is incident to increasing contact with objective reality. To surrender ourselves without flinching to the find- ings of natural science is something we have had to learn by painfully slow degrees ; to accept the unflat- tering position of man in the Copernican world and in the evolutionary scheme ; to regard and burrow deeper into the human mind as an object in nature ; to submit to the hardship involved in making a social order on the principle of a thoroughly objective impersonal justice,— all this has required the * virtue' of Rome, together with a sympathy and sensitiveness to what is not-ourselves that has not come from Rome. Our civilization is one which has once for all put away vested interest in illusions, and has dared to stand naked before the last facts so far as it could find them. In this there is much of the plain *grit' such as Joseph Conrad loves to celebrate : but grit is not necessarily attentive to the weak, the incipient, the minute, the growing,— and it is here that our peculiar strength and promise lies. It is a union of strength and tenderness which has brought us to the best we have so far found. The strength that we have is not the strength of physical instinct; nor has it ever been for mankind 'pure' grit. In former times, with the zest of original pugnacity and the conviction of mounting passion, men could throw themselves without reserve into the issues of battle ; and battle became for them a quasi- religious orgy in which the spirit of the fathers and of the tribe drew near ahnost to touching and filled the frame with unwonted power. Grit and enthusiasm « THE LAST FACT 407 went together. And now without the aid of primitive feeling or hope of individual glory men of more sensitive mould go simply to a mill of war whose portent of possible suffering is incomparably more intense. What do these men stand on? Not on any consciousness of the heroic, but on the plain sense of what is necessary; and they profess thereby a faith of some kind that facing what is necessary is better than muffling the head in a lying dream. Effectively and actually men care more for reality than ever before, and behind that confidence lies some kind of creed, or let me say, some kind of contact with the spirit of the world. Neither is the tenderness we have the tenderness of physical instinct. We tend, we teach, we legislate, we try our hand at justice and reform. We do this not from any pure outflow of kindness : we do it with a certain joy of power which is at the same time fully awake to the defect of our performance. The parent who deals with his son and the publicist whose thought becomes the rule for millions are well aware in these days of the human equation in their judgments. We are democratic: no authorities among us dare set up as absolute. They live, we all live, at the requirement of the movement of things over a gap unbridged by our own competence. Earlier men acted thus instinc- tively, with the confident affection and protectiveness of the animal parent or leader. But if we act thus it is because, while self-doubts emerge and continue to emerge, they have seemed to receive from the world we live in assurances that satisfy, as if at least the 408 CHBISTIANITY MndUer enterprises of living were, or might be, a part- nership with power more intimately attuned than our own to the inner facts of history, capable of reaching its goal in the midst of our inadequacies. If the spirit of the world is actually such as to justify to the growingly self-conscious being this kind of con- fidence and sensitiveness, we should doubtless, as with all pervasive utilities, better recognize the ingredient which does this work if it were experimentally with- drawn. . j. i, n And as it happens, such aid to vision is not wholly lacking at this moment. A calamity having the force of a ghastly experiment occurs, vivisection of this vaunted Western life, with all its sources, material and otherwise, putting a harsh end to all mere momentums of belief, to all complacencies, sanctimonies, and in- fallible prescriptions, to all sleepy tugging at dry paps. How much can you do without and still live?— this searching experimental question war presses home to soul and body, abolishing stroke by stroke gross quan- tities of wealth, gross quantities also of life, beauty, happiness, personal and public. But with all these abolitions spreads another,— the swift and easy aboh- tion of that supposed ^sanctity of human life' together with other sanctities formerly potent: this, too, we are called upon to do without if we can, or perhaps rather to see it for what it was,— a glamor of some sort, a conspiracy to hold high the level of self-esteem, mutual palaver of polite society, valid enough so long as no THE LAST FACT 409 serious business is on, no occasion for telling one another cold truth. Cold truth being now in order, we measure humanity in the mass as so much force, resistance, morale ; feed it into the hopper by regiments, brigades. A comrade, a friend, changes in an instant into debris, so much wreckage to be cleared away. Once more we see man in terms of his yield : er ist was er isst; and that will of his, that morale and mentality, is a bit of equipment, an appareil, working best when nearest the ground, fit for short flights, better avoiding long ones and cer- tainly all infinite flights. * Infinite value'? Infinite conceit! ' When this sentiment about human value is thus un- sentimentally challenged, we perceive that it has had much to do with sustaining those qualities of confidence and tenderness which we thought distinctive of our civilization. It is not itself a metaphysical belief, but a by-product of such a belief, doubtless the belief of which we are in search, and whose character we may now dimly make out. Thei*e is an instinct in us as yet unnamed by psychol- ogy, perhaps the deepest instinct of all : it is the total infantile response to the maternal impulse. This in- stinct knows what kind of metaphysic it needs, namely, a world maternal not in part only, but altogether. What has happened, then, is obvious, is it not! That benevolent god with a trillion equally dear children, that picture of world-family-dom, or of world-shep- i'i I r'l fi M 410 CHRISTIANITY I herd-hood, that impossible Absolute engaged in count- less simultaneous * seeking and saving' enterprises,— all of this is but the poetry of childhood, valid there in fact, and holding over into the more sheltered corners of mature hopefulness, lingering to comfort minds that insist on being comforted, minds incapable of genuine maturity,— or perhaps even to protect certain subjectivities and prides, personal, racial, genealogi- cal, remnants of stale human provinciality liking to believe itself the chosen strain. This persistent meta- physics of the motherhood of history or grandmother- liness of history,— is it not the most palpable of prag- matic fictions, or instinct-beliefs? And if so, it can no longer serve us, having been found out. But what becomes, then, of these contemporary qualities of justified strength and tenderness? They do not disappear ; they are merely replaced by more elemental editions of themselves, suited rather to a world aloof, preoccupied, or indifferent than to a parental world. If 'justified confidence' is unavailable, there is al- ways a well of instinctive confidence to fall back upon, the simplest, least-borrowed thing in human nature, least needing to be justified,— the now admittedly pure grit of man at bay in a world neither his own nor any- one 's; confidence original, titanic, defiant; confidence ueberhaupt. There is an attitude needing no meta- physics, an attitude, well so-called, which few are in- THE LAST FACT 411 capable of striking if necessary. We can always act as if men, or some men, were worth while, and had rights, ourselves included. For th e human life authen- tically valued by an absolute valuer, substitute the iuslinctive self-valuation of the human animal, par- ticularly the masculine animal ; and for the deference due tcTbeings objectively worthy of reverence, substi- tute the warmth of a maternal sympathy spreading from the center outward as the vital economy permits. Give these well-founded sentinaents an artificial exten- sion by the device called the State ; so that a degree of parenthood enters into an entire community in its delations to its own members,— competing and wairing from time to time with similar Sjgiglo^aJs of parent- ^''^^ hood on the part of other communities ; and as there is jfto real parent, parenthood may be said to exist just so far as it can forcibly makejtself valid in the world. This is the alternative Into which we may seem driven by the disillusionments, the down-crashing of all current sentiments, in this day of reckoning. And - in that case, we see the statesmen of the Prussia of 1914 as the prophets of the coming age ; and history, having reached its summit, turns downward. Let it be clearly understood that this reversal of direction is involved in the proposed change. For animal confidence can no longer sustain a fully human effort as we have come to understand it, not even a human war. The flame of war can leap into life among common ^1, .t^4 i^ 1 t ■1 i III SCI 412 CHRISTIANITY THE LAST FACT 413 people only because of the presence there of a meta- physical outlook that seems to make a number of things, including human life, objectively valuable and * sacred.' If the aims of war, or the activities of war, contradict this belief ; or if self -consciousness in the midst of the carnage is driven to press its questions. Do I matter! Does any deed or thought of mine matter! Does any other deed or thought or interest or life matter! Does the * cause' itself finally matter, or the nation and all its wars, holy or unholy!— the spirit inevitably seeps out of the fighting. It is possible for fighting to under- mine one's sense of the only things worth fighting for. And what is true of war is true to an even greater degree of the long upbuilding effort of the creative arts. If * progress' must bring disillusionment and the harsh daylight of a denying realism, progress is destined to devour its own children. Values, human values, can survive, only if, reaching out toward a metaphysical condition which their dream-shapes foreshadow, they find it. They need reality to climb on ; they need a reality they can climb on. They want an independent source of standards, a mooring outside of nature, such as we surmised at the beginning of our study. Their own poussee vitale droops, half-grown, unless it meets an equivalent attrait vital streaming into its environment from some pole outside itself. And thus this experiment, this world-surgery, begins to make so much unmistakable : That what human nature has been responding to is not its own instinctive self-esteem, codified in institutions, or uncodified, but a valuation believed real and objective, supposedly hailing from beyond nature, authoritatively requiring of man that self -honor and that honor of his kind which his own impulse achieves but fitfully and from the center outward. And this valuation, be it noted, has appeared to him not as a proclaimed theorem regarding human value in the abstract, but as actual valuedness, i.e., valuation acted upon in multitudes of deeds, struggles for human rights and guarantees thereof, sacrifices and martyr- doms without number; in all of which an authentic divine will and activity were supposed discernible by those having eyes to see. To many of these human doers their own deeds appeared to be utterances not alone of their private wills but also of the ultimate will of the world. In brief, we of this age have been living on an aggressive valuation, built into history, and supposed whether wisely or not to transmit an absolute judgment. And not strangely, mankind seems to have counted most on the costliest of such deeds, the most deliber- ately defiant of the natural appearance. As at this moment, so it has always been: it is the negation by the brute forces of the world, the negation and con- tempt of what humanity has held most precious, which has split opinion into its concealed extremes. For it is just such negation which creates the oppor- I % h 414 CHRISTIANITY I ft If;. tunity for deeds most audaciously experimental, deeds of self-immolation of which the onlooker must say that they embody either the wisdom of the gods, or else infra-human unwisdom. It is upon the great experimental sacrifices of history that men have climbed to their positive metaphysical insights; or to what they have taken to be such, be it only their passionate assertions that such sacrifices, such blot- tings out of man 's evident best, cannot have been folly, and shall not have been vain. 1 It is not for us, here, to assert or deny, either pas- sionately or otherwise; but as students of human nature and its destiny to state deliberately the connec- tions of cause and consequence, and face our alterna- tives. Our metaphysical finding, our last fact, may be such as to release and encourage the growth of in- stinctive meaning, warming out its inner logic and wider linkages ; it may be (as with Schopenhauer) such as to wither and repel i*^; it may be no finding at all, but an enigmatic silence .of a non-committal world which denies only by refusing to aflSrm. In no case is it indifferent. Absence of belief that the world as a whole has an active individual concern for the creatures it has pro- duced need neither destroy happiness nor the morality of compassion. Life would always be worth living and worth living well, so long as free from the major torments. Instinct has its satisfactions in an unin- terpreted or partly interpreted condition : it will reach y THE LAST FACT 415 some accommodation to the world that is. Nothing would necessarily be destroyed or lost from the good life which some at least of the human race now know and many hope for, — nothing except the higher reaches of curiosity and sympathy, and the wisdom of develop- ing them. It is only the enthusiasts for a far-off good, for an endlessly progressive humanity, for a profound and logical love of life, that would be cut off ; it is onlv the martyrs that have played the fool ; only to saints and sages the world has lied. n II I I V APPENDED NOTE THE SOURCE OF OBLIGATION IN our account of sin there is a missing element. It is the missing element, but the implied element, in all psychology, namely, the outer world. We have described the moral undertaking as a struggle within self-consciousness, the effort of a self to pull itself together, as it were, from the midst of a mass of would-be independent impulses, — ^to find its own meaning and to make every instinct share in that meaning. Sin we described simply as the deliberate suppression of meaning, the treason of self -conscious- ness to its own most vital effort. In all this the outer world has been in abeyance; but it has not been forgotten. An *' impulse'' is but an abbreviated name for an ** impulse to this or that action, and for the sake of this or that objective good." All psychological terms are just such abbreviations, naming a relation to reality from the inner end. Our term, the will to power, carries the external reference on its face. And so, while we have spoken of obligation as the debt of a partial impulse to a total will, a relation wholly within the mind, we have not been unmindful of the corresponding relation in the world of objects, that between a partial good and a total good. But if this total good, the object of my total will, ''<: '!!* liP "i 418 APPENDED NOTE is thought of simply as my own good, we have not reached the center of the idea of 'obligation.' Obliga- tion descends upon me from a region beyond anything that I can call mine ; it has its source in the interest of some being other than myself in my conduct. My duty is the inner angle of that other being's right. The nature of sin may be understood on the ground of psychology, but the degree of importance attached to sin and righteousness cannot be understood without a study of the external source of obligation. I "li The most natural, and popular, view of the case is that I owe obligation primarily to my neighbor: any and every other man is the repository of some right in relation to me. The essence of wrong is the disregard of these rights ; and sin, on its practical side, is there- fore simply selfishness. Or if * selfishness' is too limited a term— too naive possibly, or merely indulgent or passive, then join with it 'self-will,' which may be as vigorous and determined as you please. Sin is wilful, unfriendly, or unsocial conduct. This view covers most of the ground, if we can think of the moral aspect of behavior in terms of areas. Most sins are unsocial acts. In most cases, the wider thought-system which I ought to consider is one which takes in more of the minds of other persons. This is a good rule of thumb, especially for the public phases of moral questions. But our question is not whether most sinful acts are unsocial acts: it is whether any act is sinful because it is unsocial or unneighborly. THE SOUBCE OF OBLIGATION 419 If you define a world with two wills in it, and with an insufficient supply of goods and consequent unsat- isfied wants, it is not obvious that either will ought to give way to the other, or that each should do so. So long as they are two wills, related in such wise that the altruism of one is the egoism of the other, the idea of obligation cannot be extracted from the situation. I cannot find it in the simple fact of my neighbor's existence nor of his want. Nor am I convinced, though I may be overawed, when you multiply and organize and perpetuate this needy neighbor, and call it society, or the State. Professor E. A. Ross represents a large body of opinion when he makes the egoism of society the proper object of my altruism and self-sacrifice.^ But who is this social ego, that I should thus indulge it? I am inclined by many natural impulses to accept sug- gestions from a social group and to deal sympatheti- cally with its members ; but this is something short of accepting the group as a final authority for my defer- ence. The moral quality of the behavior of Socrates or of John Brown is not decided by the circumstance that it both antagonized and tended to dissolve the 1 Social Control, p. 67. Professor Eoss would scorn the idea that he has dealings with the absolute; yet I must accuse him of setting up an absolute in the form of this social ego. And many others today who think that * absolute' is a bad word, calling themselves pragmatists, and saying that right must be relative to the stage of social progress and to the social good at any stage, are in the same position. For whatever thing is stated as the thing to which other things are relative, is by definition their absolute. The pragmatic moralists, for the most part, have simply chosen a social absolute instead of some other. Their question should be not whether there is an absolute in morals, but whether they have the right one. iiii if I I 420 I APPENDED NOTE Ziety in which it appeared. If you answer, in view of Ela^ples, that it is not ^'^a* -n actua^^^^^^^ but what they rightfully want, that is authoritative over me, you abandon the case. If another mmd Igle or collective, is a source of ohligat on only when i Tsires what it ought to desire, the implication is Ltlhave an 'ought' only when the other mind has ln*ought,' and we are as far from the source of ^ISsTn:: It:: logical .uibMe : li.e all good logic it Is hut the briefest expression of what experience at great length, teaches. That I have an "ought to anoLr only when the o^er ^^^^ '^'l ^Z itJri:::t rl^rr:- others on the ^^o^d of their existence, their force or their prowess fu T4 as they themselves show respect to something beyond Need itself would not move us if n^ we e arrogant rather than earnest. It is pure futility to "tempt deriving the sentiment of reverence rom any mixture of fear, awe, self-abnegation, ^tc: reverence goes to the reverent, and to no others. This is the 'Zn part of the answer to the occasional anx ous question. What can be done for the sobering of an Tev rent younger generation!: the secular-minded person society. State, receives and deserves slight def rle it I man at worship who alone becomes torZfnl, and no pedagogical finesse can outleap^h^s Principle. Whenever men defer to each other, admit dX to the other's rights, it will be found that there s McDougall, Social Psychology, p. 132. f THE SOUECB OF OBLIGATION 421 is a twofold deference: each is deferring to a third entity, dimly discerned as a mutual object of respect, and not to the other as individual. Is it not in some such relatively abstract third that we find the real source of obligation! Such is the view of Kant, who defines right not in terms of society, but in terms of a law, which is over all alike. n In setting up a law as the supreme object of respect, Kant seems almost to abandon the outer world and to leave the individual alone once more with the workings of his own reason. This law is occupied entirely with what we have called the "meanmg" of an action. Every decision, thinks Kant, is made upon some general principle or "maxim" : this is my reason, or excuse, for the act,-it is what the act means to me. The requirement of duty is simply that I shall be willing to stand by these meanings, when I think of them as being universally adopted. "Admit into your conduct only such meaning as you would willingly see universal"— such is the essence of Kant's law. To apply this law, I must use both imagination and logic. I must imagine my motive made universal; I must conceive every act as conveying a tacit recom- mendation of its 'maxim' for general use: and I must consider whether, in all logic, I can stand by it. Like a marksman, the moral being has a 'picture' to which it is imperative he should adjust his sight,— that of perfect consistency of policy throughout a rational 422 APPENDED NOTE t universe. When his act presents him this picture, he may release it,— it is right. This picture, and nothing more concrete, is the object of his obligation. One must use imagination, I say, to apply Kant's law; yet it would be highly unjust to represent this law as a purely imaginary object of devotion. The tendency of our maxims, or meanings, to propagate themselves is real enough. Acts, we say, tend to establish habits,— a very crude bit of psycho-physics and only half true. For no one can tell from the mechanics of an act what habit it tends to establish. I give a penny to a beggar : what habit does this leave behind ? If I give it from pity, one habit ; if for display, another habit ; if for getting rid of the beggar, a third. Everything depends on the meaning: it is this alone that universalizes itself. Self -propagation of maxims both within and without an individual life is no mere fancy; and sin, from Kant's point of view, appears as the refusal to accept the very real legislative respon- sibility of an act for its maxim. It must be admitted, too, that Kant's theory agrees closely with moral experience. When men refrain from breaches of the peace, or of contract, is it not because they perceive quite beyond any actual conse- quences that that kind of principle will not do for general use? And if they go out of their way for mutual aid, or for the service of a nation, is there not, behind the personal or patriotic sympathies invoked, a sense that the principle of refusal means ruin to a certain spiritual structure which has been an object of unspoken faith? What one instinctively holds to. THE SOURCE OF OBLIGATION 423 and tries to preserve, is not * society,' as an eating and breeding entity (otherwise our minds would be attuned as pragmatically as our language often sounds) ; it is the world as a place of consistent, thoughtful meanings, the home of universal law. The error of Kant's idea is not that his law is too formal and empty, nor that it is too vigorous and unbending. These two criticisms may be left to cancel one another; for a law so abstract as to command nothing at all can hardly be so rigid as to allow no room for individuality and growth. Kant's law stands near to that critical point which a perfect test of right and wrong must hold : it is abstract enough to free the mind from all tyranny of concrete absolutes (as the ten commandments) ; it is not so abstract as to be devoid of meaning. The trouble with the Kantian theory is that the law in question is just a test or criterion of right and wrong; it is not itself the source of obligation. A criterion must be abstract — ^it would be absurd to criticise a thermometer as a test of fever because a thermometer is not itself a temperature. But no abstraction can be a source of obligation. Kant's notable utterance of reverence for the moral law involves attributing to that law a substantial reality, like that .of the *' starry heavens," and more so. It is only because the law was to Kant the point of contact between experience and a world metaphysical, 'intel- ligible,' and total that it could seem to command the allegiance of practical reason. * 424 APPENDED NOTB in The source of obligation must be something that unites the living reaUty of fellow men and society with the totality and finaUty of the Kantian law If we have no conception at hand which promises at once to unite these characters, the schoolmen certainly had, and we may still learn something from them. Thomas Aquinas was already familiar with the idea that the moral law should be followed for the sake of the moral law; and he had already Pronounced this view, in so many words, to be unmoral.' For the law exists only for the sake of a goal or destiny of human life -our real obligation is to that destiny.* We have a particular interest in the views of St. Thomas, since he has stated his idea of obligation in connection with a theory of instinct. The lower animals, he thinks, are governed by instinct, and especially by a fundamental lif e-instinct which controls all lesser instincts. In man there is something which corresponds to this centra ^^ instinct, indicating to him his destiny: it is Ins •synderesis.' It is defined as a desire or longing which presents to us our total possible good in the form of an anticipatory vision.' Its claim upon our duty lies in part in the fact that it presents to us our possib e blessedness; it commands us to live accordmg to 8 Summa, I, d. 1, q. 2, a. 1, ad. 3. untas ut natura.** I, I THE SOUBCE OF OBLIGATION 425 reason, but that means to St. Thomas, using the behavior which reason shows as means to blessedness. Sin, from this view, is a rejection of one's own blessedness; but it is sin because that rejection con- cerns another than ourselves, namely, the appointer of destiny, the real being. The interest of God in our realization of our destiny is not simply that of one who has devised that destiny ; it is the interest of one who is to participate in it. For blessedness, according to Aquinas, is found in union with God: such union is at the same time a fulfilment of God's will and of our own. I am not concerned here to discuss the accuracy of these metaphysical ideas : I only wish to point out that our moral experience gives much weight to this account of the source of obligation. Unless the universe has a central and unified life in which our destinies are involved, and which gives these destinies a higher importance than they can have for our own finite vision, the notion of obligation loses the degree of dignity which we, in fact, ascribe to it. When we speak of the rights of man and the duties of man, the respect we accord them is measured by our belief that they belong to man as a metaphysical entity, a ward of the universe. The work these *' rights" have done in history may testify to the truth of this statement. And our interest in our destiny is at the same time, as Aquinas says, an interest in a possible blessedness ; though not simply in a far-off divine event. For the destiny of the human will is to co-operate, in some degree of present awareness, with the central power ^26 APPENDED NOTE of the world ; and so far to perceive in present expe- rience the quality of "union with God." In their complete meaning, our human actions are not only lawgiving in an ideal world,— they are creative m an actual, but unfinished world. Acting as artists and originators, every deed may be more than a conformity to a rule, or a subsumption under a preconceived good: it may be also an invention, a new fact. It may assume in its own degree a will to power which is not inter- preted adequately as a suggesting of maxims for general use, but rather as a contribution through our thought to the spiritual substance of the world. Th^ to_conceiye. each deed_is the_best^^vilege of.hunftan ^tore. Our obligation is, in its ultimate interpre- tation, to achieve such blessedness. And from the same position we reach the completest expression of what we are to understand by sin. If right action is action so interpreted that I assume the place of creator to my own destiny and that of others, wrong action appears as a false assumption of this same place. But the false claim to be doing the work of a god in the world is precisely what the Greeks called -ubris and the Eomans superba; and we, with hardly equivalent force, presumption. Inasmuch as it is not usual for us to conceive our deeds consciously sub specie sternitatis, at least not one by one, this may appear as a somewhat imaginative extension of the meaning of sin. Nevertheless, with the right of inter- preting which we have no choice but to use, the ordinary courage of men who daily face their own destiny as an entire metaphysical fact involves just * THE SOURCE OF OBLIGATION 427 this will to stand in loco Dei to the circumstances with which they deal. Inasmuch as they are human they, in turn, have no choice but to see things whole, and as nearly as possible as they are. What an act conveys in meaning is not the work of a special conscious judg- ment : it is, as we have said, the sense imposed upon it by its total context. And thus, whether we will or not, our acts have for us a metaphysical meaning. But there is this difference between the Greek conception and our own. To the Greeks the sin of arrogance, •ubris, consisted in forgetting to think as mortals ; and its punishment was like the punishment of Babel, a dizziness, bewilderment, madness, such as must come to those who are out of their own element. To us, sin consists equally in forgetting to think as gods. It was Aristotle who, in replying to the charge that philosophical thought was itself arrogant, uttered the proud word, ''Let us live, then, as if divinity (immor- tality) were our share." We would add only: This is man's native element. It is his destiny so to live. His sin is to neglect that destiny — or to assume it unworthily. We have here, too, perhaps the best illustration of the principle we have noted from time to time; that of the descriptive identity of sin and virtue. In the higher reaches of self-consciousness, the difficulty of decision often lies here. If anyone assumes a position of moral leadership, and therefore of moral solitude, he cannot wholly avoid fearing his own audacity ; hence the conflict which we know to have taken place in the minds of such men as Mazzini, Luther, Lincoln, — ^the I' 428 APPENDED NOTE conflict of determining the narrow margin between the true and the false presumption. The reported tempta- tion of Jesus seems to be a symbolical account of an inner struggle such as could occur only to one who had gone far on the way to a great cast of cosmic bold- ness. To presume so much was to * * make himself equal with God''; to presume less was to be false to his own genius. J INDEX . AbBolute, 20, 289, 331, 350, 354, 367. Acquisition, instinct of, 50, 60, 95, 245. Activity, general instinct to, 53 f . Admiration, 192. Adolescence, 245 ff., 296, 297. Aeschylus, 265 f. Aesthetic experience (see also Art), 49, 64, 191, 304, 306 f., 315, 353 f ., 368. After-image, mental, 160 f., 171, 316. Alternation, chs. XXXIV, XXXV, esp. p. 288, and pp. 330 f ., 368 f . Altruism, 89, 183, 185, 226 f ., 419. Ambition, ch. XLIII and pp. 143, 174, 278, 280, 322, 380, 390. America, 21, 225. Anger (v. pugnacity), 45, 49, 117. Animism, 241. Anxiety-neurosis, 20, 141 f. A priori, 305, 309, 315. • Aquinas, Thomas, 424 ff. Aristotle, 87 f., Ill, 139, 183, 184, 229, 276, 284, 398, 427. Art (v. aesthetic experience), ch. XXXVIII> p. 316, and also pp. 3, 74, 80, 108, 189, 229, 291, 331. Asceticism (v. saintly ideal), 214, 327, 329 ff., 355 ff. Atonement, 381, 395, 414 f. Augustine, 139, 334. Authority (v. recommenders), 97, 130 f., 192, 246. Bahlitt, I., 28 n. Bagehot, W., 197 n., 314 n. Balance of instincts, 48, 53, 179. Beautiful, The, 320. Behavior-ism, 38 f., 79, 341. Belief, 237. Bergson, H., 2, 46, 76 n., 212 n., 319, 412. Blame (v. Justice), 140, 141 n. Bohemia, 108 f., 236. Bosanguet, B., 16. Brahmanism, ch. XXXVII passim, and also pp. 333, 394 ff. Buddha, Buddhism, 17, 75, 111, 334, 373 ff., 394 ff. BurJce, Edm,, 26 f ., 129, 181. Cahot, B, C, 330 n. Calvinism, 103. Carpenter, J, E., 395 n. Carver, T, N., 20 n. Catholicism (v. Church), 378. Causality, 158 ff. Central instincts, ch. X, p. 61, and also pp. 49, 55, 71 f., 115. Chadboume, 46, 57. Character, 101, 138, 148, 148 n., 324. Chesterton, G. K., 123 n. Christianity, Part VII, p. 337, and also pp. 22, 28, 31, 214, 332, 381, 399, 428. Church, 375, 377. Civilization, 405 ff. Climbing instinct, 51, 239. Coenesthesia, 159. Cognition (as ingredient in value), 64 f ., 80 f ., 219. Competitive and non-competitive interests, 74, 181, 200, 239 f. 430 INDEX Conscience, Part III, p. 85, and also pp. 20, 304. Consciousness (v. self -conscious- ness, behavior), 2, 9, 41, 104. Conservatism, 223 f., 228, 254. Contract, social (v. State, Poli- tics), 192, 197, 208. Convention (v. Custom), 173, 357. Conversation, 6 n., 184. Conversion (v. Rebirth), 22, 31, 297, 342, 376. Cram, Balph Adams, 318 n. Crime, 257. Criticism, 3, 5, 345 f . Culture, 205, 219, 261. Curiosity, instinct of, 27, 51, 55, 61 f ., 69, 88, 155, 249, 397, 415. Custom (v. Convention), 98, 107, 122, 181, 273. Cynicism, 353. Darwin, Ch., 46. Democracy, 72, 222, 318 n., 325, 332, 386, 390, 407. Desire (v. Feeling), 42, 80, 81 n., 218. Dialectic, 163, 171, 206, 207, 260, 344, 356 flf., 362, 374, 402. Dignity, 306. Dilemmas, moral, 127, 262. Discipline, chs. IV- VI, and pp. 17, 254 f. Discrimination, 180, 218. Dreams, 316. Durlcheim, E., 209. Duty, 417 flf. Economics, 7, 20, 200 flf., 208, 219, 313. Education, ch. XXX, p. 226, and also pp. 3, 30, 93, 148 n., 149, 161, 171, 295, 323, 345 flf., 420. Energism, 214. Energy, 78. Environment, 1. Equality, 13, 312, 325. Equity (v. Justice). Eugenics, 13. Evil, 6, 31, 107, 129, 135, 214 flf., 260, 263, 319, 393, 402. Experience (v. Dialectic, Dilemma, Logic, Pragmatism), Part IV, p. 145, and also pp. 14, 29, 33, 70 f., 148, 315, 316, 317. Experimentalism (v. Pragmatism, Experience), 222, 223, 224, 225, 408, 414 f. S Family (v. also Private Order), 194, 211, 265 f., 282 f., 325. Fear (and flight), instinct of, 43, 47, 49, 52 flf., 61, 69 n., 73, 92, 152, 268, 373. Feeling (v. Desire, Cognition), 42, 80 f ., 268, 339 f . Fichte, J. G., 396 n. Food-getting instinct, 27, 51, 72, 172, 178, 301. Foster, G. B., 384 n. Freedom (v. Liberty, Right), ch. Ill, p. 9, and also pp. 25, 91 n., 125 flf., 147, 194, 340. Fread, S., Freudism, 19, 75 flf., 317 n., 356. General instincts, 151, 152. God, 20, 329, 393, 398 f., 401. Gregariousness, instinct of (v. Sociabmty), 27. Grotius, H., 47. Habit, 41, 148, 153, 422. Hadley, A. T., 224 n. Ball, Stanley, 111. Hate (v. also Pugnacity), 351. Happiness, 216, 236. INDEX / 431 Hedonism, 162, 214. Begel, G. W. F., 25, 181, 192 n., 199, 210 n., 212. Hohhes, Thomas, 37, 47, 123 n., 133, 181, 197, 198, 199, 202. Holt, E. B., 19, 25, 68, 171, 214. Hume, David, 198 n. Hunger (v. Food-getting instinct), 47. Idea (v. Cognition, Intelligence), 142, 204, 320, 350, 358, 368, 385, 388. Ideals, 16 f ., 29 n., 181, 183 flf., 211, 354. Imitation (v. Admiration, Author- ity), 193, 318. Immortality, 142, 207, 364, 366, 373. Incarnation, 389. Individualism, 149, 166 f ., 171, 176, 182, 184, 204, 248 f., 254 f., 324 f. Individuality, 403. Instinct, chs. VII flf., and also p. 24, 409. Institution, 3, 181, 211 flf., 280, 333. Insurance, 197. Intelligence, 151 f., 157 f. Interpretation (v. Meaning), 62, 71, 116, 301 f., 322, 356, 370, 380. Intuition, 9, 11, 308, 358. James, Wm., 46, 57, 58, 243,^341. Judaism, 339. Jung, C, G., 76. Jury, 106. Justice (v. Blame, Right, Law), 87, 142, 196, 258, 310, 349 flf., 368. Kant, I., 25, 243, 330, 342, 384, 421 f. Karma, 309. Knowledge (v. Cognition, Self- consciousness, Reason). Eohler, J., 134 n., 197 n., 198 n., 202, 209 n. Labor (v. Economics, Food-get- ting), 183, 220, 247. Language, 3, 16, 89 n., 94 n., 352, 357. Law, Legislation (v. Politics, Jus- tice, State), 3, 12, 18, 120, 186 f., 196 f., 222, 294 f., 299 flf., 421. Learning, curve of, 126. Lee, Joseph, 65. Leihniz, 78. Leuba, James H., 373 n. Liberalism, 7, 17. Liberation, Liberators, ch. IV flf. Liberty (v. Freedom, Right), 21, 24, 172, 222, 230. Lippert, J., 95. Locke, J., 186, 305. Locomotion, instinct of, 51 f. Logic in psychology, 75, 82, 104, 119, 193, 420 f. Love (v. Parental instinct. Altru- ism, Sex, Sociability), 47, 51, 75, 140, 282, 287, 341 f., 351, 354. McDougall, William, 46, 54, 58 f., 62, 63, 90, 118, 152 n., 247, 339, 420 n. Machiavelli, N., 12. Maine, Sir Henry, 191 n., 310, 313. Maladaptation, 214 f . Martyrdom, 413 flf. Meaning (v. Interpretation), 42, 70, 120 f., 164, 180, 258. Mediaeval, 318 n., 334 f. Metaphysics, 78, 99, 1381, 147, 248, 320, 329, 358 f., 400, 403, 404, 414 f . 432 INDEX Mill, J. 5., 225. Mind (v. Sell, Will, Pereonality). Momentum, mental, 244. Montesquieu, 47. More, Paul Elmer, 21 n. Morgan, Lloyd, 90, 159. Murray, Gilbert, 396. Mysticism, 20, 328, 387, 395, 404. Myth, 294. Necessary interests, 64, 64 n., 118, 143, 201, 208, 255. Negative Pragmatism (v. Pragma- tism). Nietesche, Fr., 18, 21 f., 27 f., 74, 78, 890 n. Obligation, 417 ff. Originality, 135, 249. Pacifism, 133, 351 ff., 355. Pain, 156 ff., 173, 219. Parental instinct, 27, 89, 226, 407, 411. Parsons, Elsie Clews, 176 n. Passion, 43, 118 f., 278, 321, 357. Patriotism, 206. Peirce, Charles, 82. Penology (v. Punishment), esp. ch. XXXII. Perry, B. B., 64, 66. Personality, 78, 212, 248 f., 312, 316, 345. Pessimism, 12, 13, 214, 216. Philosophy, 3. Plato, 11, 30, 192 n., 276, 364, 385 n., 390, 398. Play, instinct of, 10, 55, 55 n., 73, 155, 242, 291. Pleasure, 81 f., 121, 122 n., 156 f., 219. Politics (v. State), 3, 7, 87, 129, 186, 256. Postulates, 185, 200, 221, 225. Power (v. Will to power), 43, 99, 202 ff., 216. Pragmatism, 137 f., 276, 300 f., 308, 314, 316, 341, 362, 404, 405, 410. Progress, 412, Property (v. Economics, Labor, Acquisition), 175, 210 n., 211 f., 220, 312. Prophetic Consciousness (v. Will to Power), 305, 306, 321. Protestantism, 378, 379. Prudence, 162. Psychoanalysis (v. Freud). Psychology (in relation to biology, V. Consciousness, Behavior), 4, 83, 87, 179, 356 f., 386, 417. Ptah Eotep, 303. Public and Private Orders, 289 f. Pugnacity, instinct of (v. Anger), chs. XXIV, XXVIII, XXXI, XXXII, XLI, and also pp. 47, 49, 51, 54, 55, 61, 89, 95, 112 f., 114, 117, 119, 131 f., 161, 259, 365, 376, 406. Punishment, ch. XXXII, p. 257, and also pp. 3, 142 f., 165, 173, 254 f., 310. Putnam, J. J., 76 n. Quantity, in psychology, 2, 18, 212. Radicalism, 223. Realism (moral), 191, 318. Reason (v. Cognition, Intelligence), 25, 174. RebeUion, ch. XXXI, p. 254, and also pp. 212, 238, 248, 252. Rebirth, Regeneration (v. Conver- sion), 20, 295, 364. Recognition, 206. INDEX 433 Recommenders (v. Authority), 183 ff. Reverence, 420. Religion, Parts VI and VII, and also pp. 3, 6, 13, 20, 97, 143, 251, 269, 273 f., 291, 314, 331 n., 369, 374, 390, 403. Repression, 19, 109, 199. Revenge, 164 f., 260, 263 f. Reverence, 312. Rhythm, 64. Right (v. Liberty, Justice), 184, 184 n., 234, 257, 310, 418, 424. Romanticism, 21, 25. Boss, E. A., 174, 419. Bousseau, 18, 22, 24 f., 37, 187 f., 199. Boyce, J., 197 n., 377, 400. Rue, Ruing, 135, 399. Bussell, Bertrand, 149, 230 n., 233. Sacrifice, 414 f. Sacrilege, 311. Saintly ideal (v. Asceticism), 14 f., 333 ff. Salvation, Saving, 273 f ., 279, 373, 380, 384, 394. Sanctions (v. Pain, Punishment). Schneider, G. H., 54, 58, 76. Schopenhauer, 220 n., 288, 371, 414. Self, unity of (v. Personality, Will), 42, 43, 44, 69 ff., 154, 219, 240 ff., 397. Self-assertion and self-abasement, instincts of (v. Ambition, Fear), 50, 69, 247, 342, 357, 406, 410, 411, 418. Self-consciousness (v. Conscious- ness, Conscience), 2 f ., 43, 92, 98, 147, 187 f., 190, 214, 219, 226 f., 297, 315, 317, 345. Self-elimination, social (v. Indi- vidualism), 189, 251. Self-preservation, instinct of (v. Will to live), 65, 66, 69, 75 n. Self -regarding sentiment, 92. Sensitivity, 218. Sex, instinct of (v. Love), ch. XLII, p. 355, and also pp. 27, 49 f., 53, 56, 761, 95, 1121, 114, 179, 211, 2451, 249, 263, 308, 322 1, 325, 376. Shaw, Bernard, 250. Sin, chs. XVI ff., Appended Note, p. 417 ff., and pp. 381, 399. Sin, original, ch. XX, p. 137, and also pp. 61, 13, 103, 1111, 113 n., 261. Sociability, instinct of (v. Gre- gariousness), 30, 65, 72, 88, 97, 1281, 240 n., 345, 397. Social contract (v. Contract). Socrates, 348, 386. Soul, 303. Sovereignty (v. Individualism, State), 208, 2551 Spencer, H., 18, 95, 171 n., 340. Spinoza, 32, 333 1 State, the (v. Politics, Right, Law and Legislation, Public Order), 89, 205 ff., 245, 257, 283, 284, 324, 3311, 381, 411, 419. Stimulus, 42, 62, 65, 235, 243. Substance, 2771 Supernatural, 328. Synderesis, 424. Syndicalism, 212, 286 n. Tabu, 300, 308. Teleology, 400. Tenderness (v. Parental Instinct). ThomdiJce, E. L., 59, 79, 89 n., 90, 111, 153 n., 158. Thought (v. Idea, Cognition, In- telligence). 434 INDEX Tolstoy, 206, 349, 355. Toynhee, A., 286. Triadic structure, 190, 192 n. Units of behavior, 51, 234, 239. Universal and particular, 151, 193, 258. Utility, 300 ff ., 359, 367. Value, 42, 44, 311, 408, 409, 411, 413. Value, theory of, 32 f., 46, 48, 81 n., 174 f. Vehlen, T., 241. Vedantism, 333. Vestibule of satisfaction, 178. Vicariousness, 215. Waiting capacity, 179, 215, 219, 244. Wallas, Graham, 69 n., 277 n. War in general (v. Pacifism, Pug- nacity), 214, 217, 351 ff. War, the, 21, 406 ff., 408, 411. Watson, J., 154 n. WestermarcTc, 89 f. Whitman, Walt, 102, 401. Will, ch. XI, p. 68, and also pp. 116, 151, 231. Will to live (v. Self-preservation), 65, 66, 73, 201. Will to power (v. Power, Will), 65, 72 f., 89, 99, 115, 143, 242, 316, 333, 360 f., 389. Wollaston, 122. 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