MASTER NEGA TIVE NO . 92 -80450 MICROFILMED 1992 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... Columbia University Library 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. AUTHOR: PERRY, RALPH BARTON TITLE: PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS PLACE: NEW YORK DATE: 1918 \ 109 P429e ^be?- Pu292 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARCFT Master Negative # Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record «ilMM«MAnMi>AHH ¥ l Wl . ■ ■ » ^' W ■ ■■ -g- Perry, Ralph Biirlon, 1^7(;-1957. The present conflict of ideals; a study of the philosophical backfriT.und of the world war, by Ralph Barton Periy ... New York ^etc.j Longmans, Green and co. 1922 cclQlSa 2p. 1., «li-xlil, 549p. 22} cm. The foUowln;;: lectures were delivered at the Unlversltv of Cali- fornia while I had the honor and good fortune to be lecturer on* the Molls fo- r.datlon from January to May of the present year. A com- panion V hime to Present philosophical tendencies, c/. Pref. Gopv" ^ral-~Li-brary-. — l-922~<:ci91&T Jl. Philosophy, .Alodern. 2. National characteristics. i. Title. Bsoi.r-2r Library of C<)n'.:ress i. 18—2.3050 "q5, co;!Ti;::': r D109 DIO9.3 PU23 Perry, Ralph Barton, I876-I957. The present conflict of ideals. -i9±e-, (Card 2) 1922 CC19183 C o pj ill Daijjard; — I^IQ, ■ Copy in Philosophy. I9I8. Restrictions o.;'' Use: TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA FILM SIZE:*^ ^ :_ ^_ REDUCTION RATIO: IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA (HA IB IIB _^ DATE FILMED:_1 --^ INITIALS_''VT\_,_P _._ HLMED BY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS, INC WOODBRIDGE. CT ' ij> 1 r Association for Information and Image Management 1100 Wayne Avenue. Suite 1100 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 12 3 4 IN riT 5 6 Inches TTT I I I 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 mm lllllllilillllllllllMllllillllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll 1.0 I.I 1.25 I rr TTI I I I T 4 III '' 2.8 2.5 ■ 50 Im 3.2 2.2 I&3 121 3.6 ■^ III lii III 4.0 2.0 i£ »i u CiiUii. 1.8 1.4 1.6 n I I I I MFINUFRCTURED TO FIIIM STRNDPRDS BY APPLIED IMfiGE, INC. Columbia ^inibergitp in tf)e Citp of i^eto gorfe THE LIBRARIES .1 LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY From the library of Margaret Ladd-Franklin ( THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS II THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS A STUDY OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND OF THE WORLD WAR Present Philosophical Tendencies A CRITICAL SURVEY OF NATURALISM, IDEALISM, PRAGMATISM AND REALISM TOGETHER WITH A SYNOPSIS OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF WILLIAM JAMES BY RALPH BARTON PERRY PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY Second Impression 8vo. Pages xv + 382 BY RALPH BARTON PERRY Professor of Philosophy in Harvard University Longmans, Green and Co. LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS I918 « Copyright, 1918, by LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. J en to 00 PREFACE The following lectures were delivered at the University of California while I had the honor and good fortune to be Lecturer on the Mills Foundation from January to May of the present year. I am publishing them in virtually the same form as that in which I dehvered them, thus perpetuat- ing my grateful sense of an interested and friendly audience. I claim neither originality nor profound scholarship; but have the hope that this assembhng and formulation of ideas that are now in the air, may have some present value for those who are trying, as I am, to understand the deeper issues that underlie the war. I have thought that this book might also serve as a companion volume to my Present Philosophical Tendencies, There I have dealt mainly with the techni- calities and fundamentals; here I have dealt with the moral, emotional, political and religious imphcations. In order that the two books may be used together, I have followed a similar order of topics: discussing first (Chapters III-XII), aspects of naturalism; second (Chapters XIII-XIX), aspects of idealism; third (Chapters XX-XXIV), aspects of prag- matism; and fourth (Chapter XXV), the practical implica- tions of realism. The remainder of the book consists of an attempt to relate these tendencies to the conflicting national ideals of the present war. I desire to express my thanks to Professor A. L. Locke of Howard University for his assistance in the reading of proof. WASraNGTON, D. C, August 15, 1918. RALPH BARTON PERRY. iii CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. Introduction i I. Object of the Present Work i II. Order of Topics 6 CHAPTER II. Our Actions and Our Professions lo I. The Need of Professing Reasons for Action n II. Profession as a Mask for Impulse i4 III. Why We Justify Our Actions i6 1. For Personal Support i6 2. For Social Support i7 CHAPTER III. The Alien World 21 I. The Cosmic Picture of Materialism 23 II. Man as a Part of Nature 26 III. The Utility of Superstition 27 IV. Secular Moralism 28 CHAPTER IV. Despair and Consolation 31 I. Pessimism and Misanthropy 3^ II. The Contemplation of Nature 3^ in. The Compensatory Imagination 4i CHAPTER V. The Cult of Science 45 I. The Method of Science 45 1. Disinterestedness 4^ 2. Appeal to Experience 4^ 3. Description 4^ 4. The Cult of Scientific Method 47 II. The Revolt against Tradition 49 1. Art and Literature 5® 2. Decadence 5' 3. The Cult of Veracity 52 III. Agnosticism 54 IV. Power and Progress through Science 57 V I vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER VI. The Science of Man 63 I. The Scientific Method in Morals and Religion 63 1. Empiricism and Experimentalism in Ethics 63 2. Modifications of Utilitarianism 64 3. Comparative Ethics 65 4. The Science of Religion 67 II. Psychologism 69 1. The Mechanism of the Mind 69 2. The Cult of Sensibility 71 CHAPTER VII. The Discovery of Society 75 I. The Social Interests of the Individual 76 II. Social Forces 78 m. Society as a Distinct Entity 81 1. Morality as a Social Fact 83 2. Progress and Reform 84 3. The Social Will and the State 86 CHAPTER VIII. Socialism 87 I. Philanthropic Socialism 89 1. Its Ethical Basis 89 2. Emphasis on the Economic Motive 90 n. Militant or Scientific SociaUsm 03 1. General Exposition g^ 2. Economic Determinism g^ 3. Opposition to Religion gg CHAPTER IX. Democracy and Humanity loi I. Science and Democracy jqi 1. Social Democracy and the Cult of Science loi 2. Social Democracy and the Results of Science 103 3. Science and Political Democracy 105 II. The Great Society jq^ 1. Economic Internationalism 107 2. The Humanitarian Motive jog 3. The Cultural Motive j jq III.'iThe Religion of Humanity m CHAPTER X. Evolutionism: Spencer and Darwin ii6 I. The Conception of Evolution j jg 1. Basal Idea ^^^ 2. Varying Factors jjg TABLE OF CONTENTS vil Page II. The Spencerian Ethics of Evolution 121 1. The General Law 121 2. Ideal Conduct in the Evolved Society 122 3. Natural Reactions and Laissez-faire 124 III. Darwinism versus Ethics jjy 1. The Darwinian Ideas J27 2. Civilization and the State of Nature 128 CHAPTER XL The Ethics of Darwinism 132 I. The Darwinian Theory of Progress j^j 1. Civilization and Degeneration 132 2. Competition and the Reward of Merit 135 3. Struggle between Social Groups 138 II. The New Ethics .^.....,... 140 1. Might is Right j . 2 2. The Ideal of Might .!.!.*!.!.*!.* 143 III. Darwinism and Socialism 1^5 1. Class Struggle j^- 2. The Transformation of Struggle 148 CHAPTER XII. The Gospel of Nietzsche 150 I. Nietzsche's Relation to Evolution j^q II. The Attack upon the Existing Code jgA 1. Moral Codes j - . 2. Slave Morality j ^5 3. The Assault on Christianity 1^3 III. The New Gospel .!.!.!...!.. 160 1. The Spirit of Reform 160 2. The Will to Power .........!!!!!!.!!!! 160 3. Hardness j^j 4. The Afl5rmation of Life 163 IV. Social and Political Implications 165 1. Class Subordination 15^ 2. Cosmopolitanism i5y 3. The Superman jgg CHAPTER XIII. The Appeal to Moral and Religious Facts... 173 I. Moralism j^- n. The Code of Conscience and the Rule of God 176 HI. Moral Self -Determination and Individualism 177 IV. Altruism and Optimism j-g V. Kantian Formalism and the World of Faith 180 VI. The Religious Experience jg^ ^•:: TABLE OF CONTENTS V"* Page 1 88 CHAPTER XIV. Phenomenalism and Panpsychism i88 I. Phenomenalism II. SpirituaUstic Agnosticism ^^^ III. Panpsychism 1. View of Nature 2. Moral Implications 3. Religious Implications IV. Meanings of Idealism ^^ 201 CHAPTER XV. Personal Idealism I. Motives and Sources 1. Moralism 2. Pluralism ^ Voluntarism versus Intellectualism ^05 O X T II. Metaphysical Individualism 1. The Personal and Immortal Soul 211 21^ 2. Freedom III. Theism ^^^ 1. Problem of Evil ^^^ 2. God ^'^ rV. The Tendency to Absolutism ^^° CHAPTER XVI. Kant AND THE Absolute 220 I. The Kantian Dualism ^^^ 1. Knowledge and Faith 221 2. The Two Reabns ^23 II. From Kant to Metaphysics 225 1. The Ideals of Reason 225 2. The Primacy of Practical Reason 226 III. The Absolute ^^7 1. Monism ^^^ 2. The Absolute as Known a priori 229 3. The Absolute as Value 230 4. Man the Microcosm ' 232 CHAPTER XVn. Absolute Optimism 23s I. Ethical Ideals 235 1. The Ethics of Duty and Freedom 235 2. The Ethics of SeU-Realization 237 II. Value Fitted to Fact 240 ni. The Confusion of Values 244 IV. The Tolerance of Evil 246 TABLE OF CONTENTS IX Page CHAPTER XVIII. The Absolutist Conception of the State 251 I. The Nature of the State 254 1. Organic Unity of the Nation 256 2. The State and the Nation 258 II. The Finality of the State 261 1. Internal Finality 261 2. External Finality 263 3. National Self-Realization 263 4. The Responsibility of the State 265 CHAPTER XIX. War and Progress According to Absolutism. . 267 I. Intemationality and Peace 267 1. The Great Conmiunity 267 2. Professor Bosanquet's Hegelianism 271 3. The International " State of Nature" 275 II. History and Progress 278 1. The Drama of History 278 2. Etemalism 279 CHAPTER XX. The Revolt against Reason 281 I. Varieties of Anti-intellectualism 281 1. Motives 281 2. Degrees 283 n. Romanticism 285 III. Instrumentalism 287 1. Instnmientalism versus Kantian Idealism 287 2. Experimentalism 290 3. Egoistic Experimentalism 291 4. The Instrumentalist Interpretation of Nature 293 IV. Irrationalism 294 CHAPTER XXI. The Pragmatic Justification of Faith 298 I. The Voluntary Character of Religious Faith 298 II. The Biological Justification 3^^ III. The Moral Justification 3^4 rV. The Spiritual Justification 3^7 1. The Religious Values 3^7 2. Ritschlianism and Modernism 3^9 V. Faith and Truth 3" I 1 I i X TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER XXII. Pluralism and the Finite God 3^6 I. The Preciousness of the Individual 3^7 II. Pluralism and Freedom 322 1. Alternative Possibilities 322 2. Regret 3^4 3. Meliorism 320 m. The Finite God 326 CHAPTER XXIII. The Gospel of Action and Movement 331 I. Vitalism 332 II. Practicality 334 III. Action for Action's Sake 335 1. Functional Exercise 335 2. The Sense of Living 337 3. The Sense of Power 33^ 4. The Sense of Effort 338 IV. Ultimate Ideals 34© 1. Heroism 340 2. The Universal Life 343 3. Forward Movement 345 CHAPTER XXIV. The Practical Philosophy of Bergson 348 I. Quietism 35° II. Freedom 35i III. Life versus Mechanism 353 IV. Man's Place in Nature 359 1. Man as a Part of Nature 356 2. Pluralism and the Triumph of Life 357 3. The Human Individual 359 V. The Conception of God 360 1. God and Time 360 2. God as the Source 361 3. God as the Current 362 CHAPTER XXV. The New Realism 364 I. The Independence of the Fact 364 1. The Attitude of Science 365 2. Values as Facts 368 II. Platonic Realism 371 ni. Externality of Relations 373 IV. The Immanence of Consciousness 376 TABLE OF CONTENTS XI Page CHAPTER XXVI. The Philosophy of Nationality 381 I. National Consciousness 381 1. The Nation and the Race 381 2. The Territorial Aspect 383 3. Nationality and Institutions 385 4. The Modifiability of Nationality 387 II. Abuses of Nationalism 389 1. Confusion of Standards 389 2. Fanaticism 39® 3. Nationalism and Humanity 392 III. Limits of the Present Study 395 CHAPTER XXVII. German National Traits 398 I. Profundity 398 II. Egoism 404 III. Aptitude for Organization 408 IV. Emotionality 413 CHAPTER XXVIIL The German Profession of Faith 417 I. Idealistic Influences 417 1. The Ethics of Self-realization 419 2. The Philosophy of the State 421 II. Anti-idealistic Influences 423 1. Commercialism 423 2. Naturalism 425 3. Nietzsche 427 4. Political Opportunism 428 in. The Reconciliation 430 CHAPTER XXIX. French National Traits 434 I. Humanism 43^ 1. The Sensibilities of the Intellect 436 2. Aptitude for Expression 43^ II. Chivalry 44© HI. Factionalism 442 IV. Social Cohesiveness 445 CHAPTER XXX. Characteristics of French Thought 45© I. The Intellectualistic Tendency 45° I. Cartesianism 45° n. The Voluntaristic Tendency 454 11 ^;. TABLE OF CONTENTS ^^ Page III. French Ethics ^^^ 1. The Scientific Ethics "^^9 2. Voluntaristic Ethics ^^ IV. The French Conception of the State 4 ^ 1. Fraternity 2. The Unity of the Nation 402 3. The Nation and Humanity 40S CHAPTER XXXI. English National Traits 466 I. Sagacity II. Self-reliance ^'^^ III. Reserve ^'^^ IV. Moral Conservatism 47 CHAPTER XXXII. General Characteristics of British Thought 479 I. Fundamental Empiricism 479 • II. British Idealism 482 1. Empirical Idealism 4o3 2. The Reaction against Utilitarianism 48S 3. The Reaction against Individualism 488 III. British Ethics 49i I. The Ethics of Conscience 492 I. Utilitarianism 493 3. Self-realization 494 i. Political Applications 494 CHAPTER XXXIII. The American Ideal of Social Equality... 497 I. The Motive of Compassion 499 II. The Motive of Emulation S^i III. The Motive of Self-respect S04 IV. The Motive of Fraternity 5^ V. The Motive of Envy 5^7 VI. Do We Really Mean it? Sio CHAPTER XXXIV. The Principles of Our Political Democracy. 513 I. The Motive of Negative Liberty 5^3 II. The Principle of Civil Liberty 516 III. The Premise ot Innate Equality Si9 IV. The Love 01 Power 523 V. The Principle of Representation 525 TABLE OF CONTENTS Xlll Page CHAPTER XXXV. The American Tradition and the American Ideal 529 I. American Traits 529 II. Philosophical Tendencies 533 III. The Perfecting of Democracy 537 IV. Nationality and Worid-peace 542 I I The Present Conflict of Ideals CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION I. OBJECT OF THE PRESENT WORK In undertaking the present work I am fully conscious of its inevitable defects. In so far as it is reflective and moderate in tone it will not arouse enthusiasm. There is nothing less picturesque and impelling than moderation. A moderate will always be suspected of fearing to commit himself deeply. Having an eye to the future, and a tolerant regard for differ- ences of opinion, looks very much like having an anchor to windward. And in times of emergency, when action must be rough and forceful, there is something like impertinence in a too fastidious analysis of sentiments and ideas. Not long before writing these lectures I was further humbled by readinJT in a current weekly that "the dulness of professors " had now eclipsed the proverbial dulness of clergymen, that "for concentrated dulness the professors have the equip- ment to be first." "Whatever chance there was for the incendiary brain of mankind before professors organized dulness, there is practically none at present." At about the same time I read the following equally humbling pronounce- ment by Rolland: ^'A lecture is a thing hovering in the balance between tiresome comedy and polite pedantry. For an artist who is rather bashful and proud, a lecture, which is a monologue shouted in the presence of a few hundred unknown, silent people, a ready-made garment warranted to fit all sizes, though it actually fits no one, is a thing intolerably false." ^ Now it is impossible, I fear, to do anything about the dul- ness. As to the other complaint, that no lecture really fits the people it is addressed to — or, that if it fits one it cannot * Jean-Ckristophe in Paris, p. 369. 2 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS possibly fit another, I am counting on the fact that we are just now more of one mind than is usually the case. We are all thinking most of the time of the stupendous events that are making the history of our age. Four years ago we were all nursing our own Httle pet illusions — firmly entrenched each behind his own prejudice. But we have been pro- foundly shaken, all of us. Many of the old landmarks are gone, many of the old hopes blasted, and one thing, namely complacency — smug contentment, lost and gone forever. We are all willing to do some fresh thinking, and to rebuild our faith if possible on better and surer foundations. It is my hope in these lectures to bring to light the deeper conflict of ideas and ideals, of creeds and codes, — of philos- ophies of hfe, in short — that underUes the conflict of sub- marines, airplanes and howitzers. This is a modern war in which the belligerents are nations largely governed by general ideas and ultimate values. It is these general ideas and ulti- mate values that are at stake. The age after the war will be a new age; not so much because the map of Europe will be changed, but rather because the map of the human mind will be changed. It is our present expectation and determina- tion that certain ideas, like national aggrandizement, at present supported by most redoubtable champions, will find only a narrow and insecure lodgment in the human mind; and that other ideas such as international justice and domes- tic self-government shall be the big and triumphant ideas. But it will not be altogether a matter of the rise of some ideas and the fall of others; to some extent there will be an exchange of ideas. Ideas are catching; and you can catch ideas, like diseases, as well from your enemy as from your friend. If the idea be a good one you are not going to refuse it merely because, for example, it was *'made in Germany." No one in our country is exhorting us to be wasteful, weak and dis- organized, merely because the opposites of these qualities are German. I suspect we shall even learn to think well of efficiency again, though perhaps under another name. In short this is a time of volcanic upheavals, of storm and conflict in the realm of the mind. All sorts of ideals are i I $ INTRODUCTION 3 voiced abroad and passionately followed. In the midst of all this I should like to be able to make for myself and others some maps and guide posts, so that we may know to what standard to rally, where to follow, where to resist, — where to adopt, where to reject. In our innermost beliefs and convictions, those deeper things we live for, we stand more or less apart; in groups, perhaps, here and there, but with no clear understanding of one another. I should like to help create a mutual understanding between friends and foes alike. What are the deeper ideal bonds that unite us? What are the irrecon- cilable differences of belief and conscience that divide us? I should like to be able to construct a world-map of convic- tions, creeds, ideas, like the maps which the ethnologists make showing the distribution of racial types in Europe; or like the maps economists make to show the distribution of the corn crop. I should like to make a map with intellectual and moral meridians, with degrees of latitude, trade-routes of thought, and great capitals of faith. This is a comprehensive undertaking; you may be tempted to say that it is an impossible undertaking. But that is what you must expect of a philosopher. A modest, attain- able goal is no business of his. There is a wholesome, com- mon-sense suspicion of philosophy which exists everywhere and which makes it desirable that the philosopher should clearly proclaim his purpose. The way to disarm common sense, I have found, is to acknowledge the entire justice of its suspicions. If I am asked whether philosophy is not against common sense, I reply, ''Yes, that's the beauty of it." Philosophy criticises and generalizes, doubts and wonders, past all the bounds of everyday living. But that is pre- cisely what it is for. Is philosophy practical? It is fair to ask that question to- day, when we live in one perpetual emergency. But ob- serve that anything is practical which contributes to your purpose. If you are in your office confronted by financial failure, and a man drops in to talk about ''the highest good," you throw him out as unpractical. If you are on a raft dying I A THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS of thirst and a man offers to lend you $1000, you resent his suggestion as unpractical; but you might listen to a priest, as well as to a man with a glass of water. It all depends, then, on what interest is moving you at the moment. Now our purpose in this war is a hberal purpose, a statesmanhke pur- pose a purpose that relates to the whole future of humanity. We want to make the best things of hfe safe for all time. What then, is practical? Powder and poison gases? Yes, decidedly. Theory of the state? Philosophy of value? The truth about Hfe and the world? Again yes — and no less decidedly. For such Ught will help us to see our way — and to reach the destination we are just now striving for. The French soldiers have been told that they should speak to the Germans with bullets. I am heartily in favor of that way of speaking. The thing of paramount importance at this moment is that there should be as great a volume of that sort of speech as possible. Bullets should have priority over every kind of commodity exported to Central Europe. I do not say this because I am a particularly bloodthirsty sort of individual. I particularly dislike to talk of violence, or to exhort others to violence and hardship. But I should not be honest if I did not say at once that in my judgment we are in great peril, and can save ourselves only by a united and supreme effort. So far as we know the enemy is stronger in mihtary power, as he certainly is in prestige, than at the be- ginning of the war. The spoils of war, such as they are, are mainly his. Just at the present moment we seem to be in a sort of trance, deceived by that strange mirage of peace that has deceived us and disarmed us a dozen times or more in the last four years.^ To-morrow or the next day we shall wake up and find that Germany has made another of those dreadful thrusts at the weakest point in the lines that en- circle her. It may be in Mesopotamia, or at Salonica, or in Italy, or on the Western front. We do not know, and we are not meant to know. When it comes we shall despair of peace as blindly and unreasonably as we now expect it. In the place of these childish and fitful emotions, what we * Written on January 18, 1918. INTRODUCTION 5 need is a grim, determined, unceasing, unrelenting effort, — a pull all together, and a long pull that shall grow stronger and stronger until the day when the enemy shall break under the strain. Just now we are spending too much time looking at the horizon for harbingers of peace; at those little toy peace balloons which the enemy knows so well how to fool us with. We can win this war; but it does not follow that we shall win it. We can if we exert ourselves to the utmost; otherwise not. Now is the time for that great effort, for that girding of the loins, for that deep, steady breathing of an athlete entering a great test of endurance. We who are behind the lines, more safe than we any of us deserve, unable to enjoy our safety because we feel the ig- nominy of it; — we, I say, can only comfort ourselves by the belief that we are making ready line after line of reserves, reserves of men and women, reserves of supplies, reserves of brain and heart and conscience, that shall make this nation's strength inexhaustible and irresistible. And I like to think that by such studies as this we shall be preparing moral reserves. We went to war on a moral issue. I be- lieve that that is the case also with our allies, but with us, there can, I think, be no question. We went to war de- liberately; in a sense, and I thank God for it, we went out of our way to go to war. We were guided by a deliberate judg- ment of right and wrong. We went to war for the safety and victory not only of our miserable bodies, but for the safety and victory of the things we account best — integrity, gentle- ness, peace and liberty. Now I believe that in order to sus- tain the great burden of this war we shall need to keep these broader purposes in view. You will notice that on the Allied side the war has become more and more clearly and un- qualifiedly a war of principle. Our own entrance into the war has had something to do with this. But it is also due to the fact that as France and England have fought on under the long and almost unbearable strain they have more and more felt the need of strong conviction and a good heart. The knight who confessed his sins before he went into battle may have professed to do it from the fear of being overtaken 6 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS by a sudden death; but I believe there was a deeper motive — the need of going into battle with an undivided self. No man can put forth his full power for a long time if his con- science is against him. He needs to keep warm m his heart the highest loyalties that move him. We have gone to war on high grounds, and we shall be able to remain at war and to reach our maximum of power only provided we continue to take high ground. We must see this war as The Great War — not in the numbers of nations and men engaged, not in its volume of death and destruction, but in the greatness of the issues which are at stake. And so I hope that in this course of lectures we may be helped a Httle to see these issues; to renew our devotion to the purpose that moves us, and our re- solve that in such a purpose there shall be no turning back. II. ORDER OF TOPICS In the chapters that follow I shall briefly survey such pro- fessions of faith as are both important and characteristic of the present age. In a book which I published in 191 2, called Present Philosophical Tendencies, I endeavored to discuss and compare in a relatively technical and polemical manner what I thought to be the chief doctrinal alternatives with which the philosophers of the day have provided the thinking public. I dealt chiefly in each case with the argument; with the reasoning or evidence by which each protagonist built up his case. Now it so happens that the crucial questions in technical philosophy belong to what the philosopher calls *'epistemology " or theory of knowledge. Epistemology is the bitter substance of every sugar-coated philosophical pill. The volume I have just spoken of contains rather strong epistemological doses, such as philosophers can cope with and even relish, but which are usually found unpalatable and indigestible by the layman. In the present lectures I am going at the matter from the other end. Instead of tracing contemporary philosophy to its ultimate roots, I am looking for its flowers and fruits. What are the philosophies of life, the codes, creeds and ideals by which men live, and to which they appeal, in their reflective moments, for justification of INTRODUCTION 7 'I I i their acts and policies? We shall be moving, in other words, not in the higher latitudes of metaphysics, theory of knowl- edge and logic; but in the temperate and semi-tropical regions of moral, political and religious philosophy, where it is less difiicult to sustain life. But I propose, nevertheless, to retain the main divisions of contemporary thought as they were drawn in Present Philosophical Tendencies. In that book I distinguished four tendencies: Naturalism, Idealism, Pragmatism and Realism, I have become less and less confident of the coordinate rank of these four tendencies. When one abandons polemics and attempts quite disinterestedly to analyze the temper of the times, when one leaves the philosophical closet and debating room, and lives in the intellectual out-of-doors — above all, when one turns to the influences of philosophy on human purposes and policies, then these four tendencies appear of very unequal weight. It becomes evident that the mightiest tendency of our day is naturaHsm. Reahsm, on the other hand, must evidently bide its time and content itself for the present with laying claim to the future! By naturalism I mean such philosophy as grows directly out of the methods or results of the physical sciences. I find at least four great ideas that move men in these days and that have sprung from this source. First, there is the ma- terialistic metaphysics, that corporeal and mechanical view of reality which I have proposed to call The Alien World. Second, there is the scientific method, adopted as a creed and code; science valued not so much for its conclusions, as for its procedure. ThislshdllcdllTheCult of Science. Then there is the application of science to the life of man, and the emer- gence into view of a new entity, the great social complex, — a new unit in discourse, a new object of emotion and allegiance. This is The Discovery of Society. Finally, the advancement of biological science has brought to the front the conception of Evolution, and many have found in this conception the in- strument of moral and even religious reconstruction. Over against all of these tendencies which signify the prestige of the natural or physical sciences, there stands 8 ^THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS idealism, as the champion of moral and rehgious faith. This, broadly speaking, is the philosophy which proclaims the ascendancy or priority of the world of consciousness over the world of bodies. There are many varieties of it. I have found it convenient to consider first, as a group, all those views which spring from the established moral and rehgious beliefs. I shall then discuss those more moderate idealistic views, such as Personal Idealism, which proclaim the irre- ducibility of the individual soul, the freedom of the indi- vidual, and the personahty of God as Christian Theism conceives it. We are thus enabled to throw into reUef and discuss by itself the more radical and distinctive form of ideahsm, which we shall call The Philosophy of the Absolute, and which we shall discuss in its various moral, poUtical and religious phases. Then, turning to pragmatism, we shall consider first its relatively negative aspect, its assault upon the intellect, or The Revolt against Reason; and second its positive aspect, or its emphasis upon Hfe as the essential reality and as the supreme good. Finally, under the title of realism, I shall make a small place for certain recent philosophizings with which I find myself in accord, and from which I expect much in time to come. This constitutes the program so far as general philosophical tendencies are concerned. It will be observed that in this program there is no specific mention of Christianity, or various other staple ideas. The reason is this. I am not attempting to expound all that people believe in this second decade of the Twentieth Century, but rather the disturbing factors, the variants in thought. That which is traditional and established, common to modern European Christendom, I take as sea-level, from which to measure the heights and depths; or as the normal temperature by which to judge the chills and fevers of reaction and innovation. Having sketched these broader features of our philosophi- cal map, and having thus oriented them by general philo- sophical axes of reference, I shall attempt a more difficult, but perhaps more timely, undertaking. The present war has INTRODUCTION 9 brought nationality to a pitch of intensity and self-conscious- ness hitherto unknown in human history. In the heat and desperation of bitter conflict the grim and lifelike features of national physiognomy have been uncovered. The paint has run and the masks have been torn off. In the moment of supreme effort the souls of nations are written in their faces. I shall attempt, though with a clear consciousness of the well-nigh insuperable difficulty of the task, to depict some of these national physiognomies, those which are most definitely formed, and with which we are best acquainted. I shall discuss the soul, the ideals, of Germany, of France, and of England. And then, finally, I shall invite you to take counsel with me as to our own national purposes. With us, as indeed with all the nations of the earth, it is not merely a question of what we have been, and of what we have sought to achieve in history; it is also a question of what, quite independently of tradition, we are now, and in the light of present events, do now seek to achieve in history. In the very act of searching our souls we shall be participating in that national renovation and reconstruction which must inevitably accompany and follow this great national effort. CHAPTER II OUR ACTIONS AND OUR PROFESSIONS The present war, as we have seen, is a war of fundamental ideas. Each belligerent nation has professed a creed and gone forth to do battle for it. In these lectures we have undertaken to examine these fundamental ideas and creeds and to relate them to the broader currents of modem philo- sophical thought. But at the very outset we are chal- lenged by the claim that in spite of all professions to the contrary neither men nor nations do as a matter of fact either go to war or do anything else as a result of holding certain fundamental ideas. The real causes of action, we are told, are entirely illogical, non-intellectual, perhaps even unconscious. A recent French writer has said : *'The great lesson of the event which is shaking the world — namely, that the world is not governed by reason, that irrational forces (sentiment, pride, collective dreams, fanaticism, will to power and to conquest) are always latent in nations, producmg by their explosions the great upheavals of History, just as the sub- terranean forces of the globe shattered in the past — and may again to-morrow shatter — the land on which quiet harvests are now growing; that truth reigns no more than reason, since sixty- five million Germans sincerely believe that which is not, and since, if they conquer, their delusion and the lie of their masters will prevail: this lesson has failed to impress itself on these theorists and dreamers, who did not feel, like their brothers in France, the earth trembling and ready to open under their feet." ^ There is more hope of a man who believes that the evils in the world are the result of irrational fate, than of the man who thinks them all to be the decrees of absolute reason; for the former can at least disapprove them. But it is ^ Chevrillon: England and the War, pp. 180-181. 10 ACTIONS AND PROFESSIONS II evident that if fundamental ideas had nothing to do with human policies, our present undertaking would be a waste of effort. To discuss this issue with any philosophical or psychological thoroughness would take us far afield. But we must meet the challenge, and meet it before we can proceed further. I. THE PROFESSION OF REASONS In answering this contention which would relegate all philosophies of life to a shadow world, where they would play no real causal part in the drama of history, I wish first to call attention to the fact that human beings do, apparently, feel the need of offering good reasons for their action. It is a notorious fact, which all cynics and satirists have been fond of exploiting, that we are inclined to profess only the highest and noblest motives for our actions. Parents never punish their children from temper, but always for the child's welfare in this world or the next. Nations never go to war for glory or aggrandizement, but in self-defense, or for the advancement of civilization. Even the Devil we are informed can and does cite Scripture for his purpose. **For the use of reason," says Conrad in a recent novel, *^is to justify the obscure desires that move our conduct, impulses, passions, prejudices, and follies, and also our fears." ^ In other words, though our conduct is really moved by "impulses," "passions," "prejudices," "follies" and "fears," we feel obliged to conceal these true motives, and invoke reason to invent other and fictitious motives. In his Human Nature in Politics, Mr. Graham Wallas has shown us that although the voter's action is largely due to simple instincts, he will always seek to justify his vote : "The tactics of an election consist largely of contrivances by which this immediate emotion of personal affection may be set up. The candidate is advised to 'show himself continually, to give away prizes, to 'say a few words' at the end of other people's ^ Victory, p. 93. i 12 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS ACTIONS AND PROFESSIONS 13 speeches . . His portrait is periodically distributed. . . . Best of aJl is a photograph which brings his ordinary existence sharply forward by representing him in his garden smoking a pipe or read- ing a newspaper. A simple-minded supporter whose affection has been so worked up wiU probably try to give an intellectual explana- tion of it. He will say that a man, of whom he may know reaUy nothing except that he was photographed in a Panama hat with a fox-terrier, is 'the kind of man we want/ and that therefore he has decided to support him; just as a child will say that he loves his mother because she is the best mother in the world, or a man in love will give an elaborate explanation of his perfectly normal feeling, which he describes as an intellectual inference from alleged abnormal excellences in his beloved."^ One more example. There has been organized in France a patriotic society called 'T Union Sacree^ It is an at- tempt, apparently a successful attempt, to bring the dif- ferent intellectual factions of France together, under the influence of the common passion and the common purpose of patriotism. M. Ferdinand Buisson, one of the founders of the movement, calls attention to the fact that although the French nation is united in sentiment and action, never- theless each faction. Catholic, Protestant and Free-thinker, has its own peculiar reasons — and no one ascribes his action simply to the influence of passion. ''Have you not remarked,'* he asks, "in the innumerable letters of soldiers to their families, letters of which the press has given extracts by the hundred, have you not remarked how these men so similar in action remain so different in opinion and conviction? Not only do they not hide the fact, or try to find a formula which will attenuate these dissimilarities and discords, but on the con- trary, with a simplicity which commands respect, the catholic utters his catholic faith in appropriate terms, the free-thinker with a like directness utters his free thought, and so with all of them: each guards his faith, each affirms it boldly, not in an aggressive tone, but nevertheless dotting all the i's. This seems entirely natural to them, it neither constrains nor surprises anyone. They » Pp. 30 ff. M N are not at all astonished at having many explanations of one mode of action." ^ This suggests that since the action is the same and the reasons different — the reasons therefore cannot make any difference. But that would be a hasty conclusion. It would be as though one were to argue that because ten men voted the Republican ticket for ten different reasons, therefore the reasons had nothing to do with it. Indeed the inference is rather to the contrary. If you grant that the ten men are different to start with, then if they all professed the same reasons for performing the same act, one would rightly suspect their professions; because one would know that if they were all submitted to the same influence their original differences would remain unreduced. If you have ten sticks of wood of different sizes, and you cut an inch from each of them, they remain of different sizes. In order to make them the. same size you must cut off a different length from each. Similarly, if a Catholic, a Protes- tant and a Free-thinker are to be brought to emotional and practical uniformity, each must be influenced and modi- fied in a way suited to his own peculiar differences. The outstanding fact thus far, then, is the fact that we do give reasons, deeper moral, philosophical or religious reasons, for our action. We feel the need of so doing. We are not brought to the point of action, at any rate of pro- longed, persistent action, without such self- justification. Now I submit that if this is the case, it is simply contrary to fact to say that our reasons make no difference to our action — that they are shadowy and impotent. There is no possible explanation of this universal human practice of self-justification, unless we grant that it is a necessary condition of action; and once you grant that it is a neces- sary condition of action you have virtually conceded that in any given practical situation it may be the decisive condition of action. * " Le vrai sens de 1 'Union Sacree," p. 1 1 , reprinted from Reme de Metaphysique et de Morale, July, 1916. 14 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS II. PROFESSION AS A MASK FOR IMPULSE But the common explanation of professions is that they are useful only for purposes of dissimulation. They deceive others as to our intentions - clothe the ravening wolf in sheep's clothing and so enable him to trap his prey. Mis- anthropists of all times have taught, for example, that every man is secretly governed by evil and sinister motives. His professions of duty and humanity are useful lies, by which he secures the confidence of others while he robs them. Or take the traditional conception of the demagogue. He pretends to be acting for the people's good, is full of high- sounding patriotic phrases; but uses these merely to secure a support which he means to misuse for his selfish advantage. A similar view appears in the version of modern states- manship and foreign policy, which is offered by such a writer, for example, as Thorstein Veblen. The national profession of faith, according to his view, is a means by which cunning and unscrupulous politicians fool their own people into patriotic support, and fool enemy nations into unsuspecting weakness. For this purpose every Govern- ment needs its trained philosophers as a sort of social organ of dissimulation. '^The ideals, needs and aims that so are brought into the patriotic argument to lend a color of rationality to the patriotic aspiration in any given case will of course be such ideals, needs and aims as are currently accepted and felt to be authentic and self-legitimating among the people in whose eyes the given patriotic enterprise is to find favor. . . . The Prussian statesman bent on dynastic enterprise will conjure in the name of the dynasty and of culture and efficiency; or, if worst comes to worst, an outbreak will be decently covered with a plea of mortal peril and self-defense. Among English-speaking peoples much is gained by showing that the path of patriotic glory is at the same time the way of equal- handed justice under the rule of free institutions; at the same time, in a fully commercialized community, such as the English-speaking commonly are, material benefits in the way of trade will go far to sketch in a background of decency for any enterprise that looks to the enhancement of national prestige. ... By and large ... it ACTIONS AND PROFESSIONS IS will hold true that no contemplated enterprise or line of policy will fully commend itself to the popular sense of merit and expediency until it is given a moral turn, so as to bring it to square with the dictates of right and honest dealing. On no terms short of this will it effectually coalesce with the patriotic aspiration." ^ On this theory, then, all philosophizing men and nations, all who give broad, fundamental, humane reasons for their action are hypocrites. Thus, for example, when President Wilson answered the Pope's peace note and stated the American profession, the German newspapers were not un- justified in dubbing him arch-hypocrite; in alluding to his "swollen phrases," ''absolute mendacity," ''crocodile tears," "Pharisaical hypocrisy," "unctuous proclamation" and "brazen cheek." Now my own belief has always been that the charge of hypocrisy is a cheap and superficial way of dodging the issue. It does sometimes happen that a man who is going to rob you approaches you in the name of friendship; that a man definitely desiring and intending one thing, deliber- ately makes it appear that he desires and intends another. But to suppose this to be universal would, of course, be ridiculous. Human intercourse is based upon the fact that normally human professions can be taken at their face value. It is perfectly evident that if we were all wolves in sheep's clothing, if everyone wearing sheep's clothing were a wolf at heart, then sheep would long since have acquired the un- pleasant reputation now enjoyed by wolves, and there would be no demand for their clothing. There is no understanding of hypocrisy, no explanation of the selfish advantage which may accrue from it, except on the hypothesis that like mendacity it is exceptional. It is useful only in so far as it finds men off their guard, owing to the habits of credulity and trust which have been built up by the common practice of honesty and candor. * An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace, pp. 35, 36. i6 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS HI. WHY WE JUSTIFY OUR ACTIONS We must, I think, look elsewhere for the explanation of this need of having reasons or professions to justify our action My thesis is this: That we justify our actions in order to gain a wider support for them either mthtn our in- dividual, personal lives, or within the social group. I For Personal Support. Let us consider the matter first in its personal aspect. Each of us is a bundle of inter- ests a httle colony of different impulses, wishes and aspira- tions They are bound together so that no one of them can act itself out without affecting the others. Given any one of these interests, all the rest of the personal household of interests act as a check upon it. The more unified a person is the more character or consistency of purpose he has, the less is any of his interests left to itself. Each interest has got somehow to satisfy the rest. Now in so far as an act is dictated only by immediate impulse, it has no support beyond itself. It may get itself performed; the immediate impulse which incites it may be powerful enough for a time to ignore and override every conflicting interest. But its state is none the less precarious and weak, owing to its isolation. Suppose, for example, that I act from the appetite for food and from that alone. My greed may for a time be unrestrained. But in so far as I act solely from greed, and conceive my act in no other Hght, sooner or later my other interests, in vocational suc- cess, or long Hfe or friends, are going to assert themselves against my greed and put in conflicting claims for my lim- ited time, resources and vitality. I may be merely troubled, haunted by these conflicting interests, so that I am uneasy in mind and hesitant in action. I cannot eat greedily with conviction, with my whole heart. But suppose I conceive my eating as a means of nourishing my body, and so as an indirect condition of the other interests which depend on my physical vitality. The food does not cease to gratify my taste, but my indulgence has gained new allies. New springs of action are called in to its support. Getting ACTIONS AND PROFESSIONS 17 reasons for an action, in other words, means securing addi- tional incentives to its performance — getting the sanction, and perhaps the active, dynamic support of my whole per- sonal complex. There will still be one motive that stands nearest to the act, and which contributes the major part of the energy which it expends in overcoming obstacles. But there will now be auxiliary motives, which give it potentially the backing of all my reserves. If we have commonly failed to accept this rather obvious view of the matter, it is because, I think, we are deceived by the idea that every act must have one and only one motive. Nothing could be further from the truth. In human action of the reflective sort actions are almost never free from ulterior motives. And mixed motives do not in the least imply duplicity. They imply simply that a single motive, the initial motive, is not sufficient to bear the burden. In so far as we feel the need of seeing the act *^in another light," or of putting it ^^on other grounds," we are conscious of the weakness of the first appeal, and the need of securing the accession of interests that have not yet been called into play. The justification of action, in short, is the means of securing the adoption of the act by the self as a whole; so that it may enjoy the support of the whole sum of dispositions that con- stitutes an active personality. 2. For Social Support. Now let us consider the matter in its social and political bearings. No nation can go to war owing to the drive of a simple instinctive motive. This has grown to be less and less possible in proportion as individuals have become enlightened, and have been taught to act on their own judgment. Men can no longer be hired to fight, nor can they be driven into war by harsh masters. Gusts of passion soon blow by. Fear, hate, love of adven- ture, greed, touch no man to the depths of his soul; and as the war wears on there are more and more men whom they do not touch at all. A nation that is to fight grimly on, with all its might and with all its resources, must be con- vinced. This means that all the interests of all the millions p» l8 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS all a stake in the outcome. What then, does the statesman, the leader, ao. ri concTes the war in its broader aspects and bearings. He b^rto Hght and pubUshes to his people the trams of cluse aid elect, the seque-es of logic, by which it connects Sth e^ery human motive. And he must beware of pre- Sting it ^n such a light as to alienate or dmde aUegiance. irSpeals to the greed of some, he wiU antagomze the humaSrof^o^ So he will find himseU by a sort o plS'divination coming more and more to ideah^^^^^^^^^^ national cause; presenting it more and more - the hght o those consequences that are umversally good. And he wiU find it necelary from time to tune to restate his nation s cause to take account of new feeUngs, new scruples, which would otherwise divide the national strength. It will usuaUy happen that an indmduals action will have two or more ^'philosophies," or forms of justification. It may be justified by a personal philosophy by which he charts his own private course of affairs. Beyond this i may be justified by a party or sectarian creed that unites hhn only with fellow-Catholics, fellow-Protestants or fellow- Free-thinkers, with fellow-RepubUcans, fellow-Democrats or fellow-SociaHsts. But this in no wise imphes that the same act shall not have over and above its personal, party or reUgious reasons, certain national or humane reasons that just now unite him with his fellow-patnots. When you examine the history of this war you will find that all the leading nations went to war for a pohcy which secured the soUd support of their people, and could be served with conviction and a whole heart. But as time wore on motives of righteous indignation, just retaUation, pumtive severity, blind fear, have proved less and less effective. They have proved to alienate as well as win support. It has been necessary to conceive the war in broader and broader terms. Even we have changed, and changed radi- cally, in the few months since we entered the war. We ACTIONS AND PROFESSIONS 19 went to war from indignation at the murder of our women and children on the high seas, and to enforce the letter of international law. But we soon found it necessary to draw upon our moral reserves. We changed our cause, and pro- fessed to be at war to make the world safe for democracy, for such institutions as our own. Already there is, I think, another change. We conceive the war now as a war to establish a permanent condition of peace and well-being in all nations. Even the Russian revolutionists have forced all the belligerents to change their stand, and to profess in- terest in the deliverance of the masses of humble men from economic subjection. It is absurd to say that these professions are not sincere. Or rather, it is flippant and superficial to say so. The in- dividuals who are the mouthpieces of these statements may, and doubtless in some cases do, entertain private opinions to the contrary. But the significant thing is that they should feel compelled to say them; significant because it betrays the fact that the several nations for w^hom they speak will not continue to fight, will not stand solidly against the enemy, unless their cause is represented to them as wholly beneficent and humane. The greatest advantage which the Allies enjoy over the Central Powers is a philosophical, a moral advantage. The German nation as a whole has fought for two causes: for the unlimited expression of its national personality; and for the defense of its territorial integrity. The latter cause is destroyed at the moment when the German people can be convinced that the policy of the Allies is not one of ter- ritorial aggrandizement or expropriation. The former cause is a vicious cause, because it is narrow, intolerant, and in effect aggressive and dangerous. In the long run it will go stale and cease to carry conviction. The Allies have from the beginning stood on broader and more solid grounds. They have a philosophy, a creed which need excite no man's fears, and which has the power of rallying all enlightened men to its support. Sooner or later it cannot fail to prevail, because it is to every man's interest that it should. 20 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS We turn now to the stock of fundamental ideas by which in our own age men and nations are wont to justify them- selves; ^om which they draw those professions which en- able them to live steadily and umtedly. CHAPTER HI THE ALIEN WORLD In characterizing one^s own age, it is important not to con- fuse its mere contemporaneousness with its genuine historical pecuUarities. There are certain characteristics which any age whatsoever will present to the eyes of those who live in it. It will always be the *^ modern" age, the latest phase of human development. And it will always be an age of ** tran- sition.'' There will be on the one hand those ideas and in- stitutions that are over-ripe, or decaying, or dried up, and on the other hand those which are in the bud, full of sap and the promise of luxuriance to come. The old men will judge the age in terms of the past, as a decline from the *^good old days'' ; and the young men will judge it in terms of the future as the dawn of a better to-morrow. To both young and old it will appear to be an age of transition, for the simple reason that every age is an age of transition, and for the further and equally simple reason that change always receives more notice and comment than sameness. Nevertheless, in spite of my own warning, I do think that there are reasons for regarding such comment as peculiarly applicable to the era just prior to the war. Strindberg, for example, suggests that it is this transitional quality of the present age which makes it peculiarly modern. ''Because they are modem characters, living in a period of transition more hysterically hurried than its immediate predecessor at least, I have made my figures vacillating, out of joint, torn between the old and the new. . . . My souls (or characters) are conglomerates, made up of past and present stages of civilization, scraps of humanity, tom-off pieces of Sunday clothing turned into rags — all patched together as is the human soul itself. And I have furthermore offered a touch of evolutionary history by letting the weaker repeat words stolen from the stronger, and by 21 22 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS letting different souls accept 'ideas^ -or suggestions, as they are called — from each other." ^ One may justly remark that every age is an age of transi- tion; and that the crucial character of one's own age is an illusion, reflecting the contrast between the immediate ex- perience of novelty and change, and the static panorama of historical retrospect. But if one may claim to have escaped a common illusion, there does appear to be some substance to Strindberg's contention. And I think that the deepest cause for it is the vogue of science, of what might be called '' the new enlightenment." Science is essentially innovating and radical, suspicious of what is estabHshed and traditional. And science has since the Nineteenth Century acquired a prestige and a place in the educational and cultural system which is unparalleled in the past. Its influence has been further extended by the increase of means of communication and popularization until something of the spirit of the sci- entist has crept into the soul of every child of European civilization. A contemporary critic has written of Huysmans, "He was the critic of modernity, as Degas is its painter, Gon- court its exponent in fiction, Paul Bourget its psychologist." ^ This writer was referring to the close of the Nineteenth Century, rather than the dawn of the Twentieth; he was confined in his outlook to art and literature, and in his in- stances to Parisian France. Nevertheless this characteri- zation of modernity, of the modernity of the eve of the war, is typical, and would be generally accepted. Now those of you who know one or more of these Frenchmen, Huysmans, Degas, Goncourt or Bourget, will agree, I think, that their common trait is their disillusionment — their preoccupation with the world as it is, rather than as they might desire it to be, rather than as it ought to be. This again, I think, is the 1 Author's Preface to "Miss Julia," Plays, trans, by Edwin Bjorkman, Vol. II, p. loi. Cf. Nietzsche's statement that "Our age gives the impression of an intermediate condition, " in his Human all too Human, § 248. * Huneker: Egoists, p. 188. THE ALIEN WORLD 23 effect, direct or indirect, of that medium of science in which like all sons of the Nineteenth Century they have lived and breathed. There are many ways in which science has influenced the modern mind; but I think they may be divided broadly into three. There is, first, the general synoptic view of the world which the physical sciences in the aggregate afford. There is, second, the method, the example, the institution of science itself. And, third, there are certain special discoveries or conceptions of science of peculiar scope and importance. In the present lecture we are to study the first of these modes of influence. I propose to present to you the materialistic picture of the world: what Huxley has called the ** night- mare " conception of the world, what I have proposed to call ''The Alien World '' in order to stress its foreignness to the most cherished hopes and aspirations of man. I. THE COSMIC PICTURE ACCORDING TO MATERIALISM Philosophical materialism was not invented in the Nine- teenth Century; nor is it peculiarly characteristic of that century. Its metaphysics and its moral and religious impli- cations were formulated as long ago as the Greek atomists of the Fifth Century before Christ. But in the Nineteenth Century the materialistic picture was filled in, rounded out and apparently completed. The case for materialism re- ceived the support of new and seemingly decisive evidence; and as though the testimony were finally concluded, the case was eloquently summed up, driven home, and impressed with a new vividness upon the imaginations of men. At the beginning of the century the case was outlined, and the broad foundations laid down by La Place (1749-1827), who proposed to dispense with the services of a Creator, and to employ instead his ''Nebular Hypothesis," by which the present stellar world evolves mechanically out of the prime- val chaos. The great generahzations of the "conservation of matter" and the "conservation of energy" made it possible, at least in principle, to regard as parts of one great 24 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS homogeneous physical system the motions of the stellar masses the reactions of chemical substances, and the varied phenomena of light, heat, electricity and magnetism. Spec- tral analysis brought evidence to show that the distant stars have a like composition and so presumably a like origin with the earth. The uniformitarian geology of Lyell and Hutton provided the beginnings of a history of this planet in terms of well-known physical laws, and in terms that would fit it as a chapter into the universal cosmic history. But the great victories of materialism in the Nineteenth Century were those gained over Hfe and man, mind and reUgion. Evidently the crucial test of materiaHsm must always lie in its abiUty to apply its corporeal and mechanical conceptions to those phenomena which are prima facie non- mechanical or incorporeal. Hence the significance of me- chanical and chemical physiology, in which the living or- ganism is shown to have the properties of a complex machine. Hence the significance of physiological psychology in which consciousness is reduced to the status of an attendant upon mechanically determined brain-states. Hence the supreme significance of the Darwinian principle of natural selection, which seemed to provide a mechanical explanation of the origin of all the higher forms of Hfe and to assimilate man wholly to his natural environment. Darwin was quite conscious of the bearings of his views. "The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows." ^ These discoveries tended to discredit the traditional teach- ings of religion; and sharply contradicted the letter of the Scriptures. At the same time the scientific method of his- tory was apphed by Bishop Colenso, Strauss and others to ^ Darwin: Life and Letters, Vol, I, pp. 278-279. THE ALIEN WORLD 2S the study of the Old and New Testaments, and seemed to throw man back from revelation upon the doubtful mercy of the unaided human intellect. The most graphic description of the lot of man as mater- ialism conceives him is Mr. Arthur Balfour's description, well known to many American readers through William James's citation of it in his Pragmatism. "Man, so far as natural science by itself is able to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe, the Heaven-descended heir of all the ages. His very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets. Of the combination of causes which first converted a dead organic compound into the living progenitors of humanity, science, indeed, as yet knows nothing. It is enough that from such beginnings famine, disease and mutual slaughter, fit nurses of the future lords of creation, have gradually evolved, after infinite travail, a race with conscience enough to feel that it is vile, and intelligence enough to know that it is insignificant. We survey the past, and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspira- tions. We sound the future, and learn that after a period, long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the con- tented silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. ^Imperishable monuments' and ^immortal deeds,' death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been. Nor will anything that is be better or be worse for all that the labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through countless ages to effect."^ A similar and not less impressive description of this cosmic spectacle is offered by Mr. Bertrand Russell: "That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes ^ Foundations of Belief, pp. 29-31. 26 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS and fears, his loves and his beHefs, are but the outcome of acci- dental coUocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that aU the labor of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins — all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.'' 1 What sorts of habitation man has attempted to build for his soul within this scaffolding, we have now to inquire. The remarkable thing is that man has so many ways of adjusting himself, emotionally and practically, even to a world so conceived. To feel the full force of the disillusion- ment, of this absolute reversal of human hopes, one should compare this picture with the faith of the Thirteenth Cen- tury, in which man believed himself the peculiar object of interest to a Creator conscious and moral like himself; and in which he believed his habitation, this earth, to be the stage set in the center of the cosmos and especially fitted and equipped for the enactment of that drama in which he is the central figure.^ II. MAN AS A PART OF NATURE The first step in the readjustment which this spectacle of the alien world requires, is to put man in his place. The old religion thought of him as "a little lower than the angels "; the new materialism thinks of him as a little higher than the anthropoid ape. You cannot immediately convert man's thoughts and ideals into collocations of atoms. But ma- terialism has a way of accomplishing the reduction by a series of steps. You can offer a psychological description of his 1 "The Free Man's Worship," Philosophical Essays, pp. 60-61. 2 Cf. Anatole France, Le Jardin d' Epicure, pp. i-io. THE ALIEN WORLD 27 thoughts and ideals; a physiological explanation of the psychical; a chemical explanation of the physiological; and a physical explanation of the chemical; until finally man and all his works find a place in the one great cosmic complex of matter and energy. On every side we meet with interests and sentiments that originate in this physical version of man. The very ex- travagance of the claims once made in man's behalf have led to a somewhat brutal insistence upon his new pedigree and status, as a creature of nature. There is the characteristic emphasis on physical well-being, health, nutrition, sanitation, eugenics, in modern social service. There is the represen- tation of the pitiable plight of man, struggling helplessly in the web of heredity and other modes of physical causation. There are the great physical schools of history that explain man and his deeds in ethnic, geographical or physical terms. Even the men of letters, such as Ibsen, Strindberg and Brieux, have taught us to view man in this light. It is well summed up in the saying, "Man is a piece of the Earth" {Die Menschheit ist ein Stuck der Erde). III. UTILITY OF SUPERSTITION Faith in a spiritual empire above this terrestrial king- dom, or faith in lasting achievement through the human will and reason — these are apparently discredited by that view of the world which physical science presents. Religion and moral idealism, then, are no better than superstition. It does not follow, however, that superstition should be abolished. Speaking of the religion of Rome, Hobbes had said: "And by these and such other institutions, they obtained in order to their end, which was the peace of the commonwealth, that the common people in their misfortunes, laying the fault on neglect, or error in their ceremonies, or on their own disobedience to the laws, were the less apt to mutiny against their governors; and being entertained with the pomp and pastime of festivals, and public games, made in honour of the gods, needed nothing else but 28 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS bread to keep them from discontent, murmuring, and commotion against the state. . . . And thus you see how the religion of the Gentiles was part of their policy." ^ On such political grounds or on other grounds of ex- pediency, it is even now sometimes judged expedient that superstition should be preserved, as a sop to the vulgar or a syrup for babes. The full truth would be too strong and bitter a dose for the average man. Let him hug his illusions. Let him lean on error who is too weak to stand in the truth. At any rate if he must lose his religion, let him taper off, like a man addicted to stimulants. This view appears in much cynical, worldly-minded comment on religion: in the view that religion is for women; or for children, like the belief in Santa Claus; or for the ignorant and unreasoning masses; or for any man on his sick-bed. Closely akin to this is the view that the usefulness of re- ligion justifies its being regarded as true. But this is in reality a different view because it puts religion on a par with science, or even on a higher level.^ We are here assuming the superior and prior truth of the physical sciences. The alien world is supposed to be a solid fact, for anyone who has the courage to face it. He who turns his back on it, or has never had his eyes opened to it, and cherishes beliefs that are more to his li^ng, forfeits truth. His preferred beliefs may be better for him, but they are false none the less. He who accepting these premises still justifies superstition, is virtually asserting that life is tolerable and safe for the masses of mankind only upon a basis of mendacity and illusion.^ IV. SECULAR MORALISM But the picture of the alien world, with its reduction of man's place in the world, and with its denial of those hopes 1 Leviathan, Ch. XII. Cf. also Ch. XXXIII, XXXVIII. 2 Cf. below, pp. 311-315- 2 Cf. Anatole France, below, p. 35. THE ALIEN WORLD 29 which religion has encouraged, does not necessarily drive man to mendacious superstition, nor does it necessarily fill his mind with despair, or force him to seek for consolation. To the healthy-minded man of affairs any of these courses may seem to be a sign of weakness. TertuUian, it will be remembered, said that the very virtue of true belief lay in its being without the support of reason. Anybody can believe what his reason finds acceptable; but it proves a sort of spiritual heroism to believe what is unreasonable. The de- mand for proof is a sort of natural weakness. Credo quia ahsurdum. There is a sort of inversion of this in secular moralism. Anybody can act nobly if he allows himself to believe hopefully, and so supplies his will with the necessary incentives. But it takes courage to pursue an unfaltering course of right action, when there is no prospect of any per- manent achievement. The man of faith renounces reason. Similarly the man of action renounces faith. ''I act,'' he virtually says, ^'because it is not worth while." He may be a fool for his pains; but there is more merit, he feels, in doing your duty with your eyes open, even though you know the worst, than in permitting yourself to be blinded by com- fortable illusions. There is something characteristically British in this. The thing is to play your part, do your bit, be a man, without worrying over-much about eventualities. There is a re- sponsibility to be assumed and a work to be done in the world as you find it. The decent and honorable thing is to side with good against evil, and to take part in the building of a better civilization just as earnestly as if you were con- vinced that the results of your effort would be permanent and universal. Huxley's reaction to the alien world is this healthy- minded disillusionment. Perhaps it is not unfair to say that it is the reaction of a man who is not too sensitive and im- aginative to find a manly and wholesome worldUness quite sufficient. He is not driven to despair or to bitterness, nor does he feel the need of those compensations to which more delicately organized souls resort. 30 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS "We have long since/' he says, "emerged from the heroic child- hood of our race, when good and evil could be met with the same * frolic welcome'; the attempts to escape from evil, whether Indian or Greek, have ended in flight from the battlefield; it remains to us to throw aside the youthful over-confidence and the no less youthful discouragement of nonage. We are grown men, and must play the man ' strong in will ' To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,' cherishing the good that falls in our way, and bearing the evil, in and around us, with stout hearts set on diminishing it." "That which Ues before the human race is a constant struggle to maintain and improve, in opposition to the State of Nature, the State of Art of an organized polity; in which, and by which, man may develop a worthy civilization, capable of maintaming and constantly improving itself, until the evolution of our globe shall have entered so far upon its downward course that the cosmic process resumes its sway; and once more the State of Nature pre- vails over the surface of our planet." ^ 1 Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays , pp. 86, 44-45- CHAPTER IV DESPAIR AND CONSOLATION Although the spectacle of the alien world leaves some modern minds quite unperturbed, that cannot be said to be the common reaction among minds of the more thoughtful and imaginative type. The man who is busily preoccupied with the daily routine may be cheerfully oblivious of re- moter cosmic events. But the man who like Huxley is both vividly aware of that alien world which the physical sciences represent, and at the same time devoted without bitterness or recompense to the cause of righteousness, is compara- tively rare. The more usual course is either to desist from a moral enterprise which one now feels to be ridiculous; or to seek for consolation through the play of one's powers of thought and imagination. I. PESSIMISM AND MISANTHROPY The issue of optimism and pessimism is forthe most part a matter of temperament and subjective bias. Emotional reactions, as we know, go in pairs, — hope and fear, love and hate, admiration and contempt. Some men live more in the positive, some in the negative form of reaction. You will meet men, for example, whose hatreds, disapprovals, resentments and grievances make up the bulk of what they live for. No man can love, without having at least the potentiality of hatred, without at least a nascent hostility to that which defeats his love. But with some men the love is the dominant passion, and the hate only incidental; while with other men the order is reversed. The world pro- vides abundant opportunity for the manifestation of either t3^e of reaction. Given any interest whatsoever, sordid or disinterested, material, moral, intellectual or aesthetic, the world will provide both that which gratifies it and that 31 ,2 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS wUch gives it Offense. One may turn in one direction and Ind the gratification, or in the other and take the offense^ Optimism and pessimism are --^^^^ ,»""^*5f*f ^'^^ men's characteristic reactions to the weather One man TxckLs: "Oh! What a glorious day!'; and the oU.er replies "Ah! But it's raining somewhere." And of course t raining somewhere, if you want to think about it m:t£; yi belong to the "Oh's " or the "Ah's" lies with you. The universe is equally tolerant of both It was Stevenson's "unconquerable soul" that said, "the wodd is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings." For another man could with equal Sstice have said, ''I am sure we should all be as wretched Is paupers." The worid contains a number of things to be either happy or wretched about, as you please. But philosophical pessimism contains another motive. The philosopher passes judgment on the universe, as on the whole or in principle of this sort or_ that. When there- fore, the philosopher is unhappy, he is likely to conclude that the universe is on the whole or in principle such as to make him unhappy. Thus, Schopenhauer said that being is wiUing, and willing is unappeased craving, and unap- peased craving is suffering; and, therefore being is suffering^ There is another, and a more universal human motive in philosophical pessimism. Misery hkes not only company, but justification. If one is unhappy, there is a certain satisfaction in being able to say, "No man has any right to be happy in such a worid. Happiness is childish and shal- low, only misery is profound." No manis wilhng as we have seen, to refer to his moods and passions as u timates, he must argue them from premises, and if he is a philosopher, then from the very nature of the universe. So it happens that the long-suffering universe has to be perpetually sitting for its portrait, and with the most astonishmgly different results. Sometimes it looks like a bride on her wedding day; sometimes more like a great cosmic symbol for tooth- ache, indigestion or neurasthenia. That generaUzation of nature which the modern world r i DESPAIR AND CONSOLATION 33 has received from the collaboration of the physical sciences is, as we have already seen, not without its appeal to the gloomier passions. Nature is cruelly, relentlessly indifferent to the interests of men. This is one of the modern ideas of nature, an idea which is prominent in the thought even of one who like Emerson beheves in the eventual victory of spirit. '' Nature is no sentimentalist, — does not cosset or pamper us We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drownmg of a man or a woman, but swaUows your ship Hke a gram of dust. ... The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity hghtmng, respect no persons. . . . Nature is the tyrannous circum- stance, the thick skull, the sheathed snake, the ponderous, rock- like jaw." ^ But this is not as yet philosophical pessimism. It is necessary that this cruelty should be thought of as mali- cious; that nature's motives should be impugned. Nature must be resented, hated, convicted, found out, exposed, known for what she is. The justification for such attitudes and emotions is commonly found in the ironical contrast between the great juggernaut of nature, and the wistfulness, useless courage and pathetic hopefulness of man. This is what Conrad calls '^the Great Joke.'' He uses this phrase apropos of a character in Victory named Morrison, of whom the author says: "He was really a decent fellow, he was quite unfitted for this world, he was a failure, a good man cornered — a sight for the gods; for no decent mortal cares to look at that sort." 2 This is as much as to say that the world plays with its human victim, tortures him, stirs hopes and aspirations in him, leads him on to prolonged and futile struggles, and then unconscionably stamps him out. The classic representa- tion of the theme is the account of creation which Goethe's Mephistopheles gives to Dr. Faustus in his study. A more ^ Conduct oj Life, pp. 12, 20. 2 P. 223. 34 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS recent expression of the same motive is to be found in Thomas Hardy's Dynasts. But the most eloquent exponent of un- ited pessimism, of bitterness, wrath and gnef evoked by the spectacle of man's lot is James Thomson. There are two stages in this pessimist's progress. There is first the lentment felt toward a God that should torture and mock Ws creatures. It were better that there should be no God than such a God; and so the preacher in the poem brings the good tidings of atheism: "And now at last authentic word I bring, Witnessed by every dead and living thing; Good tidings of great joy for you, for all: ^ There is no God; no Fiend with names divine Made us and tortures us; if we must pme, It is to satiate no Being's gall. It was the dark delusion of a dream, That living Person conscious and supreme. Whom we must curse for cursing us with life; We bow down to the universal laws, Which never had for man a special clause Of cruelty or kindness, love or hate." But thrown back upon the natural life, upon the oppor- tunities of this world, one finds no comfort even there: "The chance was never offered me before; For me the infinite Past is blank and dumb: This chance recurreth never, nevermore; Blank, blank for me the infinite To-come. And this sole chance was frustrate from my birth, A mockery, a delusion: and my breath Of noble human Ufe upon this earth So racks me that I sigh for senseless death." ^ 1 "The City of Dreadful Night," Poetical Works, DobelPs edition, Vol. I, pp. 164, 155, 156, 15S-160. DESPAIR AND CONSOLATION 35 Anatole France has been spoken of as one ''who despises men with tenderness.'' He is vividly conscious of man's place in nature, as science conceives it. He regards man in the light of that day when the globe will have become uninhabitable. After a long period of decline during which human life will have steadily retrograded as the environ- ment grows more and more unfavorable, after having been shorn of all his glory, man will eventually expire and be forgotten. "Some day the last of them will without hate and without love breathe the last sigh into the hostile heaven. And the earth will continue to revolve, bearing through the silent spaces the ashes of humanity, the poems of Homer and the august debris of the Greek marbles, attached to its frozen flanks." ^ It is the meaninglessness of life that most afifects him. "It resembles ... a vast atelier of pottery where some one is fashioning all sorts of vases for unknown purposes and where many, broken in the mould, are rejected as vile potsherds without ever having been used. The others are employed only for absurd or disgusting uses. The pots are ourselves." "The mystery of destiny completely envelops us in its powerful shades, and it is necessary to avoid thinking altogether if one is not to resent the tragic absurdity of living. It is there, in the absolute ignorance of our raison d'etre that the root of our sadness and of our disgust is to be found." 2 It is better in such a world that most men should remain in a sort of enchanted and unsuspecting ignorance. "Ignorance is the necessary condition, I do not say of happiness, but of existence itself. If we knew all we could not support life an hour. The sentiments which make it sweet, or at least tolerable for us, spring from a lie and nourish themselves on illusions." ^ But for Anatole France himself, disillusioned though he be, life is yet tolerable. This is partly due to a saving play ^ Le Jardin d' Epicure, pp. 26-27. 2 Ibid., pp. 97, 66-67. » Ibid., p. 33. Cf. p. 81. 36 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS nf wit a sense for comedy, even on the cosmic scale. He wol' MmsS have created the world otherwise; b^h^ was not charged with the task, nor did the demiurge even Isk Ms advice! And he adds: "Between ourselves, I doubt if he has consulted the philosophers and men o S a all - He finds no consolation in the achievements of science On the contrary he esteems the useless works o r^an more than the useful.^ This is because the latter a e baserupon the misguided hope of indefinite progress. No - hat which redeems life is the bitter-sweet, the mm- Sed tragedy and comedy of it, "serene and smiling grief !s tWs may be felt by a man of enlightemnent and sensi- bility. "Irony and Pity are two counselors; the one in smiling males life amiable- the other which weeps, makes hfe sacred. The Irony wS invoke is not cruel. It does not mock either love or beauty As beUevers who have attained to a high degree of mora beautv taste the joys of renunciation, so the 5a.a«<, persuaded that Si about us is only appearance and deceit, is intoxicated with this fhiltoplic melanchoty and loses himself in the deUghts of a calm despair." ' II. THE CONTEMPLATION OF NATURE In a view such as that which we have just considered there is already a distinctly new motive, the sense, namely, of intellectual and esthetic detachment. The picture is indeed sombre and depressing. But the essential man keeps himself out of the picture, and gets a satisfying sense of emancipation and superiority from ^^J^'^y.^'^l^'^'X templating it. We have now to consider that attitudes which the spectacle of the alien world instead of inspinng manly endurance or bitterness and hate, fills the beholder with a sense of self-sufficiency, a pride in the capacity to compass and endure so great a truth. In so far as I know 1 Le Jardin d'Epicure, p. S3* 2 Ihid., p. 119- 8 Ihid., pp. 122, 136. DESPAIR AND CONSOLATION 37 all and in so far as I live in that knowledge, all that happens is mine and enhances my being. James Thomson speaks of ''A perfect reason in the central brain, Which hath no power, but sitteth wan and cold, And sees the madness, and foresees as plainly The ruin in its path, and trieth vainly To cheat itself refusing to behold." But the mind of which I now speak is perfectly willing to sit wan and cold, and to be without power, provided only that it can behold and foresee. It matters not that it foresees its own private ruin. Such a mind has renounced its worldly fortunes, and is satisfied if it can see the law and nature obeying it, — the perfect rhythm and circle of being. That very inexorable necessity of nature's laws, which fills the worldly-minded with dismay, is for the trained and self- sufficient intellect the crowning glory of nature. Of this self-denying and austere gospel, the prophet is Spinoza, who anticipated this spectacle of the alien world by two hundred and fifty years. But Spinoza has had few whole- hearted followers. Many thinkers of widely different faiths, men so far apart in genius and outlook as, for example, Goethe and Haeckel, have reverently pronounced his name; and many modern thinkers, such as those whom we shall presently consider, have had their Spinozistic moods. But after searching vainly for souls to whom the Spinozistic gospel of intellectual contemplation is sufficient for salva- tion, we find ourselves compelled to conclude that this gos- pel is not adapted to the present age. It may be for lack of intellectual stamina; or it may be owing to the enrich- ment of life by other motives and interests which cry out for satisfaction. In any case there are few, if any, men of this age for whom it is sufficient that laws should reign and the eternal necessities unfold themselves to the eye of reason. But if the intellectual motive is not in itself sufficient to enable the modern man to sustain the spectacle of the alien world, there are other accessory motives that may readily be called into play. Mr. Santayana has said that: 38 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS "A thorough materialist, one bom to the faith, and not half plunged into it by an unexpected christening in cold water, would be iLe the superb Democritus, a laughmg philosopher. His delight in a mechanism that can fall into so many marvellous and beautiful shapes, and can generate so many exciting passions should be of the same intellectual quaUty as that which the visitor feels in a museum of natural history, where he views the myriad butterflies in their cases, the flamingoes and shell-fish, the mam- moths and gorUlas. Doubtless there were pangs m that mcalcu- lable Ufe, but they were soon over; and how splendid meantime was the pageant, how infinitely interesting the universal play, and how fooUsh and inevitable those absolute Httle passions. Some- what of that sort might be the sentiment that materialism would arouse in a vigorous mind, active, joyful, impersonal and m respect to private illusions not without a touch of scorn. There has been some attempt in the present age to recover this naive curiosity toward nature, this hardy adventur- ousness and love of novelty. It has been urged that sci- entific knowledge instead of dispelling mystery has multi- plied and intensified it. Thus Professor C. J. Keyser, the mathematician, writes: "The cosmic times and spaces of modern science are more impressive and more mysterious than a Mosaic cosmogony, or Plato's crystal spheres. Day is just as mysterious as night, the mystery of knowledge and understanding is more wonderful and awesome than the darkness of the unknown/* ^ And Professor Ernst Haeckel writes more fully in a simi- lar vein. One is reminded of the Chicago man's apology to the Easterner: ^'We haven't gone in for culture yet, but when we do we'll make it hum." Well, toward the end of his book on the stock-yards of nature, Professor Haeckel *^goes in" for religion, for what he calls ^^our momstic religion." "Surrounding nature offers us everywhere a marvellous wealth of lovely and interesting objects of all kinds. In every bit of moss 1 Santayana: Life of Reason, Reason in Science, p. 90. 2 Science and Religion, p. 49. DESPAIR AND CONSOLATION 39 and blade of grass, in every beetle and butterfly we find, when we examine it carefully, beauties which are usually overlooked. Above all, when we examine them with a powerful glass or, better still, with a good microscope, we find everywhere in nature a new world of inexhaustible charms. . . . The astonishment with which we gaze upon the starry heavens and the microscopic life in a drop of water, the awe with which we trace the marvellous working of energy in the motion of matter, the reverence with which we grasp the universal dominance of the law of substance throughout the universe — all these are part of our emotional life, falling under the heading of ^natural reUgion.'"^ This religion of the astonished microscopist is evidently an attempt to invoke the aesthetic powers, in order that since we cannot have things as we would like them, we may enjoy them as they are. But is is evident that Haeckel is not a connoisseur in cosmic art. His observations have a little of the untutored crudeness of the tyro who comments on the "likeness " of the portrait, or the pretty face of the Madonna. It is the virtuosity rather than the beauty or sublimity of nature that interests him. If the scientific eulogies of nature such as these of Keyser and Haeckel faintly suggest the advertisements of a summer hotel, or the barker at the side-show of a circus, it does not follow that this modern stoicism is wholly shallow and forced. Without doubt these are incidents in the slow de- velopment of a richer and more universal complex towards the alien world. More convincing is W. K. Clifford's rep- resentation of nature in his famous essay on " Cosmic Emo- tion." ^ He invites us to regard nature as the mother and nurse of life. From nature we have sprung, and from the laws of nature we must learn how to live. We are not like spoiled children to go to nature for the indulgence of our whims, but for discipline and inspiration. In other words nature is not alien, except in so far as man alienates himself by setting up his own abstract and artificial purposes in * The Riddle of the Universe, pp. 342, 344. * Lectures and Essays, Vol. II. The phrase "cosmic emotion" originated with Henry Sidgwick. 40 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS \ defiance of it, and then expecting nature to come around to his own side. The poets and men of letters have already gone far towards maturing and disseminating this idea. In Emerson's recognition of the rough ways of nature, there is no tone of complaint. Nature does not pamper us; but none the less, or perhaps for that very reason, nature is good for us. There is a kind of brave heart that rejoices in what is powerful and great and independent, and that worships nature for being so invincibly herself. There is a strain of this, along with sheer unreasoning British pluck, in Robert Louis Stevenson. It is responsible for the finest quality in Swinburne's verse. Walt Whitman, with his in- satiable appetite for experience, has no need of illusions. His very homelessness in the immensity of nature is some- thing to harp upon and exult in. **I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems. And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther systems. Wider and wider they spread, expanding always expanding. Outward and outward, and forever outward."^ Maeterlinck scarcely belongs here, because of the exuber- ance of his imagination and the vividness of his mystical sense. But ''Wisdom and Destiny" is nevertheless dis- tinctly stoical in its cast; not austere, intellectualistic, after the manner of Spinoza, but finding happiness within the reach of every man regardless of fortune. "If all who may count themselves happy were to tell, very simply, what it was that brought happiness to them, the others would see that between sorrow and joy the difference is but as between a gladsome, enlightened acceptance of life and a hostile, gloomy submission; between a large and harmonious conception of life, and one that is stubborn and narrow. 'Is that all?' the unhappy would cry. ' But we too have within us then, the elements of this happiness?' Surely, you have them within you. ... It is true that on certain external events our influence is of the feeblest, but we have all-powerful action on that which these events shall 1 Leaves of Grass. DESPAIR AND CONSOLATION 41 VI t I become in ourselves — in other words, on their spiritual part, on what is radiant, undying within them."^ All this is plainly naturalistic in its acceptance of physical helplessness; while doubtfully so in the reserves of spiritual freedom which are ascribed to the individual, and in the conception of "wisdom " as "the sense of the infinite ap- pHed to our moral life."^ The fundamental naturaHsm of Maeterlinck lies in his firm intention of treating with nature on nature's own terms. He accepts once and for all what science has to teach about nature. And he does not propose to turn away from the picture. Like Whitman, he looks for value in the common experiences, in the very facts as they are. And like Clifford he proposes to acknowledge and claim his kinship with nature, and to count upon this kinship as a ground for trusting nature. Since the intel- lectual and the moral life are in the naturalistic teaching the products of nature, there must be a secret S3rnipathy, a sort of family bond, that unites them with their source. Such is the philosophy of life which proposes to accept the natural world as it is; to look it unfalteringly in the face; even to claim it as one's own and call it good.^ III. THE COMPENSORY IMAGINATION But the more liberal-minded, the more fastidious and cul- tivated materialists, turn from the contemplation of nature to the company of their own thoughts. Having renounced the existent world as aHen and incorrigible, they turn in upon themselves where there is nothing to offend — where nothing but standards and ideals may be admitted. There are traces in Mr. Bertrand Russell's writings of a religion of contemplation such as we have just examined. "For the health of the moral life," he says, "for ennobling the tone of an age or a nation, the austerer virtues have a strange * Trans, by Alfred Sutro, pp. 8-9, 29. ^ Op. cU., p. 75. 3 This, as I understand it, is Professor J. Dewey's "democratic metaphysic." Cf. his "Maeterh'nck's Philosophy of Life," Hibbert Journal, July, 191 1, p. 778. ? 42 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS power, exceeding the power of those not ^'^^-^^^^^^^^ thought. Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chiet. But this is said apropos of ^'The Study of Mathematics," and it is clear that the truth which Mr. Russell prizes as an end in itself is not physical truth, but logical truth^ And the latter he evidently regards as in some sense created by the intellect. In any case Mr. Russell's rehgion is m the main a religion of withdrawal and non-contamination; not a love of nature, but an averted gaze. -Shall we worship Force, or shall we worship Goodness? Shall our God exist and be evil, or shall he be recognized as the creation of our own conscience?'' -When without the bitterness of impotent rebelhon, we have learnt both to resign ourselves to the outward rule of Fate and to recognize that the non-human world is unworthy of our worship, it becomes possible at last so to transform and refashion^ the un- conscious universe, so to transmute it in the crucible o imagma- tion, that a new image of shining gold replaces the old idol of clav In all the multiform facts of the world, m the visual shapes of trees and momitains and clouds, in the events of the life of man, even in the very omnipotence of Death - the insight of creative ideaUsm can find the reflection of a beauty which its own thoughts first made. In this way mind asserts a subtle mastery over the thoughtless forces of Nature. . . . Bnef and powerless is Man s Hfe- on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for Man condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through [he gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his Uttle day; disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of Fate, to worship at the shrine that his own hands have bunt; undismayed by the empire of chance, to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward life; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate, for a moment, his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power." ^ 1 Philosophical Essays, p. 86. 2 Ibid., pp. 63, 66-67, 70. DESPAIR AND CONSOLATION 43 Mr. Russell's reaction to the events of the war has added a poignancy to these words which they did not possess when they were first uttered in 1903. But it is not difficult to discern in them the temperament of the martyr, as well as that sheer force of will which needs no rational justifica- tion nor any compensation for hardship — that indomitable manliness which distinguishes the Englishman. In spite of so much agreement, in spite of the fact that he too accepts nature as mechanical science describes it, Mr. Santayana's gospel differs significantly from Mr. Russell's. Mr. Russell leaves the realm of ideals stark and isolated. He is as "other-worldly " as the most supernatural mystic. But for Mr. Santayana heaven has its roots in earth. This is very different from asserting that earth has its roots in heaven. Mechanical law alone rules nature from the be- ginning. But the ideals which the reason and imagination create express nature. *^ Religion is an imaginative echo of things natural and moral." ^ And ''things moral," it is to be observed, are for Mr. Santayana only an extension of ''things natural." Thus, for example, the idea of immor- tality is natural in the sense that it springs from a natural impulse and craving — from the love of life. But ideas which thus express natural needs and desires are not to be thought of as in any sense knowledge of a real world such as they depict. ' "The only truth of religion comes from its interpretation of life, from its symbolic rendering of that moral experience which it springs out of and which it seeks to elucidate. Its falsehood comes from the insidious misunderstanding which clings to it, to the effect that these poetic conceptions are not merely representations of experience as it is or should be, but are rather information about experience or reality elsewhere — an experience and reality which, strangely enough, supply just the defects betrayed by reality and experience here." ^ 1 Poetry and Religion, p. 235. This is what James Martineau has called "mere self-painting of the yearning spirit." 2 The Life of Reason, Vol. Ill, Reason in Religion, p. 11. Cf. also Kallen: "Value and Existence," in Creative IrUelligence, 44 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS It is interesting to note that what the emancipated mind understands to be the tree creation of his imagmation, the common man Uterally believes. This Mr. Santayana re- gards as the inveterate error of all ideahsms. The com- mon man believes in God as the child believes in fairies He has the naive preference for the " true story, for what is really so. Such compensation as the higher faculties afford in a naturalistic world can be enjoyed only by the aristocracy of the emancipated. It would seem that the vulgar mind must either be confined to a simple diet of the literally true, or else as a concession to its weakness, be allowed to indulge in such false beliefs as wil afford the requisite incentives and supports for the moral hfe _ There is, as we shall see, another way altogether, in which the attention is to be diverted from the spectacle of the alien world to the nearer and more vivid spectacle of human progress.' But those who assume that religion must be founded upon a conception of the cosmic reality will either recommend that religion be abandoned altogether, or they will incline to accept a double religion: for the enlightened, the disillusioned exercise of reason and imagination; for the vulgar such wholesome illusions as the enUghtened shall select for them. » Cf. "The Religion of Humanity," below, pp. iii-nS- 1 CHAPTER V THE CULT OF SCIENCE Science both belittles man and magnifies him. When science puts man where he belongs in nature, man looks very small and very feeble. But what is this science that makes so free with man? Evidently in some sense it is the work of man himself. Whatever superiority science enjoys through the discomfiture of man must be credited to the scientist, who is, curiously enough, man. Man is apparently on both ends of the see-saw. When one end goes up, the other goes down; but man being on both ends is always on top ! I shall not attempt to resolve this para- dox here. Suffice it to say that if the teachings or doc- trines of science concerning man seriously diminish his con- fidence and self-esteem, the magnificent and overwhelming success of science asTus own activity and his own institu- tion have restored them again. It is fitting that the very instrument that inflicted so many grievous wounds upon religion should have put new pride and new hope in the place of those which it shattered. Science thus comes itself to assume the form of religion — as something to live by, and as putting into^man's heart the courage and self-respect he needs, if he is to seek anything more than bare existence. In the present chapter we have to do with the emotions, the attitudes, the aspirations, the forms of vital faith which have been aroused in the modern mind by the activities of science. I. THE METHOD OF SCIENCE When I speak of science I mean something rather definite. I do not mean merely knowledge in general; I mean me- thodical knowledge, that co-operative, systematic pursuit of 45 46 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS THE CULT OF SCIENCE 47 knowledge which employs an established technique, and leads to a consensus of experts. I shall seek first to characterize this method or technique, as unmethodically and untechnically as possible/ 1. Disinterestedness. Although, as we shall presently see, the scientist is entirely alive to the utility of his work, he proceeds upon the supposition that his work will be useful only provided he reserves the application until after he has made the discovery. For man to control nature practically, it is necessary that nature should control man cognitively. Nature obeys only those who serve her; who have patience and restraint enough to learn her ways. Scientific method has come, therefore, to signify a respect for facts, in the sense of that which is independent of all human wishes. It has come to signify a conforming of judgment to things as they are, regardless of likes or dis- likes, hopes or fears. Science represents the specialization of the theoretical interest, which for the time being ignores every consideration but the evidence. 2. Appeal to Experience. In the second place, science is empirical or experimental. It accepts sense-experience, as the final test. Though it uses the reason and the imagina- tion in the forming of hypotheses, it regards these as ori' trial until the verdict of sense-experience can be obtained. Scientific method is thus opposed to speculation which car- ries belief beyond the effective range of the cognitive facul- ties; to rationaUsm, which claims to find in logical inference a warrant for ignoring or exceeding the evidence of sense; and to dogmatism, which allows non-theoretical^otives,[ such as inclination, habit or authority to determine belief. J^ 3. Description. Finally, science has come after a long evolution of method, to confine itself to description in terms of a formula or law. It leaves out what common sense would regard as the explanation. It does not, for example, insist on finding a good reason, a purpose, or a justification for things, but only a uniformity or consistency in things. * For a fuller account of this matter, cf. my Present Philosophical Tendencies ^ Ch. III. I I H \ It does not refer things to a power or agency such as the will or God. It is satisfied to discover precisely in what relations and sequences things occur. One may regard this procedure on the part of science as a mark of its advanced enlightenment, or as a proof of its superficiaHty;^ but in either case it is by this concentration upon the more limited task of exact, and, so far as possible, mathematical, de- scription that science has united all investigators in the use of one technique, and made it possible to incorporate all of their achievements in one homogeneous system of knowledge. 4. The Cult of Scientific Method. Now the cult of science is in part simply the cultivation of this method — the praise and promotion of it, or a devoted loyalty to it. One may look upon scientific method as the greatest achievement of the past; and as affording the only promise of human advancement. One may, in short, like Comte, the great French thinker of the last century, regard it as the index of progress, and as the central fact in a philosophy of history. It was this attitude regarding science that was in part responsible for the prolonged and deplorable war between science and religion, in which so much energy and honest righteous indignation has been wasted in modern times. Scientific zealots, convinced of the supreme human value of science, attacked in its behalf what they thought to be the reactionary, obscurantist and obstructive tactics of religion. There was, as all friends of religion must admit, no little provocation for this attitude. Almost all the great modern scientific discoveries, such, notably, as the Darwinian prin- ciple of natural selection, and the new geological account of the evolution of the earth, were stoutly resisted in the name of religion. But it was not so much the mere fact of resistance as it was the motives which actuated it which aroused the ani- mus of the scientists. Other scientists refused at first to accept Darwinism and the uniformitarian geology, but they were not attacked, because their refusal was based on sci- entific reasons. They were not enemies of science, but only * Cf. below, p. 206. 48 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS THE CULT OF SCIENCE 49 opponents of a particular doctrine. They accepted the sci- entific program as a whole while differing as to certain details. But religion seemed to the scientists to be actu- ated by motives wholly contrary to the essential purpose of science, and, therefore, a serious menace to its very existence. For apologists of rehgion refused to accept this or that new scientific doctrine from respect for authority, or by an act of faith, or because the doctrine was unpalatable, or some- times merely because it was new. Rehgion seemed thus to rally and engage in its defense those very motives against which science had had to fight for its life. So the issue readily assumed in eyes of the scientist, the aspect of the interest of humanity. He felt himself more than a special investigator; he felt himself to be the devotee of a great cause. Now a cause may be strengthened in its hold upon its devotees if it requires some sacrifice of them. The cause of science derives this additional element of strength, or of emotional appeal, from the fact that the scientist must abandon those unreasoned Jielief^, those dear illusions by which he comforts and encourages himself. The true sci- entist will deny himself this luxury, and strip himself to those few beHefs which are founded on evidence. He will be simple and hardy in mind. He will keep his love of truth purged of every ulterior motive. He will save his soul not by faith but by doubt; like Byron he will *'deny nothing but doubt everything." ^ This he will do not from frivoHty, or obstinacy, but in order to render his mind a perfect instrument and medium of truth. This attitude is most fitly and most devoutly expressed by a writer to whom we have already referred, the English scientist, W. K. CHfford: "Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer. . . . Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his belief with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain 1 Letter to F. Hodgson, Dec. 4, 181 1. I which can never be wiped away. . . . If belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence the pleasure is a stolen one. ... It is sinful because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from a pestilence which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town. ... It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." ^ II. THE REVOLT AGAINST TRADITION I have already referred in an earlier lecture to the tran- siency of beliefs in our own day; and I have already ex- pressed the opinion that this transiency is mainly due to the influence of science. Santayana has expressed this lack of intellectual steadfastness very prettily in the following passage: . "These are the Wander] ahre of faith; it looks smilingly at every new faith, which might perhaps be that of a predestined friend; it chases after any engaging stranger; it even turns up again from time to time at home, full of a new tenderness for all it had aban- doned there. But to settle down would be impossible now." ^ Why should ]the vogue of science incline the mind to radicahsm? It is due, I think, to science's suspicion of every affirmation that is not freshly tested by experience. It is not that science is opposed to any particular doctrine among estabhshed beliefs. But the very fact that a doctrine, whatever it is, is established makes it questionable to science. If a doctrine is estabhshed, it is probably accepted on other than grounds of evidence : because of habit, or custom, or in- ertia, or because of sentimental preference, or because it flat- ters men's hopes and fulfils their desires. Even so, it majy of course, be scientifically true. But it is more probable, according to the scientific mind, that the unscientific grounds and motives of the behef are merely blinding men to the lack of proper evidence. Its decorated sham buttresses are conceaUng the real lack of structural support. So the * Quoted by William James, Will To Believe, p. 8. ^ Santayana: Winds of Doctrine , p. 23. so THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS scientific mind feels that the presumption is against what- ever is established and traditional, and declares war upon it, proposing a general intellectual house-cleaning and reno- vation. Any human motive, even when it is, like this, originally a negative motive, can assume the role of an ideal, and receive the exaggerated emphasis of fanatic zeal. \ I. Art and Literature. This revolt against tradition ^i^s perhaps exhibited itself most unmistakably in modern art and hterature. It is this spirit, for example, that is com- mon to movements otherwise so far apart as romanticism and realism. Both are opposed to classicism, which is art according to law and order. Classicism represents ortho- doxy and respectabiHty. Romanticism, on the other hand, means that the artist is to trust his own emotions, and in that sense be genuine, heartfelt. It also means that in- stead of pretending to enjoy or to appreciate according to existing canons of taste, he is to use his imagination to create what is honestly to his hking. Romanticism is thus revolutionary and iconoclastic. But reahsm is equally so, though it moves in a different direction. The romanticist is to be true to himself; the reahst to the facts of the world as he observes them. And so it is with other and varying motives in modern art, with impressionism, post-impres- sionism, cubism and futurism. If you have difficulty, as I have, in understanding how things so bizarre, so outrageous, so meaningless as some ultra-modern paintings can have value, do not try to go beyond the very fact that gives you offense. What you are unconsciously trying to do is to interpret them in terms of what to you is law and order. If they had meaning for you then that in itself would signify that they were expressions of old and familiar ideas, that they suited your habits. What gives them value in the eyes of their creators is the fact that they are bizarre, outrageous and meaningless. These men are less concerned with new ideas than they are with getting rid of the old. They are anarchists like their fellow-revolutionists in politics, to whom law and order signify the dead, oppressive weight of something arbitrary THE CULT OF SCIENCE 51 and conventional. The most consistent exponent of this attitude is Max Stirner, who turns against every correct and venerated thing, such as the state, the family, the law, even against the axioms of democracy and humanity. 2. Decadence. This same motive, in my judgment, pro- vides an explanation of such excesses as have been called ''Decadence," in French culture. It is lawlessness and irreverence gone mad, a breaking away from every ancient taboo, even from every natural feeling, so far as it can be suspected of narrowing and constraining life. I do not, for example, accept Max Nordau's famous theory of ^' degeneration,'* according to which such phe- nomena as we have just referred to are due to fatigue, or neurasthenia, especially in France after her disastrous wars of the Nineteei^th Century: "In the civilized world there obviously prevails a twilight mood which finds expression, amongst other ways, in all sorts of odd aesthetic fashions. All these new tendencies, realism or naturalism, "decadentism,'* neo-mysticism and their sub- varieties, are mani- festations of degeneration and hysteria, and identical with the mental stigmata which the observations of clinicists have unques- tionably established as belonging to these. But both degeneration and hysteria are the consequences of the excessive organic wear and tear suffered by the nations through the immense demands on their activity, and through the rank growth of large towns." ^ There are obvious and conclusive objections to this view. It does not explain the widespread character of the move- ment, its appearance not only in Italy among the *' Verists," but in northern and relatively phlegmatic countries, in England with Oscar Wilde, in Germany with Gerhart Haupt- mann, and in Sweden with Strindberg. Furthermore Nor- dau's view does not account for the absence of such phe- nomena in Germany after the Thirty Years War, or in France after the Hundred Years War. * There is, I think, a much simpler explanation in the fact that reactions are natural excessive, and attended with * Degeneration, English translation of second edition, p. 43. 52 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS strong emotion. There is a kind of twice-born soul to whom the supreme crisis is the loss of his faith. We read in Jean- Christophe^ that "As with faith, so the loss of faith is often equally a flood of grace, a sudden light. Reason counts for nothing; the smallest thing is enough — a word, silence, the sound of bells. A man walks, dreams, expects nothing. Suddenly the world crumbles away. All about him is in ruins. He is alone. He no longer believes." ^ Usually such a rupture with traditional and established things leaves behind it a permanent mood of disenchant- ment. *^I woke," says Thomson, ''from day dreams to this real night." ^ Similarly Byron asks "... but what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of Truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of." ^ But the rejection of tradition and convention readily takes the form, not of a regret for what is lost, but of an exaggerated interest in the novel and unconventional. Just as the boy who breaks from restraint exults in profanity and truculence, so men of letters such as Baudelaire and Zola, in their anxiety to demonstrate the completeness of their emancipation, have made a positive cult of what is dis- reputable to the orthodox conscience or repugnant to the orthodox taste. 3. The Cult of Veracity. A still more positive tone is given to this revolt against tradition, in what may be called the cult of veracity. See the world as it is; and have the courage to keep your eyes open. Don't sentimentalize the facts to make them more palatable. Know the worst (it seems usually to be assumed that the facts are worst!). Paint what you really see; not what you think you see, or the conventional interpretation of what you see. Train your eye to a purely sensuous view of things. Thus Rodin says: 1 P. 238. 2 J. Thomson, City of Dreadful Night, p. 150. » Letter to T. Moore, Oct. 28, X815. THE CULT OF SCIENCE S3 "When an artist for the purpose of embellishing nature adds green to the springtime, rose to the dawn, red to young lips, he creates ugliness because he lies. When he softens the grimace of pain, the flabbiness of old age, the hideousness of the perverse, when he arranges Nature, when he veils her, disguises her, when he softens her in order to please an ignorant pubUc, he creates ugliness because he is afraid of the truth." ^ Don't be prudish or reserved. Thus George Moore tells his whole story as Rousseau did; with particular fullness of detail in just those parts which shame or conscience or custom would ordinarily keep hidden. This worship of truth appears in its maddest and most heroic form in the figure of RoUand's Jean-Christophe, who goes about the world assaulting lies and uncovering h3^oc- risies. Every national culture, every human creed is woven of falsehood; the whole system of the day into which the youth are ushered is founded on pretence and perjury. " Every race, every art has its hypocrisy. The world is fed with a Uttle truth and many Ues. The human mind is feeble: pure truth agrees with it but ill: its religion, its morality, its states, its poets, its artists, must all be presented to it swathed in lies. These lies are adapted to the mind of each race: they vary from one to the other: it is they that make it so difficult for nations to under- stand each other, and so easy for them to despise each other. Truth is the same for all of us: but every nation has its own he which it calls its idealism; every creature therein breathes it from birth to death: it has become a condition of Ufe: there are only a few men of genius who can break free from it through heroic moments of crisis, where they are alone in the free world of their thoughts. . . . Through education, and through everything that he sees and hears about him, a child absorbs so many Ues and blind folUes mixed with the essential verities of hfe, that the first duty of the adolescent who wishes to grow into a healthy man is to sacrifice everything." ^ ^ Extracted from the conversations with Gteell, published in VArt in 191 1, by Flaccus, Artists and Thinkers, p. 28. The same devotion to truth, even though ugly, appears in the etchings of Felicien Rops. Cf. Ibid., pp. 33 ff. * Jean-Christophe, pp. 367, 375. 1 54 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS III. AGNOSTICISM THE CULT OF SCIENCE 55 It is characteristic of the rigorous scientist that he is more concerned with his mastery than with the extent of his domain. He does not claim to know everything; but rather that, so far as it goes, his is the only genuine knowledge. He is more concerned with the quaUty than with the quan- tity of knowledge. He is the champion of standards of thoroughness and accuracy. In other words, there is a motive of self-limitation or restraint in science, just as there is in art. He is perpetually accusing the philosopher and religious believer of claiming to know everything, while knowing nothing well. He, on the other hand, proposes to annex territory only as rapidly as he can bring it under cultivation. He works from a center, knowing as he goes, and always acknowledging the sharp and narrow limits of his achievement up to date. He might, perhaps, express this by saying that he, having an established method and technique, knew the difference between what he knew and what he did not know. This self-limitation or avowed relativity on the part of science has found expression in two terms. The older, Comtean term ^'positivism" expresses the resolve of science to operate within the limits of experience, to abide by the evidence of experience, and to recognize nothing as knowl- edge which is not thus empirically tested and verified. Positivism is the scientist's credo. '^ Agnosticism," on the other hand, is Huxley's name for the scientist's act of re- nunciation. It is his veiled backward glance at the for- bidden land that lies beyond experience. Positivism sig- nifies, ''This I can know, and such knowledge is the only knowledge." Agnosticism signifies, "This I cannot know; and the knowledge of it being in principle impossible, I shall not attempt to know it." Agnosticism was the greatest of the secular faiths of England in the Victorian period, and from its ranks were recruited the most formidable of the English critics of ortho- doxy during the era of the war between science and religion. Among writers of prominence in whom this motive was more or less dominant were Spencer, Tyndall, Huxley, John Stuart Mill and his father James Mill, Grote, Harriet Mar- tineau, George Eliot and Leslie Stephen.^ There is, I think, some significance in this flourishing of agnosticism m Eng- land. It is essentially a compromise doctrine. In this view the rigors of science are mitigated by a wistful glance toward the metaphysical Eden from which the thinker has voluntarily banished himself. His moral and religious dis- illusionment is prevented from taking radical or blasphe- mous forms by a continuance of the old sentiments. And in place of the irresponsibility and aloofness of the sceptic the agnostic feels the sobering influence of a mystery which he can neither penetrate nor exorcise. The master of the agnostic faith is Herbert Spencer, and its Bible is this writer's First Principles. According to Spencer the very rigor of scientific method serves to hmit its scope. It is not that there is another sort of knowledge, such as metaphysics, with which to piece it out; but that knowledge itself has both its positive and its negative as- pects. The scientist, in short, knows both what he knows and what he does not know. "The progress has been," says Spencer, "as much toward the establishment of a positively unknown as toward the establishment of a positively known. . . . Positive knowledge does not, and never can, fill the whole region of possible thought. At the utter- most reach of discovery there arises, and must ever arise, the question: What lies beyond? " ^ ^ In this inevitable recognition by science of a not yet known, — and since the difficulty is inherent in the very nature of scientific method, of a never to be known, — in this inexhaustibiUty of human ignorance, lies, according to Spencer, the fundamental reconciliation of science and re- ligion. Religion has always had the unknown as its object; that is the one thing common to all religions. And of this, 1 The best defense of the position is to be found in Leslie Stephen's An Agnostic's Apology. 2 First Principles, pp. 9i» i3- 56 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS its own favorite object, religion will never be robbed by science. ''May we not without hesitation affirm that a sincere recognition of the truth that our own and all other existence is a mystery absolutely and forever beyond our comprehension contains more of true religion than all the dogmatic theology ever written? . . . If knowledge cannot monopolize consciousness — if it must always continue possible for the mind to dwell upon that which transcends knowledge — then there can never cease to be a place for something of the nature of religion; since religion under all its forms is dis- tinguished from everything else in this, that its subject matter is that which passes the sphere of experience/' ^ Religion is, of course, more than the mere idea of the unknown, it is a sentiment entertained toward the un- known, — a sentiment finding a sphere for its exercise ''in that nescience which must ever remain the antithesis to science.'' ^ What is meant by this sentiment appears more explicitly in the closing paragraph of Tyndall's famous Belfast Address: ''And if . . . the human mind, \vith the yearning of a pilgrim for his distant home, will still turn to the Mystery from which it has emerged, seeking so to fashion it as to give unity to thought and faith; so long as this is done, not only without intolerance or bigotry of any kind, but with the enUghtened recognition that ultimate fixity of conception is here unattainable, and that each succeeding age must be held free to fashion the mystery in accord- ance with its own needs — then, casting aside all the restrictions of Materialism, I would affirm this to be a field for the exercise of what, in contrast with the knowing faculties, may be called the creative faculties of man." And in a later article this writer explains himself further: "When I attempt to give the power which I see manifested in the Universe an objective form, personal or otherwise, it slips away from me, declining all intellectual manipulation. I dare not, save poetically, use the pronoun 'He' regarding it; I dare not call it a *Mind' ; I refuse to call it even a ' Cause.' Its mystery overshadows * First Principles^ pp. 96-97, 13. 2 Ibid.f p. 14. THE CULT OF SCIENCE 57 me; but it remains a mystery, while the objective frames which some of my neighbors try to make it fit seem to me to distort and desecrate it." ^ Professor C. J. Keyser, in his essay, ''Science and Re- ligion," has recently offered an elaborate argument against the human possibility of knowing everything,^ since the "unchartered region of human experience" (which Profes- sor Gilbert Murray assigns to religion in his Four Stages of Greek Religion) is limitless and infinite. Hence, Professor Keyser concludes, if all that religion requires is ignorance, it need never fear being put out of business by science. Now while Tyndall was unwilling to characterize the mystery as a "cause" he did not hesitate to characterize it as a "Power," manifesting itself in the Universe. The fact is that agnosticism is a sort of metaphysics, of the most metaphysical sort. It rests upon a very non-scien- tific conception of substance and of causality, conceptions that were abandoned long ago for the purposes of science. Agnosticism provides a sort of metaphysical limbo, a heaven, a space which the imagination promptly fills. The Western imagination and emotionality is too lusty to preserve the scrupulous reserve of the Japanese Shintoist, of whom the poet says: "Not knowing what it is silent tears he sheds." This nothingness is readily replaced by the Ether of Lord Kelvin, or by the Energy of Ostwald or Haeckel, or by the Force of Spencer himself. These substances thus allo- cated the domain once ruled by God, soon take on a vaguely and equivocally spiritual character. It is a short step to the avowed spiritualism of Sir Oliver Lodge. Agnosticism thus permits or even encourages a species of spiritual phil- osophy which nourishes itself on the crumbs of comfort that fall from the scientists' table.^ IV. POWER AND PROGRESS THROUGH SCIENCE It is difficult for us to hold at arm's length and scrutinize the ideas that are closest to us. Or, to change the meta- 1 The Rev. James Martineau and the Belfast Address, p. 244. 2 Cf. below, pp. 190-192. 58 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS phor, it is hard for us to sense the peculiar quality of the medium in which we habitually live. Even if we do sense it, it is hard for us to realize that it is peculiar. Such is the case with the idea to which I wish now to invite your atten- tion. The greatest of all modern ideas, in its originality, in its widespread adoption, and in its far-reaching importance, is, I believe, the idea that man can make his way through all the difficulties and dangers that beset him, by means of applied science or technology. This idea is so much of a commonplace that it is difficult to conjure with it. But it is not a universal, or even an old idea. The Greeks and Romans were on the whole of the opinion that the funda- mental nature of things is fixed once and for all. There are changes, to be sure, and vast changes extending over great stretches of time; but they are cyclical rather than progres- sive, so that the world is none the less marking time. The model of nature for the Greeks was the stellar system with its periodic and as they thought circular motions, in which change is taken up into eternity. I do not, of course, deny that there was, especially in the later Hellenistic age of science, some looking forward to a future that shall remedy and perfect the present. But W. K. Clifford to the contrary notwithstanding, it was, I believe, the Greek idea that nature was a nurse and a school and an object of love or contemplation, rather than a source of powers and tools for man to manipulate.^ In the Orient there is added to this cyclical, recurrent view of nature, a sense of its overwhelming immensity. Man can at best scratch its surface, and he might better occupy himself with the saving of his soul. The audacious, profane, or possibly shallow and fatuous idea, that man can himself wield the thunder bolts and drive the chariot of the sun, is a modern European idea. It is essentially the idea of Sir Francis Bacon; not that Bacon made it famous, but rather that it made Bacon famous. ''The real and legitimate goal 1 Cf. W. K. Clifford, Lectures and Essays, II, p. 264. THE CULT OF SCIENCE 59 of the sciences,'^ said this prophet, ''is the endowment of human life with new inventions and riches." ^ A recent writer on "Francis Bacon and the Modern Spirit " has said: "What, then, is the modem spirit? There are, it seems to me four cognate ideas which go to make up the concept of modem I do not present them either as final or as complete. I present them as tentative and partial. They are the ideas of progress, of control, of utility, and of responsibUity. And these are just the ideas we find so conspicuously emphasized in the writings of Bacon. We find the general idea of power and progress through science here analyzed into four subordinate ideas. There is first the buoyancy and energy of the modern world as this expresses itself in the idea of progress. I have called it an "idea"; but it is not a generalization or inference from the past, so much as one of those beliefs that spring from an act of will. Few moderns could give you very con- vincing historical evidence that the worid is growing better; but virtually all will declare their intention, so far as m them Ues, of making it better. The second is the idea that a cause discovered is a cause controlled; that by patiently waiting for nature to disclose herself man can in the end turn the tables, and use nature against herself. The third idea is complementary to the foregoing. It is the idea that only those things which can be controlled by science, the welfare and happiness of men so far as conditioned by nature, really count as good and evil. And fourthly there is man's sense that through science he is the responsible and competent maker of his own destiny. In short, the Baconian faith is man's sense of his power through natural science to control and better his own external fortunes, these being of paramount importance in life. This philosophy of Ufe has steadily strengthened its hold upon the European mind. It was developed by philoso- phers of history, such as Turgot, Condorcet and Priestley 1 Novum Organum, Bk. I, Aphorism LXXXI. 2 M. T. McClure, Journal of PhUosophy, Psychology and Sctenttfic Method, Vol. xiv (191 7) » P- 522. 6o THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS in the Eighteenth Century. It was carried to extravagant lengths by the early French socialists, Saint Simon and Fourier in the early Nineteenth Century. "The optimism of Fourier went as far as to anticipate the time when the sea would be turned by man's ingenuity into lemonade, when there would be thirty-seven million poets as great as Homer, thirty-seven million writers as great as Moliere, thirty-seven million men of science as great as Newton." ^ The great influence of Auguste Comte did much to dis- seminate this philosophy and to give it philosophical dig- nity in the Nineteenth Century, until it became allied in the latter half of the century with the great doctrine of Evolution. But its hold on the contemporary mind is not due so much to the philosophers or to other theorizers and prophets, as it is to the amazing triumphs of applied science. The Baconian dream seems actually to be in process of coming true. Bridges, cables, automobiles, antitoxines and aero- planes are more convincing than disquisitions on scientific method. Furthermore, the rate of scientific advancement is so rapid that in the short span of a single human Hfe the whole aspect of life is revolutionized. Marvel has succeeded marvel so rapidly within the memory of living men, that their imaginations have been fired, and their hopes raised, until nothing is any longer called impossible or incredible. Thus the older idea according to which man was meta- physically superior to nature, of another origin, sphere and destiny, has in many minds been replaced by the idea of man as the moulder of nature, as one who in the midst of nature, through his continuity and contact with nature, divines her secrets and takes the reins into his own hands. Of all the pre-wartime creeds of Europe this is perhaps the one which has been most disturbed by the war. To some minds the war seemed the direct outcome of a preoccupation with those material and industrial interests which tech- nology has done most to promote. The excesses and hor- * Bury: History of Free Thought , p. 226. THE CULT OF SCIENCE 61 rors of war have been made possible by the invention and skill of scientists. That nation, Germany, which had car- ried science, both pure and appUed, to the ^ighest^pitch cultivation, was the nation most reprobated both or the inception of the war and for its atrocities. High explosives poison gases, monstrous submarines seemed to be as ogical Tsequel to the supremacy of science, as were artificial ferti- lizers, anesthetics and ships of commerce. Saence meant power, yes; but power for evil as logically and as readily as power for good. - , There has, I think, been for fifty years and more a false complacency due to the superficial successes of science. I do not for a moment wish to suggest that man wiU abandon or relax his control over physical forces. Quite the con- trarv I foresee not only a more extensive control of phys- ical nature, but a more deHcate control that will carry technology even into those complexly and sensitively organ- ized parts of nature where the mind dwells - where are to be found the vital roots of human conduct and character. But mankind will not, I think, soon forget that there is httk virtue in the control of forces, if they are not subordinated to a wise and beneficent policy. Deeper and incomparably more difiicult are the problems of ends and Purposes, by which warring interests may be harmomzed and unified, and the powers of nature harnessed to programs of socia re- construction in which every interest shall find its due place Progress, even secular worldly progress, is not entirely, or even mainly a matter of the control of physical nature The most enlightened exponents of the Bacoman ideal have seen this clearly, and have provided for^ the more authon- tative r61e of the philosophical and social sciences. Thus Professor Hobhouse has written: "Only if mind should once reach the pomt at which it could control all the conditions of its life, could this danger (of its d^- Satfon and lapse) be permanently averted. Now it seemed to me that it is precisely on this line that modem civilization has made T^l^:iLc.. tL through science it is begmning t^^^^^^^^^^ the physical conditions of Ufe, and that on the side of ethics and 62 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS religion it is forming those ideas of the unity of the race, and of the subordination of law, morals, and social constitutions generally to the needs of human development, which are the conditions of the control that is required." ^ * Development and Purpose^ pp. xxii-xxiii. CHAPTER VI THE SCIENCE OF MAN We have so far been considering ways in which science itself has become the source of inspiration or the object of emotion, or has deflected the soul to seek its spiritual suste- nance beyond science in the world of the unknown. We have now to consider the entrance of science itself into the realm of human life. In short, having considered science as a moral and religious object, we have now to consider morals and religion' in so far as these have been objects for science. I. THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN MORALS AND RELIGION There is something characteristically modern in this very idea. Although science, with some show of modesty, con- fines itself within the bounds of experience, it does not hesi- tate to insist on the letter of its bond within these limits. It is not to be kept out of any region of experience, however venerated, so long as it is a region of experience. Now morals and religion undeniably are experienced; they afford data, which the scientist can observe and describe. Hence, in our day, the science of morals and the science of religion. I. Empiricism and Experimentalism in Ethics. There are two varietiesof^thics which are cherished_by common sense and tradition," but'which clearly will be unacceptable to science. The first of these is that rationalistic or intuitive ethics which appeals to self-evident first-principles. ^ Science, here as elsewhere, will look to experience, and will insist that ''right" and "wrong" shall prove themselves as tried out in human life. Science will adopt the tone of Byron, when he said: "... I begin to find out that nothing but virtue will do in this damned world. I am tolerably sick of vice, which I have tried in its agreeable varieties." ^ In the second place 1 Letter to Francis Hodgson, May 5, 1810. 63 64 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS science will reject all forms of religious and metaphysical ethics which appeal to the will of a supernatural Being for the sanction of conduct. Right and wrong must be defined in terms of their consequences within the limits of human Hfe. In short, the new scientific ethics will be empirical and experimental. It follows that the influence of science will be favorable to that type of ethics which is known to philosophers as ^'he- donism " or "utilitarianism.'' The reason for this alliance is to be found in the fact that science insists upon appealing to immediate data for the verification of its theories. In the physical sciences these data are provided by sensation; while in the moral sciences they are provided by the felt satisfac- tions. The effect of science, as we shall see, has been to modify the traditional utilitarianism in very important re- spects. But the fundamental thesis is accepted: the thesis, namely, that the particular pleasures and pains of particular men, their desires and aversions, their fears andTiopes, are the basal facts of value, which afford the only sure means of controlling and checking the theorizings of moral philosophy. Right and wrong, then, in a scientific ethics will have to do not with absolute imperatives or august"authorities, but with human policies and human satisfactions. 2. Modifications of Utilitarianism. While the influence of science has been such as to confirm the empirical and experimental b^is of , utilitarianism, a more enlightened psychology has discredited the former view that man is a mechanism that can be moved only by the expectation of pleasure or the fear of pain. In place of the view that the main-spring of action is a calculation of future feelings, there has appeared a new view that man is a bundle of miscellane- ous impulses, such as the sex impulse, the appetites, and the instincts of pugnacity and maternity. The proof of right y \^ action, in this new utilitarianism, is not the state of pleasure/ but the satisfaction or fulfilment of these impulses. / For the older utilitarianisnr the central and insoluble prob- lem was to r^cg^die sociajly useful action IWith the indi- vidual's supposSmdifference to everylhing but his private THE SCIENCE OF MAN ^S pleasures and pains; the new view recognizes among man's original impulses at least one other-regarding impulse, such as the parental instinct or the ''tender emotion." In other words, instead of being naturally egoistic and only arti- ficially social, man is now regarded as naturally social. Thus as the older utilitarianism was individualistic, the new utilitarianism is associated with the rising tide of socialism, with the new sense of the interdependence or "solidarity " of mankind, and with the more advanced forms of democracy. But even with these changes utilitarianism retains the same fundamental view of institutions that distinguished the thought of its founders, Bentham and Mill. On the day after the entrance of Bulgaria into the war, the British Government served notice that "The military authorities will not hold themselves responsible for the issue of the war if the country does not provide them with another million men."i Xn other words, the government of Great Britain acknowledges itself to be a sort of directorate, holding its power in trust, and appealing in the end to the interest and judgment of the people. Utilitarianism still adheres to an individual rather than a corporate theory of value; measuring and testing institutiDnal policies by their distributive effect upon the well-being of men and women, rather than by their unified effect upon the greatness and glory of the nation. Utilitarianism in this sense still remains one of the chief dis- tinguishing marks of moral and political thought in English- speaking countries.^ 3. Comparative Ethics. Such scientific ethics as I have thus far described would study the effects of action on human interests, and endeavor to define such forms of action as will conduce to the harmonious and fruitful fulfilment of in- terests. But some exponents of the scientific method have insisted that such an inquiry, although it may contribute to the art of life, can never result in the development of a science. A science, it is said, cannot deal with what ought to he, but only with what is. It must deal with facts and confine its 1 Chevrillon, England and the War, p. 217. 2 Cf. below, pp. 491-496. 66 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS efforts to describing them. Are there, then, any describable moral facts? According to the Frenchman Levy-Bruhl such facts are to be found in the actual approbations and disap- probations of mankind, as these have been felt and expressed by different communities at different places and at different times. The moral facts are the forms and utterances of the historical conscience of mankind. The truly scientific ethics will then deal with these facts. - ''It consists in considering the moral rules, obligations, rights, and in general the con- tent of the moral conscience, as a given reality, as an en- semble of facts.'* ^ Scientific ethics will x:ompile and compare these facts, study their genesis, their psych^gical and othir causes, and trace their development through the course Af human evolution. I This type of ethics results either in^moral scepticism or in an appeal to some more fundamental principle. Taken as it stands it seems to imply that nothing's right or wrong but thinking makes it so; that right and wrong, in other words, are relative to the opinions of an age, society or even in- dividual, and have no objectivity that can be argued and proved. Indeed, Westermarck expressly avows this view. But more commonly ethical considerations of another type are introduced to supplement these purely descriptive re- sults. Such ulterior considerations are introduced through the asking of one or both of two questions. First, one may ask, ''Are these particular moral judgments of mankind true?'' Was the Spartan approval of mendacity, for ex- ample, well-advised? In answering~\he question one as- sumes that it means, "Is mendacity, in fact, good for man- kind ? " — and one looks to its effects to see. Second, one may ask, "Are these particular moral judgments useful to the community that forms them?'' "Does the possession of such a conscience strengthen a society in the struggle for existence ? " The former of these questions leads to an em- pirical and experimental utilitarianism of the type described * La Morale et la Science des Moeurs, p. 14. For a similar conception of ethics cf . Westermarck, Origin and Development oj Moral Ideas, and Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution. THE SCIENCE OF MAN 67 above; the second leads to the new Darwinian ethics that I propose to consider later.^ 4. The Science of Religion. It is not wholly absurd to deny the existence of God, but it would be wholly absurd to deny that men have believed in God. The former, or the debatable thing, is the object of religion; the latter, which is the indubitable fact, is religion itself. Though you con- demn a man's religion as superstition, you do not prove him any the less religious; though you regard it as a primitive or even a pathological fact, it remains none the less a fact. And it is the business of science to describe facts wherever they are to be found. When the fact is a belief it may be described quite without prejudice to the question of its truth or error.^ In this sense religion falls within the prov- ince of science. It is the task of the science of religion to view religion as an incident in human history and a mani- festation of human nature. The older branch of the science of religion is that which deals with religion as an incident in human history. The interest here has been mainly in the questions of genesis and of comparative types. How did religion in the generic sense arise, and what are its leading species? This evolutionary interest has led to a special emphasis on primitive religions, as presumably exhibiting the nature of religion most simply; whereas the older philosophical interest had led men to look for the meaning of religion in its completer, and in what the particular philosopher took to be its truer, forms. The study of primitive religions has been carried on as a part of the general study of primitive customs and folk-lore; the com- parative study of religions, as a part of the general study of racial traits. Such studies have necessarily dealt almost exclusively with the externals of religion, with ritual, myth and art. To this anthropological and ethnological form of the science of religion there has been added more recently the psychology of religion. This is the turn of inquiry that is most characteristic of the day. There are several methods. 1 Cf. below, pp. I32-I49' 68 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS William James's epoch-making Varieties of Religious Ex- perience was based mainly on the study of the intimate per- sonal writings of great Christian devotees, such as St. Augustine and Luther. Professor E. D. Starbuck and Professor J. H. Leuba have made use of the questionnaire and the statistical method. More recently the psychiatrists and pathologists have applied clinical methods to the excesses and abnormaUties of religion. In all of these studies in- terest has centered in the rehgious crisis, in the conversion of the ''twice-born,'' and in mystical rapture, because in these extreme forms of the religious experience its peculiari- ties will presumably be most clearly marked. Now there are two different and opposite effects that studies such as these may have upon the believer himself. On the one hand the reduction of one's own reUgion to a mere species of a genus that includes what one is accustomed to regard as idolatry and superstition may seem to degrade one's own religion. Having lost its uniqueness it loses its hold. One's miracles now appear as only a variety of magic, one's faith as a variety of superstition, one's sacraments and feast days as survivals of old cults, one's revelations as myths, and one's founders and saints as "psychics." So far the effect of the science of religion is to undermine religious be- lief. But, on the other hand, one may feel that one's rehgion is confirmed by the proof of its universaHty. To be so affected requires that one's religion shall be broadened and liberalized. The intolerant worship of a jealous God is only discredited by the promiscuous interest in all reUgions. But if one thinks the religious spirit, the religious emotion, or the attitude of faith to be the important thing, one will rejoice that these are so universal and that they are able to manifest themselves in so great a variety of dogmas, symbols and outward forms. The science of religion has emphasized the universality of religion. And this universality in itself suggests that religimr- must have some necessary and abiding value. It may be argued that what is so universal must be true; or that it must be grounded in human nature; or that it is useful; or that it THE SCIENCE OF MAN 69 proves the spiritual descent and destiny of man. With all of these reinforcements of religious behef by the scientific study of religious facts we shall meet in the chapters to come. II. PSYCHOLOGISM So much for the direct applications of scientific method to the content of the moral and religious Hfe. We have next to consider the indirect bearing of scientific method on morals and religion, through its application to man. Man, as we have seen, was the last and in its own judgment the decisive conquest of science. With man, his ideals and his institutions submitted to the scientific method, and incor- porated into nature, there would now be no remnant left of the spiritual philosophy that had once ruled human belief. Hence we find science especially active in the Nineteenth Century in carrying the war into this, the enemy's last stronghold. There have been three sciences that have de- voted themselves to man: psychology, which has considered him as an individual mind; biology, which has considered him as an organism; and sociology, which has considered him as a group, obeying psychological and biological laws, but with a peculiar and more complex nature of its own. The sociological and biological studies of man are to supply the content of several chapters to come, on *'The Discovery of Society," and on "Evolution." I wish here to dispose briefly of the psychology of man in so far as this has given rise to a change in moral and religious values. I. The Mechanism of the Mind. I am speaking here not of psychology in general, but of that modern psychology which ranges itself under the banner of natural science, and submits the human mind to the descriptive and experimental method. In such a view of the matter the soul in the old sense utterly disappears. I am assuming that the term "soul " suggests an indivisible, substantive and imperishable entity, that acts freely, possesses its states as only its passing modes, and propels a body which it only temporarily in- habits. In place of this, scientific psychology provides only 70 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS the manifold of the states themselves, with all their variety and transiency, and in close dependence on the states of the central nervous system. The self, instead of being a sub- stance, is a '* stream." Instead of being a source of power, it is a theatre where forces enter from abroad, meet, and pass beyond. In so far as this has a purely negative bearing on religious conceptions, such, for example, as immortaUty, I shall not pursue it further. It has found positive expression in the interest in the psychical mechanism of man. This interest in the psychological causes of action is illustrated in Strind- berg's powerful play Miss Julia, which the author calls *^A Naturalistic Tragedy.'' This girl's fall and tragic end are ascribed to heredity, education, temperament, physical condition, social and physical environment and to the fatality of chance. It is the author's contention that con- duct is the expression not of a fixed ''character " in the sense of the older dramatist, nor of a superior destiny, but of the interplay of many causes. Hapless mankind is doomed, not by the order of events, but rather by their caprice. In this view the notions of man as a responsible and guilty creature tend to disappear. ''The naturahst has wiped out the idea of guilt, but he cannot wipe out the results of an action — punishment, prison, or fear — and for the simple reason that they remain without regard to his verdict."^ In explaining his subordination of the more personal aspect of his charac- ters in Miss Julia, Strindberg says: "I have done this because I believe I have noticed that the psychological processes are what interest the people of our day more than anything else. Our souls, so eager for knowledge, cannot rest satisfied with seeing what happens, but must also learn how it comes to happen! What we want to see are just the wires, the machinery. We want to investigate the box with the false bottom, touch the magic ring in order to find the suture, and look into the cards to discover how they are marked." ^ » Author's Preface, Plays, trans, by Edwin Bjorkman, Vol. II, p. 102. * Op. cit., p. 106. THE SCIENCE OF MAN 71 This interest in the psychology or even the physiology of Ufe is united with the moral interest in the so-called " problem play " of Ibsen, Brieux, Shaw, Zangwill, Hauptmann and Bernstein. There is no longer an indivisible soul that fol- lows its appointed destiny, or a "character " which plays its stereotyped and self-consistent r61e; there are only elemen- tary passions and motives, diseases and nerves, tempera- ments and hereditary traits, which conflict and combine with one another and with the forces of the environment. While the new psychology has modified the aesthetic in- terest in human nature, it has even more profoundly modi- fied all the arts which have to do with the use and naoulding of human nature. The practical importance of this is in- calculable and is rapidly increasing. Knowledge means control, whether of physical forces or of man himself. And in the building of the social order it is more important to 1/ control love and hate than electricity or chemical energy. \ But since we are here concerAcd with the ultimate ends of life rather than ^ith its instruments and agencies a bare mention of appUed psychology, or moral technology must suffice. We find it in economics, ih the study of the relation of fatigue tathe efficient oflabor . We find it in education , intellectual, morafand religious; in criminology and penal- ogy ; in medicine, and in every other work of human ameliora- tion. It is one of the influences that has made philanthropy less sentimental and spontaneous, but at the same time more systematic, and it is to be hoped more efficient. FinaUy, we find it in politics and in propaganda as furnishing the basis of the new art of publicity. If the spread of the new mech- p, anistic psychology confirms the fatalist in the view that man is the creature of natural iorces, and confirms the cynic in the view that mankind can^^e "worked,'^ it even more powerfully confirms the Jfiuiimne)in the faith that mankind can be saved. 2. The Cult of Sensibility. So far modern psychology is morally negative, or merely instrumental. But there is Hke- wise a purpose or goal of life which may be traced to the in- fluence of the psychological method of introspection. This 72 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS procedure is more a point of view than a method. You can if you will, watch experience in the pecuHar patterns which it forms within the confines of your individual mind. Your thoughts may be worth a penny, or more; but in any case they are there for you to gather. Psychology has sought to make an exhaustive study of these introspective appear- ances; of all the different kinds of thoughts and all the dif- ferent combinations of thoughts that skilfully self-conscious people have been able to distinguish. Though by no means wholly responsible for it, this psy- chological emphasis has certainly reinforced the tendency of moralists and litterateurs to make much of the inward pano- rama and shifting scenes of their own consciousness. We find this in Byron. ^'The great object of Hfe," he says, ''is sensation — to feel that we exist, even though in pain. It is this ' craving void ' which drives us to gaming — to battle — to travel — to intemperate, but keenly felt pur- suits of any description, whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment."^ And so with Walter Pater and his ''New Cyrenaicism" ; or the less discriminating Barres, the psychologue, the "dandy of psychology." These men, as a recent critic has remarked, engage in spiritual exercises not unlike those of the old Christian ascetics, save that whereas St. Anthony sought to put certain feelings out of his mind, these men seek to put certain feeUngs in.^ Psychologism as a cult has its own characteristic excesses, and it is by these that it is best known. It is one of the chief motives of that "decadence" to which I have already re- ferred and which I have attributed to the spirit of revolt against fixed standards of morality and taste. These two motives, the phobia for anything established or respectable and the craving for" experience," work easily together and tend to the same results in conduct. For if you live for ex- periences, you must forever be seeking new ones. The old experiences soon lose their flavor as the palate becomes 1 Letter to Mis^ Milbanke, Sept. 6, 1813. * Cf. Huneker: Egoists, pp. 214, 219. THE SCIENCE OF MAN 73 accustomed to them. And the richer, more highly seasoned, the experiences, the more rapidly do they deaden the powers of taste. But novelty is most readily found in those for- bidden regions which have been closed by the habits, con- ventions and standards of society. Hence the French poet Baudelaire, who deUberately cultivated a morbid sensibility, who said, "Evil be thou my good." Hence the school of Poe and De Quincy, with its reUsh for the horrible and the occult. The psychologues go to prison, or go mad, or even get religion, in order to find new pastures where their jaded sensibilities may still be quickened. When new things are exhausted, old and forgotten things must be revived. Hence the return to MediaevaHsm and Romanism by litterateurs such as Huysmans, Bourget and Barres, and the cult of the primitive and savage among post-impressionist painters. This pursuit of the novel experience, of the bizarre, the im- / proper, the disgusting, the obsolete, the abnormal, — ends / invariably with pessimism, Hfe outlasting the appetite for life.^ The psychologue ends, if not with despair, then with hope- less ennui, like that of Stendhal who, having witnessed the battles of Jena and Wagram, is said to have asked during a day of fierce fighting, " Is that all?" ^ There is another evil in this psychologism, that is niore serious. I refer to the inversion of values, that " ego-mania," to use Nordau's term, which judges the worid from the angle of one's private sensibilities. George Moore, in his Con- fessions of a Young Man, affords a striking example of this. From Walter Pater, Moore learned the wholesome lesson that if one has only a good appetite one can enjoy the home- cooking of everyday hfe. "I had not thought of the simple and unaffected joy of the heart of natural things; the color of the open air, the many forms of the country, the birds flying, — that one making for the sea; the abandoned boat, the dwarf roses and the wild lavender; nor had I thought of the beauty of the mildness in life, and how by a certain avoidance of the wilfully passionate, and the surely ugly one may rescue an aspect of temporal life which is abiding and soul-sufficing." ^ 1 Quoted by Huneker, Egoists, p. 23. ^ P. 212. 74 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS \ But the real motive of this philosophy is betrayed by Moore elsewhere in the same book: "Every immortal deed was an act of fearful injustice; the world of grandeur, of triumph, of courage, of lofty aspirations, was built up on injustice. HaU, therefore, to the thrice glorious virtue injustice' What care I that some millions of wretched Israehtes died under Pharaoh's lash or Egypt^s sun? It was well that they died that I might have the pyramids to look on, or to fill a musmg hour with wonderment. Is there one amongst us who would exchange them for the lives of the ignominious slaves that diedi' According to these philosophers it^s *^ sugar and spice and everything nice, that^s what the world is made of/' The causes of nature and history are so many confectioners that compound sweets for Mr. Moore and those Uke him. If the taste is bitter or if the sweetness palls, if there is an un- pleasant dish of "snaps and snails and puppy-dogs tails, then the feasters complain, make up faces, burst out crying, or refuse to play. I have said that this inversion of values, this mistaking of one's own palate for the theatre of history and the barometer of universal destiny, was a serious evil. But it is prevented from corrupting the bulk of mankind, through being ridiculous/ Those who count themselves an aristocracy of rare soul< will always appear to the man on the street as a few spoiled children who have eaten so much candy as to destroy their appetite for the staple and whole- some things of life. / ^ P. 145. CHAPTER VII THE DISCOVERY OF SOCIETY In order to understand the sense in which society may be said to have been discovered in our day, it is necessary to distinguish three different motives which have led men to conceive of society. The first of these is the moral-religious motive. By this men have been led to conceive of society as the ideal form of life. This is the commonest notion of society in European thought, both Pagan and Christian. Plato and Aristotle believed that man could be perfected only in a political community permitting of varied and orderly relations in which he might exercise his powers. The Stoics and Epicureans thought of society as a fellowship of the virtuous, the congenial association of the emancipated. The distinctively Christian virtues, compassion, love, humility and service, were socializing virtues. They implied that in proportion as a man became Christianized he became alive to the existence and the interests of other men. ^ To be a Christian meant, moreover, to identify oneself with the whole race of mankind, a race solidified by the inheritance of a common taint and by the promise of a common salvation. In all these conceptions there is undoubtedly some recog- nition of society as a natural fact. But if so it is as a rule incidental and implicit. And more commonly man is thought of as naturally selfish and as requiring some induce- ment or a change of heart before entering into the society in question. The second motive may be called the logical or meta- physical motive. It is asserted, to start with, that the whole is more real than its parts. From this some philos- ophers have argued that the individual cannot be real, be- cause he is particular and incomplete. The institution, or the group, though it in turn is also incomplete, is, according 75 76 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS ( to this reasoning, nevertheless more real than its component individuals, and is the highest form of human reality. The third is the motive with which we are here primarily concerned. Let us call it the biological or psychological motive, or the motive of natural science. Whereas the moralist contends that man ought to be social, and the meta- physician that he logically must, the scientist remarks simply that as a matter of fact he is. This is the sense in which society has in our day been discovered. There are three of these social matters of fact which have been brought to light in modern times and which afford the starting point for the science of sociology. There is the social interest within the individual, or the natural interest of one individual in others of the species. There are the social forces, the pecuHar agencies that emanate from the group and mould or control the individual. Finally, there is society as a distinct entity, having its own structure and function at once more primitive and more authoritative than those of the individual. I. THE SOCIAL INTEREST OF THE INDIVIDUAL Hobbes, who was the founder of the British ethical move- ment in the sense that those who came after him sought to answer and refute him, regarded the natural man as a self- seeking automaton. The state of nature in which men are left free to act as their self-seeking prompts them is, according to Hobbes, a state of war. To escape this mean and brutish condition, men find it necessary to erect a sovereign power that can enforce peace by intimidation. But from an early date Hobbes's view was felt to be a libel against human nature. His challenge was taken up by Cumberland; by Shaftesbury, who proclaimed the *^ natural affections," "such as are founded in love, complacency, good will, sympathy with the kind "; by Bishop Butler; by Hume, with his .recog- nition of sympathy or *' fellow-feeling"; by Adam Smitli; by John Stuart Mill, who spoke of man's "feeling of unity with his fellow-creatures"; and by Auguste Comte, with his THE DISCOVERY OF SOCIETY 77 theory of "social affections." This more favorable view of human nature has come gradually to prevail. Though at first it was largely dictated by sentimental and ethical con- siderations, it is now recognized as a plain matter of psycho- logical fact. The social view of man's original impulses has been rein- forced by another change of psychological opinion. The utilitarianism of Bentham and his followers was founded on the more or less unconscious assumption that human con- duct is governed by a single motive. So long as this view prevailed the selfish theory was bound to possess great plausi- bility. Selfish pleasure appears to be a more constant and a more powerful motive than altruism, and if there must be one main-spring of action, this would therefore have the strongest claim to acceptance. Thus there arose the view, so widely held a generation ago, that unselfish action is only a refined and calculated form of selfishness. It was believed that before a man could be moved to perform an unselfish act he must be led to expect some private gain for himself; this expectation providing the incentive or inducement without which no active energy would be generated. But once the theory of a central main-spring was abandoned, this inter- pretation of such behavior as mother-love appeared intoler- ably forced and grotesque. Once grant that nature supplies man with many motives capable of operating quite inde- pendently, there is then no reason for denying what seems to be the plain fact that men do sometimes act from an in- terest in others, with no thought whatever of the conse- quences for self. So the monistic psychology of self-seeking was superseded a generation ago by the pluralistic psychology of instinct. Mother-love, the parental instincts, "the tender emotions " and " gregariousness " are now generally accepted as original impulses that require no more ultimate psychological ex- planation, and that find their biological explanation in the good of the species ratlier than of the individual. Let us consider the ethical implications of this view. It establishes altruism on a new basis. This better form of 78 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS conduct need no longer be referred to a supernatural prin- ciple, such as duty, conscience or reason, — a principle that supervenes upon the natural impulses and constrains them against their original bent. Altruism is no longer unnatural and artificial. Furthermore it is no longer necessary to think of altruism as instrumental, as a higher prudence by which man escapes penalties imposed by God, or by the state, or by public opinion. The new altruism is not an altruism of discipline or of pressure, but an altruism of education. Thus Comte, Mill and Spencer teach that the better life has its own roots in nature. What is needed is only that the social impulses should be cultivated and developed until they shall have acquired such ascendancy over the individual as shall fit him for a humane and co-operative social life. It is this altruism with its insistence on the native sociality and perfectibiHty of human nature that has provided the main ethical basis for modern democracy and social reform. II. SOCIAL FORCES But the emphasis on the social aspect of human life has threatened to overwhelm the individual altogether. It has been argued that the more powerful forces which govern history and which mould the individual, are neither private interests nor rational self-determination, but impersonal and irresistible ^'social forces.^' There have been two varieties of social force that have been recognized in modern times. There is first what may be called the ^'statistical " force, the sheer weight of num- bers, the preponderance of the aggregate over the individual. It is a mistake, according to this view, to write history as though its events and epochs were the work of great men. The great man is himself the product of history. He merely happens to be there ^ and to be used by circumstances and agencies that he neither makes nor controls. Thus Mr. T. E. Cliffe Leslie contends that it is not this man or that that governs the course of history, but ''the more lasting forces of society decide." "Napoleon I," he continues, "carried THE DISCOVERY OF SOCIETY 79 the boundaries of France to the Elbe, but they are now what they would have been had no Corsitan adventurer ever found his way to Paris. And not the will of Napoleon III, but the will of France upon the one hand, and of the rest of Europe on the other, and the balance of European power, will de- termine whether the French flag shall float over Antwerp, Coblentz, Genoa, and Alexandria at the end of the present century."^ While this view is evidently justified as a needed corrective of the dramatic and biographical type of history, it is at best a loose and dangerous generally tion. Granting that the great man's opportunity is provided by a unique combina- tion of circumstances, the fact remains that the great man uses his opportunity. He may not lay the train, but he creates the spark which ignites it. Though he may con- tribute from himself only a sUght increment of energy, the way he apphes that energy in a crisis may determine which of two widely different courses the current of history shall follow. It may be argued that if Alexander, or Napoleon, or Columbus had not happened to do it, then some one else would. But this is sheer dogmatism. It only serves to remind us of the vast difference between those cases in which the great man appears only to be drawn by lot from among many who would have "done as well," and the cases in which the great man is uniquely qualified to meet the sit- uation. History abounds in lost opportunities; lost because the necessary individual with the necessary genius to use the opportunity was not there. ^ The second variety of social force, a variety which has been discovered by the psychologists rather than the historians, is the force of "imitation." The individual, according to this view, is for the most part like the group in which he lives, like in deed, in opinion and in sentiment. This is due not to any deliberate act of agreement, nor even of conscious imitation; but to unconscious imitation, to a process like leavening or crystallization, in which what is typical is diffused ^ Essays in Economic and Moral Philosophy, pp. 30, 33. For James's dis- cussion of this question, cf. below, p. 321. 8o THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS through the social mass. The individual is assimilated, or contaminated, by mere contact. This phenomenon is ex- hibited most impressively by the behavior of a crowd, in which the individual is overpowered and swept away by the emotion about him; in which he loses his individual traits and his power of individual judgment, and acts, thinks and teels **as one possessed." Even more important, though less spectacular, is the phenomenon of publicity. The in- crease in modern times of facilities for communication has enlarged the area of human contact. The increase of literacy and of means of propaganda has created conditions in which the individual is perpetually exposed to the power of ''sug- gestion.'' The individual cannot call his mind his own; it is only a channel through which flow the tides and currents of opinion that spring from all about him. Such is the social psychology of imitation; the psychology which was inaugu- rated by Bagehot and developed more recently by Tarde, Le Bon and Baldwin.^ This view like the view above would seem to suggest a new fatahsm, a new sense of the helplessness of the individual man. But now that the first enthusiasm has declined, and these new ideas can be examined in a more sober and critical spirit, it appears that they enhance rather than disparage the importance of the individual. Though it may serve the rhetorical purpose of pointing the truth, it is a mistake to regard imitation as a sort of prairie fire that kindles and con- sumes the individual. It is a series of individual responses, in which fear, pugnacity, emulation or other instincts are stimulated by their appearance in others. Furthermore, if imitating is a collective or ''social " phenomenon, being imi- tated is an individual phenomenon. Here is new testimony to the power of the individual leader. Only the man of force, the man of commanding prestige, is imitated; and what shall through his prestige come to be generally adopted or believed or admired, may be the product of his own origi- nality and invention. 1 For an application of such views to historical events, cf. Le Bon's Psychology of Revolution and his Psychology cj ihc Great War. THE DISCOVERY OF SOCIETY 8l Furthermore, there is a notable reaction at present against the whole emphasis on irrational forces in human conduct. Yesterday imitation was invoked to explain everything. To-day psychologists are turning to a study of the learning process, and taking their cue from animal behavior are at- taching primary importance to trial and error, or to learning by experience} Likeness of behavior may be largely ac- counted for by the similarity of needs, and the similarity of conditions under which men learn to satisfy these needs. Learning by experience is evidence of intelligence, rather than of blindness and passivity. Instincts there doubtless are; but these instincts are almost limitlessly modifiable and subject to control. Conduct is not the direct product of instinct, but a re-forming, redirecting and correlation of instincts, in which the cognitive faculties play the dominant part. If we must use the term instinct to cover whatever is native to the mind, then we must admit an instinct of thought, and recognize its regulative and organizing roie.^ Finally, it must be remarked that the discovery and under- standing of what is irrational in conduct is itself the work of reason. To recognize the force of unreason is to be less sub- ject to that force; to understand is to control. Hence in so far as the individual understands the impersonal social forces that play upon him, the better is he enabled to master these forces and use them in accordance with his deliberate pur- pose. This conclusion justifies the hopeful belief that even world-wide catastrophes like the present war are the result of forces that may be controlled by individual decisions and regulated by calculated policies. III. SOCIETY AS A DISTINCT ENTITY All sociologists agree that there is such a thing as a society, which has its own peculiarities. In any complete museum of existence, containing specimens of everything in nature that has manifested any individuality or ways of its own, » Cf., e.g., the writings of E. L. Thomdike. * Cf. Graham Wallas's Great Society, 82 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS there would have to be societies, as well, for example, as volcanoes and elephants. This is not intended as a eulo- gistic or edifying contention. Societies may be the noblest things in the world, or they may be pests; the point is that there are such things. Nor is it a matter of logical necessity; it is only a fact, be it reasonable or unreasonable.^ If you take the whole of a group of mankind into your view, you can see that there are arrangements of parts and modes of behavior that you would otherwise lose sight of. In respect of such structures and functions, the group such as the French, rather than the individual such as Napoleon Bona- parte, is the unit of discourse. In this general contention all sociologists are agreed; nor can there be any doubt raised against it. But some sociologists go further and insist that the social entity is something independent of the individual in its nature, more original than the individual in its genesis, and more authoritative in its value. The foremost contemporary exponent of the view that societies form a distinct species in the animal kingdom, is Emile Durkheim, the brilliant French sociologist whose recent death is so widely deplored.^ We are not concerned here with the details of his studies of social phenomena, but only with the moral and political implications of the general view which he represents. These he has himself elaborated. We learn that the sanction or authority of conscience lies in the fact that its promptings are expressions of the social life, in which individuals participate, but which is always greater than any single individual, or mere collection of in- dividuals. In order to understand this it is necessary to recognize that society is not a collection of homogeneous units like peas ki a pod. It is not similarity that gives unity to society, but solidarity, interdependence of parts, division of labor. Oxygen and hydrogen combined in certain pro- 1 Durkheim's chief writings are De la division du travail social, and The Elementary Forces of the Religious Life (English translation by J. W. Swain). There is a good summary of Durkheim with a collection of extracts m G. Davy. Emile Durkheim, series des Grandes Philosophes. Cf. also L^vy-Bruhl {Les fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures), Bougl6 and others of the French school; also J. M. Baldwin {Social and Ethical Interpretations). THE DISCOVERY OF SOCIETY 83 portions form a new substance, water. The hydrogen is not like the oxygen, — quite the contrary. It is their specific and complementary differences which explain their union. Moreover, when they are united there arise new properties which were possessed neither by the hydrogen nor by the oxygen. So in society, the social character is not to be found in what is average, or common, but in those specific prop- erties of human life which appear only when there is a union of individuals of different sorts to form a new kind of human substance. Society is not to be explained by the equalizing effect of imitation. On the contrary nothing is imitated unless it has prestige. But to have prestige a thing must already be social, it must be a property of the social com- pound rather than of the individual elements. According to Professor Durkheim society is both the pro- founder human fact and also the more original. It is as though hydrogen and oxygen existed only as components of water; and as though their distinctness had come to be recog- nized only by the analysis of water. Man the individual is nothing if not a constituent of some human society. The primitive forms of human life and mind are all social. The social mind is the original source of all the fundamental cate- gories and beliefs. Individuality is itself a product of social evolution. It is in this view of the priority of society over the indi- vidual that the moral and religious implications of such a philosophy are to be sought. I. Morality as a Social Fact. Moral facts, according to Durkheim, consist of rules which are distinguished by the peculiar consequences which attach to their breach or ob- servance. He who breaks them is blamed or punished^ and he who observes them is approved or honored. This char- acter cannot be understood as an inherent property of the acts themselves, or as a "natural " consequence which flows from them. It arises from the fact that moral rules are man- ifestations of the social mind. Their observance is ** oblig- atory " in the sense that they are demanded of the individ- ual by the social whole of which he is a part. This accounts, 84 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS furthermore, for the fact that the moral act though obliga- tory is not externally imposed. The agent is *' obliged '' to perform the moral act; but at the same time he desires to perform it. This is because the individual through being a part of the social mind imposes the act on himself. The moral act thus possesses the same quality that attaches to *^ sacred " objects: "The sacred object inspires us, if not with awe, at least with a respect which divides us from it, which holds us at a distance; and at the same time it is an object of love and of desire; we tend to draw near to it, we aspire towards it. Here is a double senti- ment which seems contradictory, but which is none the less a fact." 1 The object of moral action, furthermore, is something human, but not something merely individual. It can be neither one's own private interest, nor the merely private interest of another. There must be an object of a higher order. "We are brought, therefore, to this conclusion: that if there is to be any morality at all, any system of duties and obligations, society must be regarded as a moral person qualitatively distinct from the individual persons which it comprises. . . . Morality begins only when disinterestedness or devotion begins. But dis- interestedness can mean nothing unless we subordinate ourselves to a value higher than ourselves as individuals. Now in the world of experience I know of but one subject that possesses a moral reality richer and more complex than our own, and that is the collectivity." ^ 2. Progress and Reform. But we must now raise the crucial question which cannot fail to embarrass a view of this type. The institutions of any given society are the out- ward expression of its fundamental social condition. This is true not only of laws, customs, and other outward forms of life; it is true equally of codes and ideals. The historical and comparative methods of sociological investigation bring * Davy, op. cit., p. 156, ^ Ibidfi pp, 160-161. THE DISCOVERY OF SOCIETY 8S to light this reciprocal fitness of all the parts of any individ- ual society. A striking example is afforded by the two sets of laws, morals and even religions with which the Eskimos are equipped, the one being suitable to the denser, more con- gested life of winter, the other to the sparse and scattered life of summer. But our question is this: What is to be the justification for social change? Does this view not suggest that things are always what they should be? Does not Durkheim really argue from the existing state of a society, and are not its forms of life precisely what that existing state requires? What incentive is there for reform? What could be meant by progress? Professor Durkheim tells us that ''save in abnormal cases, each society has on the whole the morality that it needs, that any other would not only be impossible, but would be fatal to the society that should practise it.'' Each society con- ceives the ideal in its own image. The only excuse for reform lies, then, in the fact that a society may, so to speak, forget and deny itself, and need to be recalled to its senses: "The science of ethics (mceurs) can appeal from this momentary and disturbed moral conscience to that which is more original and more constant. ... If, for example, a society tends as a whole to lose sight of the sacred rights of the individual, can one not correct it authoritatively by recalling how the respect for these rights is intimately bound up with the structure of the great European societies, with the whole of our mentality, so much so that to deny them on the pretext of social interests is to defeat the most essential social interests?''^ ' But there appears to be a dilemma here, which Professor Durkheim does not escape. Either the scientist of morals must reason from the actual past or present structure of the given society, in which case he is always an advocate of con- servatism; or in his own critical consciousness he will be giving voice to something new, which as taken up by others will then become a new social conscience. It is not clear whether in Professor Durkheim's view the dynamic or criti- * Ibid., pp. 165, 168-169. 86 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS cal function of moral judgment lies in its tracing connections among the existing institutions and the given facts of social organization, or whether it is a forging of new ideals by which the future society is to become better than the past. 3. The Social Will and the State. It cannot be said that the author satisfactorily disposes of our crucial question. M. Durkheim must have felt somewhat hampered by his own philosophy in dealing like a Frenchman with present events. Certainly such war writings of his as I have seen contain no allusions to the propriety and fitness of German institutions and codes, as expressing the essential genius of the German society! This, however, must be said in his behalf. He has always consistently maintained that the soul of a society is to be found in the voluntary forms of civil life, such as customs, science, art or popular sentiment; and not in the state. In other words, there is no trace in his philosophy of that modern Teutonic malady sometimes known as ''statism,'' according to which the existing government is declared to be the in- fallible exponent of the national will and destiny. Statism, as we shall see, unites in one person or group of persons, both the military and police power, and also the moral authority. The same agents may both use force and coercion and also justify their use. To this view, especially prominent^ in German political philosophy, is sharply opposed the view that the powers and functions of the state are delegated and instrumental, and that they are answerable to the moral judgment of the people. This view Durkheim accepts. In his teaching, the social conscience speaks with an authority superior to that of any ruler. If a ruler fails to conform he IS an anachronism to be superseded by some more perfect expression of the deeper social consciousness. CHAPTER VIII SOCIALISM 1 Perhaps no one but a philosopher would have the audacity to announce socialism as an incidental topic to be disposed of in a single chapter. But the present philosopher has the deliberate intention of avoiding all the serious technicaUties of the subject, and of confining himself to superficial and more or less glowing generalities. The technical difl&culties of socialism are mainly economic, as is also the major part of the evidence to which one must appeal in forming a sound critical judgment of it. Not being an economist, the only graceful as well as safe thing that I can do is to evade these issues. But there still remains, I believe, a relatively humble task which even an economically incompetent philosopher may undertake. Excepting, of course, the great nations themselves, social- ism is, all in all, probably the most powerful organized social and political force in the world to-day. If this were ques- tioned, if, for example, one were to claim greater power for the Roman Catholic Church, there would still remain the fact that socialism is the most powerful disturbing and inno- vating agency abroad in the world to-day. This fact I should regard as incontestable. In days when men like Trotzky and Lenine, who were but yesterday exiled agita- tors, are revolutionizing the social and political life of a hundred million people, negotiating on equal terms with the proudest chancelries of Europe, and playing a major role in formulating those terms of war and peace that are to set the * The word first appeared in 1833 {Poor Man's Guardian), and obtained cur- rency in connection with the Robert Owen movement ("The Association of all Classes of all Nations"). Two aspects of socialism are to be considered later: — its internationalism in the next chapter, and its relation to Darwinism in Chapter XI. 87 88 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS stage of world history for the next century — in days like these, the importance of socialism does not need to be urged upon any man who reads his morning paper. This importance will justify, I hope, the mere outline sketch of socialism which I propose to give. I shall not try to solve its problems or judge its claims, but only to state what it means, and so put it in its place among the great ideas that are stirring in the mind of to-day. The scope of my topic is narrowed, furthermore, by my association of socialism with the influence of science. I believe that all things considered, this is the proper context and setting in which to survey it, and that we shall in this way be seeing that which is central and basal in socialism. But, neverthe- less, our naturaHstic approach will enable us to omit various aspects of the topic which would necessarily present them- selves if we went about it more systematically. There are many kinds of socialism, or many issues on which those who accept the name are divided among them- selves. I shall employ one of these differences as a means of dividing the topic for purposes of exposition. We have on the one hand the philanthropic type of socialism, and on the other hand the militant, or scientific type of socialism. This distinction is not an absolute one. It would be absurd to contend that the socialism of Kingsley or Proudhon was in no sense influenced by science; and it would be still more absurd to say that the followers of Karl Marx are not in the least actuated by the love of men. But there is a great dif- ference of motive and temper of mind between socialists of these two types; a difference great enough in the heat of partisan conflict to make them enemies instead of allies.^ 1 In addition to the above we may mention three other lines of cleavage: (i) that between the advocates of a national centralization of the means of pro- duction, and the advocates of its local ownership by the commune, town- ship, etc.; (2) that between those who advocate distribution according to needs ("From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs") and those who advocate distribution proportionally to social contribution in the shape of labor, skill, etc.; (3) that between the orthodox Marxians or advocates of revolutionary class-war, and the "Revisionists," "Reformists," "Fabians " or opportunists. SOCIALISM 89 I. PHILANTHROPIC SOCIALISM I. Its Ethical Basis. Philanthropic socialism is to be re- garded as a sequel to the French Revolution. Its birth- place is France, where its first exponents were Saint-Simon and Fourier, who flourished just after the Napoleonic era. Its first English exponent was Robert Owen, a contemporary of Saint-Simon and Fourier. Since these early days it has been merely the most radical wing of the whole democratic and philanthropic movement, in which the principles of the French Revolution and of primitive Christianity have been applied to modern industrial conditions. Like the French Revolution it is dogmatic in temper, and it rests upon sub- stantially the same ethical axioms. Man, however humble his station and attainments, is fundamentally innocent and deserving. The evils of life are curable evils because they spring not from human nature itself, but from the existing social system. The heart of man is sound. The sentiment which moves these reformers is not the hopelessly sorrowing conviction of man's depravity, but a zealous compassion which, regarding man as the unfortunate victim of circum- stance, proposes to rescue him and restore him to his native dignity and happiness. There is a tendency to regard the simpler and homelier things as better, for being less tainted by the vicious institutions which man has inflicted on him- self. So this tendency finds points of contact not only with Rousseau, but also with revivals of primitive Christianity like that of Tolstoi. This last motive finds expression in the view that manual labor, or the tilling of the soil, is both more innocent and more noble than the artificially elaborated operations of the broker or corporation lawyer. Indeed I believe that the same view has something to do with social- istic dogma that physical labor is the true source of economic value, that the worth of a commodity in terms of money is simply a measure of the physical exertion put into it. Socialism of this type is of course revolutionary in that it proposes a thorough-going social reconstruction, and in that this reconstruction is to be brought about by the protest and 90 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS assertion of those who most need it. But its leaders have been as a rule men who were acting on behalf of others, rather than on their own behalf. They have not been men with a grievance, embittered by oppression or misfortune, but rather men of heart moved to an ardent championship of the rights of others. So their dominant motives have been those of compassion and benevolence rather than those of resentment and hostility. Many socialists of this type have been simply reformers or Christian ministers, adopting socialism as a method of poor reUef or other social service. With this attitude of pity and affection for the unfortunate, there has not infrequently been mingled something of that feehng of paternal indulgence which the more self-respecting among the unfortunate so strongly resent. 2. Emphasis on the Economic Motive. But, you may well ask, if this be socialism, what is the difference between philanthropic sociaUsm and philanthropy in general? In my haste to expound the philanthropy of it I have so far omitted the socialism. Let me therefore state at once that the sociahsm of it lies in its preoccupation with the economic or industrial aspect of life. The evils which claim attention are economic evils, and the remedies which are proposed are economic remedies. These economic evils are new evils resulting from the great industrial revolution of modern times. The facts are vividly present to all of us; and the causes scarcely less so. The passing of feudalism tended to drive the peasants off the land. The voyages of discovery opened trade routes and developed world markets. Most important of all, modern science and invention led to the factory system in which industry is concentrated and mechanized. The social con- sequences followed inevitably: the congestion of population in large manufacturing cities; the wage system; the massing of capital in the hands of a few; the absolute control of in- dustry and of all who depend on industry by those who con- trol the capital. Thus there came into being a new tyranny and a new slavery. The new tyrant was the owner of the means of SOCIALISM 91 production, who could fix wages and hire or dismiss his em- ployees as he saw fit. The new slave was the wage-earner, too poor and too ignorant to find alternative means of liveli- hood; and so at the mercy of those who paid him for his labor, but paid him as little as possible and employed him only so long as they saw fit. Serfs had been bound to the soil with a guarantee of permanence and sustenance. Body slaves had been the property of their owner, who had therefore had a selfish reason for treating them as well as his other domesti- cated animals. But the hired laborer was a tool to be used or misused, and flung aside as convenience or caprice might dictate. The new urban life brought new aggravations of poverty in^he shape of unsanitary housing. The helpless- ness of the wage-earner cut him off from enjoying the bene- fits of that very wealth and material progress to which he was contributing. He lived in what was called an era of civilization, and he belonged to what were called civilized nations; but this civilization was not for him. Huddled to- gether miserably with the masses of his fellows he supported this civilization on his shoulders, but himself lived in a dark under- world which its light and warmth never reached. As a whole man was not more miserable than formerly; all in all he was less so. But he was miserable in a new way; and the spectacle of his misery aroused new emotions and new plans for his relief. Laveleye, the Belgian economist of the last century, expressed this as follows: "The message of the eighteenth century to man was: 'Thou shalt cease to be the slave of nobles and despots who oppress thee; thou art free and sovereign.' But the problem of our times is: ' It is a grand thing to be free and sovereign, but how is it that the sovereign often starves? How is it that those who are held to be the source of power often cannot, even by hard work, provide themselves with the necessaries of life? ' " ^ The new evil being economic, the remedy must be eco- nomic. The root of the evil was the control of industry by ^ Quoted frc«n E. de Laveleye: "Communism," Contemporary Review, March, 1890, by Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution, p. 4. Cf. also H. George; Progress and Poverty, Introduction. 92 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS a few capitalists, who were legally entrenched behind the institution of private property. The cure lay in breaking this control by transferring the ownership of the means of production to the community as a whole, or to the workers themselves. In this way, it was believed, men's economic status, like their political status, might be equalized; and all men be enabled to enjoy the blessings which the genius and invention of man had now added to the natural resources of the earth. In all this you will recognize orthodox humanitarianism applied to new conditions. It makes a new diagnosis of human misery, and advocates a new remedy. But it is not consciously revolutionary in its ethical ideals, nor is it ani- mated by any irreconcilable hostilities. It aims at a decent Christian reform of existing evils. It thinks of the lot of the human individual and seeks to ameUorate it. This sobriety and traditionalism in the moral temper of socialism appears, for example, in this paragraph written by J. Ramsay Mac- donald, the former leader of the Labor Party in England. "Socialism is the creed of those who, recognizing that the community exists for the improvement of the individual and for the maintenance of liberty, and that the control of the economic circumstances of life means the control of life itself, seek to build up a social organization which will include in its activities the management of those economic instruments such as land and industrial capital that cannot be left safely m the hands of in- dividuals. This is Socialism. It is an application of mutual aid to politics and economics. And the Socialist end is liberty, the liberty of which Kant thought when he proclaimed that every man should be regarded as an end in himself and not as a means to another man's end. The means and the end cannot be separated. Socialism proposes a change in social mechanism, but justifies it as a means of extending human liberty. Social organization is the condition, not the antithesis, of mdividual liberty." ^ This author is evidently, as an Englishman, concerned to reconcile socialism with individualism; and so to defend it against such attacks as Spencer had made upon "State ^ The Socialist Movement, p. xi. SOCIALISM 93 Socialism," as a union of capitalism and political tyranny.^ But the same ethical traditionalism, the same humane and charitable spirit and the same individualism appear in the writings of the great French socialist Jaures, who was so tragically assassinated early in the war. "In the nation, therefore, the rights of all individuals are guaranteed, to-day, to-morrow and for ever. If we transfer what was once the property of the capitalist class to the national com- munity, we do not do this to make an idol of the nation, or to sacrifice to it the liberty of the individual. No, we do it that the nation may serve as a common basis for all individual activities. Social rights, national rights, are only the geometric locus of the rights of all individuals." ^ Such is socialism in its broader and more ethical sense, comprising men of every degree of dissent from the harsher and stricter teachings of Karl Marx, comprising even benevo- lent middle-class socialists, Protestant Christian socialists, Catholic socialists, or Tolstoyan mystics, and affiliating them with the whole army of radicals that is fighting for the con- summation of social democracy. n. MILITANT OR SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM I. General Exposition. Militant or scientific socialism is a sect with a founder and a bible. The founder is Hein- rich Karl Marx, who lived in Germany from 1818 to 1883. The bible is Das Kapitaly published in 1867. Karl Marx is sometimes said to be an Hegelian. He was such much in the sense that Robert Ingersoll was a Christian. In other words, happening to be brought up as a HegeHan, that was the philosophy which he revolted from. Marx wrote at the time when the Hegelian school was breaking up in the wave of reaction against romanticism and idealism. It was an age of realism, materialism and disillusionment. Those of Hegelian training who exhibited this new tendency were said to constitute the ** Hegelian Left." They utterly rejected * Cf. Man versus the State, and the controversy with Laveleye, in the Con- temporary Review, 1885. * Jean Jaures: Studies in Socialism, English Translation (1906), p. 9. 94 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS SOCIALISM 95 the spiritual part of the teaching, while retaining its histori- cal method, its emphasis on the conflict of social forces, and something of the dogmatic, rationalistic temper of the master himself. The teachings of Karl Marx have been modified or re- interpreted by his followers, but they still remain as the great germinating intellectual force in the movement. There are said to be three main teachings: (i) the doctrine of ''surplus value;" (2) the doctrine of class war; and (3) the doctrine of "economic determinism.'' The first of these is a technical economic doctrine. Labor, according to this doctrine, is the source of whatever value a commodity possesses; but the laborer gets only a small fraction of it, the rest, the ''surplus value," being appropriated by the capitalist. Practically this means that the socialist is going to distribute wealth among the workers, who have, as he thinks, created it. As a theory it has connections with the teachings of Ricardo and the British economists, and is an important phase in the development of economic science proper; but we have no con- cern with it here except in so far as I have suggested its con- nection with the old revolutionary idea of the native worth of man. The second of these doctrines involves ideas which must await a fuller and more independent treatment. The doc- trine of class war involves the Darwinian idea of struggle for existence; and also the newer vitaHstic idea that struggle and heroic adventure is an end in itself. These ideas are too im- portant to introduce incidentally here, and so we must post- pone this phase of Marxian socialism until we shall have filled in the necessary philosophical background. It must suffice here to point out that the tone and animus of Marxian socialism is largely due to this doctrine. The Marxian so- cialist is irreconcilable, sometimes even truculent. Trot- zky, for example, appears from his recent writings to be an orthodox Marxian; and you scarcely think of him as a pecu- liarly gentle, humble or tender-minded soul. These men propose to spoil the Egyptians. They confidently expect to fight for their class and to expropriate the present owners of 4 wealth, the bourgeoisie^ by force. There is a trace, I think, of that feeling which sometimes expresses itself in the hope that the present war will not end until the Germans have known what it is to have the war on their own soil. The dispossessed proletariate are not unwilling that the enemy class should know what it is to suffer. These militant so- cialists are not sentimental pacificists. They do not in the least shrink from the rough usages of war, or from the exer- cise of force. They want not peace, but a different war in which their fellow-workers of all nations shall unite against the common capitalist enemy of all nations. From the be- ginning the Marxian faction have shown something of the hardness of the uncompromising sectarians, like that, for example, of Christian fanatics, Puritan or Catholic. Thus Lasalle, who believed in political action, who in 1863 founded the Universal German Working Man's Association, and who is chiefly responsible for the Social Democratic move- ment in Germany, taught the workmen to regard them- selves as the "ruling class," and urged them to cultivate the stern virtues appropriate to their superior might. 2. Economic Determinism. But it is the third of the Marxian doctrines that I wish more especially to emphasize in this context. "Economic determinism" means briefly that the revolution by which the proletariat shall dispossess and supersede the bourgeoisie, is necessitated by the opera- tion of irresistible and predictable economic forces. This doctrine is a conscious expression of the spirit of science.^ The Marxians pride themselves on their disillusionment. They regard the philanthropic socialists as mere sentimen- taHsts, dreamers, makers of Utopias. They regard them- selves not as reformers but rather as men of firm intellects who know the world, and are preparing themselves and others for impending events. 1 Cf. Kirkup: History of Socialism, 5th edition, pp. loo-ioi. 2 Professor G. P. Adams ("The Philosophical Basis of Socialism," University of California Chronicle, Vol. xv, No. I) speaks of socialism as "the conscious synthesis of radical democracy and natural science." Cf. Ferri, Socialism and Positive Science, 96 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS This school proposes to adopt not only the scientific method, but the physical view of the world. "For Hegel," says Marx, "the thought process, which he trans- forms into an independent subject under the name idea, is the creator of the real, which forms only its external manifestation. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material transformed and translated in the human brain." ^ Since the historical point of view of Hegel is retained, there results a materiahstic philosophy of history. As we have already seen, various materialistic philosophies of history have appeared in modern times, such as the physio- graphic or ethnological. With the Marxians the economic forces are fundamental, and furnish the clue to all great his- torical changes. There is a famous dictum that runs, ''Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are." The Marxian says, ''Tell me under what economic system a society lives, and I will explain its entire civilization." "Morality, law, politics are only superstructures, effects of the economic structure, they vary with it from one clime to another, from one century to another century."^ Even what we ordinarily call the laws of economic life, those forces with which orthodox economic theory deals, hold only for the present industrial arrangement, and do not enable us to predict the future. Human nature itself, with those selfish, acquisitive and emulative impulses which are commonly invoked to explain economic phenomena, is itself the result of the economic situation in which a man finds himself. The "economic man" is not a constant, but a variable, varying with changes in the general social forms of economic process. These last, since they determine the individual's education and his opportunity, absolutely pre- scribe what manner of man he shall be. This insistence on the priority of economic causes in life, 1 Translated by Kirkup, History of Socialism, 5th edition, p. 151. 2 Ferri: Socialism and Positive Science, English translation, sth edition, p. 82. Cf. Friedrich Engels, in his book against Duhring; Marx: Critique of Political Economy (1859); Th. Rogers: The Economic Interpretation of History; A. Loria: The Economic Basis of Society. SOCIALISM 97 leads the Marxian socialist to believe with the philanthropic socialist that present economic conditions are the root of all evil. "As long," says Ferri, "as the economic basis of poHtical, legal, and moral life had not been demonstrated by positive evidence, the aspirations of most men towards a social amelioration were directed vaguely to the demand for, and the partial conquest of, some accessory means, such as freedom of worship, political suffrage, public instruction, etc.; and certainly I have no wish to deny the great utility of these conquests. But the sancta sanctorum always remained impenetrable to the eyes of the crowd, and as economic power continued to be the privilege of the few, all the conquests, all the concessions, were without real basis, separated as they were from the solid and fructifying foundation which can alone give life and durable force. Now that socialism has shown, even before Marx, but never with so much scientific precision, that individual appropriation, private ownership of land and of the means of pro- duction, is the vital point of the question, the problem is laid down in precise terms in the consciousness of contemporary humanity." ^ But the distinctive quality of Marxian socialism appears not in the spirit of reform, but rather in the conviction that man is the puppet of irresistible forces. This quality appears strikingly in the following paragraphs by the same writer: "Thanks to it (the great Marxian principle), the annals of primi- tive humanity, barbarous and civilized, cease from being a capri- cious and superficial kaleidoscope of individual episodes, and form a grand and fateful drama, determined — consciously or uncon- sciously, in its most intimate details as in its catastrophes — by economic conditions j which form the physical and indispensable basis of life, and by the struggle of the classes to conquer and pre- serve the economic forces on which all the others necessarily depend. . . . The present organization of private ownership with- out any limit to family inheritance and personal accumulation; the continual and always more complete application of scientific discoveries to men's work in the transformation of matter, the telegraph and steam, the always extending migrations of men — cause the existence of a family of peasants, of workmen, of small tradesmen, to be united by invisible but tenacious threads to the * E. Ferri: op. cit., pp. 65-66. 98 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS Ufe of the world, and the crop of coffee, of cotton, or of com in the most distant countries has its effect on all parts of the civilized world, just as the decrease or increase of solar spots forms a co- efficient of periodical agricultural crises and directly influences the lot of millions of men. This grand conception of ' the unity of physical forces' ... or of universal soUdarity, throws far from it the childish conception which makes free will and the individual the cause of human phenomena." ^ History is a succession of economic revolutions, each rendered inevitable whenever existing legal institutions have come to impede rather than facilitate production. "The method of production of the material things of life settles generally the social, political and spiritual process of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their mode of exist- ence, but on the contrary their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage in their development the material productive forces of society come into opposition with the existing conditions of production or, which is only a legal expression for it, with the relations of property within which they have hitherto moved. From forms of development of the forces of production, these relations change into fetters. Then enters an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the whole gigantic superstructure (the legal and political organizations to which certain forms of consciousness correspond) is more slowly or more quickly overthrown." ^ Such a revolution is now impending. '' With the constantly diminishing number of capitalist magnates who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of this process of transforma- tion, the mass of misery, oppression, servitude, deterioration, exploitation," is constantly increasing among the working classes. This develops their spirit of revolt; while at the same time they are being ^'taught, united and organized by the mechanism of the capitalist process ^ of production itself.'' When the class-consciousness and discipline of the 1 Ferri: op. cit., pp. 62-63, 68. . . , r. -n r 2 Karl Marx: A Contribution to the Criticism of Political Economy, Preface; quoted by Bernstein: Evolutionary Socialism, English translation, pp. 7-8- The reader will note the resemblance of this view to that of Durkheim as cited above, p. 85 . SOCIALISM 99 workers is sufficiently ripe, the control of the means of pro- duction passes into their hands, the transaction being simpli- fied by the steadily diminishing number of the capitalists in whom this power is concentrated. Many Marxians have come to see that the explanation of history is not so simple. Thus Bernstein, for example, recognizes that the division between the classes is not so clean cut, so unambiguous, as Marx would have us believe. But despite these doctrinal amendments in matters of detail the essential quality of Marxian socialism unmistakably persists, and still characterizes those who, like the Christians of the monastic orders, stand as the models of sectarian zeal and refuse to dilute their doctrines or compromise their standards. The Marxian is known by two things: by a cer- tain ruggedness, militancy, and harshness of temper, asso- ciated with his doctrine of force; and by his thoroughly scientific, secular, disillusioned and hard-headed acceptance of what he believes to be the facts. 3. Opposition to Religion. Further confirmation of this fundamentally naturalistic motive in Marxian socialism is found in its anti-religious bias. This is doubtless in part due to the fact that religion being institutional and conservative is identified with that vicious existing system which the economic revolution is to sweep away. But there is the same suspicion of religion as emotional and unproved that characterizes the scientist. There is the same secularism. Religion has taught men to regard the evils of life as bless- ings in disguise or to bear with wretchedness and injustice here below in the expectation of compensation and reward in another life. But the socialist adopts that natural scale of values according to which a full stomach is better than an empty one. He accepts no *' spiritual '' substitute but wants the solid diet which the natural organism craves. And he does not propose to sacrifice his real chances in this world for more or less speculative chances in another. Thus Ferri, who is especially explicit on this topic, remarks that "The disappearance of the faith in something beyond when the 100 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS poor wiU become the elect of the Lord, and when the miseries o! this 'valley of tears' will find an eternal compensation in Paradise, gives more vigor to the desire of a Uttle 'terrestrial Paradise' down here for the unhappy and the less fortunate who are the most "1 numerous. The same author, though, like any anti-clerical, he con- demns the organized church for holding the people in super- stitious subjection, nevertheless has no fear of the traditional religion. ''Scientific Culture " will soon extinguish it. "It is because sociaUsm knows and foresees that religious beUefs, whether we consider them as pathological phenomena of human psychology or as useless phenomena of moral incrustation, must waste away before the extension of even elementary scientific culture; it is for that reason that sociaUsm does not feel the neces- sity of 'fighting especially these same religious beUefs which are destined to disappear. It has taken this attitude even though it knows that the absence, or lessening, of the beUef in God is one of the most powerful factors in its extension because the pnests of all reUgions have been, in all phases of history, the most powerful allies of the governing classes in keeping the masses bent under the yoke, thanks to religious fascination, as the tamer keeps wild beasts under his whip." Similariy, Ferri takes a tolerant and contemptuous attitude toward the Catholic socialism of his day; willing to have its assistance for purposes of propaganda *4n the rural distncts," but confident that the scientific socialism of it will remain after the unscientific Catholicism of it has died away.^ » op. cit., pp. 48-49. In the same paragraph the author declares his adher- ence to the religion of humanity, such as is described below, pp. iii-nS- * Ferri: op. cit., pp. $0-$^' CHAPTER IX DEMOCRACY AND HUMANITY I. SCIENCE AND DEMOCRACY I. Social Democracy and the Cult of Science. Although democracy is by no means a product of our age, it has nevertheless recently received such great accessions of strength as to make it indubitably one of the great charac- teristic ideas of our age. It has spread wide its conquest without in the least abating its extremes t claims. It should be understood that I do not refer to democracy as a form of government merely, but rather as an ideal of equality; to what is called ^'social democracy'* as contrasted with a merely political democracy. That tendency of our age which has been working most profoundly for the growth of democracy is, I am convinced, that same scientific ten- dency to which I have already ascribed so much influence. Science, as we have seen, is essentially without reverence for what is established or in any sense privileged. It pro- poses to prove all things, and to accept nothing merely because it is on the ground and already enjoys the respect of mankind. Science is then by implication antagonistic to social privilege, or to political authority, wherever that authority rests on the past or on a sentiment of respect for superiors. A scientific age is in its general temper an age congenial to radicalism; and democracy, at least in the present historical context, is a phase of radicalism. Every scientist, furthermore, is himself a ^^ self-made man." He owes his strictly scientific attainment to his own efforts and to the endowment with which nature has equipped him. Whatever elevation in life he reaches is not an arti- ficial status created by institutions or traditions, but a measure of solid achievement. The scientist, therefore, re- lOI I02 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS spects man for what he is rather than for his class or station. The cult of science carries with it, just as it did formerly m the Eighteenth Century, a glorification of man's intellectual faculties- and this in turn carries with it the suggestion of human equahty. Not that men are equal in intellectual attainment, any more than in wealth or poHtical power. But while wealth and power are altogether products of social organization, intellectual attainment rests upon some- thing inherent in the man himself. And with the capacity for knowledge, the germ of reason, all men are endowed. The more this capacity is glorified, the greater the im- portance which is attached to that in which men are alike, instead of that in which they differ. Over and above this general regard for the intellect as in- herently and universally human, there is an affinity between democracy and the specifically scientific type of intellec- tual attainment. It is not accidental that the growth of democracy has been associated with the dechne of the classical curriculum and ideal of culture. I do not say this in praise of democracy. It is perhaps one of the unfortu- nate by-products of democracy, of which there are undoubt- edly many. But the classically educated person belonged essentially to the caste of the gentleman. His educational attainments were accomplishments which were not judged by standards of utility, but which were sufficiently justified by their being agreeable and decorous. The classical edu- cation was an education for leisure, for peace, for perfection; not a sharpening of the tools of trade. But science is m- controvertibly useful. Even the workman, who has no leisure and who instead of perfecting himself must fit lum- self in where he can make a living, — even he should find time for it. The vogue of science, then, has stimulated popular education. It has met the demand for an intel- lectual pabulum that may be freely and pubhcly distrib- uted, and yet be a proper working diet for the jnasses of men who must live by the sweat of the brow rather than by the nobility of its proportions and dimensions. On the other hand science tends to equalize men in so DEMOCRACY AND HUMANITY 103 far as it makes them an object of study. For science, all men belong to one animal species. Attention is directed to the common characteristics of the species, rather than to the exceptional endowment, advantages or circumstances of the individual. For the biologist, king and peasant, noble and commoner, capitalist and laborer are all so many organisms, similarly equipped with muscular, circulatory, respiratory, nutritive and nervous systems, and by such equipment adapted to a physical environment and to the struggle for physical existence. For the psychologist men of every social station are primarily minds of the same type, similarly equipped with sense capacities, memory, association and the power of thought. Even a scientific sociology or political science, however much attention it may give to the causes by which societies are internally differentiated, by which some men are exalted and others debased, does not encourage a sentiment of reverence to any actually existing instances of eminence. Science is no re- specter of persons. Its task is to reveal the common clay, the identical mechanism, the general forces, which underlie the superficial pageantry of life. 2. Social Democracy and the Results of Science. When we turn to the results of science, rather than to its general attitude, we again find a tendency to promote the growth of democracy. Thus the philanthropic regard for the unfortunate — for the poor, the sick, the ignorant — has received a fresh impetus from the successes of science. There has developed a scientific in the place of a merely senti- mental philanthropy. Poor relief is based on economic or psychological principles; sickness is attacked systematically by preventive methods of sanitation or hygiene; insanity, feeble-mindedness, maladaptation, even criminaUty, are at- tacked by the new methods of mental pathology; education is standardized by psychology and distributed in accordance with principles of administrative efficiency and social policy. Philanthropy or humanitarianism thus organized and directed by science is nevertheless as much as ever an in- terest in equality. It is an interest in those who have 104 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDE.\LS fallen below a certain minimum of well-being; it is a pur- pose to raise them to that minimum rather than to raise the maximum higher. Though there may be no express hostility to the more developed cultural activities, never- theless the motive of philanthropy is to bring up those who have fallen behind, even if it be necessary to halt the van- guard of human attainment. So long as there is a single human being starving, every other consideration is to be sub- ordinated to getting that man fed. It will be time to think of perfection — such is the feeling of the philanthropist — when those who are in deadly peril have been brought to a place of safety. The effect of such a sentiment, whether intended or not, is to retard the head of the column, accel- erate the rear, and so to bring more and more of marching humanity abreast into line. The scientific movement has undoubtedly strengthened this sentiment, and rendered it more effective. Above all, as we have se^n, it has tended to convert a merely emotional and intermittent philan- thropy into a broad and consistent policy of social amelio- ration. Problems of human welfare are now regarded as community problems, to be undertaken by responsible authorities. Instead of the individual hero who takes off his coat and jumps in because he happens to be passing by, we have the organized relief, or better still, the organized prevention, of general types of human malady. However the consequences may be obscured or depre- cated by monarchs such as those of the Central Powers, this wholesale and methodical relief points straight to social democracy. The full consequences may be postponed by methods which highly centralized military governments know so well how to use. But it is absolutely inevitable that when men reach a certain level of emancipation from igno- rance and poverty, they should insist upon going all the way. There is no safe foundation for social aristocracy or political absolutism save the helpless misery and blindness of the masses of the people. Help them to their feet, and they will soon help themselves. The results of science have conduced to democracy, not DEMOCRACY AND HUMANITY 105 only through promoting scientific philanthropy, but also, and perhaps more profoundly, through causing that indus- trial revolution which we have recently considered in con- nection with socialism. Modern industrialism has resulted primarily from the use of machinery, in production and in transportation. Modern industrialism is mainly respon- sible for two great class-movements, that of the bourgeoisiey and that of the laboring-classes, skilled or unskilled. The bourgeoisie, the class which has exploited the new industrial opportunity and amassed unprecedented wealth, has on the whole been liberal in its social and political ideals. It fought and won the great battle against hereditary privilege. It gave prestige to commercial activities and so opened the opportunity of social recognition to every participant in industry, whether high or in the scale. Even the laborer might regard himself as eligible, provided only he had the luck and the talent to get to the top. Thus there developed the self-made magnate, whom the mass of his envious in- feriors regarded as one of themselves, distinguished only by the degree of his success. But such successes are too rare and difficult, for the vast majority of mankind too hopelessly unattainable, to satisfy the demand for equality. Bourgeoisie liberalism becomes in turn the object of attack for new and more radical demo- cratic movements. For these also the industrial system has been largely responsible. For it has mobilized labor; bring- ing it together in great congested masses, forcing it to act solidly in its own interest, and fusing it emotionally by common grievances, resentments and ambitions. Thus to- day we face, as a direct outgrowth of modern industrialism, a formidable movement to pull down the whole superstruc- ture of society by the expropriation of the propertied classes and the distribution of wealth among those who, not having had it, most eagerly and most bitterly covet it. 3. Science and Political Democracy. Over and above these causes by which science has tended to promote the idea of social democracy, there is a further cause which has tended especially to promote political democracy. It is in io6 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS DEMOCRACY AND HUMANITY keeping with the experimental and matter-of-fact temper of science that institutions should be judged by their utiUty. Nothing is to be supported merely because it has antiquity or prestige. It must justify itself by its works. Applied to the state, this means that the state is a mechanism con- trived to serve a certain use, and to be scrapped whenever it proves obsolete or uneconomical. The interest in govern- ment tends, then, to take the form of increasing its useful- ness, more especially on the administrative side. No gov- ernment can hope to stand which does not do its work well, and make at least a show of service to its constituents.^ The German government has, as we shall see, an inde- pendent ground of appeal in the religious patriotism by which Germans make an idol of the state. This is a wholly different matter, to be explained only in terms of a peculiar philosophical tradition. But even the German government depends on its efficiency, on the widespread belief among its constituents that they are well policed, well transported, well defended, and well insured. Now in Germany, as elsewhere, the logic of this sort of appeal is unmistakable. It means that the ultimate appeal is to the constituents, to the people, whose individual welfare is affected by acts of government. It implies that the government is their agent, whose services should be supervised, or even in extreme cases dispensed with altogether. But this is in principle not only responsible government, it is democracy. It means that the court of appeal in which ultimate authority is vested, is that great pubUc court made up of all those whose interests are at stake. It means that even the Emperor William II is responsible to this court, and not merely, as he would himself apparently prefer, to Almighty God. II. THE GREAT SOCIETY Cosmopolitanism, humanitarianism, and world-religions have from early times kept alive the idea that there are bonds between man and man more fundamental and more significant than those of state or race. But this idea is characteristic of to-day, not only in its spread and in the I 1 107 degree of conviction with which it is held, but in the real- istic and practical meaning which attaches to it. In our day the world-wide humanity is not a sentiment, an ideal, or a dogma; it is a fact and a policy. Mankind is one great web of inter-related interests; and the future peace and well-being of the world depends on accepting this fact, and shaping our moral judgments and organized institu- tions to conform to it. In short, the ^' Great Society," as Mr. Graham Wallas calls it, the society of all men, extended through space and enduring through time, is a simple mat- ter of fact, discovered and in large part created in the age to which we belong. I. Economic Internationalism. I propose first to con- sider internationalism in the socialistic sense, since that will at once bring into view one of the most important aspects of the Great Society, namely, its economic aspect. The socialist movement was consciously international as early as 1864, which saw the inauguration of the ^'Inter- national Workingmen's Association." This having expired in 1873, it was eventually replaced in 1889 by the so-called "New International." The resolutions passed at the three congresses held at Amsterdam, Stuttgart and Copenhagen between 1900 and 1910 have been thus summarized by J. Ramsay Macdonald: "Militarism has been condemned and a citizen army approved instead of a conscript army where that is in vogue; international strife has been declared to be the result of capitalistic rivalry; imperialism and an acquiring of colonies have been opposed on the ground that they are only a form of exploitation of the weaker races and the fruits of the struggle in which capitalism is engaged to expand markets at any cost. A reasoned policy of co-operation between Socialists and trade-union bodies has been drafted and ... a detailed series of propositions laying down the conditions under which the emigration and immigration of workmen should proceed has been carried. A sketch code of international labor laws has been agreed upon, and measures dealing with unemploy- ment discussed and accepted. . . . Socialist unity in the various countries has been recommended, and in addition to these more general subjects, resolutions dealing with important questions of io8 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS international policy, which were before the public when the various Congresses sat, have also been passed." ^ If we analyze this summary, we shall, I think, find three motives at work. In the first place, as it is expressed in the Communist Manifesto, drawn by Marx and Engels in 1848, *'The proletarian has no fatherland." The socialist divides men class-wise rather than nation-wise. If you sup- pose vertical lines to divide nation from nation, you can draw a horizontal line which intersects all the others, and which divides the capitalistic and propertied classes from the laboring classes. To the socialist it is this world-wide horizontal cleavage which is important, and in order to widen it and strengthen his own class against the enemy class, he would like to get rid altogether of the vertical divisions, which confuse the workingman's mind and divide his allegiance. He therefore does everything in his power to diminish state loyalty; and opposes international rival- ries and war as the most powerful means by which such loyalty is intensified. In the second place, he attacks international war on the ground that it is waged in the interest of the capitalist classes. The masses of the people are induced to fight by an unscrupulous appeal to their patriotic sentiments. But behind the more idealistic national purpose which moves the people, there is the struggle for colonial expansion or control of world-markets, induced by the greed of capital- ists and waged exclusively for their profit. Finally, the military establishment itself is the means by which the masses are held in subjection and deprived of their just rights. The pretext of national defense or na- tional honor is used to justify the creation of great armies and navies, and these are then used in the name of unity and order to preserve that economic status quo, from which the capitalist class derives its unfair advantage over the workers. Over and against this internationalism of labor, which is promoted by the socialists, there is also an internationalism ^ J. Ramsay Macdonald: The Socialist Movement ^ pp. 24^241. DEMOCRACY AND HUMANITY 109 of capital which is an inevitable outgrow^th of international trade. Though the propertied classes of different nations may to some extent regard themselves as rivals, their inter- dependence is more notable than their conflict of interest. Indeed this is so emphatically the case that it goes far to discredit the charge that commercial motives have been directly responsible for the war. That all buyers and sell- ers, all producers and consumers the world over, are parts of one system which is affected as a whole by prosperity or depression, is a commonplace of economic history. And where there is economic interdependence, some sort of social organization is sure to follow. This principle is well illus- trated by Royce's account of the relation of public order in California to the development of methods of gold-mining. Panning was the method of the isolated, wandering and irre- sponsible individual. The cradle involved the co-operation of several men, the *'long Tom " and the sluice of more and more, until finally there grew up a normal community of interdependent parts in which it was to the interest of each that all should work peacefully together according to some definite plan.^ We may say that the world as a whole is now tending to form such a community, in which all men shall co-operate under the rule of one system of law. The economic factor in the Great Society is its most solid factor. It has played much the same role in the propaganda for world-peace that considerations of health and efficiency have played in the Prohibition movement. It is the un- sentimental factor, that appeals to the hard-headed man of affairs. But over and above this we have two other factors, neither of them distinctively contemporary, but both operating to-day more powerfully than ever before. The one of these is the moral factor, the other the cultural factor. 2. The Humanitarian Motive. The moral factor is the spread of the humanitarian ethics. In principle, humani- tarianism has never recognized any boundaries of state or It responds to suffering or to need wherever these * Cf. J. Royce: California, American Commonwealth Series, Ch. IV. race. no THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS are felt, and whoever feels them. It has always been the special interest of humanitarianism to relieve those who are in extremities, who are abused, excluded, unprivileged. The missionary's interest in the heathen is a case in point. Now this interest has found new objects in our day. It cannot, I think, be proved that men have become more compassionate than formerly, but there is now more oppor- tunity for compassion than there was. This is not because there is more suffering or need, but because in these days we know more about what need and suffering there is. This is one of the big alterations of sentiment that can, I think, be attributed mainly to increased communication between man and man the world round. When there is a flood in China or a famine in India, when women and chil- dren are murdered in Belgium or in Serbia, it is known to every rural storekeeper in Vermont and to every ranger in Texas. He can read about it and he can see pictures of it. So the natural human reactions of pity or of resentment against the abuse of one's kind, find new objects in every part of the world. Mankind are consciously fellow-suffer- ers, fellows in adversity, as never before in the world's history. 3. The Cultural Motive. By the cultural factor I have in mind as more particularly characteristic of this era, the cosmopohtanism of science. Science has always been asso- ciated with cosmopohtanism from the time of Alexandrian Hellenism down to the present time. Scientists regard themselves as a brotherhood in which social and pohtical distinctions are obHterated. They feel themselves to be working for a common truth, for all men, and for all times.' It is true that our own day has witnessed a tendency to regard science, in so far as it is an instrument of commerce or war, as a national asset. Industrial and military inven- tions are cherished with great secrecy and an attempt is made to possess them exclusively. But no great invention has long remained a secret or the exclusive possession of any nation. Sooner or later they all go into the great common fund of material civilization of which all men are DEMOCRACY AND HUMANITY III ! i the beneficiaries. And in any case this taint of nationalism infects only the applied sciences. In pure science the aim is impersonal, the technique is impersonal, and the code among those who labor in this field is one of devotion to a common and humane object. The applications of science, like all instruments, take on the character of the ends for which they are used. But the cult of science, the spirit of science, the sentiments and ideals to which the vogue of science has given rise, have all contributed to the solidarity of mankind. The ideas of democracy and of the Great Society are undoubtedly the greatest moving ideas of our time. No leader can hope to-day to stir the deepest moral sentiments of the world without speaking in their name. We shall have to do with them again, when we undertake to discuss the conflicting ideals for which the belligerent nations are to-day contending. But at this point I wish to pass on to the religious turn, which, as might be expected, has been given to this vision of a united humanity. III. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY Though man the individual has rarely been regarded as a suitable object of worship, and then only when some one individual has been separated from his fellows by a great interval of power and prestige, man as a race, as the con- tinuous, all-comprehensive and developing social life, readily takes on the dignity and exalted status that religion re- quires for its object. The development of the idea of the solidarity of mankind has thus brought into being a new religious cult, sometimes not inappropriately called "soci- olatry." The chief founder of this cult was Auguste Comte, the French positivist whose acquaintance we have already made. Comte's positivism had a considerable influence in Eng- land, through Littre and Pierre Lafitte, Comte's French disciples, and through the influential circle of Mill, Harriet Martineau, George Henry Lewes and George Eliot. Most of these more distinguished thinkers rejected the forms of 112 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS the Comtean religion. But this cult was taken up by Richard Congreve and Frederic Harrison, and has main- tained a somewhat faltering existence for half a century. Its importance lies not in its existence as a particular or- ganization, but as the most self-conscious attempt to create an institutional and ceremonial religion consistent with posi- tivism. It was largely actuated by a disapproval of what was thought to be the insincerity and inconsistency of the Broad Church movement in England (inaugurated by Jow- ett and others), and by a feeling that nature and mystery did not make suitable objects for the religious consciousness. It was necessary to retain religion in all its emotional and social power, but with entire intellectual honesty and clear- mindedness. Let me quote from Frederic Harrison: "Now classes are being swallowed up in the Republic; races and nations are being brought together; industry, science, human- ity are slowly asserting their superiority. The solidarity of Peoples, the Federation of mankind, or what is foreshadowed by such terms, is an idea which grows. ... If we mean by Religion that which makes man more complete, which makes societies united, it is plain that we are more and more converging towards this state." ''The idea of basing a really devotional frame of mind, or any working enthusiasm of a genuine kind, on any negation is truly ludicrous. But to pass from Atheism or the assertion that there is no God — to pure Agnosticism (that you know nothing about God or any other object of worship), or to Evolution or the laws of matter, or infinite differentiation, or the Unknowable, or the Universum, as Strauss calls it, or the Infinite, as some metaphysi- cians say, or the All, or the Good, or any other ideal of the inani- mate world; how utterly hollow is the notion that any real enthu- siasm can be based on this ! . . . This I take to be the one indis- pensable, imperishable, truth of Positivism — the one central point round which everything else may be left to group itself. It holds up to us a Power: human, real, demonstrable, lovable — one that we can feel with, and work for, and learn to understand, who provides for us, and whose good we can promote. It shows us something we can love and be proud to serve, something that can stir all our intellectual efforts, reduce them to system, something DEMOCRACY AND HUMANITY "3 too that can dignify and justify our best exertions. And this something is the same for our whole nature, and it knits together our whole nature in harmony. It is always herCj on earth." "The theological believers say, 'Have faith and all things shall be added unto you!' So we may say, believe in Humanity (no! it is impossible to disbelieve in Humanity) — but habitually come to look at Humanity as the converging point of your whole existence, thoughts, feelings and labor; and all other things may be con- sidered hereafter." ^ Every religion, says the positivist, requires a creed, a code and a cult. Humanity supplies a creed in agreement with science, and requiring no compromise with the intel- lect; it also supplies a code, or ethical program. The cult of positivism is supplied by a new hero worship. The Church Calendar is the "Calendar of Great Men"; the saints are "the prophets, the religious teachers, the founders of creeds, of nations and systems of life; the poets, the thinkers, the artists, kings, warriors, statesmen and rulers; the inventors, the men of science and of all useful arts." These departed heroes, who yet live in their works, are to be reverently remembered on the Saint's days duly ap- pointed for them.2 Even the sacraments may be retained in a new form, in the form of commemorative sermons and ceremonies for " Infancy, Education, Adult Age, Marriage, Choice of a Profession, Maturity, Burial.'' ^ In short, all the wealth of socialized emotions that cluster about religious observance is to be preserved; and is henceforth to be evoked only by objects that enjoy the unqualified sanction of science. Such is the Religion of Humanity in its most explicit and self-conscious form. But the Comtean Church is only a very small part of the religion of humanity. To all whom science has deprived of God, and who yet desire to retain the moral stimulus of religion. Humanity suggests itself as * Frederic Harrison: The Creed of a Layman (1907), pp. 206, 216-218, 226-227. Cf. also Positive Evolution of Religion, Ch. XIII, pp. 237, 238, 241- 242. * Ibid., p. 340; cf. also the same writer's Calendar of Great Men. ' Ibid., p. 52. h 114 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS the most appropriate substitute. Even Nietzsche finds something like religious inspiration in the thought that *^man can henceforth make of himself what he desires"; in the conviction that *^our way goes upward from species to super-species." To all of the positivistic and sociological school of thought this religion has made some appeal. Here, for example, is a characteristic paragraph from Durkheim: "Since the human person is the only thing that touches all hearts, since its glorification is the only end that can be collectively pursued, it cannot fail to acquire in all eyes an exceptional impor- tance. It thus raises itself above all human ends and assumes a religious character. Such an individualism, far from detaching individuals from society, or from every transcendent end, unites them in thought and in the service of the same cause." ^ Frederic Harrison, having been brought up as a Church- man, felt the importance of cult and ritual. But this was not the case with W. K. Clifford, for example. This writer has perhaps expressed the essential inspiration of this re- ligion more strikingly than any recent writer: *'The dim and shadowy outlines of the superhuman deity fade slowly away from before us; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure — of Him who made all Gods and shall unmake them. From the dim dawn of history, and from the inmost depth of every soul, the face of our father Man looks out upon us with the fire of eternal youth in his eyes, and says, ' Before Jehovah was, I am.' " ^ It is highly significant that John Stuart Mill, positivist though he was, and deeply influenced by Comte, neverthe- less was apparently little touched by the Religion of Hu- manity. His *' Three Essays on Religion " barely mention it. But the reason is clear. To MilFs less extravagant and less consistent mind, the essence of religion was metaphysi- cal. Religion was an attempt to establish relations not * Durkheim: Le Suicide, p. 382. Cf. also La Division du Travail Social ^ p. 396. * W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Religion," in Lectures and Essays, Vol. II, p. 243. DEMOCRACY AND HUMANITY 115 with man, but with the deeper causes of nature. In this even the Agnostic was to his mind more nearly right than the Comtean. But Mill did not think a temperate mind need deny God outright even on the evidence of science. There was room for doubt, and this might properly be superseded by faith, since faith was humanly so important. We have here another motive, to which we shall return below. But I want to quote a single paragraph, to illus- trate the difference between the positivism of Mill and that of the orthodox Comteans: "It appears to me that the indulgence of hope with regard to the government of the universe and the destiny of man after death, while we recognize as a clear truth that we have no ground for more than a hope, is legitimate and philosophically defensible. The beneficial effect of such a hope is far from trifling. It makes life and human nature a far greater thing to the feelings, and gives greater strength as well as solemnity to all the sentiments awakened in us by our fellow-creatures and by mankind at large. It allays the sense of that irony in Nature which is so painfully felt when we see the exertions and sacrifices of a life culminating in the formation of a wise and noble mind, only to disappear from the world when the time has just arrived at which the world seems about to begin reaping the benefit of it. . . . Impressions such as these, though not in themselves amounting to what can properly be called a religion, seem to me excellently fitted to aid and fortify that real, though purely human religion, which sometimes calls itself the Religion of Humanity and sometimes that of Duty. To me it seems that human life, small and confined as it is, . . . stands greatly in need of any wider range and greater height of aspiration for itself and its destination, which the exercise of the imagination can yield to it without running counter to the evidence of fact." ^ * Three Essays on Religion, pp. 249, 255-256, 245. See below, pp. 326-330. CHAPTER X EVOLUTIONISM: SPENCER AND DARWIN Evolution is in our day an excessively familiar idea; excessively familiar, because, having been taken over by popular discourse, it has lost most of its definiteness of meaning. Everybody thinks he knows what it means, but scarcely anybody could render an intelligible account of it. The idea has been vulgarized; and the first step in discuss- ing it must be to sharpen its meaning. I. THE CONCEPTION OF EVOLUTION I. The Basal Idea. The most obvious thing about the conception of evolution is that it impHes an interest in the historical or temporal aspect of things. As characteristic of the Nineteenth Century it signifies that in this century as contrasted with the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Cen- turies, men began to think that the past was worth investi- gating. But this is evidently insufficient. The interest of the antiquarian, who studies the past because he finds it picturesque, or merely because it challenges his curiosity, does not suggest evolution. Nor does a knowledge of the mere sequence of events imply any use of this idea.^ One may know, for example, that the mediaeval civilization of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries was followed in the Fifteenth Century by the Renaissance. But this does not mean that the latter evolved from the former. *' Follow after " is not the same as "evolve from." Teniporality and sequence are necessary but evidently not sufiicient. Suppose we add the idea of continuity. This has un- doubtedly played an important role in evolutionary thought. It was once thought, for example, that the crust of the earth had passed through a series of cataclysmic upheavals, of sudden and overwhelming catastrophes, just as the city of ii6 EVOLUTIONISM: SPENCER AND DARWIN 117 f ' i I I San Francisco has been rebuilt from time to time as a result of devastating fires. This view has been superseded by the so-called uniformitarian geology in which the crust of the earth is conceived as having been gradually and smoothly changed through normal forces, like erosion, work- ing steadily over vast periods of time. This new geology with its emphasis on the continuous transformation of the earth's surface, is a part of the general theory of evolution. Or, consider the case of the animal species. The old view was that a sort of zoological garden was planted by God in the beginning, two of each distinct variety. And it was thought that these original species were not only absolutely differ- ent, but immutably fixed, each reproducing its kind. This old Noah's Ark conception of animal creation has been superseded by the view that the differences between animal species are only accumulations of little differences of degree. The modern zoologist tries to arrange animal species not as a mosaic in which differences are heightened by contrast, but as a series in which each term shall differ as slightly as possible from those on either side of it; as we might arrange men according to height, so that while the tallest differed greatly from the shortest, each differed very slightly, almost inappreciably, from his neighbors. Perfect continuity would, of course, mean more than this; it would mean a flow- ing, unbroken change like that from light to shade in a vignetted photograph. This biology has never achieved ; but it is well known that this science has succeeded in interpo- lating little graduated differences all the way from plant- Hke micro-organisms at the bottom to God-like man at the top. But even continuity, I think, is not the essential feature of evolution. If you had a body moving through space at a uniform velocity its changes of position would be con- tinuous, more perfectly continuous, perhaps, than any other natural phenomenon that can be imagined. And yet this would not occur to us as a good example of evolution. The reason would be, I think, that there would be nothing of which we could properly say that it was evolving. In an ii8 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS evolutionary process something must come into existence that did not exist before, and something having a distinct individuality of its own. In the case of animal species each species still retains a certain uniqueness and a certain stability. It is never dissolved wholly into a fluid process of change. It appears, in other words, that discontinuity is scarcely less necessary to our conception than continuity. Something new must come out of the old. We may provide for this, I think, in some such way as the following. We may say that an evolutionary process is one in which indi- vidualities and novelties may be understood as successive phases of one orderly change. A thing may be said to have evolved when, having a specific character of its own, it is neverthe- less an outgrowth of the past; when it can be understood as produced by the same forces as those which produced its antecedents, and as coming in its own proper turn. Thus out of a primitive settlement evolves a great city. In all the stages of its growth the same causes are at work, the strategic location, the natural advantages, etc. After a certain stage of growth has been reached it passes over the line, and ceasing to be an overgrown town becomes a great city. This is a crucial change in which entirely new psy- chological, political or commercial characteristics appear. But this new thing born into the world is to be explained none the less as the outcome of the same forces that have been long at work, and as belonging next in the series of changes after that which has just preceded. Now accepting this as the general meaning of evolu- tion (the explanation of novelties as successive phases of one orderly change), let us consider its variants, or the several factors by which different types of evolution may be distinguished. 2. Varying Factors. In the first place, there is the mode of determination, the type of agency or law by which the change is brought about. There are three important types of evolution, all of great importance in contemporary thought, and distinguished by this factor. There is what Bergson calls ** creative evolution," in which the great proc- EVOLUTIONISM : SPENCER AND DARWIN 119 ess of cosmic history is conceived as moved by the free spontaneous action of Hving beings. There is the idealistic conception of historical development, originating with such philosophers as Hegel and Schelling. According to this conception, change is governed by ideas; it is the progres- sive realization of a plan. Finally there is the naturalistic conception, according to which change is due to the me- chanical causes recognized in physical science. This is the evolution of Spencer and Darwin, which I propose to con- sider in the present chapter. The other types, evolution by ideal determination and evolution by free creation, will receive attention later, in connection with idealism and vitalism.^ Secondly, evolutionary processes may vary in direction. They must always have direction, for without direction there is no such thing as orderly sequence. But this direc- tion may be ascending, as in the case of the progressive complexity of living organisms; or descending, as in the case of political degeneration as described by Plato. Or it may be horizontal as in the case of a musical melody in which the end is neither more nor less significant than the begin- ning. Or the direction may be zigzag as in the case of development through the alternative triumph of opposing forces. Or, finally, the direction may be circular, as in the case of the world-cycles of the ancient thinkers, or the Eternal Recurrence of Nietzsche.- A third and very important varying factor is the relation of the evolutionary process to value. The modern mind has been almost hopelessly confused in this matter. There is a vulgar idea that if only you can stand things up in a row, and then pass along the row from one end to the other, the first must be the worst and the last the best. This idea is largely responsible for the vaguely eulogistic associations which the term evolution has acquired. It has been widely supposed that since science has established the fact of evo- lution, the world is therefore growing better and man's 1 Cf. below, pp. 278-280: 345-347- 2 Cf. below, p. 164. 120 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS religious hopes are justified. There is something of this shallowness in John Fiske's Through Nature to God, and in Tennyson's ''far-off divine event toward which the whole creation moves/' ^ As a matter of fact, granting that the creation is moving toward some far-off event, it does not in the least follow that the event has anything divine about it. So far as the principle of evolution is concerned it might equally well be a Gbtterddmmerung, or end of the world. Indeed that far-off event which is most widely proclaimed by science is a con- dition of cosmic prostration in which, all energies having been dissipated in the form of heat, neither life nor any kind of mechanical work will longer be possible. The evolu- tionary process may be a change for the better, or it may be a change for the worse, or it may be quite indifferent in re- lation to values. Even progressive adaptation may signify a decline in value, under conditions in which the environ- ment is increasingly unfavorable to the more delicately or- ganized forms of life. Disease, old age or death may be said to evolve as truly as health and life. Chaos may evolve out of order as well as order out of chaos. In other words evolution in itself impHes nothing as to value. In principle it lends support neither to a pessimistic nor to an optimistic view of history. Finally, conceptions of evolution may vary as to scope, Spencer's conception is a cosmic generalization, a law con- ceived to hold universally; and the same is true of the con- ceptions of Aristotle and Hegel. Darwin's conception, on the other hand, was a strictly biological conception. It has, to be sure, been loosely generalized by posterity;^ but with its author it was a vigorously verified hypothesis within the field of a special science. In what follows here, we are to confine ourselves to riatur- alistic conceptions of evolution, in which the process is de- termined by mechanical forces; and to two instances of this 1 Cf. also David Strauss, The Old FaUh and the New. For a criticism of Evolutionism on grounds similar to those taken by the present writer, cf. B. Russell, Kmrwledge of the External World. Lect. I, and below, pp 346. 347- EVOLUTIONISM: SPENCER AND DARWIN 121 i f / I type, the cosmic generalization of Spencer, and the biological hypothesis of Darwin. We shall be mainly interested in discovering what spiritual incentives or ground for hope these conceptions have suggested to the modern world. n. THE SPENCERIAN ETHICS OF EVOLUTION I. The General Law. Spencer called his philosophy the "Synthetic Philosophy," thus calling attention to that feature of it which most impressed his age, and which is the author^s chief title to fame. When Spencer wrote, evi- dence had long been accumulating to show that the different departments of nature or fields of science were only arti- ficially bounded. Physical chemistry, organic chemistry, physiological psychology, psychological sociology and the other hyphenated sciences to which attention has been called, had already proved the continuity of physical proc- esses. The great generalizations of science such as the Conservation of Energy and the Conservation of Matter, generalizations which were not the property of any one science, emphasized the homogeneity of the physical world. The idea of the mutation of species had discredited the idea of special creation as a means of accounting for living organisms. Anthropology had brought to light the stages of human development from primitive beginnings, in which the differ- ence between man and the brute was no longer as absolute and irreducible as had once appeared. Man had learned enough about his own past to suspect his humble origin. He was prepared to believe that instead of coming into the world "trailing clouds of glory from Heaven," he might perhaps be soiled with ancestral slime. And though this was a less flattering genealogy there was consolation in the thought that with such an origin he had nevertheless gone so far. In the very baseness of his origin there was proof of man's power to make of himself what he would. If to look back was to look down, then to look forward was to look up. Spencer found ready at hand the materials for a new synthetic view of the world and of man. With a versa- 122 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS tility and erudition that give him a place beside Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz and Hegel as one of the great encyclopedic minds, he compassed the whole range of human knowledge. Astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, psy- chology, sociology, each science contributed its part. Each took up the tale where the other left ojff, until the whole story of the physical cosmos was unfolded, from the first primeval nebula to the future perfected society of man. But Spencer did not merely piece the several sciences together to cover the whole extent of nature. He found, or thought he found, a common theme, a law of laws, by which all nature might be viewed as a single orderly process. This great cosmic law he expressed as follows: "Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipa- tion of motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes parallel trans- formation." ^ The clearest and most spectacular instance of this is the transformation of the celestial world from an indefinite incoherent, homogeneous nebula, widely diffused through space, to a system of concentrated stellar masses. But we shall confine our attention here to the application to human society. 2. Ideal Conduct in the Evolved Society. Society, like celestial matter, evolves in the direction of differentiation and inter-adjustment. When one compares a relatively primitive society of the pastoral type with a modern civi- lized nation it appears that in the former all men are more or less aUke and only loosely aggregated, while in the latter there are all kinds of different stations and occupations closely interconnected. Social evolution, then, is in the direction of diversification and organization. In the com- pletely evolved society there will be as many kinds of people as possible, each with as many interests as possible, but all living in perfect harmony together. Jack Sprat and 1 First Principles, Chap. XVIII. EVOLUTIONISM: SPENCER AND DARWIN 123 his wife found a way by which their two individualities could be preserved without friction. So mankind, more and more of them, and with interests more and more diversified, come to learn better and better how to live together. "From the laws of life it must be concluded that unceasing social discipline will so mould human nature, that eventually sympathetic pleasures will be spontaneously pursued to the fullest extent advantageous to each and all. The scope for altruistic activities will not exceed the desire for altruistic satisfactions." "One who' has followed the general argument thus far, will not deny that an ideal social being may be conceived as so constituted that his spontaneous activities are congruous with the conditions imposed by the social environment formed by other such beings."^ Thus in the evolved society all classes, creeds, races, opinions, ambitions, passions, temperaments and tastes will form one great amicable and happy family together. Each while doing what he most wants to do, will have become so attuned to the rest that in doing it he will never step on anybody else's toes or jostle his neighbor with his elbow. Indeed, what he does for himself and in his own way will positively promote every interest which it affects, as the indulgent mother will please her child by the same act with which she ministers to her own pleasure. It is more than external adjustment reached by a set of prohi- bitions. That would be mere justice, the rough preHminary socializing that can be accomplished by the force of the state. True sociality is an affair of inner feelings and impulses, these being gradually cultivated or modified until they are in entire harmony. Absolutely right conduct, then, is such conduct as is found in a completely evolved society. Such conduct is impos- sible at the present stage of human development, but it is approximated in time of peace in the internal life of an advanced modern society. The international relations of men are still discordant, and the foreign policy of nations has to be adapted to the conditions of a military age. But the law of evolution implies that in due time nations will * H, Spencer: Data of Ethics, pp. 250, 274. 124 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS leam to live together as amicably as individuals of the same society. ... But as Spencer clearly recognizes, an evolved soaety is not necessarily good. The one thing does not necessarily follow from the other. In what sense is social evolution a process of improvement or betterment? It is important to remark that while Spencer recognizes that organization and harmony are conditions of a society's survival, he does not value them on that account. That which tends to endure and survive is the integrated form of life, which as it happens is good. But it is not good because it survives. I call attention to this point because Spencer is here expressly in disagreement with those evolutionists, commonly of Darwinian persuasion, who find in the fact that a society exists when others have perished, a proof of its superiority. For Spencer the goodness of the evolved type of society is asserted on quite other grounds. The evolved society is good because it represents a maximum of life in length, in breadth or numbers, and in completeness, richness or variety. In other words, life is good; and hence the more of it the better. But why is Hfe good? We are not yet at the bottom of the argument! Life is good be- cause it is pleasant; and pleasure is good in the last and fundamental sense. So Spencer belongs to the hedonistic school, which proclaims that pleasure is the only thing intrinsically good, and pain the only thing intrinsically evil. And he offers an expressly optimistic interpretation of his- tory. Having on the one hand a conception of the evolu- tionary process of nature, and on the other hand an inde- pendent conception of good, he is led to the conclusion that the actual course of the evolutionary process is such as to conduce to more and more of good. We have now to consider another aspect of the Spence- rian ethics that has played an important part in contempo- rary social and political philosophy. 3. Natural Reactions and Laissez-faire. Spencer^ is known as one of the great apostles of individualism, against centralization and state-action. On this ground, for ex- EVOLUTIONISM: SPENCER AND DARWIN 125 ample, he stoutly opposed socialism. Let us see if we can connect this with the fundamental doctrines already de- scribed. Human evolution, as we have seen, is the result of ** unceasing social discipline.'' By social discipline Spencer means learning by social experience; learning how to live with others by trying this or that mode of action and experiencing the consequences. If a man is brutally in- different to the susceptibilities of others he soon discovers that others avoid him, and that he suffers in all his affairs by isolation. So he tries some other course of action until he has acquired the sort of disposition that fits him better to a social environment. But to learn by experience, the consequences of one's action must be allowed to take their course. If the rude individual above referred to were to have the effects of his rudeness obscured or offset by the eager attentions of some doting friend or relative, he would never learn better. The same would be the case if for the direct effects of his action a teacher were to substitute some artificial penalty. A tardy boy who is compelled to stand in the corner or write out the word "Constantinople" three hundred and fifty times, learns nothing about the social effects of tardiness. He should be allowed to miss something. That is what happens in the long run to the man who is late. This is what Spencer calls the principle of *' natural reactions," the principle on which he bases his theory of education. "Each individual," he says, "is to receive the benefit and evils of his own nature and conse- quent conduct." The "normal relations between conducts and consequent" must be left so far as possible undisturbed.* This social discipline, according to Spencer, goes on from generation to generation, each inheriting the lessons already learnt and learning new ones of its own.^ And in order to make it possible, men must so far as possible be let alone. The wise state like the wise parent will not coddle its chil- dren, but let them find out the ways of the world for them- * Justice, pp. 17, 19. * In other words, Spencer adopts the now generally abandoned doctrine of the "inheritance of acquired characters." 126 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS selves; and build what they learn into their very systems in the form of indelible memories, durable habits and acquired aptitudes. So the political and economic doctrine of laissez-faire is consistent with the whole drift of the Spencerian philos- ophy. The state should confine itself to the enforcement of justice, which Spencer defines as follows: "Those actions through which, in fulfilment of its nature, the individual achieves benefits and avoids evils, shall be restrained by the need for non-interference with the like actions of associated individuals. . . . Every man is free to do that which he wills, pro- vided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." i Justice in itself is insufficient; beneficence also is needed in order to realize the possibilities of life to the full. But beneficence is a private and not a public concern. Spencer's acceptance of the laissez-faire theory, his desire narrowly to restrict the functions of the state, is, then, con- nected fundamentally and logically with his theory that human evolution is a process of education, of readjustment and reformation upon the basis of individual experience. But other motives. confirmed this primary motive. Thus he believed, as Nietzsche did not, that evolution was a natural law, and that it would therefore take place of itself, without human interference. He believed, as so many of his time believed, in the sure beneficence of the competi- tive principle in economic Hfe; in a sort of providence by which private self-seeking would bid for public favor and •cater to the public interest. Spencer lived before the growth of great corporate, centralized industries had rendered an appeal to the state imperative. Finally, he was an English- man, with the Englishman's inveterate dislike of being inter- fered with; and with the Englishman's confidence in the power of the individual, if let alone, to find his way by himself. * Op. cit., pp. 15, 46. EVOLUTIONISM: SPENCER AND DARWIN III. DARWINISM VERSUS ETHICS 127 I. The Darwinian Ideas. Charles Darwin's epoch-mak- ing Origin of Species was published in 1859. It was pri- marily a biological treatise; and though its central ideas have since been widely applied, it has owed its great influ- ence largely to its strictly scientific origin. It was Darwin's ** theory of natural selection," said Huxley, 'Hhat was the actual flash of light." He meant that it was Darwin who first exhibited the mechanism of evolution. Hitherto evo- lution had been a speculation, an inspiration, or an empirical generalization. Darwin was a scientist of the most patient and rigorous type, and through him evolution became an accredited scientific achievement. He was able to lay bare by analysis and experimentation the important factors and causes by which the process of biological evolution was actually determined. Thus launched under the patronage and with the credentials of science, the Darwinian ideas have retained, despite their popularization and more or less ille- gitimate extension and modification, a certain flavor of intellectual austerity. The fundamental conceptions of Darwinism are briefly as follows. In the reproductive process nature is prodigal of life, bringing into existence more individuals than there is room or supply for. In any generation of the given species there will be, over and above the general hereditary similarity, certain slight individual '^variations," due to unknown causes connected with reproduction. Each of the individuals will seek to maintain itself, and since the oppor- tunity is limited there will be competition. In this com- petition some of the variations will prove advantageous and others disadvantageous; and under the pressure of the struggle a handicap proves fatal. Those who survive the struggle and grow to maturity will be those individuals whose variations were *' favorable" or which rendered their possessors relatively *'fit" to meet the peculiar conditions imposed by the environment. The relatively unfit will not live to maturity; so that the next generation will be bred \ 128 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS exclusively from the relatively fit, and will inherit those favorable variations which enabled the parent organisms to survive. With this favorable start in life the new gen- eration will again reveal individual variations, from which the most favorable will again be selected, the third genera- tion thus inheriting the fitness of the first and second gen- erations combined. And so fitness will go on accumulating from generation to generation until new and more complex species arise. Several points require special emphasis. Evolution in Darwin's sense is a more or less mechanical phenomenon, in the sense of being due to a concatenation of circum- stances, rather than to design. That which is selected is a capacity and suitability strictly relative to the conditions of life which the struggling organism is called on to meet. The relatively unfit are eliminated altogether. Their strain absolutely comes to an end, since they never reach maturity. The only characters which are inherited in addition to the hereditary characters of the stock are the *^ variations." Whatever improvement is made by the individual within his life- time is lost to the race; except in so far as it may form a part of the educative process. The result is that according to this teaching the improvement of the race, its native aptitude and capacity for life, is entirely depend- ent on a struggle "to the finish" — an irreconcilable conflict in which strength is cruel, and weakness fatal. 2. Civilization versus the State of Nature. Here, then, is a self-consistent mode of life. Each unit presses its own claims against its competitors, and to the full measure of its ability. It presses its own advantages quite relentlessly with the result that the best equipped get everything, even life and the chance of offspring. This is offered by Darwin as an account of what actually takes place. What estimate shall be put upon it? How shall it be judged? At this point there diverge two sharply opposing views. There is the view that condemns it as the very antithesis of right conduct; and there is the view that accepts it as the ulti- mate standard of all values. EVOLUTIONISM: SPENCER AND DARWIN 129 The first of these views, which is the common view, is best represented by Huxley. This writer accepts the ortho- dox moral code, that which is supported by the general conscience of European mankind, as the basis of the state of civilization. Civilization thus construed is the .very an- tithesis of the Darwinian mode of life which he calls the *' state of nature." The difference lies partly in the relative power of life and its environment. In the state of nature, represented by the natural or wild vegetation of any region, the environ- ment dictates what forms of Hfe shall obtain a footing. The only rivalry is to secure the favor of the environment. Life is submissive. In civilized life, such as horticulture, on the other hand, life is imposed upon the environment. **The tendency of the cosmic process is to bring about the adjustment of the forms of plant life to the current conditions; the tendency of the horticulture process is the adjustment of the con- ditions to the needs of the forms of plant life which the gardener desires to raise." ^ But a more important difference between the cosmic or natural process, and the ethical or artificial process, appears in the elimination of struggle. ''Man, the animal ... has worked his way to the headship of the sentient worid, and has become the superb animal which he is, in virtue of his success in the struggle for existence. ... For his successful progress, throughout the savage state man has been largely indebted to those qualities which he shares with the ape and tiger; his exceptional physical organization; his cunning, his sociability, his curiosity, and his imitativeness; his ruthless and ferocious destructiveness when his anger is aroused by opposition. But, in proportion as men have passed from anarchy to social organization, and in proportion as civilization has grown in worth, these deeply ingrained serviceable qualities have become defects. After the manner of successful persons, civilized man would gladly kick down the ladder by which he has climbed. He would be.only too glad to see 'the ape and tiger die.' "2 * T. H. Huxley: Evolution and Ethics and other Essays ^ p. 13. 2 Op. cit., pp. 51-53. 130 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS The ethical code is expressly directed against the state of nature; and does, in so far as obeyed, actually bring the process of natural selection to an end. "As I have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically best — what we call goodness or virtue — involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows; its influence is directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence. . . . Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process and reminding the individual of his duty to the community, to the protection and influence of which he owes, if not existence itself, at least the life of something better than a brutal savage." ^ There are sundry grounds on which Huxley's view of the matter may be criticized. One may object to his view that the code of civilization is essentially artificial, and show that the contrast is overdrawn. Even in its earliest stages life is constructive and not merely submissive. Indeed the very principle of self-assertion which underlies struggle shows that life at all times seeks to bring the environment into conformity with its own needs. Huxley also overstates his case in claiming unqualifiedly that natural Hfe is ruthlessly self-assertive. Combination or union, involving restraint, is present from the beginning, at least wherever the young are cared for by their elders; or wherever there exists, as among gregarious animals, any form of group solidarity. But, I wish here to emphasize rather the fact that Huxley is a moral dogmatist, that he accepts the existing ethical code unquestioningly. Nietzsche, for example, would not so much deny the antithesis, as assert that on higher ra- tional grounds the principles of the state of nature are superior to those of European civilization. He would pro- pose to overthrow established morals in the name of a higher »* Ibid., pp. 81-82. EVOLUTIONISM: SPENCER AND DARWIN 131 morals. And so with all of those who adopt a distinctly Darwinian ethics. They do not judge Darwinism by old standards of good and right; but on the contrary propose to derive from Darwinism new and more advanced ideas as to what good and right really mean. 1 THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM 133 CHAPTER XI THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM I. THE DARWINIAN THEORY OF PROGRESS I. CivUization and Degeneration. It is agreed by Dar- winians and anti-Darwinians that the humanitarian code in some measure thwarts the operation of the law of natural selection. The operation of this law requires that the strong man shall exult in his strength and make the most of it; while the weak man shall pay the penalty of his weakness and be crowded out. According to the humanitarian code, however, the strong man is to divide his strength with those who are less fortunate, and the weak are to be the objects of a special soUcitude and protecting care on the part of society as a whole. Thus, whereas in the state of nature the race is recruited only from the strong, since they alone reproduce themselves, in a humanitarian society the weak, through receiving special indulgence, may be as long-hved and fertile as the strong. While both concede the general fact just stated, the Darwinian and anti-Darwinian will judge the fact quite differently. The anti-Darwinian will say that a society of brotherly love and mutual helpfulness is good in itself, bet- ter far than a society of superb physical specimens who are governed by the instincts of the brute. The anti-Darwin- ian, furthermore, will attach great importance to education. The weak, he thinks, may not only be saved, but they may be made strong; if not physically, then in those mental and moral aptitudes which fit a man for life in a civilized society. Thus even the blind or the deaf mutes may be shaped so as to fit in somewhere in the highly diversified modern indus- trial system. Spencer, as we have seen, believed that the effects of education could be transmitted so that every increase of fitness thus achieved was a permanent gain for 132 the race. Those anti-Darwinians who feel compelled by the trend of modern biology to deny the inheritance of acquired characters, and who therefore acknowledge that the work of education must be done over again for every generation, find a compensating consideration in the importance and permanence of the social environment. There all social advances may be preserved and accumulated. If, for ex- ample, a bHnd man learns a trade his children are not born with any increased aptitude for that trade. But they are born into a family and community in which the blind find useful employment; and if they be unfortunate enough to inherit the parent's affliction, the way will have been made easier for them by his example and success. The Darwinians on the other hand insist that education can only palHate hereditary weakness; and that in extreme cases it can do nothing at all. The big fact in life, according to this view, is that some men are born fit, healthy, strong, *'just built for this world"; whereas others are defective and out of their element. The difference is not in the least due to education. It is due to heredity, and to those mys- terious little variations which arise in the course of repro- duction. Those who are born fit should, then, be the ones to reproduce themselves, so that their fitness may be in- herited. This can be brought about only by allowing this fitness to enjoy its natural advantages, and so to dispossess and exterminate unfitness. Just so far as this natural superiority of the fit to the unfit is interfered with, the race will deteriorate. Suppose, for example, that we imagine a society like the evolved society of Spencer, in which the struggle is entirely eliminated through a perfect adjustment of men's altruistic and selfish impulses. Strong men will predominate as a result of an- cestral elimination in the rougher days of uncivilized struggle. But now the strong are also merciful. At first there will be just enough weakness in such a society to gratify the kindly indulgence of the strong. The second generation, however, will be recruited both from the weak and the strong, and all will survive. The proportion of the weak to the strong will 134 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM 135 then steadily increase as variations accumulate and are preserved quite indiscriminately. There will be no prin- ciple at work to connect survival with native aptitude. In other words the surviving types will be determined by accident and will steadily lose that initial adaptation which was inherited from the age of struggle. Benjamin Kidd, speaking of Spencer^s ideal society, has expressed this idea as follows: ''The evolutionist who has once realized the significance of the supreme fact up to which biology has slowly advanced, — namely, that every quality of life can be kept in a state of efficiency and prevented from retrograding only by the continued and never- relaxed stress of selection — simply finds it impossible to conceive a society permanently existing in this state. We can only think of it existing at all on one condition — in the first stage of a period of progressive degeneration.'' ^ What, then, is the Darwinian going to do about it? If he is a pessimist he will say that since civilization has once and for all brought to an end the beneficent reign of natural selection, such degeneration is inevitable; and he will point for proof to the growth of hereditary alcoholism, feeble- mindedness, crime and neurasthenia. But there is another school of more hopeful Darwinians who say that since natural selection has permanently ceased to operate among individuals within the same social group, it must be replaced by artificial selection. The state must see to it that while the weak are protected and cared for they are not allowed to reproduce and so transmit their weakness to posterity. This is the teaching of "eugenics," a by-product of Darwinism. In its negative application, the segregation or sterilization of the feeble-minded and criminally insane, and the requirement of medical certifi- cates for marriage, this idea has already been widely adopted. This negative application, which a contemporary patholo- gist has proposed to call *'kakogenics," is a measure of pre- vention, merely. The positive application, boldly proposed by Plato over two thousand years ago, would involve the * Social Evolution, pp. 313-314. systematic improvement of the race by selective mating and breeding. Such a policy is too repugnant to the senti- ments which in the present age attach to love and marriage to receive any favorable consideration. But it is interest- ing and illuminating here because of its logical connection with Darwinism. £: ■ Such, then, is the attitude of Darwinians who regard the good old days of natural selection as gone forever.^ But there are more Darwinians who believe that while in the strict biological sense natural selection can no longer take place, it does nevertheless continue to operate in a broader and modified sense. And they believe that it should be the end of all sound political, social and economic policy to preserve it. 2. Competition and the Reward of Merit. Thus there is still a sort of natural selection of the fit in a competitive economic system. In the strict biological sense natural selection involves an irreconcilable conflict, a fight to the finish. The defeated party must not be merely cowed into submission, or put out of action; he must perish altogether. For the crucial point is that the relatively unfit should have no offspring. Now in that sense struggle among individuals within the same social group has certainly largely disap- peared. There are those, however, who believe that while physical violence is a thing of the past, economic competi- tion still accomplishes the same end at the lower limit of human capacity. The ignorant, poor and unskilled do, it is true, show more fecundity than the more fortunate classes. But below this lowest class of labor, which holds its place and survives because after all it possesses certain staple virtues such as endurance, industry, thrift and physical stamina, — below this class there are the utterly unfit who never find a place for themselves anywhere; who may sur- vive for a time as tramps, loafers, or dependents, in some category beyond the pale, but who on the whole die out as rapidly as they come into existence. They define a lower limit or threshold of social efl&ciency, short of which a man cannot secure any footing at all. i 136 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS According to the view we are here considering,^ it is important that society should not further lower that limit by moderating the rigor of economic competition. Let every man prove his fitness by making a place for himself; and if he and his kind disappear, let that be regarded as proof that the race is better for having his strain eliminated. Furthermore, though the fate of actual annihilation over- takes only the grossly unfit at the margin, nevertheless in a free competitive system the amount of a man's reward may be taken as a rough index of his social efficiency. This holds all up and down the scale. The rich and the powerful are those whom nature most favored with native vigor and aptitude. The poor and lowly are not destroyed. They are allowed to live, and to continue their stock. But they play a passive role. They have no prestige. The ideals and policy of the group are dominated by the successful; and the unsuccessful merely re-echo, reflect, and adopt that which originates with others. It is clear that this is a departure from strict Darwinism, because it does not touch the question of the improvement or deterioration of the race in its inborn physical qualities. It may be said to be broadly Darwinian in principle only because it proclaims that the individual shall be allowed within limits prescribed by law to take what he can get. It is conceived to be good for society as a whole that the man who can get more of wealth or power than his neighbor, should be allowed to do so. By allowing each individual to keep what he can get, society encourages each man to exert himself to the utmost and to bring his full powers into play. So that although there is no guarantee that the native capacity of the race shall be improved or even maintained at the present level, that capacity will at any rate be uti- lized to the maximum. In his Social Evolution, a book which was widely read a generation ago, Benjamin Kidd has defended the interesting thesis that if competitive struggle be construed in this gen- 1 The view is best represented perhaps by T. N. Carver, a., e.g., his Essays tn Social Justice,] THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM 137 eralized sense, civilization, instead of interfering with it, has positively facilitated it. The most characteristic feature of the history of civilization, he thinks, is the development of democracy, the progressive emancipation of those who have been the objects of an unjust discrimination. Kidd's idea is that the development of democracy has resulted in introduc- ing competition and struggle on a scale hitherto unheard of. The movement toward '^ individual, economic, political and social enfranchisement," has led to a more vigorous, a *' freer and fairer" rivalry. The old caste system inter- fered with competition through disqualifying or handicap- ping large social groups. ' "As the evolutionist ponders on this process of development, its immense significance is gradually perceived. ... Its inherent tendency he sees must be not to suspend the rivalry of life, but to raise it to the highest possible degree as a cause of progress. So far from our civilization tending to produce an interruption of or an exception to the cosmic process which has been in progress from the beginning of life, its distinctive and characteristic feature, he observes, must be found in the exceptional degree to which it has furthered it. The significance of the entire order of social change in progress amongst the Western peoples consists, in short, in the single fact that this cosmic process tends thereby to obtain amongst us the fullest, highest, and completest expression it has ever reached in the history of the race." ^ The moral of such a philosophy of progress is to open the competition as widely and freely as possible. The authority of the state would be used only to guarantee that all shall have a fair chance. But it is important to note that in order really to equalize the struggle it may be necessary radically to alter existing institutions. Institutions and laws which once established a fair basis for competition may cease to do so under changed conditions. Something of this sort has undoubtedly occurred in the case of our laws governing private property. For frontiersmen directly ex- ploiting the resources of nature the most important thing is that each man should be guaranteed the secure posses- » Pp. 152-153, i55» 157. 138 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS sion of the fruits of his own industry and skill. A man may enter the race stripped to his bare talents, as nature equipped him, and he will win or fail on his merits. But in a highly organized industrial society a man's chance is greatly, per- haps decisively, affected by his educational opportunities, his possession of capital, or the personal connections which he owes to the social station into which he is born. Under such conditions it is wrong to assume that the fairest thing, or the thing most favorable to free and open competition, is to let matters alone. If one is going to appeal at all to the value of competition as bringing all talent into play and the best to the top, then one must concede that this value will be realized only in so far as all talent has a chance, the terms of the competition being such that only merit can prevail. If you hold competitive trials in order to select a team to represent the university in a cross-country run you can get the best only provided you so arrange the trials that nothing but speed and endurance affect success. This may require elaborate rules and arrangements. As a matter of fact sport has become fairer, and records of skill more trust- worthy, in proportion as these activities have been more systematically regulated. Merely letting things alone does not in the least imply fairness, for it means faUing back upon whatever terms and conditions of competition may happen at the time to be in vogue. So in human life at large much in the way of social legislation that may seem paternalistic, that may seem specially indulgent to the weaknesses of a special class, will upon more careful scrutiny appear as only a means of offsetting existing inequalities, and so of making more men eligible for success and leadership. The more men eligible, the wider the range of choice, the greater the chance that any society will develop and utilize its human resources to the maximum. 3. Struggle between Social Groups. The most impor- tant extension of Darwinism is to the rivalry between groups. There the doctrine may be applied with some approach to strictness. The competing units of life are races or nations; the struggle for existence is war; the outcome is victory of THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM 139 the stronger, who, seizing territory and other natural re- sources, is thereby enabled to increase in numbers and supersede its unsuccessful rival. So the strong inherit the earth. The strongest ethnic or social types are selected for survival, and the standard of human attainment is preserved. Consider the following statement of the case by Mr. Karl Pearson: *'This dependence of progress on the survival of the fitter race, terribly black as it may seem, gives the struggle for existence its redeeming features; it is the fiery crucible out of which comes the finer metal. You may hope for the time when the sword shall be turned into the ploughshare, when American and German and Eng- lish traders shall no longer compete in the markets of the world for their raw material and for their food supply, when the white man and the dark shall divide the soil between them and each till as he lists. But . . . when that day comes, mankind will no longer progress; there will be nothing to check the fertility of inferior stock; the relentless law of heredity will not be controlled and guided by natural selection. Man will stagnate; and unless he ceases to multiply, the catastrophe will come again; famine and pestilence as we see them in the East, physical selection, instead of the struggle of race against race, will do the work more relentlessly, and, to judge from India and China, far less eflSciently than of old.'' ^ But social competition, like that between individuals, may imply not elimination but only subordination. It may im- ply only that the defeated are enslaved, or reduced in ter- ritory, wealth or prestige. In this inter-group struggle the victory is not to those societies in whom the higher faculties are most cultivated, to those most gifted in intellect or imagination, but to those possessing a sort of social vitality, depending on the simpler virtues and on group coherence. Thus Professor Carver says: "The problem is, which group will succeed best in expanding, m securing territory, defending its boundaries, and finally in crowding * National Life from the Standpoint of Science. I owe this quotation to A. O. Lovejoy, "Some Aspects of Darwin's Influence upon Modern Thought," Bulletin of Washington University, April 1909. I40 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS the other communities off the face of the earth. The community that succeeds in this final test will be the community with the best moral and social organization." ^ Benjamin Kidd makes an application that has acquired new interest, though scarcely new force, in the light of recent events. ''At a future time," he says, ''when the history of the nineteenth century comes to be written with that sense of proportion which distance alone can give, it will be perceived that there are two great features of this century which give a distinctive character to its history, and by the side of which all other developments and events will appear dwarfed and insignificant. The first is the complete and absolute triumph throughout our Western civilization of the principles of that political idealism which found expression in the French Revolution. The second is the equally triumphant and overwhelming expansion of the peoples of Teutonic stock, and the definite and final worsting by them in the struggle for existence, at nearly every point of contact throughout the worid, of that other branch of the Western peoples whose intellectual capacity has thus so distinctly left its mark upon the century." 2 And then he goes on to say that, "It is not intellectual capacity that natural selection appears to be developing in the first instance, but other quahties contribut- mg more directly to social efficiency, and, therefore, of immensely more importance and potency in the social evolution which man- kmd is undergoing. There can be Httle doubt that the ascendancy which the Teutonic peoples have won, and are winning in the world, IS mamly due to the higher and fuUer developments these last mentioned qualities have attained amongst them." ^ II. THE NEW ETHICS It is essential to the Darwinian ethics that it not only offers a theory of progress, or an account of the method and forces by which value is conserved in the world, but also a theory as to what constitutes value. This is per- haps best illustrated in the following somewhat cynical and ^ Op.cit., p. 75. ^ Social Evolution, p. 299. ' Ibid.y pp. 303-304. THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM 141 somewhat paradoxical statement which I cite from Pro- fessor Carver: *'But it is depressing to think how little human likes and dislikes coimt in the long run in social evolution. The world will be what it will be whether we like it or not. If our likes or dislikes are such as to unfit us for survival, we shall eventually cease to count. They whose likes and dislikes fit them for survival will continue to count, and the worid will eventually be peopled by them, and their likes and dislikes will eventually be selected for survival." ^ This is a cynical view because it virtually states that all ideals are illusions, as respects both their importance and the possibility of their realization. It is a paradoxical view, because if human likes and dislikes do not "count,'' it is difficult to see how they either fit or unfit man for survival. The meaning, however, is clear. We are mistaken in sup- posing that man's ideals will be fulfilled, or that it is good that they should be. But that men should have ideals of a certain sort makes them relatively strong in the struggle for existence. The great struggle as Carver sees it is the struggle between social groups. Success in this struggle will depend on the efficiency of the group as a unit, but this in turn will depend on the possession by individuals of the group of certain fundamental qualities. Thus the colonial expansion of England has been made possible by the regard which the individual in that group has for what he calls '' the word of an Englishman." Kidd mentions other qualities. "Occupying a high place amongst them are such characteristics as strength and energy of character, humanity, probity and in- tegrity, and simple-minded devotion to conceptions of duty in such circimistances as may arise." ^ But far the most important force in group survival, accord- ing to this writer, is religion, which like the moral qualities mentioned above is valued not for its truth, or for the soul's eternal salvation, but for its power of social discipHne. "The function of that unmense and characteristic class of social phenomena which we have in our religious systems, is to 1 Op. cit., p. 19. « Op. cit., p. 345' 142 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS secure this necessary subordination of the present interests of the self-assertive individual to the general interests of the process of evolution which is in progress."^ In short the ordinary code of morals or of religion, in so far as it is retained, is justified because it conduces to might, or power to survive and prevail. The ultimate value, then, is might. This doctrine appears in two forms: might is righty and might is admirable and worthy. I. Might is Right. Some ethical systems are founded upon a conception of what is obligatory or permitted, or in agreement with some law or principle; others are founded upon a conception of what is admirable or desirable. The former is the ethics of right; the latter is the ethics of good. There is a Darwinian version of each type. According to the Darwinian ethics of right, what one is morally obliged or permitted to do is determined only by the measure of one's power. To the strongest all things are permissible; to the helpless, nothing. At railroad crossings trains have a right to precedence over vehicles because they are stronger, and at street-crossings vehicles enjoy a similar right to pre- cede pedestrians. So the strong man or nation enjoys a sort of universal right of way. Submission to restrictions is a confession of weakness. It indicates a willingness to give way to the strong for the sake of securing their favor or protection. ^ He has a "right" who is strong enough to assert it. This view is consistently developed in an article by Professor Seeberg, a bellicose theologian of the University of Berlin. A nation's ability to hold a territory is a test of their right to it. Right is measured by " Lebenskraft '' — " Lebenswilkr The small nation, such as Belgium, or the degenerate nation, such as France, has no rights against the large healthy nation like Germany. In times of peace weak- ness is not apparent, and unfit nations go on enjoying rights to which they have no proper claim. France, in particu- lar, has long been regarded in Germany as rotten at the core, with no national vigor at all proportionate to her national * Ibid.y p. 315. THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM 143 pretensions. *'Thus war," says Professor Seeberg, "is the great test of the nations "; "it reveals the lie and enthrones truth in its place." ^ This view, like that which would reduce all rights to legal rights, does not explain moral rights, but denies them. For a moral right is something which you claim on principle before you possess it in fact. The right of woman suffrage, for example, existed in this sense before it was legally acknowledged, and before women had grown powerful enough to obtain it by force. Indeed their power to obtain it was not a power to use force, but a power over public opinion by effective appeal to generally acknowledged moral and political axioms. Rights are first defined in terms of gen- eral ethical principles accepted in the community; as woman suffrage, for example, was first defined in terms of prin- ciples of democracy, representative government, and social welfare. They are then fought for, most actively by those who claim them, but by arguments which are calculated to secure the support of disinterested opinion. Finally, if they are won they are incorporated into the system of positive law and enforced by the state. They were moral rights in their first phase, assuming that the arguments by which they were supported were sound arguments. If not, if rights are only rights when they are successfully asserted, or legally enacted, then there could be no such thing as fighting for one's rights, since these rights would not exist until after they were won; and there would be no such thing as being denied one's rights, since rights that failed to obtain recognition would be no rights at all. 2. The Ideal of Might. But might, the power not ''to live and let live," but to live and outlive, may be thought to be the goal of life. "That is strength which in the end brings survival." "Let us assume that the great problem of the human race, as of every other species of life, is to keep on living." ^ * R. Seeberg: "Das Sittliche Recht des Krieges," Internationale Monat- schrifty Oct. 1914. Qu. by Chevrillon, England and the War. 2 Carver: Social Justice, pp. 74, 33. 144 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS It follows, we are allowed to infer, that the superlatively important and significant thing is strength. There is a type of nation which is vigorous, sound at the heart — which tends to expand from within, to grow and to possess. This nation, and such men as make it up, shall inherit the earth; and we are asked to admire this type and attempt to realize it. In discussing this view we must never lose sight of this essential point, that power, strength, might, is defined in terms of survival. It is not that the mighty survive; but that surviving is what is meant by being mighty. To be mighty is to be able to triumph over others in the struggle for existence. If we adhere strictly to this teaching it must follow that it makes no difference what form that struggle assumes; whatever the form of the struggle, to be superior is to be strong, and to be strong is to be admirable. But now consider that there are as many types of supe- riority as there are kinds of struggle, and that the variety of these is limitless. Suppose that you had eight different competitive trials, the first, let us say, in putting the fifty- six pound shot, the second in steeple-chmbing, the third in mental arithmetic, the fourth in poker, the fifth in oratory, the sixth in piano-moving, the seventh in crocheting, and the eighth in glass-eating. If you lined up in a row all the successful competitors, all the survivors from these strug- gles, you would have a most varied assortment of human beings, as I think you will agree. I doubt if you would find any one of them who would be your ideal of the man of might. What would be that power to win, that surviving- capacity-in-general which all would have in common? Nothing, except perhaps a roughly human anatomy, a spark of life and a low minimum of intelligence. If you tried to combine their individual peculiarities in one superman he would certainly be unable to triumph in any of the compe- titions. Success in a really severe struggle requires con- centration in the peculiar qualities which just that compe- tition calls forth. Now the struggle for existence is just as varied and in- THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM 145 determinate a thing as these examples suggest. It varies all the way from snatching candy from a baby up to a ten years' war with one-half of humanity organized against the other half. There are short struggles and long ones; struggles of violence and struggles of intrigue; bodily strug- gles and machine struggles; individual struggles and collec- tive struggles. The surviving type changes with every change in the methods and conditions of the struggle. It was once the type of Roland. A generation ago in America it was the type of the trust magnate. The qualities requi- site for success may be physical courage and chivalry, or they may be cunning and sanctimoniousness. Among na- tions, according as conditions change, success may be favored by avarice or by martial vigor, or by scientific research, or by political submissiveness, or by revolutionary individualism. The most significant illustration of this relativity of the conception of might is the difference between the struggle of war and the struggle of peace. War as we are now hav- ing most unforgettably impressed on us, absolutely revolu- tionizes methods of social life and the scale of social values. Entering a war is doing on a colossal scale what a man does when he leaves the duties and pastimes of ordinary fife and trains for a Marathon run. Now when a nation is entered for a war, trained, stripped, narrowly preoccupied, tense, alert, it is abandoning or subordinating a thousand other interests, art, commerce, social service, learning, political reforms. It is for the time being growing to be a warrior society, as distinguished from a commercial or philanthropic or humanistic society. Now our Darwinian view would virtually assert that such a change has no relation to value. The form of group competition does not signify, but only the degree of success. In other words — Rome conquering the world by force of arms, is not less good than a Greece conquering it by force of ideas, or a Judaea conquering it by the force of religious sentiment. Indeed this view derives from its biological origins a strong tendency to favor the ruder and more violent forms of struggle, as being more unmistakably biological. 146 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS THE ETHICS OF DARWIITISM 147 Unless we bear these things in mind we shall be misled by the specious plausibility of this ideal of might, a plausi- bility derived from the impulse to hero-worship, and from our practice of using terms like "strong,'* '* powerful," "mighty," as implying completeness and nobiUty. The essential principle of the Darwinian moralists is that of struggle; and the type of the survivor in struggle is as high or as low as is the form of the struggle in which they engage. It is true that the Darwinian commonly thinks of struggle as inter-social, and therefore requiring on the part of indi- viduals a subordination of themselves to the group. And this we find to be admirable according to conventional moral standards. But when we admire the restraint of the individual we are thinking of the brother whom this re- straint regards and favors. The Darwinian is thinking of the greater blow which the brothers twain may deliver against the common enemy. For, if the Darwinian moralist meant to praise restraint, discipline, subordination, then logic would compel him to look beyond struggle between groups to a federation of mankind in which nations and in- dividuals alike were cemented in brotherly union. The strongest life in this sense would be the common life of humanity with no enemy remaining except those hardships and evils which nature herself imposes, and which a united mankind might then hope speedily to diminish. III. DARWINISM AND SOCIALISM In an address before the Congress of Naturalists held at Munich in 1877, Haeckel contended that Darwinism was opposed to socialism. As himself a good Darwinian, he offered this as an argument against socialism. "The theory of selection teaches that in the life of humanity, as in that of plants and animals, everywhere and always a small privileged minority alone succeeds in living and developing itself; the immense majority, on the contrary, suffer and succumb more or less prematurely. The germs of every kind of plant and animal; and the young that are produced from them, are innumerable. But the number of those which have the good fortune to develop to their complete maturity and which attain the aim of their exist- ence, is comparatively insignificant. . . . ^4// are called, but few are chosen. The selection, the 'election* of these 'chosen ones* is necessarily connected with the defeat or the loss of a great number of their living fellow creatures. Thus, another learned English- man has called the fundamental principle of Darwinism: 'the survival of the fittest, the victory of the best.* In every case the principle of the selection is anything rather than democratic: it is, on the contrary, thoroughly aristocratic.** ^ The writer who quotes the above passage from Haeckel then proceeds to defend socialism against the aspersion of being anti-Darwinian. Socialism, he points out, has recog- nized the essentially biological character of society in its emphasis on the importance of the fundamental biological motives, such as reproduction and food-getting. Further- more, it attaches central importance to the principle of struggle. I. Class Struggle. This latter contention might seem to be belied by socialism's attack upon the competitive eco- nomic system. True socialism, Benjamin Kidd has said, "has always one definite object in view, up to which all its pro- posals directly or indirectly lead. This is the final suspension of that personal struggle for existence which has been waged, not only from the beginning of society, but, in one form or another, from the beginning of life.** ^ But socialism, says Ferri, has recognized that the deeper struggle, which determines the course of history, is the struggle of classes. "In the historic period Graeco-Latin society struggles for civil equality (abolition of slavery); it triumphs, but does not stop because life is a struggle; the society of the middle ages struggles for religious equality, gains it, but does not stop; and at the end of the 1 8th century it struggles for political equality. Should it ' Qu. by Enrico Ferri, Socialism and Positive Science^ English trans., Fifth Edition, pp. 4-5. * Social Evolution, pp. 222-223. Cf. pp. 219, 230. 148 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM 149 now stop and rest in its present state? To-day society struggles for economic equality, not for an absolutely material equality, but for this more positive equality of which I have spoken. And every- thing makes us foresee with mathematical certainty that this victory will be gained to give place to new struggles for new ideals among our descendants." ^ The shepherds against the warriors, the plebeians against the patricians, the vassals against the feudatories, the com- moners against the nobles — each in turn won its way against the privileged and possessing class. And now these struggles are succeeded by the greatest of all, the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Thus the Dar- winian law of struggle is observed, not between man and man, nor even between nation and nation, but between class and class, where the great issues of social form and organization are determined. 2. The Transformation of Struggle. But there is an aspect of this view which though it compromises its Dar- winian orthodoxy is nevertheless creditable to its ethical enlightenment. We are told that although struggle is the law of life and the condition of progress, there is a scale of struggle, in which it assumes higher and higher forms. Struggle tends to become less and less wasteful. There is a "law of decreasing disproportion between the 'called' and the 'chosen.' " ^ The methods employed tend to be more and more refined, more intellectual and humane. And above all the issues of the struggle become more and more significant. Socialism would eliminate once and for all the struggle for food, for the bare means of subsistence — a struggle that must call into play the most sordid motives and the most brutal methods. Liberated from the degrad- ing necessity of struggling for food, men may compete upon a higher plane for superior values. Such competition will be less greedy and less violent, and will put a premium upon the possession of higher faculties. Now it is clear that although the language of Darwinism * op. cit., p. 27. * Fern: op, cit.^ p. 23. is still employed there is, nevertheless, an advance here to a new set of ideas. Brunetiere has argued that there is no more ethics in evolution than you put into it. '' The moral- ity which one can extract from the evolutionary doctrine, will always be a ' refracted ' morality, of which one must look elsewhere for the origin.'' ^ Socialism has certainly gone to sources other than scientific evolutionism for its ethical light. Darwinism, vigorously interpreted, defines no value save that of the survival of the competing unit^ of life under whatever conditions happen to exist. Socialism has de- parted from this strict interpretation, and in so doing has unconsciously shown the inadequacy of it. If a less wasteful struggle is better than a relatively destructive struggle, then no struggle, a harmonious accord of interests, with perhaps an element of friendly rivalry, would be better still. If the more refined and more humane methods of struggle are higher, if the struggle for ideal ends is higher than the struggle for bread and butter, then clearly struggle in the sense of irreconcilable conflict and forcible dispossession is not good at all. To apply these standards in judging the course of history is virtually to concede that though struggle may have had some good effects, it is in itself inherently evil, and bound therefore to disappear just in proportion as these effects are good. If this appear paradoxical our misgivings will be removed when we reflect that though struggle results in the survival of the strong, the strong are those who have eliminated struggle among their own members, and are themselves proof of the principle that the secret of a strong life is harmony and solidarity. 1 F. Brunetiere: "La morality de la doctrine 6volutive," in La Science a la Religiont p. 180. CHAPTER XII THE GOSPEL OF NIETZSCHE I. Nietzsche's relation to naturalism The question of Nietzsche's relation to present German policy is one that I propose to discuss more fully elsewhere. But in order to justify the general presumption that this writer has something to do with what is now going on in the world, I should like to cite the testimony of Professor Kuno Francke that Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche and WiUiam II are "perhaps the three men whose influence has shaped the feelings and ideals of the present generation of Germans most conspicuously."^ I do not mean for a moment to contend that the principles of Nietzsche's philosophy have been carried out scrupu- lously and consistently by any large number of persons. Perhaps no one has done this. I doubt if it lies within the power of any one, human or divine, to carry them out con- sistently. I doubt if any thinker of Nietzsche's type ever had any large number of followers whom he would himself admit to have grasped the essence of his teaching. I mean only that Nietzsche has, whether intentionally or in spite of himself, whether by understanding or by misunderstanding, exercised a great influence on '' the feeHngs and ideals of the present generation," especially in Germany. Of this there can, I think, be no doubt. I need scarcely say that Nietzsche was neither a madman nor a miscreant. He did deliberately assault the code by which most of civilized European mankind conduct their lives. ^ He was perhaps the most uncompromising enemy of Christianity to which Christendom has given birth. But he was none the less a responsible thinker, and a devoted and heroic servant of what he took to be the good. He suffered ^ A German- American's Confession of Faith ^ p. 21. ISO THE GOSPEL OF NIETZSCHE 151 i much from ill-health, and spent the last eleven years of his life the helpless victim of a stroke of paralysis which de- stroyed his sanity. But he wrote nothing after that date; and before that date, during his active career, he was not more insane than the rest of us. As for his personal char- acter he was considerably superior to the rest of us. Indeed in my judgment his greatness lies in the force of his per- sonality, the intensity of his conviction, and the utter un- worldliness and disinterestedness of his purpose, rather than in the originality or profoundness of his thought.^ In discussing Nietzsche in this context I am perhaps put- ting too much emphasis on the Darwinian strain in his thought. But I do not in the least desire to argue that he is consistently evolutionary or even consistently naturalistic. There is a strain of voluntarism or vitalism in him that would make it as suitable to discuss him below in conjunction with Bergson as here in conjunction with the Darwinians. Like every unsystematic thinker whose great influence for better or for worse is unmistakable, everybody claims him and everybody repudiates him. You will find Catholics, Protes- tants, atheists, socialists, individualists, idealists, pragma- tists and realists all discovering a secret affinity with him, or all denouncing what each on his own grounds finds objection- able. In a way everybody is right. Nietzsche has some- thing of the universality of the artist both in his insight and in his errors. Like Emerson he was a preacher and an artist with philosophical ideas. He did not employ the philosoph- ical method. In spite, therefore, of Mr. Salter's^ admirable work, I think it is a mistake to assume that there is a syste- 1 As for Nietzsche's originality, I have some sympathy with the foUowing verdict, though I should not go so far: .,,.,. t v.- u "Nietzsche has not that supreme originality which he claims for tumseit. Mix Greek sophistry and Greek scepticism with the naturalism of Hobbes and the monism of Schopenhauer corrected by Darwin and seasoned with the paradoxes of Rousseau and Diderot, and the result will be the philosophy of Zarathustra." A. Fouillee: "The Ethics of Nietzsche and Guyau, Intern. Journal Ethics ^ 1903, p. 13- , „ , , • 1 j- -j-^^ 2 W M. Salter: Nietzsche the Thinker. Even Mr. Salter by wisely dividing his work into three periods does not attempt to reduce NieUsche's philosophies to less than three. 152 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS THE GOSPEL OF NIETZSCHE 153 matic logical coherence in the thought of Nietzsche. He had strong temperamental peculiarities, such as are associ- ated, for example, with " the nerves of a Shelley and the stomach of a Carlyle";^ and there is a temperamental con- sistency and emotional continuity in his writings. But his temperament was not of the sort favorable to consistency and continuity. He was emphatic, enthusiastic, volcanic. When he changed, as he did, for example, in his attitude to Wagner, he did not move or gravitate — he jumped, from passionate admiration to equally passionate contempt. This was proof of his honesty, but also of his emotional in- stability and of the extent to which his professions were governed by emotional promptings. He says of himself, ''All truths are for me bloody truths" ^ — outward expressions of his whole spiritual struggle in which the heart was cer- tainly not less actively enlisted than the head. Such being the case, it is folly, I think, to attempt to deduce his thought from a formula or to classify him as a whole. Furthermore, while I do believe that one of his major teachings, that perhaps which has most affected the senti- ments of our age, has a strong Darwinian coloring, I am fully aware that Nietzsche himself had much fault to find with Darwin. He rejected the Darwinian notion that life is essentially adaptation. On the contrary, he asserted, it is a will to power and expansion. He regarded Darwin's idea of the universality and necessity of the struggle for existence as a British provincialism, due to the fact that Malthus and Darwin himself lived on an over-populated island. He in- clined to the Lamarckean view that structure is created as the outward expression of the organism's will and need, rather than by an accumulation of accidental variations. The unhampered struggle for existence he further dis- approved as tending too much to the promotion of medi- ocrity and the homelier social virtues. I recognize, finally, that Nietzsche approved of Darwin, as he approved of Schopenhauer and of Wagner, only for a limited period of his * Huneker: Egoists, p. 260. * Nachgelassene Werke, Vol. XI, §§ 590-2. life, in this case the middle period; and that the most Dar- winian of his writings, Human All Too Human, is not to be accepted as a statement of his later and maturer views. Notwithstanding these many and very considerable quali- fications two broad and important facts remain. In the first place, Nietzsche was converted from Schopenhauer and other metaphysical influences, delivered from every ortho- doxy and conservatism of belief, and established upon an explicitly naturalistic footing, chiefly through the influence of evolutionary biological thought. Furthermore, he found in this same scientific influence, with its emphasis on life and on the continuity and improvement of the race, the starting- point for a new belief, which eventually assumes a meta- physical and religious form. The evolutionary phase of his thought is therefore the crucial phase, the phase of recon- struction. Nietzsche first slays God and looks upon the churches as his "tombs and monuments." ^ Then God being dead there is none so fit to succeed him as man who slew him. To make mankind a worthy object of worship by developing and ennobling him becomes the new goal of hope and en- deavor. But man for Nietzsche is '' of the earth, earthy." He is to be taken as essentially a product and representative of the natural life. "The animal functions are, as a matter of fact, a million times more important than all beautiful states of the soul and heights of consciousness: the latter are an overflow, in so far as they are not needed as instruments in the service of the animal functions. The whole of conscious life . . . ; in whose service does it work? In the greatest possible perfection of the means (for acquiring nourish- ment and advancement) serving the fundamental animal functions: above all, the ascent of the line of life'' ^ The world as a whole is without a goal, being but '' a monster of energy, without beginning or end." ^ 1 For a discussion of this ^^ole question, cf. Claire Rrchter: Nietzsche et des theories Uologiques contemporaines. 2 Joyful Wisdom, III,, §125. Inciting Nietzsche, I shall ordinarily refer to the English translations in Levy's edition. 3 The Will to Power, 674. Cf. §§ 491-492- « /Wa.,§§ 106-7. IS4 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS But over and above this naturalistic, evolutionary recon- struction of Nietzsche's thought, there is a distinctively Darwinian strain in his ethics; and it is this which Nietzsche whether rightly or wrongly, has come to represent to our generation. ^ The type of life which he praises and urges us to cultivate is the consciously superior type. The admirable man is the man who exults in his strength, whose strength is proved by a mastery over the weak. The keen edge of Hfe must be whetted in struggle. But to take such an edge life must be hard, like tempered steel. The strong man must assert his strength without scruple or squeamishness. The subordination or suffering of the weak is not to be viewed with sentimental regret, but is to be regarded as providing the necessary foil by which the man of might proves his strength, and as providing the necessary interval by which his superior elevation is marked. That there is deep affinity between this teaching and that of the Darwinians, is not, I think, open to question. II. THE ATTACK UPON THE EXISTING CODE The only formula that is in the least adequate to Nietzsche is that of protest against the reigning tendencies and senti- ments of his age. Call to mind anything which seems to you m your thoroughly ordinary moments, when you are a mere mouth-piece of the Zeitgeist, to be axiomatic — and you may be reasonably sure that Nietzsche was opposed to it. What the modern age is most proud of, Nietzsche most deplored; what the modern age most ardently and with most convic- tion aspires to, Nietzsche most dreaded. He spoke ^ of himself as proposing a '' transvaluation of all values'' {Umwerthung die Werthe); and it will be perhaps as a revolutionist of sentiment that his fame will longest endure. I. Moral Codes. To understand Nietzsche's manner of treating moraHty, we must work ourselves into that detached frame of mind in which we see that there are many morali- ties. We are accustomed to the view that there is a code of 1 In the title and preface of the unfinished work. The WiU to Power, THE GOSPEL OF NIETZSCHE 155 ethics respected in the medical profession, a code respected by amateur athletes, a code observed by gentlemen, and that there is even "honor among thieves." Each of these codes has its own peculiar rules and sentiments recognized exclusively by the class in question. But we ordinarily sup- pose that below these there is an absolute morality, consist- ing of the primary virtues like justice or veracity; and that this absolute morality is mandatory upon all. To under- stand Nietzsche we must transfer to morality as a whole the idea which we familiarly apply to a special code. According to Nietzsche, absolute morality is a fiction. There are only codes, each peculiar to a group, and binding within that group only in the sense that it happens to be one of the fundamental group characteristics. Thus a physician will not lure away another man's patients or receive fees from his relatives for medical attendance. There is no written law against these things, nor any outward penalty; but if he did them the physician would lose caste in his profession. So similarly the fact that we entertain chari- table sentiments toward the wretched, and shrink from the taking of life, signifies that we happen to belong to a group in which charity and humanity are esteemed, and in which there- fore their violation tends to social disfavor. Of course we do not ordinarily view matters of sentiment in this dispassion- ate way. Ordinarily we condemn a violation of our class code in unqualified terms, as absolutely wrong and unworthy. But we are then only giving emphatic utterance to the class- consciousness within us. A member of another group may declare himself quite otherwise with equal vehemence and conviction. This is his way as ours was our way. But although in Nietzsche's way of viewing the matter there can be no question of the absolute validity of any code, nevertheless codes may be judged according to the type of character which they express and which they tend to con- serve and promote. Its moral code is the most powerful means by which any given group maintains its solidarity, preserves its existence, and disseminates its own quality of Ufe. iS6 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS Nietzsche himself is interested not in the code of any na- tion or race but in the codes of two classes of mankind that he thinks appear and reappear in all historical epochs, the masterful class and the servile class. These two classes repre- sent not the accidents of historical conflict, but the deeper instinctive difference between what the modern psychologist would call positive self-feeling and negative self-feeling. Positive self -feeling is the '' yes ''-attitude to life, the attitude of aggressiveness and self-reliance, the attitude of those who are healthy and fit. Negative self-feeling is the ''no "-atti- tude, the attitude of shrinking and timidity, the attitude of those who are weak and poorly endowed. The former class instinctively takes the lead, asserts and feels its superiority; the latter class instinctively follows the lead and knows its master's voice.^ Each of these classes has its own code. The code of the masters is that which Nietzsche seeks to promote, and the positive teachings which we shall consider below constitute his elaboration of it. Suffice it to say here that it is the code which has always been more or less com- pletely observed by the aristocratic class — the code which praises bold action, openness of mind, fullness of life, courtesy, and loyalty. It is the code of the cavalier as opposed to the code of the puritan. But let us turn first to the code of the servile or slave class. 2. The Slave Morality. Nietzsche was at one time largely under the influence of Schopenhauer. Although he came eventually to a general view of life which was almost the antithesis of that of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche retained to the end that philosopher's conception of the orthodox European morality. According to Schopenhauer morality is essentially repressive and self-denying. It leads logically to total self-effacement and self-annihilation. But while Schopenhauer preached this doctrine, to Nietzsche it is anathema. It is the common and in a sense the fundamen- tal morahty, yes; but that is because it is the morality of common and inferior man. It is the morality of the masses; * Cf. G. Wallas: Human Nature and Politics. THE GOSPEL OF NIETZSCHE 157 the herd-morality. It is the morality of those who, feeling their individual weakness and incompetence, and realizing instinctively that they can survive only if they band to- gether, are therefore impelled by the motive of self-preserva- tion to exalt those qualities of restraint and submissiveness by which social life is promoted. Unable to deny their personal disabilities, and being in sore need of indulgence, they fall to praising pity and benevolence. Just as Tom Sawyer who, wishing to have some one whitewash his fence for him, hinted at the superlative joys of whitewashing, so the miserable folk in the world, needing relief, promote the gospel that there is nothing in the world so fine as to relieve the needy. Indeed they go so far as boldly to proclaim that their very disabilities, their weakness, their poverty, their softness, their ignorance, are in fact not disabilities at all — but the highest qualities of life; although of course they call them by other names, such as simplicity, gentleness and ten- derness. Thus the masses of mankind, prompted like every human class by their own group interest, codifying their own peculiar characteristics, and making a cult of them, have actually brought man to the ridiculous and suicidal posture of worshipping his own defects. It is this spectacle which excites Nietzsche's bitterest contempt: "They are miserable, there is no doubt about it, all these whis- perers and counterfeiters in the comers, although they try to get warm by crouchmg close to each other, but they tell me that their misery is a favor and distinction given to them by God, just as one beats the dogs one likes best; that perhaps this misery is also a preparation, a probation, a training; that perhaps it is still more something which will one day be compensated and paid back with a tremendous interest in gold, nay in happiness. This they call ^Blessedness!' ... But enough! Enough! I can endure it no longer. Bad air! Bad air! These workshops where ideals are manufactured — verily reek with the crassest lies." ^ There is, Nietzsche would admit, a certain indispensable- ness in the herd-morality. If there is to be a society at all there must be a social mass as its lowest stratum. And the 1 The Genealogy of Morals^ § 14. 158 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS social mass can be held together only by certain elementary virtues. But Nietzsche is railing against that excessive laudation of these virtues which would give them the supreme place in the scale of values. Like many indispensable things they are vulgar and primitive, a mere base on which the heroic virtues of superior men may be erected. And he con- demns these lower virtues, it must be remembered, because he beheves that the class-type which they express, and which they exalt, is essentially ignoble. He condemns the code because of the ideal which it promotes. Such a code he thmks, is a sort of idolatry, a false worship; in which men admire what is not truly admirable, and thus not only have their minds perverted, but their actions degraded. 3. The Assault on Christianity. You will have recognized that those features of the orthodox moral code which Nie- tzsche most resents are those which we are accustomed to associate with Christianity. Nietzsche himself identified Christianity with the cult of servile moraHty, and attacked it accordingly. ^ A recent writer on Nietzsche, J. N. Figgis, in a book^ which IS otherwise admirable, finds Nietzsche to be very largely in agreement with what this writer regards as the essence of Chnstiamty. Both Christianity and Nietzsche, he contends are opposed to the ethics of utihty and exj^ediency, and to the ethics of mere duty. Both proclaim that the value of life hes m the triumphant assertion, in and through suffering and tragic conflict, of one's deeper spiritual nature. But I beheve that if poor Nietzsche wants to be the enemy of Chnstiamty he should be allowed to be. I am always ready to intervene in behalf of the exasperated critic whose victim instead of turning and rending him, turns and agrees with him. Certainly Nietzsche did his best to make the conflict between his views and those of Christianity quite irreconcil- able. As we have already seen he attacked religion in general m so far as he explicitly and unquaHfiedly rejected super- naturahsm. He then went on to attack Christianity in par- « The WUl to Freedom. THE GOSPEL OF NIETZSCHE 159 ticular, and for what would ordinarily be regarded as its most unquestionable merit, for its conception of a merciful Heavenly Father. After following Nietzsche's treatment of moral codes we shall be prepared for the method of his assault on Chris- tianity. It is not in the least a question of the existence of God. Nietzsche takes it for granted that God does not exist, and does not think the point worth arguing. He is perfectly willing that men should worship as many gods as they please, provided the gods they conceive are worthy of worship. *' What separates us," he says, "is not that we do not rediscover any God, either in history or in nature or behind nature — but that we recognize what was worshipped as God not as ' divine,' but as pitiable, as absurd, as injurious — not only as error, but as crime against life. We deny God as God. If this God of the Christians were proved to us, we should still less know how to believe m him. In a formula: Deus qualem Pavlus creavit, Dei negatio.'' The God of Christianity, in other words, is improperly con- ceived. "When everything strong, brave, domineering and proud has been eUminated out of the concept of God, when he sinks step by step to the symbol of a staff for the fatigued, a sheet-anchor for the drowning ones, when he becomes the poor people's God, the sinner's God, the God of the sick par excellence, and when the predicate of Savior, Redeemer, is left as the sole divine predicate," — when God is so conceived, thinks Nietzsche, God is not exalted, but reduced and degraded. The Christian God is the God of the masses, reflecting their characteristic weak- nesses and representing their low level of aspiration. He is the God of the timid, of those who withdraw from life, not feeling equal to cope with it. "The Christian concept of God — God as God of the sick, God as cobweb-spinner, God as spirit — is one of the most corrupt concepts of God ever arrived at on earth; it represents perhaps the gauge of low water in the descending development of the God type God degenerated to the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and its eternal yeal In God hostiUty i6o THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS THE GOSPEL OF NIETZSCHE l6l announced to life, to nature, to the will to life, God as the formula for every calumny of 'this world,' for every lie of 'another world.' In God nothingness deified, the will to nothingness declared holy!"^ As in the case of the slave-morqjity, Christianity is con- demned not for the falsity of its doctrinal assertions, but for its effect upon its adherents, or for its effect upon humanity through the ignoble following which it attracts and puts in power. Just as the Darwinian finds that civilization inter- feres with natural selection, so Nietzsche finds that Chris- tianity tends to excuse incompetence, lower standards, and negate aspiration. It is the most powerful enemy of that ideal of human eminence and perfection which is the positive feature of Nietzsche's teaching. III. THE NEW GOSPEL ^ I. The Spirit of Reform. Nietzsche's destructive crit- icism was only incidental. He had the temperament of a reformer and prophet. In spite of his acceptance of the teachings of science, he was no fatalist. '^Mankind does not get on the right road of its own accord," he said.^ He beUeved in evolution, but he believed that it must be kept up and directed by the zeal of the true lovers of mankind. We are at the beginning of a new age, when the teachings of Socrates, of Christianity and of the French Revolution have run their course. He felt himself to be called; to be in possession of a new truth which he must proclaim and for which he must suffer. 2. The WiU to Power. The essential reality, Nietzsche teaches, is a will to power. Will is not, as Schopenhauer would have it, a mere appetite for something which the exter- nal world may give or withhold; a craving which must always remain unappeased because essentially dependent on the caprice of fortune. It is an expansion from within, that is limited only by the degree of its own force and exuberance. > These passages are from Antichrist, 316, 260-262. They are cited by Figgis, op. ctt. ■' ^ 2 Ecce Homo, 93, I. Cf. Will to Power, § 979. Life is not only a will for expansion, for growth from more to more, but it is an instinct for mastery and superiority. It is not enough for will merely to exist. Nietzsche transcends both the Darwinian conception of life as a struggle for bare existence, and the Spencerian idea that it is mere adaptation to conditions imposed from without : "A plurality of forces bound by a common nutritive process we call 'Life.' . . . Life is not the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations, but will to power, which, proceeding from inside, subjugates and incorporates an ever-increasing quan- tity of 'external 'phenomena. . . . The only reality is this; the will of every centre of power to become stronger — not self-preservation, but the desire to appropriate, to become master, to become more, to become stronger." ^ ' 3. Hardness. It is a condition of the realization of the will to power, that a man should have the heart to see it through. One of the most frequently quoted and generally repellent sayings of Nietzsche is the following: ''This new table, O my brethren, I put over you: 'Become hard!'"^ But though its meaning is bad enough, let us not misun- derstand it. It does not mean that the man of power will be malicious or consciously cruel in the sense of enjoying the sufferings inflicted on others. That would be a kind of in- verted sympathy, in which, though in a sense opposite to that which we think commendable, one would nevertheless be affected by the feelings of others. Nietzsche teaches, on the contrary, that the strong man will not be governed by the feelings of others, but by his own will to mastery. He will be hard in the sense that he will assert himself without scruple. Nietzsche thought of sympathy as a weakness, by which man allows his resolutions to waver. You cannot be masterful if you are perpetually troubled about the way the under-dog feels; you cannot excel if you are painfully aware of how disagreeable it is to the other man to be surpassed. The strong man will be bUthesomely, carelessly, inhuman. He will enjoy his superiority and press his advantage with a 1 The Will to Power, §§ 641, 681, 689. 2 Zarathustra, 318-319. 1 62 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS thoroughly good conscience. He will occupy whatever place in the sun he is big enough to fill, and will be superbly in- different to the fact that he may be crowding his neighbor. Without such hardness, Nietzsche would say, we must be forever apologizing, shrinking, and waiting for others to precede, with the result that life is never anywhere fully expanded. The same idea, traceable to Nietzschean influence, appears in the following passage from Strindberg: **When we grow strong as were the men of the first French revolution, then we shall receive an unconditionally good and }oyi\A impression from seeing the national forests rid of rotting and superannuated trees that have stood too long in the way of others with equal right to a period of free growth — an impression good in the same way as that received from the death of one in- curably diseased. ... I find the joy of life in its violent and cruel struggles, and my pleasure lies in knowing something and learning something." ^ In other words, society needs perpetually to be pruned and weeded. The unfit must make way for those in whom, as in the healthy trees of the forest, humanity may be more ad- equately represented. For this pitilessness, like that of the surgeon, is a merit, and not a defect. Closely connected with this, is the more familiar teaching that true greatness is bred only by conflict, and that without hardness conflict cannot be sustained. Nietzsche does not preach a ** peace without victory." On the contrary the strong man is the man who presses his advantage until he overcomes, and who relishes the victory when he wins it. Nietzsche understood well the wastefulness and fatuousness of war. But he regarded militarism as superior to most forms of modern life. He consistently admired in Germany, 1 Author's Preface to "Miss Julia," Plays, trans, by Edwin Bjorkman, Vol. II, p. 98. The plays of this period for the most part centre in a struggle for mastery. Such is the case, for example, with "Miss Julia," in which the valet conquers the daughter of the noble house; "The Stronger," dealing with the struggle between two women for the love of a man; and " Pariah," the struggle for personal ascendency between the two guilty and mutually sus- picious scholars. THE GOSPEL OF NIETZSCHE 163 S not the commercial classes, but that very officer-caste of the army whom we to-day most bitterly reproach.^ And though he had no sympathy with nationalism for its own sake, and was as free as a man can be from patriotic bias, nevertheless he saw in the war-like nation the only hope of escaping his pet aversions, utilitarianism and democracy. *'The maintenance of the military state," he said, "is the last means of adhering to the great tradition of the past, or, where it has been lost, to revive it. By means of it the superior or strong type of man is preserved, and all institutions and ideas which perpetuate enmity and order of rank in states, such as national feeling, protective tariffs, etc., may on that account seem justified."^ 4. The Aflarmation of Life. Of one thing Nietzsche can- not be justly accused. He did not seek the easy or^ the pleasant way of life. He despised every species of utilitar- ianism and eudaemonism. He who affirms life must have a stomach for it as it is — the bitter with the sweet. "The highest state to which a philosopher can attain," he says, is "to maintain a Dionysian attitude to life — my formula for this is amor JatiJ^^ There is in Nietzsche an almost morbid determination to exult in suffering. The man of power will not complain. He will say of pain or any misfortune ''I like it,'' ''Give me more," like one who gratuitously and deliberately bites on a sore tooth. Indeed it has been suggested that Nietzsche's philosophy of life was perhaps in part the result of his pro- longed sufferings from toothache, and from his struggle to bear with it.'* But the meaning of his teaching is not morbid. It means, as does that gospel of life for life's sake of which I shall speak later,^ that he who pretends to love life, and to value power above material possession or subjective satis- > Cf. e.g., The Genealogy of Morals^ p. 14. 2 The Will to Power, § 729. 3 Ibid,, § 1041- * Figgis: Op. ciL, p. 70. » Cf. below, pp. 341-347. 164 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS faction, must have a sort of magnificent heartiness of appe- tite, a relish for the rough edge of life, for life as it is, rather than for carefully selected or tempered portions of it. This motive in Nietzsche finds its noblest and most ex- travagant expression in his doctrine of ^ ^Eternal Recurrence." Although time is infinite, the energies or dynamic agencies in nature are finite, so that only a limited number of natural combinations is possible. Since each such combination is determined by its antecedent in the series, — there is a circu- lar or periodic movement in which every situation recurs infinitely many times. This idea contradicts the belief in straightforward and permanent progress, and is initially re- pugnant to the mind. But with Nietzsche it is an appeal to that grim courage which exults in life as it is. To bear this dreadful prospect, to greet each recurrent event with the joyful cry "Once again,'* ^ — this is the supreme test of the masterful spirit. The doctrine of recurrence gives a kind of immortal dignity to all that is; and enables man to live as though all he did were eternal. In this doctrine Nietzsche's thought reaches its most metaphysical and religious level. The following passage will serve to indicate his mood: "If I am fond of the sea, and of all that is of the sea's kin, and if I am fondest if it contradicteth me angrily; If that seeking lust is within me that driveth the sails after the undiscovered; if there is a sailor's lust in my lust; If my rejoicing hath ever cried: 'The shore hath disappeared! Now the last chain hath fallen from me! The limitless roareth round me! Far, far away shine unto me space and time ! Up! upward, old heart ! Oh! how could I fail to be eager for eternity and for the mar- riage ring of rings, the ring of recurrence? « « * * « Fofr I love thee, Eternity V^ ^ » Werke. VI, 461. ^ Thus Spake Zarathtistrat p. 344. THE GOSPEL OF NIETZSCHE 165 IV. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS It remains only to consider certain implications of Nie- tzsche's philosophy that bear more directly upon the great questions in dispute in the present war. It is one of the paradoxes of Nietzsche's teaching that although he is radical in his ethics and religion, he is a con- servative in his political and social philosophy. The ex- planation of the paradox is not difficult. The orthodox morality of to-day is humanitarian. The interest of hu- manitarianism is in the relief of the unprivileged and the unfortunate. Humanitarianism moves, whether consciously or not, steadily toward political and social equality. But in this movement it encounters the existing system, in which inequality is articulated, legalized and fostered. It in- evitably attacks that system as a whole or in part, with a view to removing handicaps and restrictions, and opening the way for those who lag in the rear. So that political and social radicalism are only an outgrowth and application of the oldest and deepest moral sentiments of Christendom. These, however, are the very sentiments which Nietzsche repudiates. His repudiation of them gives him the aspect of a moral anarchist, of something new and dreadful and shocking to the moral sensibilities. But many of the appli- cations of his moral philosophy would suit the most reac- tionary Bourbon among us. I. Class Subordination. The essence of the matter is that believing in the cultivation of superiority, he is every- where an advocate of authority. Instead of equalizing the differences among men we should acknowledge them, pro- mote them, and legalize them. Instead of being all on one plane, as the democrats would have it, society should be a pyramid or flight of steps, a Rangordnung, with differences of elevation clearly marked. Although the higher men, in whom the ideal of humanity is realized, must only voice their will in accents of command, the mass of mankind have humbly to obey. Their present restiveness under the yoke is to be condemned. Doubtless the "will to power " i66 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS prompts them to it, but they must be held in check by the more potent will to power exercised by their superiors. They 'have no political rights since political authority emanates from above and not from below, being founded on force rather than on contract. The family, Hke the state, is a dominion founded on the centralized responsibility of the head. The present tendency to sentimentalize marriage and rest it on an "idiosyncrasy " like love, is only one more proof of the weakening of authority.^ But Nietzsche is not a reactionary in the sense that he values authority merely because it is established and tradi- tional. He values it in principle. It so happens that the innovating and liberating movements of the age express a levelUng tendency which he beUeves calculated to vulgarize and degrade humanity. Therefore he is opposed to them. He IS a convinced aristocrat, and not an aristocrat from tem- perament, habit or training. He is an idealistic aristocrat in the same sense that Plato was, because he believes that only in a society so graded and scaled can the highest type of Hfe be reaUzed. So thoroughly are we indoctrinated with democratic and humanitarian teachings that it requires some effort on our part even to understand Nietzsche. But the effort is worth while, even if it results only in a clearer con- viction of the extent to which Nietzsche's influence challenges and menaces those ideals that we most warmly cherish. In order that there shall be superiors, he says in effect, there must be inferiors. Society culminates in "the synthetic man who embodies everything and justifies it . . . for whom the rest of mankind is but soil on which he can devise his higher mode of existence. He is in need of the opposition of the masses, of those who are levelled down'; he requires that feeling of distance from them; he stands upon them, he lives on them." ^ The social pyramid, narrow and elevated at the top, re- quires a broad base at the bottom. The masses of mankind are to be regarded as a pedestal, to support what is above * Salter: Op. ciU, p. 422. 2 The Will to Power, § 866. Cf. § 954. THE GOSPEL OF NIETZSCHE 167 » them. If superior men are to look down from their eminence, there must be those whose role it is to be looked down upon, and who for their own part must be satisfied with looking up. If those at the bottom should strive to ascend, it is evident that the pyramidal form of society would be destroyed. Therefore they must be encouraged to keep their place, even to the extent of fostering among them that very slave- morality which Nietzsche so much despises. At the top of the pyramid are the emancipated, the intellectuals in whom humanity recognizes its highest self-expression. Like the philosopher-guardians of Plato's Republic they combine superlative capacity with the control and direction of the affairs of mankind. But they do nothing themselves. That would be beneath their dignity and would compromise their freedom and self-sufficiency. The practical business of ruling is done for them by the next class beneath them, by the statesmen and higher warriors, a sort of glorified General Staff. Below these are the great mass of those who engage in business, in the industrial or mechanical arts, and in manual labor. The essence of the matter is that the whole social pyramid exists for the sake of the apex. Some of you may have seen the upper part of the Washington Monument illuminated by a searchlight at night. The pointed summit of the monu- ment shines high up in the sky, apparently unsupported by the innumerable tiers of blocks that lie below. So for Nie- tzsche's ideaUzing consciousness it is only the pointed summit of the social structure that shines with the radiance of per- fection. The State is "Nature's roundabout way of making a few great individuals." The vast substructure of toiling and suffering mankind is essential to the elevation to which these superb beings have attained. But their part is sub- ordinate and inglorious. For one who has gained the true perspective and learned the true scale of values, they fall within the unnoticed foreground of attention where they are suitably shrouded in the darkness of the lower air. 2. Cosmopolitanism. Nietzsche, like the socialists, is opposed to the cult of nationalism, and for the same reason. i68 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS [ The socialist says that the proletariat has no fatherland; Nietzsche would say that the true aristocracy has no father- land. Like the socialists Nietzsche was the advocate of a class, and not of any particular race or state. He sought to promote a certain type of manhood wherever and whenever conditions permitted. In other words, if Nietzsche's influence is cast for Germany, as I beHeve it is, then at any rate it is not because of any appeal to national partisanship, but because Germany wills that which would in Nietzsche's judgment be of greater value than what is willed by her enemies. It is not in a mere struggle for territory, it is not in commercial rapacity, that this will is to be found, but in that claim of dominion that comes from a conviction of innate superiority. There is as good a "right " to aggression as there is to self-preservation. "A people ought at least with quite as much justification, to be able to regard its lust of power, either in arms, commerce, trade, or colonization, as a right — the right of growth, perhaps. . . . When the instincts of a society ultimately make it give up war and re- nounce conquest, it is decadent: it is ripe for democracy and the rule of shopkeepers." ^ Now there is a type of pan-Germanist who like Nietzsche denounces wealth and pleasure, and who like Nietzsche thinks these to be the pecuHar preoccupations of the ignoble Englishman. Himself he feels to be of another substance, exalted above other races, and therefore justified in seizing and holding that higher place to which his quahty entitles him. Nietzsche would wait long before acquiring apter pupils. Nietzsche is a professed cosmopolitan. His heroes were men of all the world rather than local or merely national figures. He proposed that we should "fearlessly style our- selves good Europeans, and labor actively for the amal- gamation of nations." 2 His superior class was to be an international aristocracy. But we must not forget that he 1 The Will to Power, § 728. 2 Human, All-Too-Human, § 475. Cf. his Peoples and Countries. J P THE GOSPEL OF NIETZSCHE 169 was no sentimental or philanthropic internationalist. It was from no thought of extending like opportunities and privi- leges to all humanity. Nor was it from any idea of dissemi- nating the spirit of peace and brotherly love. Conflict in some form he felt to be necessary, since there is no other means by which "the rough energy of the camp, the deep impersonal hatred, the cold-bloodedness of murder with a good conscience, the general ardour of the system in the destruction of the enemy, the proud indifference to great losses, to one's own existence and that of one's friends, the hollow, earthquake-like convulsion of the soul, can be as forcibly and certainly communicated to enervated nations." ^ He realized the wastefulness of it, in the destruction both of man and of his works, but felt that civilization needed to be reinvigorated by barbarism. It was not that he shrank from war, but from the pettiness of narrow national aspira- tions. He simply felt, as the socialists feel, that most inter- national war is wasteful, since it is waged upon trifling issues. Let the superior men of all nations unite their efforts. Let them fight side by side in the assertion and pro- tection of their own superiority against the inundating tide of mediocrity. Thus does Nietzsche meet the challenge of socialism, and sound his answering and defiant trumpet in that dormant class war whose deeper rumbHngs can even now be heard amidst the active eruption of the war of nations.^ 3. The Superman. Nietzsche is not an egoist in any vulgar sense. We may perhaps accept the distinction of Simmel, who says: "Egoism desires to have something, Per- sonaHsm desires to be something." ^ In this sense Nietzsche is certainly a personaHst rather than an egoist. His motive is not one of greed, but of aspiration toward what he deems a higher type of humanity. To this higher type, viewed as ^ Human, All-too-Human, § 477- Cf. 442, 444- 2 There is, of course, a paradox in all this. The extreme socialists, or syndicalists, might as a minority-class of men of action, be thought to represent the true aristocracy. Cf. below, p. 341. 3 Schopenhauer und Nietzsche, 245. Qu. by Figgis, op. cit., p. 71. 1 70 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS the goal of evolution, he gives the name of "Superman" ( tjbermensch) . There is considerable difference of opinion as to whether Nietzsche literally intended the evolving of a new species re- lated to man as man is related to his simian ancestors; or whether he intended merely the perfecting in a few chosen individuals of the human species itself. But for practical purposes it does not greatly matter.^ In any case he meant to look forward to the development of a new race. Such an end he thought worthy of every sacrifice. To this end every present interest must be subordinated; and for its reahzation every means which history and science suggest is to be em- ployed. The Superman is to be bred by biological selection after the manner of eugenics. He is to be educated by being afforded the fullest opportunity of development; and the whole organization of society is to be adapted to his nurture and support. Above all he is to be schooled by adversity and conflict; and must therefore win his way and maintain himself largely by his own efforts. Although no perfect Superman has yet appeared in history his prototypes are to be found in the world-conquer ers, such as Alexander and Napoleon, in the wicked heroes such as the Borgias, Wagner's Siegfried, and Ibsen's Brand, and in the great cosmopolitan intellects such as Goethe and Stendhal. These were the gods of Nietzsche's idolatry. Their Super- man-like quaUty lay not only in their genius, but in their freedom from scruples. They rightly felt themselves to be above the law. What they did was right not because sanctioned by any law beyond themselves, but because they did it. So the Superman will be a law unto himself. What he does will come from the will and superabundant power within him. Thus the Superman may be generous, even compassionate and sympathetic, provided it flows from strength and not from weakness.^ In Nietzsche's Superman, as in Aristotle's Highminded 1 For a discussion of this question, cf. Simmel: op. cil., and Doraer: Pessi- mismus, Nietzsche und Naturalismus. 2 Cf. The Will to Powers II, §§ 330, S^S* 379- THE GOSPEL OF NIETZSCHE 171 < \ Man, there is an air of superiority that somehow mars the perfection. Here is lordUness and eminence and quahty enough to command our unquaUfied admiration. But there is an unmistakable flaw, hard to detect, like a delicate nuance of physiognomy, and yet enough to make the difference be- tween the sublime and the ridiculous. The flaw consists, I think, in the accompanying consciousness, the inner attitude of the Superman. Not only is he superior, but he knows it, and he doesn't care who else knows it. He is thoroughly and unpleasantly satisfied with himself. Like everybody else he cannot stand success. I know of no better evidence of this weakness of the Super- man than the contrast presented between the Superman and Nietzsche himself. The latter, despite the errors and ex- cesses of his teaching, is a commanding and admirable figure. This, I think, is because he suffered and struggled. We feel him, we of the herd-morality, to be one of us in that he knew hardship and failure, but to be better than most of us in that he wore himself out for disinterested ends. But the Super- man is one who has arrived. He has no remote goal, no greater cause, to give himself to. He can only sit and medi- tate upon his own greatness; or walk out upon a balcony and survey with disdain the clamoring multitude below; or occasionally give orders to have some impudent uprising suppressed. The mass of suffering and failure in the world is as great as ever, but it is no concern of his. It is all justi- fied in that it has put him where he is. But however mag- nificent he is we cannot admire him. It is not, I think, be- cause we envy him. It is because we feel that a man who finds himself so at ease and so comfortable in his conscience, when pain and death and despair abound, can be no more than a spoiled child or a pompous prig. There is the same difference between the Germany of a cen- tury ago and the Germany of to-day. The nationaUstic as- pirations of a beaten and suffering people, reclaiming their liberties by heroic and self-sacrificing efforts, is admirable. But a bloated and arrogant Empire, ostentatiously successful, and having no longer anything to live for but to expand itself 172 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS and sound its own praise, this we feel is not great but child- ish and vain. It comes back in the end, I think, to this: that so long as there is evil in the world, in any recess or corner of it, man- kind had better postpone the occasion of self -congratulation. The perfecting of a favored few at the expense of their fel- lows may be a noble work of love and sacrifice on the part of those who pay the cost, but those who like Nietzsche's Supermen accept the sacrifice as only what their superiority deserves, will have deceived themselves. They will, in fact, be less than the least of those who serve them. 1 CHAPTER XIII THE APPEAL TO MORAL AND RELIGIOUS FACTS Thus far we have been examining these creeds and codes of our time which have been formed chiefly under the in- fluence of science; some of them inspired by the physical and mechanical view of nature, some by the example and achieve- ment of scientific method, some by certain new ideas, such as society and evolution to which science has recently given vogue. Science is innovating and radical, and its great power in recent times has given to our age that general transitional character which we ascribed to it at the opening of our study. Although in some cases science has seemed to reinstate and confirm the traditional moral code it has in- variably discredited the metaphysical and religious founda- tions on which that code is ordinarily supposed to rest, and whose support it is ordinarily supposed to require. Thus Huxley, for example, would have us do our duty in the same old way, but without ascribing to duty any central signifi- cance in the world at large; and while the socialists would still proclaim the brotherhood of man they would omit that fatherhood of God which many would regard as the neces- sary and indispensable sequel. It is in its bearings on the spiritualistic metaphysics, on the belief that the mental and moral things are first in the order of reality, that the in- fluence of science has invariably been innovating and radical. This influence, as might have been expected, has been stoutly resisted. The spiritualistic metaphysics has not only survived in old forms, but has forged new weapons with which to champion the cause of the old religious beliefs against the menace of science. In so far as old orthodox beUefs have merely continued to exist by inertia and habit, or through the repetition of old arguments, they do not con- cern us here. We shall confine ourselves to those revivals 173 174 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS of the spiritualistic metaphysics in which there is something of novelty, or at any rate something that is distinctly char- acteristic of the times. We shall find it convenient to discuss this group of tendencies under three heads. First, we shall consider the appeal to moral and religious facts as affording a basis for faith. Second, we shall examine certain rather miscellaneous phases of idealism, such as Phenomenalism, Panpsychism, and Personal Idealism, having some logical connection with one another, but distinguished chiefly by the absence of that positive speculative motive which dis- tinguishes Absolute Idealism. Third, we shall examine Absolute Idealism as being the greatest of these spiritualistic philosophies, and as having played a major role in present events through its appUcation in the German philosophy of the state. In the present chapter we turn to the first of these topics, the appeal to moral and religious facts. We have already seen that the application of the scientific method to the fields of morals and religion has had the effect of emphasizing the unmistakable existence and the vast area of these fields. Whatever you may make of it, it is less possible now than it ever was before, to deny that man is moral and that man is religious. Even science has strengthened this conviction. But there have been other forces, no less potent. Chief among these is that emotional intensification of moral and religious convictions which is due to propaganda and or- ganized appeal. In addition to this there is that which, for lack of a better understanding, we must term the natural, periodic revival of moral and religious zeal, in which after stretches of relative apathy the pendulum swings back again. There would seem to be a sort of psychological law by which laxity accumulates forces of remorse that eventually break out in waves of reform and renewed faith. The periodic re- turn to good government in New York City and to Catholi- cism in France, are instances of what I mean. The great war, as might have been expected, has stimu- lated the whole range of human emotions and sentiments. If in some cases it appears to have intensified the baser in- MORAL AND RELIGIOUS FACTS I7S i stincts, in other cases, and more unmistakably, it has strengthened the appeal of conscience and the grip of old religious beliefs. The war has made many men more vigor- ously dutiful, more tenderly humane, more buoyantly con- fident, or more tenanciously loyal. Thus the facts of moral and religious experience have been revivified and freshly apprehended in our day, and new importance therefore attaches to their interpretation. For we are concerned here not so much with the facts themselves as with their use for the purpose of justifying a spiritualistic view of the world. I. MORALISM By "moralism'' I mean viewing the world through the medium of the moral consciousness; regarding moraUty as the central fact in the world, and construing the world ac- cordingly. Moralism, in other words, is not being moral simply, but interpreting the world as morahty suggests or seems to require. The firmest dogmatism of the present age is its moral dog- matism. By this I mean holding firmly to conscience and its promptings, without seeking further. Every older dogma abandoned has meant a larger adherence to the moral dogma, as when at sea one life-boat after another sinks, those that remain become more crowded. In so far as men's confidence in the Scriptures, or in miracles, or in the authority of the church, has been shaken, they have climbed aboard the raft of morality. In so far as science has shaken the older theistic arguments by which God was proved from the book of nature, men have turned to morality as the last support of a faltering faith. The classic example of this is the rise of what is known as Deism, in the Eighteenth Century. This aimed to be a religion without mystery or supernaturalism, a re- Ugion consistent with the utmost freedom of thought, inde- pendent of inspiration and authority. It rested, more and more heavily, upon the supposed immutable and self-evident dictates of conscience. Voltaire was both the most de- structive critic and the most unhesitating moral dogmatist to which the movement gave rise. This tendency to fall 176 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS MORAL AND RELIGIOUS FACTS 177 back upon the line of moral entrenchments when the meta- physical or institutional first-line trenches become untenable is perhaps pecuHarly characteristic of the French and Anglo- Saxon minds. At any rate, such is the contention of Nie- tzsche, who says that when Englishmen give up the Christian creed they are not logical enough to give up the code that goes with it. The war has given rise both in France and in England to a great revival of conscience. In both countries, though in characteristically different ways, patriotism has assumed the form of a moral revival. In England, in par- ticular, the old-fashioned moral prejudices were largely, per- haps mainly, responsible for the voluntary recruiting of three million men. MoraKsm assumes several quite different forms which it is worth while to distinguish. n. THE CODE OF CONSCIENCE AND THE RULE OF GOD To many persons, especially in Protestant countries, morality signifies a set of prohibitions. Duty is a sort of taboo, restraining men from the performance of certain acts to which nature prompts them. It is a sort of sumptuary legislation, proscribing card-playing, dancing, theatre-going, or the indulgence of physical appetites. It is a moderate, half-hearted revival of the old Christian asceticism. It consists in the possession of a set of powerful scruples that thwart the expression of natural impulses. This is what in our own tradition is called ''the New England conscience," though its centre of distribution is now somewhat nearer the Mississippi Valley. It is usually associated with the teachings of the Old Testament, and especially with the Lutheran and Calvinistic revivals of Old Testament theology. But this view of conscience is closely associated with a certain view of the world. Nature is regarded as scanda- lous; and man, since nature is a part of his inheritance, is necessarily sinful and undeserving. Since man deserves nothing, the severity of God is justified; and his grace being gratuitous is not claimed as a right, but humbly and grate- I fully received as pure bounty. More fundamental than this is the idea of the moral government of the world. Conscience of this sort is codified; it consists of statutes and commands. There must be a God, because there must be a Ruler with universal jurisdiction over men. Conscience, the ''stern daughter of the voice of God,'' is the medium by which God's commands are made known to his subjects. Conscience speaks imperatively and authoritatively and demands un- hesitating and unreasoning obedience. Human suffering cannot be held to be a grievance, since man in any case de- serves the worst, nor does it afford any ground for failure to do one's duty. Duty is necessarily painful in any case, since it goes against the grain of nature. Nor are moralists of this type disturbed in their worship by the spectacle of the cruelties which God permits, since God is worshipped not for his lovableness but rather for his stern justice and his unshakable power. in, MORAL SELF-DETERMINATION AND INDIVIDUALISM A very different conception of conscience is implied in the notion of "the individual conscience," or "liberty of con- science." This too is Protestant rather than Catholic in its Christian sources. It is connected with the teaching that a man may search the Scriptures for himself and save his soul without the intervention of the Church. A more advanced form of the same thing is to be found in Locke's idea of toler- ance, according to which the individual's judgment must not be coerced. Church and state being separated, moral and religious teachings must be left to the art of persuasion. The same teaching is reinforced and finds its chief support to-day in Anglo-Saxon individuahsm, which would in all possible ways make each reasoning man independent and self-sufficient. This idea is the key to the "conscientious objector," a phenomenon peculiar to England and America, and the occasion of much wonderment even to our French allies. The rights of the conscientious objector are based on the right of every man in moral matters to make up his own mind. 178 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS There is no moral truth, according to this idea, save such as is achieved by conscientiously thinking it out for yourself. There are no moral authorities, with any infallible higher insight. To reach and to disseminate truth it is therefore important that each individual should be encouraged to use his own reason. When an individual conscientiously reaches a conclusion contrary to the present need or interest of the community, the situation is essentially tragic. However fantastic the objector's judgment may appear to the majority of his fellows, there is something sacred in it just because it is his judgment. If the state coerces him, then having his own high sanction, more authoritative than any external instrumentality such as the state, he is entitled to the dignity of martydom. There is, furthermore, an ideal, as well as a principle at stake. The highest type of life is the individual who is answerable only to himself, whose supreme rule of conduct is to abide by the canons of his own code. To be a man of honor, to be a man of one's word, to be true to one's self whatever the cost, is to be a man, or at any rate an English- man. With this norm of conduct there is associated a view of the world in which the spiritual centre tends to be shifted from God to the human personality. If there be a God he must be conceived so as not to compromise the dignity of in- dividual moral beings. If God be worshipped he must Him' self be similarly endowed. If God's existence be doubtful, then the autonomous moral agent remains as the rock on which a spiritual faith may be founded. "Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever Gods may be For my unconquerable soul. « « « 4t * It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with pimishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul." * ^ Henley's Invictus. I ' c MORAL AND RELIGIOUS FACTS IV. ALTRUISM AND OPTIMISM 179 A third version of conscience finds expression in the familiar idea that the essence of moral obliquity is selfish- ness, the essence of right conduct unselfishness. To be bad is to be hard or self-indulgent; to be good is to be com- passionate or self-sacrificing. This view, in other words, identifies conscience with a specific sentiment; or, if we are to credit McDougall's acceptance of the "tender emotion" even with a specific instinct. Conscience is the better part of human nature, contending against the baser. With this philanthropic morality we have already met. Its most conscious expression since the French Revolution has been in the philanthropic type of socialism, in that socialism which is concerned with giving rather than getting. But it has found an even wider expression in what we now call "social service "; and the sentiment of humanity which moves men to act in behalf of the rights of small nations. That this type of conscience has in our day reasserted itself with re- newed vigor will not be denied. It is appealed to, especially in France, as a finality, as the highest principle by which to judge the conduct of men and the policy of nations. The altruistic conscience may through emphasis on the motive of pity be reconciled, as in the case of Jansenism, with the belief in original sin, and the helpless depravity of man. But it is more naturally and more logically connected with the idea that men are like children, in being the innocent victims of circumstance; deserving to be happy, and only prevented by the artificial cruelty of institutions. Such a view inclines all of the moralists of kindliness, as it incHned Rousseau and Shelley, to a belief that nature is beneficent and good, only civilization being vile. Good is inherently more powerful than evil, it being necessary only to remove barriers in order that it shall prevail. Man's humane im- pulses are deeper, more significant of the cosmic order than his baser impulses. Religion is a deepening of these gentler feehngs into a love of God, who manifests himself in the graciousness and beauty of nature. So feeling, rather than reason or will, is the root both of morals and of religion. i i8o THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS The altruistic conscience in its recent reawakening has also undoubtedly given a new support to Christianity, thus partially offsetting the loss which Christian apologetics have suffered through the weakening of the older theistic meta- physics. Even Catholicism has in certain quarters allied itself with socialism; or with the teaching that the state must protect the individual from the abuses of the competitive economic system.^ **The very existence of Catholic social- ism," thinks Brunetiere, "shows that there is something of idealism at the basis of all socialism."^ -q^^ ^q might equally well say that it shows that there is something of altruism in Catholic Christianity; and that it therefore derives rein- forcement from every kindHng of the sentiment of humanity. Similarly the Tolstoyan pacifism and love of humble men has stimulated a revival of primitive Christianity; while in a wider sense the participation of the Christian churches in the new campaign of social service has brought them new recruits with which to replace losses due to the decline of the dogmas and doctrines of the orthodox creed. V. KANTIAN FORMALISM Finally, we have to consider a version of conscience that is primarily philosophical in its origin, but which has lent countenance, if it has not directly caused, certain practical attitudes and policies characteristic of our day. I refer to Kant's doctrine of the "categorical imperative.'' We have within us, says Kant, a faculty which has special and final jurisdiction over conduct. This practical reason ^ though universal in its validity, is present in each individual con- sciousness, so that in a sense each individual is his own moral ruler. The right act is whatever act this practical reason affirms. Whatsoever I do with the conviction that it is in keeping with the laws binding on all moral agents, whatever I do in this sense conscientiously, is ipso facto right. * Cf., e.g., the Bishop of Mainz, and M'g'r de Kelleter in Germany, Cardinal Manning in England and Cardinal Gibbons in this country. Cf. Socialism and Religion, Fabian Socialist Series, No. i. 2 The Renaissance of Idealkm. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS FACTS l8l Such ethics may be called ''formalistic," in the sense that what determines the rectitude of the act is not its conse- quences or effects, but the form or principle under which the agent subsumes the act in his own mind. Thus, if I feed a starving man and save his fife, the act is right not because of what happens to the starving man, but because I perform the act out of respect for the general law that we should re- lieve brothers in distress. If I was moved to the act by the natural incUnation of pity, that too has nothing to do with the rectitude of the act. Doing one's duty has nothing to do either with the consequences of acts, or with one's natural inclinations. It is altogether a question of a stern, cold, judgment within the agent himself. If he pays too much attention to consequences his act declines to the level of expediency and loses its moral value altogether. If he lets himself be swayed by his inclinations, he is the slave of nature and is not exercising that autonomy, that self-mastery, of which his moral ^^ freedom " consists. Now formalism may be entirely innocuous when it is allied with traditionalism. Kant himself owing to his pietistic training and inheritance practised a plain homespun morality such as any orthodox Protestant community would approve. His own personal edition of the practical reason was edited; it took over bodily that code of justice, honesty and benevo- lence by which social well-being is assured. But Kant's theory, like the theories of many gentle ped- ants, was logically of the most menacing character imagi- nable. It implied that a man might justify his act by its inward accord with reason, whatever its consequences. To see the full significance of this teaching we have to imagine a man of wholy different moral habits from those of Kant, a man like Nietzche's Superman, let us say, entirely emanci- pated from traditional social morahty. He may then enter upon a course of conduct entirely subversive of the public interest, and his course is completely justified provided only his reason approves what he does. He may proceed to in- jure and destroy with all the solemnity and conviction of one who believes himself to be doing his duty. You may reply l82 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS MORAL AND RELIGIOUS FACTS 183 that no man's reason will prompt him to such a course of action. But why not? Where is the guarantee? In so far as the formaUstic principle is adopted, one ceases to con- sider consequences, and one hardens oneself even against the promptings of one's natural humanity. One may even come to regard such hardness and indifference to conse- quences as a proof of one's uncompromising adherence to duty. The more ruthless one's action, the more rigorous one's morality. Virtue being thus divorced from all content, from those specific precepts and sentiments which conduce to social welfare, these may readily be replaced by other precepts and sentiments. It is easy, for example, to find any course reasonable and dutiful, that is in accord with one's personal interest. Nothing is more natural, more humanly probable than that a man should thus deceive himself and harness his conscience to his greed or ambition. Or the precepts of social beneficence may be replaced by the commands of the state. Formahsm in ethics breeds submissiveness to authority. It accustoms the will to the acceptance of rules of conduct that are contrary to the natural feelings, and that are indifferent to human happiness. What, then, is more natural than that conscience should come bodily to adopt the rulings of the poUtical authorities as the course of duty? When this is done, when the moral agent imposes on himself by force of conscience whatever the state enacts, then the tyranny and unscrupulousness of the state's action is not only ignored and unchecked, but receives a powerful reinforcement from the moral motives of the community. Tyranny is called *' freedom," and unscrupulousness is called ''righteousness." I should not thus enlarge upon the practical implications of Kantian formahsm did I not beheve that this logic has played an important part in the events of the day, and given in the name of Kant a moral name to practices which the human impulses and a considerate regard for social well- being must unqualifiedly condemn.^ ^ Cf. below, pp. 419-421, 431. But we are here concerned also with the metaphysical and religious sequel to formahsm. Here Kant's thought is both original and of far-reaching influence. It is the most clean- cut instance of morahsm, of a view of the world determined by moral necessities, that modern thought affords. According to Kant it is impossible to know the real world. The objects ordinarily treated in rehgions — God, the soul and the future Kfe — He beyond the limits of knowledge, be- cause they lie beyond the limits of experience. But there is a way of reaching them none the less, the way oi faith. Now by ''faith " Kant does not mean beheving wantonly and capriciously, but in such definite ways as are prescribed by one's moral nature. Thus, for example, as a moral agent one proceeds to one's duty quite regardless of the considera- tions of happiness. Nevertheless, one cannot so proceed without beheving that since virtue deserves well, it will in the long run be crowned with happiness. But to believe this is to believe in a being governed by a moral purpose and powerful enough to direct the course of cosmic affairs so as to harmonize them with moraUto. Such a being is God. There is no evidence or proof of his existence in the sense acceptable to science. But if one is a moral agent, and does one's duty, one cannot but believe in God. Similarly, there is no doing one's duty without beheving oneself free to do] it, free from the exclusive dominion of natural laws; and there is no possibiUty of aspiring to moral perfection without beheving that through immortaUty one will have an opportunity commensurate with the task. So the whole edifice of religious beUef is based, according to Kant, on one's needs as a spiritual being. Kant's idea is one of the great stimulating ideas in modem religious thought. Kant himself gave an exclusively moral turn to it. But it may be generalized and appUed in other forms. It amounts to a new logic of behef. As regards ultimate things, where facts are inaccessible, we must, according to this new logic, believe as our deeper needs dictate. What we have to be- lieve in order to be true to ourselves, in order to supply Ufe with the necessary incentive, background, or presupposition, that will be our religion and our view of the world. 1 84 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS VI. THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE The motives which lead to revivals of religious zeal are largely inscrutable. There is no type of human character more inexplicable in its force and influence than that of the founder of new religious movements. I know of no psy- chology that explains Mary Baker Eddy or Joseph Smith. It is almost equally difficult to explain the conversion of in- dividuals to reverent credulity. With some, as perhaps with Huysmans, religion comes as ^'a seasoned dish to a jaded palate," with others it is the death-bed repentance of an uneasy conscience. But on the whole the con- version of Blake and Strindberg to Swedenborgianism remains as mysterious as the power of Mother Eddy and Apostle Smith to convert thousands to Christian Science and Mormonism. There has been no lack in our day of religiosity, that is, of religious sentiment and experience. While the war may have seemed to discredit the religion of progress and human- ity, it has given fresh strength to the religion of renunciation and other-worldiness. Religion of the latter type seems better justified than ever in its contention that man cannot be saved through his own efforts or by any merely secular achievement. Above all fresh impetus has been given to the religion of suffering. This religion regards suffering as an opportunity for spiritual trial and growth, in which the soul is quaHfied for a higher form of existence beyond the grave. The French Catholic writer Paul Claudel describes a French farmer of the time of the Hundred Years War who had been strangely spared the pillage and bereavement which were the common lot. Instead of congratulating himself he fell to wondering how he could have offended, that God should not have tried him too. So he leaves his property and family behind and goes upon a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in order that through hardship and exile his courage and resignation may be proved. It is in this spirit that many Catholic French- men have met the cruelties and havoc of the present war, notably the briUiant young men of letters, Peguy and MORAL AND RELIGIOUS FACTS 185 Psichari, both of whom died in battle. To them war was a supreme spiritual opportunity in which they might suffer and die nobly, and like true martyrs achieve an extraordi- nary exaltation of devotion and purity.^ Mysticism, too, lives on as hardily as ever, as though ex- pressing a permanent strain in human nature. This form of the rehgious experience thrives without the church as well as within. It is a potent factor in modern literature, where its greatest exponent is perhaps Maeterhnck. In the preface to his collected plays, written in 1908, this writer analyzes the beauty of a work of art as follows: "First, the beauty of language, then the impassioned view and portrayal of what exists about us and in us, that is, nature and our sentiments, and lastly, enveloping the whole work and form- ing its atmosphere, the idea formed by the poet of the unknown in which the beings and things he calls forth are drifting, and of the mystery which rules and judges them and presides over their destiny." ^ The religious experience, then, has found appropriate occasions in the life of the times. But there is nothing new in this. What is new, and peculiarly characteristic of our day, is the study of this phenomenon. As we have already seen,^ the scientific method has been extended to the field even of religion. For there are facts there as well as else- where. Whatever interpretation may eventually be put upon these facts, the anthropologist and psychologist may describe them, and the sociologist may endeavor to ex- plain or evaluate them in terms of the life of the community. But the result of this study is to call attention to the ubiquity, and the unique vividness and power, of the religious life. A notable example of this influence is afforded by William James's Varieties of Religious Experience. The title in itself 1 Cf. A. Schinz: "The Renewal of French Thought on the Eve of the War," American Journal of Psychology, Vol. XXVIII (1916), pp. 310-313. This article shows a trend towards Catholicism and Mediaevalism among French literary men just before the outbreak of the war. 2 Quoted by Flaccus, Artists and Thinkers, p. 39. ' Cf. above, pp. 67-69. 1 86 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS is most expressive, as signifying that religion is to be studied as an assemblage of psychological facts. But this book has done much more than satisfy scientific curiosity. It has quickened and promoted the religious life. This effect has been due largely to the directly moving and contagious power of the religious biographies unfolded. But it has been due even more to the attitude of the author. He says in effect, ** These experiences are just as genuine as any experiences. Do not be prejudiced because those who had them were neurotic or otherwise queer. To those who had them, these experiences were just as convincing as your perception of external nature. Is there not, perhaps, a certain presump- tion in favor of any object which any man has felt to be present to him?" In other words, James has encouraged us to credit the content and the claims of the religious experience. And quite apart from the attitude of James himself there can be no doubt that a familiarity with the facts of religion, and especially with the more vivid and exalted moments of the religious life, inclines the mind to accept religious experience as in some degree objective. Conversion and mystical communion are experiences of something which those who have these experiences call *'God." An open-minded re- ceptivity to the evidence of experience would seem to require that these claims be given some credit. William James is also largely responsible for another in- terpretation of Religious experiences, to which we shall again return in discussing pragmatism.^ Quite independently of its truth or falsity as a representation of objective reality, religion has certain specific effects upon the mind of the believer himself. In so far as it promotes the contentment, serenity and optimism of the individual, it may be said to have a hygienic value. Although religion has always had such values, never before have they been so consciously recognized and exploited. Thus in Christian Science, and in the "Immanuel Movement," religion is deliberately pro- moted as an instrument of mental healing. What accession * Cf. below, pp. 301-31 1. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS FACTS 187 of Strength the religious view of the world has thus obtained, has resulted from a better knowledge of the facts of the re- ligious life itself — knowledge of its relation to the emotions and will, or to the general nervous and mental organization of the individual. 1 CHAPTER XIV PHENOMENALISM AND PANPSYCHISM We have seen that morality and religion themselves, as incontrovertible facts of human experience, have inclined men to adopt the spiritualistic metaphysics which is thought to be appropriate to them. We have now to consider that movement of thought in which the spirituaHstic metaphysics is systematically established on its own proper philosophical grounds. This is philosophy's direct reply to naturalism, by which it is conceived to save man from the unwelcome practical implications of triumphant science. I. PHENOMENALISM This reply to naturalism commonly takes as its point of departure a view to which I shall give the name of ** phenom- enalism." This view attacks what it conceives to be the essential thesis of naturalism, the thesis, namely, that all being is corporeal, that is, either matter or physical energy. The counter-thesis of phenomenalism is the thesis that, prima facie, so far as given in experience, all being is mental. Whatever is immediately present, it is contended, — the data, the actual scene of nature and history, or, to use Berke- ley's phrase, *'the whole choir of heaven and furniture of earth," — is appearance- to- consciousness, *^ representa- tion" or ** content." This desk before us, for example, taken just as it appears, is essentially a something-perceived, a percept. When we look into our minds, we find it there; hence it is something contained in mind, or mental content. Or it is something appearing to us, a phenomenon ; not some- thing as it is by itself, but something as we see it. I shall not attempt to gauge the correctness of this reason- ing here. I have devoted a good deal of space to it else- i88 PHENOMENALISM AND PANPSYCHISM 189 where.^ We are interested here in considering its practical implications. And these will not detain us very long, for as nearly as I can discover, it has none. Its only importance lies in what it leads to in the way of further philosophizing. Pragmatism has been called a *' corridor philosophy," in the sense that a good many different philosophical itineraries lead through it. The phrase could, I think, be more appro- priately appHed to phenomenalism. Many different schools of philosophy traverse it together, and then part company just before they make the interesting inferences and draw the moral. That phenomenalism in itself is quite indeterminate and ambiguous as regards morality and religion is most clearly proved by the fact that while we all probably associate it with a spiritualistic view of the world, it is as a matter of fact accepted by many thinkers who hold just the opposite view; by Hume, for example, and in our own day by Huxley and Karl Pearson.^ These writers say that the data, the given items of experience, are sensations; that the hard facts, to which science has to appeal in the last analysis, are sensible facts. But they then go on to maintain that the only hy- potheses that fit these facts are those mechanical hypotheses that are formulated by physical science. The concepts of matter, force and energy, they say, are the only means by which these sensations can be described and accounted for. The upshot of it is that the order of events in the world is a mere sequence or blind necessity, expressed in mathematical equations, and entirely indifferent to values or aspirations. So it appears that for moral and religious purposes it makes no difference whatever that the terms or items of experience should happen to be of a psychical rather than of a corporeal character. The really important question appears to be the question of determination, the question of the sort of causal principle that is operative in the world. In order, then, to reach that spiritualistic metaphysics which is thought to justify moral endeavor and guarantee * Cf. Present Philosophical Tendencies, pp. 126-134. ' Also, more or less qualifiedly, by Santayana and Bertrand Russell. 1 90 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS human hopes, it is necessary to go beyond phenomenalism. This view in itself is incomplete. Everything depends on how it is rounded out. It is possible to distinguish at least four views of this more complete or metaphysical character that may be said somewhat loosely to be spiritualistic rather than naturalistic in their tendency. There is first spiritualistic agnosticism, which would give a spiritualistic flavor to the unknown substance supposed to underlie phenomena. Secondly, there is panpsychism, which would regard the phenomena themselves as a sort of substance, a kind of ''mind-stuff," of a higher or lower order. Third, there is personal idealism, which would support phenomena by sup- posing them to be the states of individual souls of the human or superhuman type. Finally, there is absolute idealism which supposes the whole aggregate of phenomena to be supported and arranged by a single universal mind. In the present chapter I shall briefly discuss the first two of these alternatives, and introduce the third and fourth by distin- guishing them and setting forth certain broad ideas which they have in common. II. SPIRITUALISTIC AGNOSTICISM Agnosticism, as we have already seen, is the view that there is an underlying reality, which makes itself known by its effects, but which never shows itself in its own true char- acter. Reality is always masked; its identity remains a perpetual and impenetrable mystery. In spiritualistic agnosticism this unknown reality is more or less illicitly given a spiritual character, which makes us feel relatively at home and safe in its presence. Of course if one were a strict agnostic one would not attribute any character to the un- known. But it is doubtful if there is any such thing as a strict agnosticism. To assert even that the unknown is there, is to claim some knowledge of it; and once you have gone that far there is no insuperable logical obstacle to going further. The mind abhors a blank, just as nature is supposed to abhor a vacuum; and when the blank cannot be filled by proper scientific evidence, it tends to be filled in other less PHENOMENALISM AND PANPSYCHISM 191 rigorously intellectual ways. Thus the mind tends to con- strue the unknown favorably, to give itself the benefit of the doubt. A man in the dark will allow his imagination to invoke objects suggested by his fears or his hopes. So the agnostic may be afraid in the dark or he may feel safe in the dark. Feeling afraid in the dark has induced what we call superstitious dread, a sense of malignant mystery. But the grown man, master of his fears, confident of his powers, tends to construe the unknown as an ally, or as a sympathetic and approving presence. This favorable version of the unknown may be thought to rest not on prejudice, but on a sort of moral necessity. The great champion of this view is Kant. We have already seen that Kant regards certain articles of faith as the inevi- table sequel to performance of duty. Believing in God, Freedom and Immortality is not an arbitrary act, as you might believe in a lucky horse-shoe, but it is believing as your moral nature compels. Since you cannot do your duty with- out so believing, it is your duty so to believe. But if the scientific account of the world were complete and final, such belief would be excluded. So Kant limits science, as he says, to make room for faith. This room left for faith is the un- known. Science deals with phenomena or appearances only. Beyond there is the mystery, inpenetrable by the methods of knowledge. But this mystery we are in duty bound to construe as morality requires; and so the void of the unknown is filled by God, Freedom and Immortality. But there is another variety of spiritualistic agnosticism which is more in favor with men of science. We start once more with phenomenaUsm. The facts, it is asserted, are mental. The unknown, then, may be judged by its appear- ances. It is the kind of unknown that manifests itself in sensations. That being the case, it may be credited with a sort of kinship to mind. All that we know about it is mental. This inference seems to be confirmed by the recent develop- ments of physical science. I have said that there is a nat- uralistic version of phenomenalism in which it is contended that the only explanation of the order of sensations is by 192 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS mechanical hypotheses. But in the course of its history the aspect of mechanism has grown less forbidding through the increasing emphasis on the concept of energy. So long as science expressed itself in terms of hard impenetrable matter it seemed utterly ahen to the spiritualistic view of the world. But energy, like the ether or centres of force advocated by other physicists, is softer and less forbidding. It is im- possible to speak of spiritual matter, but it is the easiest thing in the world to speak of spiritual energy, or even of spiritual force. Now if energy explains the order of sensations, it must be conceived to lie farther back than the sensations, closer to the unknown source of things, and it must therefore be con- ceived to reflect this unknown more directly. So we may speak of the unknown as *' the unknown energy." Of course in all strictness an unknown energy is not in the least energetic, any more than an Unknown God is divine. If we construe the unknown in terms of the physical energy of science, it ceases to be unknown, and becomes a part of mechanical nature; while if not so construed, it lapses into nothingness. But such is the power of words that an ambiguity like energy, meaning one thing in science and another thing in popular speech, further obscured by the adjective *' unknown," will, especially if spelled with a capital, afford such thinkers as Haeckel, Ostwald and Sir Oliver Lodge all the gratifications of a hopeful speculative beUef. III. PANPSYCHISM Another passage which leads out from this corridor of phenomenalism bears the label ^^Panpsychism." This doc- trine is a sort of mental atomism, mental contents being conceived to have a substantial existence by themselves, instead of requiring some support from beyond. In the usual view we think of mental contents either as appear- ances of something, or as states of something; either, for example, as the appearances of the unknown reality of the agnostic, or as the states of a person, human or divine. But in panpsychism these bits of mind belong to nothing. They PHENOMENALISM AND PANPSYCHISM 193 are neither relations nor possessions. They are just them- selves, each with a unique qualitative identity of its own. All other realities are compounds and patterns of them. An individual mind, instead of being their active proprietor, is simply their sum, one of the shifting aggregates or flowing streams in which they unite. I. The View of Nature. Panpsychism is best known by its view of nature. Instead of supposing mind to begin somewhere in the scale of Hfe, and life to begin where biology distinguishes the organic from the inorganic, this doctrine proposes to carry both mind and Ufe all the way to the bot- tom. Everything in its inward essence is sentiency or feel- ing. The argument appeals to analogy and to the principle of continuity. Just as animals and men, although out- wardly physical and extended in space, are inwardly made up of perceptions, memories, ideas and emotions, so one may suppose by analogy that for every unit or element of nature there is a corresponding mental life. To others I am a body, to myself I am a consciousness. I know how it feels to be myself. So there is a way it feels to be a tree, or a river or a mountain. Everything feels, and everything is what it feels to be. By the principle of continuity it is argued that as we move down or back in the scale of nature there is no reason for supposing mind ever to have had any beginning. In animals one finds a form of mind appropriate to their place in the scale, not the same as the human mind, but mind of a sort, none the less. Among the lower animals mind is less re- flective and purposive, more like crude sensation or dumb craving, but it is still mind. Biologists are inclined to recognize in the tropism of plants a cruder form of the same thing. When therefore we pass from organic to in- organic phenomena, instead of conceiving mind to drop out altogether, we may conceive it to exist in forms that are cruder still. The argument borrows support also from the psychologist's recognition of a subconscious mental life that lies outside the focus of attention, or below the threshold of clear consciousness, or disconnected from the central personal 194 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS system of association and memory. Further plausibility is given to the view by the vocabulary of physical science, with its "affinities," *' attractions" and ''repulsions," making it possible for a writer like Haeckel to say in all seriousness that "the irresistible passion that draws Edward to the sympathetic Ottilia, or Paris to Helen, is ... the same impetuous movement which imites two atoms of hydrogen to one atom of oxygen for the formation of a molecule of water." ^ It is important to distinguish the panpsychistic view of nature from the merely phenomenalistic view, and from the idealistic developments of phenomenalism. This difference can be most compactly expressed by saying that according to panpsychism nature is made of conscious subjects. Take, for example, any natural landscape. The phenomenalist and idealist argue that tree, river and mountain are mental in the sense of being appearances to a sentient or thinking mind such as his own. They are passive states belonging to something beyond themselves. They are not mental in themselves, but rather in their relation to senses or faculties of some subject other than themselves. The panpsychist, however, would say that tree, river and mountain are them- selves minds having, like ourselves, their own states. For phenomenalism and idealism nature is a panorama; for pan- psychism it is a menagerie. The idealist in contemplating nature is communing with his own thoughts; the panpsychist feels himself to be in a vast society which has a rich interior life of its own, and in which he is himself the object of a million watchful eyes. The panpsychist concedes that the self-sentient parts of nature are also objects or appearances for one another. In short the view is radically dualistic. Everything in the world has two aspects; there is that which it is for others, its external, its phenomenal or what we commonly call its physical aspect; and there is that which it is for itself. The latter, its psychical aspect in the narrower sense, is its sub- stantial aspect. In other words, the former is the appear- * Riddle of the Universe j pp. 211 flf. PHENOMENALISM AND PANPSYCHISM 195 ance of or to the latter. This dualism, however, is not re- garded by the panpsychist as a difficulty, but rather as the chief theoretical merit of the doctrine. For it affords him a solution of the baffling problem of the relation between mind and body. Although the relation of these entities is ob- viously an intimate one, it has always been found difficult to conceive their acting on one another. The psychologist evades the difficulty by provisionally adopting the view that mind and body form two parallel series C' psycho-physical parallelism "). The panpsychist accounts for this parallel- ism by saying that the one is the outward, the other the in- ward aspect of the same thing. They go on together for the simple reason that they are the same thing, viewed now from without, now from within. And then, as we have seen, the panpsychist generalizes and extends the conception. He construes nature throughout as *' psycho-physical. "^ 2. Moral Implications. I have enlarged upon the pan- psychistic view of nature, because it may be said in itself to have a certain practical, or at any rate a certain emotional, value. Fechner called it the "daylight view," the view that ''the material universe, instead of being dead, is in- wardly alive and consciously animated." ^ There is a deeper gregarious instinct which extends beyond the species, and expresses a sort of kinship among all living things. To life nothing is so uncompanionable as death. A living creature avoids the lifelessness of the desert, and values the presence even of trees and flowers and grass. So a cosmos of waste spaces and inert corporeal masses is chilling and dispiriting, while a cosmos that is aU growth and feeUng is reassuring and heart-warming. Such a view of nature tends, more specifically, to a pro- miscuous valuing of life. Instead of valuing exclusively those higher forms of mind, such as reason and the moral * For this application of panpsychism to the problem of mind and body, cf. C. S. Strong: Why the Mind has a Body; and F. Paulsen: Introduction to Philosophy. The classic representative of the view is G. T. Fechner: Elemente der Psychophysik. 2 From W. James's Preface to the English translation of Fechner's LitiU Book of LiJ$ after Death, 196 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS will, upon which man prides himself, this philosophy values mind in all its primitive and wayward forms. It tends to a liberal and sympathetic regard for varied forms of life, each with its own unique individuality, instead of to an exclusive regard for preferred or ''higher '' forms of hfe.^ 3. Religious Implicatioiis. But the most original appli- cations of this view lie in the field of religion.^ God in this view is not the perfection of mind, — the pure reason or the absolute will, — but rather the vast plenitude and infinite rich- ness of the cosmic soul. Pantheism receives a new form, through the idea of the intersection and overlapping of in- dividual minds. Fechner makes use, for example, of the analogy of a cross-written letter. Read in one direction it has one meaning; read in the transverse direction it has another and distinct meaning. And yet the markings of which it is composed are everywhere crossed and mingled. Similarly a puzzle picture represents one thing if held in one way, and another thing if reversed, the same elements com- posing various patterns according to the way you take them. So the elements of mind of which the human individual is composed have each their own significance, and form sub- ordinate groupings and unities of their own; while human minds in turn enter into still larger composites and patterns, constituting spiritual beings of a higher order. By this principle one may conceive of an earth-soul and a world- soul. God is the largest of these patterns, the inclusive life in which our lesser lives are contained without losing their identity. The totality of things has its own peculiar in- wardness. "And only because you are a part of this world," says Fechner, *'see in yourself also a part of that which it sees in itself."^ Our inmiortality, thinks Fechner, is guaranteed by the fact that mind, being the very substance of things, is never lost. It finds empirical proof in the fact that the dead Uve ^ Cf. below, pp. 318-320. 2 For the panpsychistic religion of William James, cf. A Pluralistic Uni- \ ( PHENOMENALISM AND PANPSYCHISM 197 verse. Cf. The Little Book of Life After Death, English translation, p. 79. * Op. cit., p. 86. on in the memories of the living. This fact he would con- strue as a Hteral identity of the mind which makes our present selves with those traces, influences and prolongations which enter into the life of posterity, and into the never-ceasing and all-containing life of God.^ IV. MEANINGS OF IDEALISM The term "idealism" has now accumulated so many meanings that it is impossible to use it without hedging it about with quaUfications. Let me first mention some of the things that I shall not mean by idealism. In the first place I shall not mean by idealism simply having ideals. It is possible to have ideals on any philosophical terms, or per- haps without any philosophy at all. I shall not mean by idealism the Platonic theory that reality consists of general ideas or concepts;^ for this doctrine stresses the superiority of the abstract universal to the particulars of nature or sense, which is not the central issue in the present context. I shall not mean the view that there is a deeper purpose in things behind the outward show of circumstance.^ Absolute idealists and personal idealists are as a rule also ideahstic in this sense; but it is quite possible to beUeve in a deeper cosmic purpose without being either an absolute or a personal idealist. I shall not mean by idealism merely that general t)^e of philosophy which I have termed spiritualistic to suggest its provision for moral and reUgious values. Phenomenalism is very close to the meaning which I pro- pose, but the distinction is well worth making. In phenom- enalism the items or terms of nature are regarded as appear- ances or contents, the substance and the order of reality being left indeterminate. Idealism accepts phenomenalism as a part of the truth, and then completes it by asserting that the substance and ordering principlcjin reality_is the mind which receives the appearances, or in which the contents lie. ^ For a similar idea, see William James: Human Immortdlity. * This'is commonly called " Platonic realism," which shows that " realism, " the verbal antithesis of "idealism," is also infected with ambiguity. Cf below. Chap. XXV. ^ Cf. F. Brunetidre: La Renaissance de VIdealisme, pp. 19, 20. 1 98 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS PHENOMENALISM AND PANPSYCHISM 199 Thus the sequel to phenomenalism is different in the case of idealism from what it is in the case of panpsychism. In the latter case, as we have seen, each appearance has its own inner substance and activity. The order of nature is the resultant of all the myriad bits of mind-stuff that he behind it, each leading its own hfe, following its own impulses and determining what shall appear to any spectator of nature. But in idealism the spectator arranges the spectacle. There is nothing behind appearances; their dependence is not on any source beypnd, but on the forms of receptivity and ar- rangement by which they are known. In the spectator or judge himself is to be found that control and substantial support which the appearance requires. In short, while both panpsychism and idealism accept the view that the immediately given world is appearance, panpsychism re- gards it as appearance of something, while idealism regards it only as appearance to iSome thing. Since for panpsychism the appearance is thus more or less independent of the mind to which it appears, this view is sometimes spoken of as ** realistic^'; while since for idealism the appearance has no outer source or determination, this view is sometimes spoken of as subjectivistic. Panpsychism, furthermore, since all the many items and features of the world are given a certain original and substantial existence of their own, tends to what is called *' pluralism' '; while idealism, since the whole spec- tacle of nature is held together and set in order by the know- ing mind, tends to a more unitary or ^'monistic " view of the world. ' # "* ' "•> ' According to idealism, then, the world will be made up of knowing minds and their contents. Or, as Professor G. H. Howison has summarized it, ' t . # .; ' "All existence is either (i) the existence of minds, or (2) the existence of the items and order of their experience; all the existences known as 'material* consisting in certain of these experiences, with an order organized by the self-active forms of consciousness that in their unity constitute the substantial being of a mind, in distinc- tion from its phenomenal life." ^ * Limits of Evolution, Second Edition, pp. xii-xiii. Idealism in this sense is what Santayana has called *Hhe genteel tradition in American philosophy.''^ The same author speaks of what he calls "the tumid respectability of Anglo-German Philosophy." ^ in other words idealism was made in Germany and imported into England and America, where it became somewhat consciously respectable. The animus of Santayana's remark is simply the protest of a newer generation of thinkers against the established philos- ophy. In modern philosophy idealism is or has been the System. It has largely controlled the means of philosophical production, such as the vocabulary, the professorships and the public ear. It has furnished all the teachers in the philo- sophical Sunday School. It has enjoyed the support of the authorities, and of the champions of law and order. It has written the history of philosophy so as to make it appear that the mounting development of European thought culmi- nates in itself. And then it has insisted that the only proper philosophical scholarship is a thorough knowledge of the great masters, thus indoctrinating many generations of in- nocent and impressionable youth. Such is the power more or less unconsciously exercised by any school of thought once it has gained as great prestige as was enjoyed by ideal- ism during the closing decade of the Nineteenth Century, especially in England and America. There is at present a widespread movement of revolt. These new protestants were at first touched with resentment, largely a mortifica- tion at their own past credulity. But pragmatism, instru- mentalism, realism, pluralism, naturalism and the other pro- fane philosophies of the day, have now won their spurs and are claiming the allegiance of many of the more irreverent and forward-looking minds. This counter-idealistic move- ment, to which we shall presently turn, has gained great impetus from the war. There is a natural disposition at present to view with suspicion anything that came out of Germany; and idealism having formerly been addicted to ancestor-worship and having loudly proclaimed its descent from the tribe of Kant, is finding itself on the defensive. 1 Cf. the essay so entitled in the volume Winds of Doctrine, * Ibid.f p. 16. 200 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS In expounding idealism I shall divide the topic into personal idealism and absolute idealism. The former is nearer to common sense and to orthodox moral and religious ideas. Hence it has taken root more readily in England and America. It accepts the general idealistic teaching that nature is the content and artefact of mind. But by mind it means your mind and mine — the minds of human individuals. God is thought of as a greater human person related to men much as men are related to one another. It is individuaHstic and theistic. Absolute idealism is more original, more radical and, as I think it will appear, more consistent with the fun- damental premises of idealism. In this view, which still flourishes most abundantly in Germany, the mind which sup- ports and orders nature is a mind conceived for the purpose, a universal mind — one as nature is one, impersonal as nature is impersonal. This greater mind, which is at once the substance of things, and the norm or perfection of all individual minds, is called ^^The Absolute." \ CHAPTER XV PERSONAL IDEALISM I. MOTIVES AND SOURCES The dispute between personal idealism and absolute idealism is only the latest revival of the oldest of all the internal feuds of religious philosophy. It may be said even to have divided Plato and Aristotle, as it afterwards divided St. Augustine and Pelagius; and later, St. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus; and later still, Spinoza and Leibniz. The dispute is between the party of God and the party of man; between those who from emphasis on the feeling of depend- ence and the sentiment of admiration so exalt God as to dis- parage the dignity of the human individual, and those who from emphasis on moral responsibihty so exalt man as to disparage the power and reality of God. On the one side there is the tendency to universalism, pantheism, mysticism, determinism; on the other side, individualism, theism, empiricism and the assertion of freedom. Personal ideaUsm represents the party of man within the idealistic movement, seeking ^o save the essentials of moral responsibility from being absorbed by ''The Absolute '' — which is idealism's new name for the All-God. The root of this dramatic interplay of motives seems to be as follows: Man invokes God to save him from the indifference or cruelty or baseness of nature; and then finds that in order to obtain this aid he must let God take matters into his own hands. As a result he finds himself threatened with a new tyranny, and finds himself struggling to make terms with the very power he has called in as a friend. There are political analogies which I shall refrain from drawing. The application in the case of idealism is clear. The Kan- tian-Hegehan argument is invoked against the threat of science, and its partisans are welcomed into the land of moral 20I 202 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS and religious philosophy by young girls dressed in white, streets decked in flowers, and with all the other marks of great popular rejoicing. But after the deliverer is well behind the fortifications he develops an unmistakable tend- ency to absolutism, which is nearly if not quite as bad as the naturalism he was invited to overthrow. For absolutism threatens to overwhelm the standards, the freedom and even the individual identity of the moral agent. So the people of the land find it necessary to rise against the deliverer and to hold him in check. An extreme party would even advocate expelling him altogether. But although the domestic dis- cord that results greatly aids and comforts the common enemy, there gradually develops a moderate party made up of moralists tinged with idealism, and ideaUsts tinged with moralism, who seek to use the argument of Kant and Hegel and at the same time to avoid the abuses of absolutism. This moderate party is personal idealism. As impartial spectators of this dramatic episode in modern thought we must, I think, be affected with mingled feeUngs. On the one hand, seeing, as any advocate of individual re- sponsibility must see, the dangers of absolutism, we shall prefer the personal idealist to the absolute idealist. In this sense the only good Hegelian is an ex-HegeUan. But on the other hand as advocates of logical thoroughness, and desiring to see an argument carried through when once it is under- taken, we shall prefer an out and out absolute idealism to a compromise personal idealism. In this sense the only good idealist is an Hegelian. I. Moralism. The form of moralism which is most characteristic of personal idealism, is the second of those forms which were examined in Chapter XIII, in which con- science is conceived as essentially self-determination. The central fact in morality, according to this view, is the moral agent himself, with his sense of duty, his power to judge for himself, his freedom, and his responsibility. Personal ideal- ism, with its willingness to make every concession, to construe nature and even God as the integrity of the moral individual may require, is the metaphysical sequel to this view of PERSONAL IDEALISM 203 morality. This motive is most clearly apparent in a volume entitled Personal Idealism^ published in 1902 by a number of philosophical essayists of Oxford University.^ Considei, for example, the following passage: "We have to reckon with the abiding sense of the community; and in apportioning our justice in the public courts, or over the private conscience, we start from the hypothesis of this stable point at least — the reality of the self, and the persistence of the ego, amid apparent change. We need not be ashamed, especially in this doubtful province of philosophy, of seeming to shirk ultimate problems. Ethics is the realm of faith." ^ The Oxford personal idealists, in other words, are pri- marily concerned to obtain a philosophical justification for morality. They believe that morality must presuppose the integrity and independence of the human individual, and their purpose is to formulate and affirm this presupposition even at the cost of intellectual thoroughness and rigor. It is this primary insistence on what is supposed to be required by morality, that gives a pragmatist turn to their teachings and accounts for the inclusion of such a thinker as Mr. Schiller in their number. It is also partially accountable for their emphasis on the will rather than the intellect, and for a certain opportunism and tolerant empiricism in their method. In 1 90 1 Professor George Howison had already used the phrase ''Personal Idealism," in a book entitled The Limits of Evolution and Other Essays Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory Oj Personal Idealism. As Professor Howison had already used the phrase repeatedly four years before in his contribution to the volume entitled The Conception of God, his prior title to it is clearly valid. ^ This writer also is influenced by the moraHstic motive. At the time when he wrote he believed that sound morality and true religion were threatened by 1 G. F. Stout, F. C. S. Schiller, W. R. Boyce Gibson, G. S. Underbill, R. R. Marrett, H. Sturt, F. W. Bussell and H. Rashdall. 2 F. W. Bussell: Op. cit., p. 3Si- 3 Cf. his discussion of the matter in the Preface to the second edition of The Limits of Evolution (1904). 204 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS two varieties of monism, the evolutionary, naturalistic monism of Spencer and Haeckel, and the idealistic monism of Hegel. Against both of these he sought to estabhsh a revised idealism that should be thoroughly consistent with the ideals of Western civilization: with individualism in morals, and theism in religion. 2. Pluralism. That which Professor Howison believed to be most vicious in existing philosophy of the prevailing schools was, as we have seen, its monistic tendency; that is, its definition of reality in terms of one all-determining or all- enveloping being. Whether physical or spiritual such a being robs the human individual of those prerogatives which are the central theme of moral and religious thought. Man is left with no freedom to do his duty and no soul to save. Futhermore such a being, who must be identified with every- thing that exists, whether good, bad or indifferent, is a sort of metaphysical monstrosity, and not a worshipful God. To proclaim their repudiation of such a doctrine personal idealists call themselves "pluralists," meaning to imply that for them the plurality or manyness of human individuals is left as a final and irreducible fact in the universe, and that God, in- stead of being the All-Real, is only one of many realities.^ James Ward, who is perhaps the most eminent of the de- tached thinkers that may be grouped with this tendency, especially emphasizes this aspect of it.^ In a book entitled The Realm of Ends, or Pluralism and Theism, he says: "The pluralists take all their bearings from the historical stand- point and endeavor to work backwards from the facts of human personality and social intercourse. Their mode of thought is frankly, though not crudely, anthropomorphic: hence such titles as Personalism, Personal Idealism, Humanism and the like, which one or other has adopted." ^ Ward and Howison alike regard the world as fundamentally * For the pluralism of William James, which is akin to this, cf. below Chap. XXII. ^ « Cf. also A. Seth Pringle-Pattison in England, A. Aliotta in Italy and E. Boutroux in France. » P. 71. PERSONAL IDEALISM 205 a plurality or society of persons, with God as in some sense the first among them. Hence the view might not inappro- priately be called ''pluralistic idealism" or "social idealism." As fellow-pluralists Howison recognizes his close agreement with Thomas Davidson in America and with J. M. E. McTaggart in England.^ But his comment on the Oxford essayists brings to light a deep cleavage which we shall, I think, find to involve the most important issue with which this school of philosophy is confronted. Howison finds his view and theirs to be "quite divergent upon most of the prime philosophical issues, with little in common but the affirmation of a fundamental pluralism in the world of ultimate reality, and with profoundly different conceptions as to what that pluralism means. "^ It develops that this profound difference turns on the fundamentals of idealism. Davidson and McTaggart, like Howison, are good idealists, striving to be true to Kant, and seeking to correct Hegel rather than to reject him. But the Oxford essayists are philosophical heathen and Gentiles. In their eagerness to save the premises of morality and religion they have lost sight of the essential truth. Their personal idealism is all personalism and no idealism. The crux of the matter lies, I think, in the relative claims of the willing and the knowing faculties, in voluntarism versus intellectualism. 3. Voluntarism versus Intellectualism. The moral con- sciousness tends to emphasize and exalt the will, and especially in the reflective, self-conscious form represented by the expression "I will." In so far as personal idealism is in- fluenced by the moral consciousness, it tends to conceive the person as essentially one who acts of his own volition. Here is a strain of thought which is quite independent of phenomenalism, and which has its own answer to naturalism. Naturalism and mere phenomenalism both err, according to this view, in accepting reality as it is presented in perception * Davidson's view, styled "Apeirotheism," affirms a divine nature distrib- uted through an indefinite number of individual minds. For the relation of Howison's view to McTaggart's, cf. Limits of Evolutiotty second edition, pp. 389, 420, and McTaggart's review of Howison in Mind, July, 1902. * Op. ciLf p. xxxi. 2o6 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS or represented in thought. Like the panpsychist, the personal idealist maintains that perception and thought view reality only from without, and fail therefore to reach its inward essence. This inward essence, however, is accessible in another way, a way so short and direct that it is easily lost sight of. This way to the heart of things is through immediate awareness of one's self as active, wiUing subject. So far the view does not differ from panpsychism ; and some personal idealists, like James Ward and Schiller, are wholly sympathetic with panpsychism; holding merely that it, like phenomenalism, is an incomplete account of the matter. But ordinarily the personal ideaUst differs from the panpsy- chist in that he conceives this inner reality to be essentially voHtional and purposive. His principle is not the wider principle of the psychic, shading away through bare sentiency and feeling into even more primitive forms of mind; but the narrower and superior principle of personaUty, which does not appear lower in the scale than man. ReaUty of the inward sort, then, is revealed not, as with the panpsychist, universally throughout nature, but only in the human and moral realm. The following statement, for example, is characteristic: ^ "Inexplicable in a sense as man's personal agency is, — nay, the one perpetual miracle, — it is nevertheless our surest datum, and our clue to the mystery of existence. In the purposive 'I will,' each man is real, and is immediately conscious of his own reality. Whatever else may or may not be real, this is real." ^ PersonaHsm in this sense has, as I have said, its own answer to naturalism. Science has come gradually to the adoption of the descriptive method. Abandoning the older and common-sense ideas of explanation as a reference to purpose or to power, ignoring the questions, To what end? and. Who or what did it? science confines itself to the question, Just how does it take place? Now you may regard this as a perfecting of method, beUeving the ignored questions to be childish and unanswerable questions, or you may regard scientific method as narrow and superficial, speaking of it » A. Seth Pringle-Pattison: Two Lectures on Theism., pp. vi, vii, 46. PERSONAL IDEALISM 207 as ''mere description.'' Personal idealism takes the latter course. "We know why a thing happened," says Rashdall, "when we know (i) that it realized an end which Reason pronounces to have value, and (2) what was the force or (knowing all the abuses to which that word is liable), I will say, the real being which turned that end from a mere idea into an actuality, i.e.j the actual experi- ence of some soul." ^ In other words a real cause, a cause that shall wholly satisfy the demand for explanation, must be a purposeful and substantial agency. But we are acquainted with only one such agency, and that is ourselves. "We are active beings," says Ward, "and somehow control the movements of the bodies we are said to animate. No facts are more immediately certain than these, and there is nothing in our actual experience that conflicts with them." 2 We have here one of the cardinal principles of modern religious philosophy. Science gives us only the bare pro- cession of events without the power that moves them or the goal to which they move. Its formulas and laws sketch the cosmic machine and even enable us to operate it; but they still leave our minds, to say nothing of our hearts, unsatisfied. We want to know what nature is for, and where it gets its punch and drive. We need a new view of nature, some illumination wholly different from that which is afforded by the external perceptions and conceptions of science. Where shall we look? Within ourselves, says personal idealism. There we shall find activity, effort, agency; and at the same time indissolubly wedded to it, meaning, purpose, goal. Persons do things, for reasons. That is in the last analysis what lies behind every event. Somebody has done it for some reason. It is the work of a person. This is the voluntaristic strain in personal idealism. But associated with this is another strain derived from Kant, and, as it appears to me, quite different and even conflicting. * Personal Idealism, pp. 379-380. ^ Realm of Ends, p. 12. 203 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS Voluntarism finds personal agency as a datum or fact, and then generaUzes it as being the only kind of ultimate cause with which we are acquainted. It is not that nature shows any unmistakable signs of having had a personal origin, but only that since it must have had some origin, and since this is the only kind of origin we are acquainted with, we must suppose it to have had this origin. It is like the old so- called cosmological proof of God, in which it was argued that God created the world, not because there was anything partic- ularly divine about the world, but because somebody had to be assigned to the role and God was the only available agency. It is like convicting a man of murder because notwithstand- ing the fact that the deed is not in the least characteristic of him he is the only person who cannot establish an alibi. But 'the motive in Kantian idealism is very different. Here the argument is more like that used in the teleological argument for God. According to this argument God must have created nature because nature is beautiful, orderly, prov- ident; in other words, because it is like God. So in Kantian idealism it is argued that nature must be the work of spirit not because spirit is the only capable workman within reach, but because nature bears the imprint of spirit. In what does this imprint consist — this unconscious signature by which the author betrays his handiwork? It consists, according to Kant, in the unity, order and system of nature. ^ Nature is not chaotic and capricious, but it obeys laws — it is self- consistent. And this is just what it would be if it were the work of mind. The mind prompted by its own proper and inherent motives goes to nature looking for unity, order and system; and lol it finds them. Nature is just what mind would make it, had mind the making of it. The scientist constructs hypotheses. These are the work of mind, its free and characteristic creations. Then, asks Professor Ward, "when this intelligible scheme of our devising, with which the scientific inquirer greets Nature, is confirmed by Nature's response, are we not justified in concluding that Nature is intelligent or that there is intelligence behind it?"^ * Realm of Ends, p. 5. PERSONAL IDEALISM 209 Several very important points are now to be observed. In the first place that part of mind whose authorship nature suggests is the intellectual part. Nature can scarcely be the work of a lover of happiness or a lover of justice.' Judging the author strictly by the product, we should never infer that the world sprang from the sentiment of tenderness, or from the Puritan conscience, or even from a sensitive appreciation of beauty; but we might infer that it sprang from the in- tellectual love of system. We might say that the world is the outward embodiment of the ideals of reason; and then, of course, we might afterwards correct our moral, aesthetic and sundry other human ideals, to conform. In the light of this intellectuaHstic leaning in Kantianism, we may now understand Professor Howison's dissent from the voluntar- ism of the Oxford school. His own stricter adherence to the Kantian premises finds expression in the following passage: "Idealism is constituted by the metaphysical value it sets upon ideals, not by the esthetic or the ethical, and rather by its method of putting them on the throne of things than by the mere intent to have them there. It is always distinct from mysticism (which at the core is simply emotionalism), and still more so from volun- tarism. Its method is, at bottom, to vindicate the human ideals by showing them to be not merely ideals but realities, and to effect this by exhibiting conscious being as the only absolute reality; this, again, it aims to accomplish by setting the reality of conscious being in the only trans-subjective aspect thereof, namely intelli- gence. So the fact comes about that idealism gets its essential character from its discovery that intelligent certainty depends on such an interpretation of reality as makes the knowledge of reality by the spontaneous light of intelligence conceivable; in short, that idealism is necessarily rationalism^ that is, implies an apriorist theory of knowledge. No sort of experientialism, so far as it is consistent, can rightly be called idealism." ^ In this passage there appears also a second point that I wish to emphasize. The underlying mind, the ego, is not a datum of which one is immediately aware, but rather a principle inferred as a necessary condition of knowledge. The order in nature is due to the "categories " or principles * Limits of Evolution, second edition, Appendix C, p. 407. Cf. also p. 408. m 2IO THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS of thinking; and there must be an '' I think " as the counter- part of nature, since thinking is an operation involving a single central active subject. Thus the Kantian ideaUsm, as reflected in Howison, is a priori. Spirit is not found at the centre of things, or immediately felt to be there, as with the voluntarists; but it must be there, it can be transcen- dentally proved to be there. In other words, for Professor Howison^ the fundamental thesis of idealism is that the intelHgibility of the world, the power of the mind to know in advance of acquaintance with the facts, and to know objec- tively and universally, implies that the world itself is the prod- uct of intelligence. Thus the deeper creative reality is not personal will regarded as a kind of forceful agency, but the intellectual faculty regarded as a set of ideals and principles. There is a third point of equal importance, that must be introduced here though it cannot be fully developed until later. That order of the world which suggests the author- ship of intelligence is its one all-pervasive order. It consists in the fact that nature's laws are observed through the whole vast domain of facts and compel the assent of all thinkers at all times and in all places. Furthermore, we ourselves as individuals with our several places in nature and history are included in this order. It follows that the mind which sets up the order of nature cannot be your mind or mine in any personal sense. Thus this motive in idealism tends toward the presupposition of one great standard mind; which is the distinguishing thesis of absolute idealism. We may summarize the interplay of motives within personal idealism as follows. Its moralism and individual- ism incline it to voluntarism, to the acceptance of the self-conscious active person as a metaphysical finality. Its Kantian philosophy of nature, on the other hand, incHnes it to intellectualism; and this, in turn inclines it to a uni- versaHsm or absolution that contradicts the original motive of moral individualism. To this more fundamental question we shall return below, after examining certain moral and religious implications of personal idealism. 1 Cf. op. cit., pp. 13, 14, 298. i PERSONAL IDEALISM 21 1 II. METAPHYSICAL INDIVIDUALISM I. The Personal and Immortal Soul. We have already seen that this view emphasizes the autonomy of the moral individual. This must be preserved at all costs, and in particular it must be protected against the threat of the Absolute. There are two interesting ways in which this is attempted. The Oxford school with its voluntaristic and even panpsychistic leanings emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual as known to himself. No other mind, not even God's mind, can know me as I really am. Hastings Rashdall, for example, puts the matter as follows: "A thing is as it is known: its esse is to be known: what it is for the experience of spirits, is its whole reality: it is that and nothing more. But the esse of a person is to know himself, to be for him- self, to feel and to think for himself, to act on his own knowledge, and to know that he acts. . . . The essence of a person is not what he is for another, but what he is for himself. It is there that his principium ifidividuationis is to be found — in what he is, when looked at from the inside. All the fallacies of our anti-individualist thinkers come from talking as though the essence of a person lay in what can be known about him, and not in his own knowledge, his own experience of himself." ^ It follows that even God cannot know the essential in- dividual as he is within. "We must make it plain that the knowledge of the finite self by God does not exhaust its being as is the case with the mere object. .... God must know the self as a self which has a consciousness, an experience, a will which is its own — that is, as a being which is not identical with the knowledge that He has of it." ^ Professor Howison, on the other hand, is dominated by the Kantian thesis that as nature is one great system, so it must be supported by one universal mind. But he hopes to save the individual by construing this universal mind not as the individual mind of God, but as a league of personal ^ Personal Idealism, pp. 382, 383. This is said especially of such writers as Royce. » Ihid., p. 386. 212 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS minds, unified by a common purpose, and by a like intel- lectual constitution. Nature owes its existence and constitu- tion to the ''correlation " of minds, which is ''their logical implication of each other in the self-defining consciousness of each." ^ God is the "Rational Ideal," which unites all minds, and reigns in them by "light." The theory of knowledge is fundamentally Kantian, so far as concerns the "spontaneity" and a priority of the mind. But how can Howison prove this spontaneity for many individual minds, when in the theory of Kant it is argued from the essential oneness of the system of nature? His answer is that the self implies a society of selves. A mind's awareness of itself "is seen to involve, as the complemented condition making up its sufficiency y its awareness of a whole society of minds, the genus against which it spontaneously defines itself, per differentiam, as individual. . . . Over and over it tums up in these essays that a person means a being who thus recognizes others and relates him- self to them, and that the Personal System, while rigorously idealistic, making all existence root in the existence of minds, is still always a Social Idealism, so that the objective judgment is always the judgment that carries the weight of the social logic, and the final test of any and every truth, though never so often dis- covered in the private chamber of the single spirit, is that it con- forms to this principle of universal social recognition." ^ Howison's view might be called a "moral idealism " in that the a priori subject, being plural, free and social, is therefore morally equipped; and in that all the Kantian articles of moral and reUgious faith are regarded as necessary to the constitution of the mind in its cognitive as well as in its practical functions. "The purpose is, to exhibit the theoretical nature and functions of the moral consciousness itself, thus closing the chasm left by Kant between his noumenal world of morality and his phenomenal world of science." ^ Professor Howison agrees with Kant in thinking the moral * Limits of Evolution, second edition, p. xiii. ' Ibid., pp. xxxvi, xxxvii, xxxviii. He speaks of "this sociality of the pri- mordial logic of self-consciousness." (p. xxxiii.) ' Ibid., p. 384. i PERSONAL IDEALISM 213 life to demand immortality, as an opportunity of spiritual growth. But he does not leave immortaUty in the doubtful status of an article of faith. The soul as member of that society of minds which creates and underUes nature cannot itself be subject to the vicissitudes of nature. "We . . . discover our personal self to be the regulative source of all the laws under which natural or sensible existence must have its course, and so to be possessed of a being that by its essence transcends all the vicissitudes of the merely natural world, surviv- ing all its possible catastrophes and supplying the ground for its continuance in new modes under new conditions." ^ The trouble with this view is that the immortal soul is as effectually prevented from living as from dying. The bodily and mental life which it cognizes, which belongs to the phenomena of nature and history, has all the adventures, and it dies. The immortal soul can only be a spectator of its own instantaneous handiwork. Its self-activity cannot be in time; it cannot grow, or pursue ideals in time, because time is its own creation. The soul which survives death is not that soul which was in the time before death. 2. Freedom. The moral individual must not only be distinct and indestructible; it must also be free. The view of freedom also assumes two different forms, according as we adopt the looser voluntaristic form of personal idealism, or the stricter, Kantian form represented by Howison. For the Oxford essayists, freedom is thought of in relatively negative terms. The important thing is that the world should still be in the making, a place where possibilities abound, and where the will of man can make a difference. To quote F. W. Bussell: "Morality concemed with the Good which is not yet, but may be, through our endeavor, dwells in a chiaroscuro realm of Faith and Instinct; where that clear light never penetrates that is wont to display in unmistakable outlines the realm of Truth or of Power, of mathematical and physical law. . . . The limits of omnipotence seemed to J. S. Mill to constitute the strongest claim on the efforts and the co-operation of good men; the heroic soul is conscious of 1 Ibid., pp. 298, 300, 302, 306, 309. 214 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS the same attraction in the field of ethics. Its decision is a bold wager in the face of probabilities." ^ For Professor Howison, on the other hand, freedom, like immortality, lies among the prerogatives of the creative mind. The action both of man and of God is governed by reason, but thinking is the pursuit of truth by one who chooses truth. Free action is neither forced, nor is it arbi- trary and capricious, but is rational action, "action spon- taneously flowing from the definite guiding intelligence of the agent himself." ^ Man and God are in accord, but this does not mean that God coerces man. They agree because all spiritual beings are inwardly governed by the same rational purpose. "Each spirit other than God, let us suppose, fulfils in its own way and from its own self-direction the one universal Type or Ideal. Then each in doing its ' own will,' that is, in defining and guiding its life by its own ideal, does the ultimate or inclusive will of all the rest; and men realize the 'will of God,' that is, fulfil God's ideal, by fulfilling each his own ideal, while God fulfils the 'will of man' by freely fulfilling himself." ^ In other words, God^s power over man is not that of efficient but that of final causation; and this does not prejudice man's freedom, since man himself freely adopts the end which he follows.^ III. THEISM I. The Problem of Evil. I suppose that it is a well-known fact that the oldest and the most stubborn problem for religious philosophy is the problem of evil. Religion raises up two ideals, the ideal of a Power which rules all things and on which man, weary, despondent and conscious of his failure can rely; and the ideal of a Goodness which man may unqualifiedly admire and emulate. The problem of evil lies in the difficulty of uniting these two ideals in one Being, the * Personal Idealism, pp. 343-344. 2 Op. cit., p. 320. ' Ibid., p. 328. * On the question of alternatives and choice, cf. pp. 319, 369. , PERSONAL IDEALISM 2x5 difficulty in view of the facts of evil in the world. If God be all-powerful, how can he be acquitted of responsibility for these facts, and how can he be unqualifiedly admired and emulated. If God be perfectly good, how can he be the author of these facts of evil, and how can he be the all- powerful Creator in whom the worshipper puts his trust. Absolute Idealism, like Calvinism, holds to the omnipotence of God, and tries to adjust his goodness thereto. Personal idealism, like common-sense Christianity, holds to the good- ness of God, and is correspondingly doubtful about his omnipotence. Indeed the personal idealist avowedly sets limits to God's power; and has some difficulty even in pro- viding a place for God at all. In short the first interest of personal idealism being in the personal moral consciousness, theology has to be cut to fit. The view of personal idealism finds interesting and timely expression in a recent book entitled The Faith and the War. The facts of evil have in our day been multiplied, aggravated and indelibly impressed upon the human mind. Personal idealism accepts this evil as evil; and does not seek to extenuate it or to explain it away. The indisputable exist- ence of evil makes it necessary for us to take a more patient view of the world. That goodness-triumphant for which all moral beings labor, and in which they must all ardently believe is not a fait accompli, but a far-off goal to be reached by prolonged and painful effort. "The world," says James Ward, "has thoroughly to evolve itself; everything is tried, and what is found wanting cannot survive. Experimentally to know evil is to shun it. Here the slow grinding and the exactness come in. Applying the argument to the present time: — the German ideal of militarism is a great experiment of the sort men try, like slavery, polygamy and the exploitation of labor — the masses as 'hands.' If militariness is utterly defeated and exposed now, that will be a move on for the world; and the lesson, it may fairly be said, will be worth what it costs, especially if it clear the way for social and political advances, which have been so long delayed." ^ » From a letter to the editor of The Faith and the War, op. cit., p. xii. If 2l6 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS God; in this view, is a Power struggling for ascendancy. Another contributor, Percy Gardner, expresses his faith as follows : "Thinking men have more and more accepted the view, repug- nant to the old a priori theology, that the divine Power as revealed in experience is not victoriously omnipotent, but works gradually, makes its way by slow progress, often suffers partial defeat from the hostile forces of evil. Also that it is our duty and our highest privilege to place ourselves on the side of that Power, to work with it, and that in such partisanship human merit Ues." ^ It will always remain true that the world with the good that we did not do would have been a better place than the world without such a good. Similarly, Hastings Rashdall recognizes the irremediable imperfection of the world. We have to suppose, he continues, that God's good will is un- limited but that his power is limited; and that we are " fellow- workers with Him, who works in and through human wills, and through the co-operation of those wills is conduct- ing the Universe to the greatest good that He knows to be possible of attainment." ^ Professor Howison, as might be expected, cannot accept so irregular a proceeding. Though evil is not to be justified, and though God must be kept clear of it, nevertheless it is not an accident. Like everything else it has its place in the world; that place being below the level of God, within the sensuous experience peculiar to man. "We can have no hope in moral endeavor in a world whose Source and Controller we cannot clear of suspicion of intending or causing evil, or of being in collusion with it, or of even conniving at it. ... I have already hinted at the success of the new PluraHsm. Its God has no part whatever in the causation of evil, but the whole of evil, both natural and moral, falls into the causation, either natural or moral, that belongs to the minds other than God. They alone carry in their being the world of sense, wherein alone evil occurs or wrong-doing can be made real." ^ » "Providence and the Individual," in The Faith and the War, p. 21. 2 "The Problem of Evil," The Faith and the War, p. 100. ' Op. cit., p. 402. PERSONAL IDEALISM 217 2. God. God being in this philosophy divested of su- preme authority in the world, his position is relatively insecure. The purely metaphysical motive in theology is discredited. If there can be something outside God that limits him, then it can no longer be argued that God is the necessary condition of there being any reality at all. There is room for the suspicion that he may for strictly philoso- phical purposes be a superfluity. The self-sufficient moral persons become so self-sufficient that the world tends to be a spiritual aristocracy or fraternity rather than a spiritual monarchy. But though the metaphysical basis for theology becomes questionable, there is still in this philosophy a sufficient ethical basis. God, as we have already seen, is needed to give unity to the moral enterprise. He is the moral life in its solidarity. He is the one uniting purpose in which all participate. He is the more than human purity and con- sistency of purpose, the more than human steadfastness and vigor of purpose, by which the whole moral achievement is guaranteed. Thus James Ward, for example, accepting the broad principle of evolution, says that when nature has mounted from novelty to novelty, from value to value, to the level of human culture, then "the final goal of evolution comes into sight, not a pre-established harmony but the eventual consummation of a perfect commonwealth, wherein all co-operate and none conflict, wherein the many have be- come one, one realm of ends." ^ This author, who accepts the panpsychistic view of nature as containing inferior forms of mind, conceives God as the supreme form; only one of many, but the completion and perfection of the rest. "If then we regard the universe as teeming with hving orbs, how are we to imagine these as ever constituting the commonwealth of worlds . . . ? Such questions lead the pluralist to apply the principle of continuity upwards as well as downwards. To connect these otherwise unconnected worlds he is driven to assume a hier- archy of intelligences of a higher order, and so is led on to conceive a Highest of all.'' 2 1 Op. cit., pp. 434-435. 2 Ibid., pp. 435-436. 2l8 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS Professor Howison regards God^s limitations not as a disability or defect of any kind, but as essential to his nature as a moral being. If God were a//, then he could not be a person. **For it is the essence of a person to stand in a relation with beings having an autonomy, in which he recognizes rights, toward whom he acknowledges duties." So the personality of God implies men as the necessary objects of his moral dealings. '^Genuine omniscience and omnipotence are only to be realized in the control of free beings, and in inducing the divine image in them by moral influences instead of metaphysical and physical agencies; that is, hy final instead of efficient causation.'^ ^ God is unique only as the perfect person. Man's sense of his own individuality implies that he is a peculiar degree or phase of a graduated reality, and that all the other possible degrees and phases ^exist, including God as the *^ Supreme Instance.'^ ^ IV. THE TENDENCY TO ABSOLUTISM Personal idealism, I believe, is properly to be regarded as occupying an unstable intermediate position between pan- psychistic and pragmatistic pluralism on the one hand, and absolutism on the other. Stress the demands of individua- listic morality, and the intuition of individual self-existence, and it is easy to escape the Absolute. But at the same time one loses the important support of the Kantian theory of knowledge, and the philosophy, though more acceptable to moral common-sense, is much less cogent as a theory. But once the Kantian theory of knowledge is accepted idealism is on a slippery inclined plane with the Absolute waiting at the bottom. Nature presents a well-nigh insoluble problem to the personal idealists. Starting as they do with a variety of individuals as ultimate, how is one to account for the com- monness and uniformity of nature? If you have only one creative spirit, then you can say that the objectivity of ^ Op. cit., pp. 65. 2 Ibid., p. 355, PERSONAL IDEALISM 219 nature reflects the oneness and self-consistency of its author. But if you have many authors, and are to escape relativism, then you must predicate a uniformity or like-mindedness of spirits; which virtually submits them to an impersonal dominion very like the laws of nature. Howison, as we have seen, would regard the fundamental mind from which all the categories of nature spring as itself social. But if the principles of structure and order in the world are the work of mind, as Kant asserts, then this must hold of its social as well as of its physical structure. If there be many spiritual persons, they must stand in some scheme of relations to one another. In some sense they must, like nature, form one system. But it is of the essence of Kantian- ism that all such connecting and ordering relations, not only time, but the more abstract relations as well, should be regarded as the work of an enveloping and correlating mind. System, for Kant, is the product of a systematizing or syn- thesizing act. Then the system of persons, too, must be the product of such a mind. The moral kingdom must be unified and supported by a general, all-including act of knowledge. The result is that either God falls within such a system, and is not even the supreme spiritual being; or he is this all-including act of knowledge, in which case he be- comes the Absolute. Thus absolutism is the price which religious philosophy must pay for the support of Kantian idealism. Is the gain worth the cost? To answer that question we must examine absolutism and seek to discover what moral and religious alternatives are open to those who boldly accept it. CHAPTER XVI KANT AND THE ABSOLUTE Although absolute idealism has many implications which are repugnant to popular convictions and sentiments, there is at least one motive in common-sense to which it makes a strong appeal. There is a very widespread and natural feeling that there is something going on in the world as a whole. It is this motive which has inspired most purely philosophical speculation, and is responsible for the popular interest in philosophical speculation. There is supposed to be a sort of cosmic bandwagon and everybody wants to get aboard. Things are moving somewhere and everybody wants to join the procession. Speculative philosophy is looked to as a means by which the initiated may learn what it all means, and how to take part in it. Or, the facts, according to this view, are the fragments of a puzzle which if only put together in the right way would make a grand cosmic picture. Philos- ophy is expected to provide the key to the puzzle. The monistic or absolutist type of philosophy derives a certain favorable presumption from the wilUngness of the average mind to concede without argument that there is some unity and meaning to things. If it is not precisely that which any one such philosophy proposes, then at any rate it is some- thing of the kind. The poet Thomas Hardy refers as a matter of course to ^'the ubiquitous urging of the Immanent WiU." "A Will that wills above the will of each, Yet but the will of all conjunctively." He expresses the general conviction: "That shaken and unshaken are alike, But demonstrations from the Back of Things." * * Tlte Dynasts. 220 KANT AND THE ABSOLUTE 221 It is the existence of such a ''Back of Things " that is so universally conceded, and which is the central thesis of philosophical absolutism. This philosophy, as we shall see, turns out to be disappointingly negative when it comes to the precise nature of this ''Back of Things." And it would appear that we ought not to speak of. a fact as a "demonstra- tion " from the "Back of Things,'' unless we are in a position to see the "Back of Things " and in the light of it to interpret the fact. "If we talk of a certain thing being an aspect of truth,'' says Mr. Chesterton, "it is evident that we claim to know what is truth; just as, if we talk of the hind leg of a dog, we claim to know what is a dog." ^ So in order to be justified in regarding the particulars of nature and history as limbs or members of a greater organism, we ought to know what is the organism. But so strong is the popular pre- sumption in favor of everything's being an aspect, or member, or demonstration of something^ that this objection is not commonly pressed; with the result that absolutism gains an unwarrantably easy ascendancy over our minds. Although in what follows we shall be mainly concerned with the values, the moral, religious and political implica- tions of absolutism, we must first learn how the modern, ideahstic form of absolutism is built up on Kantian founda- tions. I. THE KANTIAN DUALISM I. Knowledge and Faith. The germ of Kantianism lies in his doctrine of the categories. The only way, says Kant, in which knowledge, and in particular scientific knowledge, can be justified, is by supposing that it puts its own formal stamp upon the plastic materials of sense. In knowledge we proceed as though nature formed an orderly, self-consistent system. So far as knowledge is concerned there is no other way of proceeding. The moment you try to understand anything, the moment you form any, even the most tentative, opinions about it, you assume that the thing in question has a nature of its own, and has fixed relations to other things. ^ Heretics, p. 293. 222 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS KANT AND THE ABSOLUTE 223 You assume that it has this nature and these relations equally for any mind that may undertake to know it. In other words, the underlying assumption in all knowledge is that things form one objective system. But how is one to obtain any guarantee that nature will comply with this condition and so let itself be known? There could be no guarantee, says Kant, if we supposed nature to be quite independent of our mind.' We should then have to wait and see, and we should have to wait endlessly, because we could never be sure that the facts not yet reported would not prove recalcitrant. Kant concludes, then, that the only nature that can be known must be a nature on which the mind has imposed its own conditions. The guarantee that nature will prove to be an objective system, and so knowable, hes in the fact that the mind makes it an orderly system in the course of knowing it. A ranch owner can be sure that all the cattle in his inclosure will bear a certain brand, only if he stations somebody at the entrance to brand all cattle as they come in. So the mind appointing the understanding to brand all the data of knowl- edge as they flow in through the senses, to brand them with the principles or categories that define an objective system, can be sure that all its content will bear that brand. Thus to make nature knowable at all, Kant finds it necessary to make nature in part the product of the knowing mind. As respects its form, its connecting and ordering principles, such as space, time, substance and causaHty, it is an artefact, a something made by the cognitive faculties. Since it is essential to objectivity and system that there should be one system forVl, this making cannot be supposed to be done differently and independently by individual human minds; there must be one nature made for all, by a sort of general, impersonal mind in which we all participate. This is the idealism of Kant himself. It had very definite limitations. Thus Kant restricted the creative function of mind to the formal aspect of nature, and supposed that the senses received impressions from an external and unknown source, which he called the ^'thing-in-itself.'' Furthermore, he thought that the only constructive principles emploved by the mind were the concepts of the physical sciences; and he had in mind more particularly the concepts of exact, mechanical, mathematical science as represented by Newton. Finally, he was very strict in adhering to the view that this construction of nature by science was the only knowledge. In short, the only known world is nature as depicted in the physical sciences, and this is a union of materials given through the senses with forms of arrangement supplied by the knowing mind itself. Now Kant, as we have already seen, was also a moralist. He was concerned no less with *^the moral law within " than with **the starry heavens above.'' His dualism results from the fact that when he came to morality he began all over again. He did not include morality within nature and so explain it in terms of the categories; but just as he had first asked himself what assumptions were necessary to satisfy the demands of scientific knowledge, so now he asks him- self, quite independently, what assumptions are necessary to satisfy the demands of the moral consciousness. We have already heard his answer. The moral agent must, in keep- ing with the performance of his duty, beUeve in God, Free- dom and Immortality. In this case, knowledge is out of the question, because there are no sense-data. Desiring to reserve the title of knowledge for that combination of sensa- tion and understanding that is characteristic of science, Kant here employs the term ''faith.'' 2. The Two Realms. Since Kant developed the pre- suppositions of science and the presuppositions of duty quite independently, there was no reason why they should not conflict. And such, as a matter of fact, proved to be the case. As a part of nature, man belongs to the causal nexus; as a moral agent he is free. As a part of nature man dies; as a moral agent, he is immortal. Nature so far as science is concerned is ruled by blind mechanical law, but in religion nature is created and controlled by a benevolent God. Kant avoided contradiction, or sought to do so, by dividing the world between these two conflicting claims. There is the known world of phenomena where science reigns; and the 224 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS unknown world of noumena, where morality reigns. Man belongs to both. I shall presently discuss the way in which this dualism was overcome and superseded by Absolutism. But I wish first to suggest that there are important practical implications in duahsm itself, imphcations which might be said to constitute a strictly Kantian philosophy of life.^ The strict Kantian is at one and the same time a rigorous positivist and a rigorous moraHst. You must not allow moraUty to compromise science, or science morality. In the realm of nature you must adhere strictly to the me- chanical view. Man, so far as you view him psychologically, as a creature with appetite and passions, must be submitted to a rigorous causal explanation. Being thorough and scientific in one's dealings with physical nature, one will stress the technological aspect of civilization. And where you are dealing with mankind as psychological causes, you will be a disillusioned Realpolitiker. In the realm of morahty, on the other hand, the dualist will abstract altogether from nature. Duty of the Kantian sort makes no concession to feeling, whether one's own or anybody else's. Duty does not learn by experience. It is neither confirmed by any kind of success nor discredited by any kind of failure. It is not likely to be either useful to mankind, because it is above all consideration of conse- quences; or urbane and gentle, because it does not allow itself to be refined by social experience. It is a priori, and from within. Having no relation to outward success or failure, it is accompanied by no expectation of achievement in this world. The faith which it begets has to do altogether with another world. Thus Kant justifies the supernaturahs- tic and other-worldly teaching of Christianity, the sinfulness of the natural man, and the postponement of blessedness, or the union of virtue and happiness, to a world beyond the ^ Kant himself made some efifort to reconcile this dualism in the Critique of Judgment, but the significance of this attempt is better understood in its fuller (and non-Kantian) development by his successors. The practical imphcations of Kantian duahsm, with especial reference to current German ideals and policies are admirably developed by J. Dewey, in his German Philosophy and Politics^ I. Cf. below, pp. 420-421. KANT AND THE ABSOLUTE 225 grave. The moral life is an inner life, a conformity of will to the imperatives of the practical reason. As such it may be divorced from the externals of life, and being so divorced it does not interfere with the application there of the mechani- cal principles of science. II. FROM KANT TO METAPHYSICS Kant declared that he was no metaphysician; that meta- physical knowledge was impossible. He called his method the method of criticism, meaning that he merely brought to light the presuppositions of science and morals. While ''criticism " has been continued and developed by those who pride themselves on the purity of their Kantianism, the great influence of Kant has been due to the metaphysics which, in spite of himself, he has inspired. This metamorphosis of criticism into metaphysics we must now examine. Kant thought that metaphysics was impossible because of the impossibility of knowing the world in any ultimate and definitive way. Knowledge is an interminable operation of building sense-data into the structure of nature as fast as they come in. The structure is never completed because the data never get through coming in. All knowledge is rela- tive to an inexhaustible and unfathomable source of supply. The transition to metaphysics, however, is suggested by the following consideration. Cannot the sense-data themselves be regarded as the creation of mind? After all, we never meet with them in a purely sensuous form. They are always in some degree thought over and judged. Furthermore, it is inconsistent to attribute them to an external source, when it has to be acknowledged that the source in question lies beyond knowledge. If, then, the whole of experience, and not merely its formal structure, is regarded as the work of mind, then it should be possible to grasp the world all at once, from the very centre, when once we thoroughly under- stand the constitution of mind. If the world is a mind-made world, then the key to it will lie in the motives, purposes, or plans by which the mind is governed in its operations. There are two hints of such a solution in Kant himself. I 226 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS In the first place he refers to what he calls the ''Ideals of Reason." Our intellectual faculties have, he says in effect, their own bias. They always consistently strive towards an unconditioned whole, an all-inclusive and internally coherent system, that has within itself its reasons for being. Kant thought that since the mind had to depend on sense- materials which it did not itself produce, it could never realize its ideal. But once this notion is abandoned, and the mind is conceived to be self-contained, supplying its own raw materials as well as the manufactured product, we must suppose that it does realize its ideal. I say we must suppose so; for it still remains a regrettable fact that the ideal is not realized within the Hmits of human or finite knowledge. If we follow this clue in Kant, we get one kind of meta- physical ideaUsm, a kind that might be called logical, and that is best represented by Hegel. The intellect, governed by its own proper love of systematic wholeness, creates the world. The world is the consummation of reason. The world is to be understood by analyzing reason in its essence, and then tracing it through its manifestations. Kant's other metaphysical suggestion is to be found in the doctrine which he called ''The Primacy of the Practical Reason." He meant that the moral consciousness goes deeper than the theoretical consciousness. Spirit, as it is known in man, is both a knower of nature and a doer of duty; but it is primarily a doer of duty. Assuming, then, as before, that thought makes nature, we should look for the deeper explanation both of thought and of its product, in the moral will. This is the clue which Fichte followed. He said that a moral agent, called upon to do his duty, must have an external world in which to do it. It is as though we were to say, "If there were no physical world, it would be necessary to invent one." The ultimate moral will, being prior to everything else, does invent one. Thought is the inventor it employs. Thought contrives the order of nature in the interest of a will that must do its duty. Or, nature is a moral necessity. Thus Kant's philosophy is transformed into a spiritualistic KANT AND THE ABSOLUTE 227 metaphysics. There is no longer anything unknown or alien to spirit. The world, as a whole, and in its ultimate derivation, is the construction of spirit; just as Kant thought to be the case in a more limited way with nature. Thus philosophy proposes to reach the very "Back of Things," and to discover that it is thought or moral will. By analyz- ing these one obtains the key to reality, — a libretto by which to follow and grasp the whole show of experience. III. THE ABSOLUTE I. Monism. We have now to consider the reasons which impel this philosophy to speak of ''the Absolute." In the last chapter we have already seen that the logic of Kantian- ism moves irresistably toward monism. The reason is to be found in the character of our knowledge of nature. Nature is one temporal, spatial, causal, and otherwise interrelated system. If this system is put into nature by mind, then it must be by one mind carrying it out consistently. Science claims to know laws which hold of nature universally; which is equivalent to claiming to know nature once and for all, in a manner that nature can never possibly belie, and which must be confirmed by the judgment of every other knower. Our knowledge of nature, in short, is such that there can be only one knowledge of nature. If it is the knowledge of nature, as Kant thinks, that puts nature together, then there can be only one such nature-builder. Or, to put the matter somewhat differently, when we know nature we feel that the truths about it, although they are formed by the mind, are nevertheless independent of our merely private opinions. There must be then a universal mind whose forming of truths about nature is authoritative and final. With the logical ideaUsts this universal and authoritative mind is a great impersonal thinking controlled by the ideal peculiar to thinking, namely wholeness or systematic unity. There can be only one standard thinking, in which the nature of thought is wholly realized. "Logic, or the spirit of totality," says Professor Bosanquet, "is the clue to reality, value and freedom. . . . The logical spirit, the 228 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS tendency of parts to self-transcendence and absorption in wholes, is the birth-impulse of initiative, as it is the Ufe-blood of stable existence. And the degree to which this spirit is incarnate in any world or system is one with the value, the satisfactoriness and reaUty by which such a system must be estimated, as also with the creative effort, by which it must be initiated." ^ The world possesses superlatively this character of whole- ness which distinguishes what Bosanquet calls the '^ concrete universal," or the ^'individual," and which qualifies a thing to exist. ^'A world or cosmos is a system of members, such that every member, being ex hypothesi distinct, nevertheless contributes to the unity of the whole in virtue of the pecuHarities which constitute its distinctness." ^ j The argument for the Absolute is simply that there can be only one perfection, one maximum. Every recognition of incompleteness is a fresh acknowledgment and reaffirmation of the one great system in which everything is made whole: ''This, then, the positive and constructive principle of non- contradiction — in other words, the spirit of the whole — is the operative principle of Ufe as of metaphysical thought. We might call it, as I said, in general, the argument a contingentia mundi, or inference from the imperfection of data and premises. And it is this, essentially, and overlooking differences of degree, in virtue of which alone we can at all have progressive and continuous experi- ence, whether as inference, or as significant feeling, or as expansion through action. It is this through which my perception of the earth's surface makes one system with my conception of the Anti- podes, or the emotion attending the parental instinct passes into the wise tenderness of the civiUzed parent, and the instinct itself, as we are told, develops into the whole structure of social benefi- cence. And it is this, only further pursued, that forces us to the conception of the Absolute. . . . This, then, is the fundamental nature of the inference to the absolute; the passage from the contradictory and unstable in all experience aUke to the stable and satisfactory."^ /:f> '? 1 The Principle of Individuality and Value, pp. 23, 24. * Ibid., p. 37- 3 Ibid.y pp. 267-268. KANT AND THE ABSOLUTE 229 If the monistic outcome is inevitable in the case of the logical type of idealism, it is no less so in the case of the ethical type. And once more the unity of the world-spirit reflects the unity of nature. In this view nature is created by the moral will as providing the necessary arena for action and materials for achievement. Society and history, too, according to Fichte, are to be explained morally, as provid- ing the human relations necessary for the cultivation of virtue. But as there is one nature and one history, so there must be one moral will which created them. The result is that Fichte and all Fichteans conceive of the world-ground as Absolute Moral Ego, or Over-individual Will. This outcome is especially interesting because, as we know, the moralistic strain in this view would, if left to itself, conduce to individu- alism and pluralism. It testifies eloquently to the strength of the monistic trend in Kantianism that it should in this case have imposed upon philosophy so extraordinary, not to say monstrous, a conception, as an impersonal moral will. 2. The Absolute as Known a priori. It is clear from what has already been said that the absolute is something which is inferred rather than something which is given in experi- ence. In personal idealism spirit is a fact, given in a peculiar way, but given none the less. But the Absolute is something that is invoked in answer to certain supposed logical necessi- ties. Indeed, appearances are all against it. It is this character of absolutism that Mr. Russell has in mind when he makes the following statement: "Modern philosophy, from Descartes onwards, though not bound by authority like that of the Middle Ages, still accepted more or less uncritically the Aristotelian logic. Moreover, it still believed, except in Great Britain, that a priori reasoning could reveal otherwise undiscoverable secrets about the universe, and could prove reality to be quite different from what, to direct observation, it appears to be. It is this belief, rather than any particular tenets resulting from it, that I regard as the distinguish- ing characteristic of the classical tradition, and as hitherto the main obstacle to a scientific attitude in philosophy." ^ » "The Classical Tradition in Philosophy," in his Scientific Method in Philosophy, pp. 5-6. 230 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS In SO far as we attempt to know at all, so absolutism teaches us, we are bound to assume that the world is intel- ligible or rational. We may therefore know what the world is on the whole if we simply think out in advance what it must be in order to be intelligible or rational. Mere facts need not embarrass us in the least. We may even go so far, with Mr. Bradley, for example, as to deny virtually all the facts, and condemn them as "were appearances,'' because unfortunately, they are not congenial to the intellect.^ Thus this philosophy enjoys many of the Uberties of a dogmatic or revealed religion. The report which science renders of the brutal facts of experience may be ignored in the name of a higher authority. Metaphysical knowledge assumes a form which is in the last analysis more like faith than scientific knowledge. It will be remembered that even in Kant's view science was answerable to the data of science. It had to accept these as they came, and was privileged only to impose a certain formal arrangement upon them. But in absolute idealism facts as something externally imposed on the mind drop out altogether. Faith, in Kant's view, was believing what one's inward nature required. So in absolute idealism knowledge is affirming what one's rational constitution requires. My constitution as a rational being issues a sort of categorical imperative with which all my thinking, judging and believ- ing must comply; and pursuing the truth means not sub- mitting to the facts as I find them, but being faithful to the inward dictates of my reason. 3. The Absolute as Value. Although the point has already come incidentally to Hght, I wish next exphcitly to note that the Absolute is not merely the ultimate being, but at the same time the supreme value. When spirit is installed as the general creative principle, the next step is to discover some master-motive in spirit. Since spirit makes the world, the explanation of the world will lie in the purpose which actuates spirit. The world is to be construed as what spirit would have it to be, as the perfect work of spirit. This is ^ Cf. his Appearance and Reality, passim. KANT AND THE ABSOLUTE 231 indispensable to the very argument for idealism. We reach the Absolute, as we have seen, by completing our incomplete- ness, by thinking what would be the perfect sequel to our imperfection. If the world is the free and unhampered creation of spirit, if it is explained entirely in terms of the requirements of spirit, then it will be the maximum or supreme expression of spirit. We have only to conceive the absolutely ideal, and then affirm that. For logical idealism, which is the dominant type, this perfection is, as we have seen, an all-inclusive, thoroughly consistent and highly unified system, the paragon of system — all that the most systematic of systems could possibly be. The world, then, is not merely the supreme reality, but it is also the supreme type of value. Aesthetic enjoyment is a revelation of the same value. "A really strong and healthy emotion," says Bosanquet, "demands for its embodiment and orderly variety, a precise and careful fitting of part to party the accurate and living logic that constitutes the austerity, which is an aspect of all beauty." ^ Spirit is better than matter, because *Hhe characteristic of the spiritual in its proper nature is inwardness," which is *' diversity without dissociation," and which is *^in contrast with the character of space in which objects appear as outside one another." ^ Individuality is valuable because "its posi- tive nature is ruined if anything is added or taken away." ^ And for the same reason, as we shall see presently, a political society is valuable, because it has its own organic, indivisible wholeness. Thus wholeness, integrity, organicity are at one and the same time the characters of reality and the norms of aesthetic, moral, political and religious value. The same thing is the case even more unmistakably with idealism of the Fichtean type. The ultimate reality is will governed by duty. But this doing of what the inward imperative requires is not only the germinating principle of reality, it is also the type-value. Truth and citizenship * Social and International Ideals^ p. 93. 2 Bosanquet: The Principle of Individuality and Value, pp. 72-73. » Ibid., p. 68. J 232 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS are primarily duties. Beauty, which does not readily con- form to this standard of value, tended to find little recogni- tion in the Fichtean scheme, and this was one of the chief grounds of attack on the part of Fichte's idealistic critics. The logical type of ideaUsm has tended to prevail over the ethical type because the conception of organic unity serves better as a unifying ideal under which to subserve all the values, than does the narrower and more specific conception of duty. We have, then, brought to light two most important theses regarding value that I wish to recapitulate and em- phasize for future reference. In the first place, in absolute idealism, reality is conceived to be the very incarnation of supreme value. This I shall speak of later as "absolute optimism." In the second place, all values are conceived of as of that one type which is represented by the universe as a whole. This I shall speak of later as " the monism of values." 4. Man the Microcosm. Finally a word as to the rela- tion of man to the Absolute. It is evident that in this philosophy man gets a sort of vicarious exaltation. He is not himself in his private capacity the creator of the world ; but the world is created by his kind of reality, and by a corporate being in which he participates. This philosophy draws its only analogues of the Absolute from the ''higher" activities of man. Thus in *' self-con- sciousness, the fullest form of consciousness which we experience," Bosanquet proposes to look for *' something which furnishes a clue to the typical strmiure of reality ^ ^ Human life in its more advanced phases, in thinking, moral conduct and the appreciation of beauty, is reality taken *'at the richest point of its development in experience," and by this reality is to be judged.^ As I work out my life and think out my world, so the Absolute in his more perfect and complete way, works out his life and thinks out his world — * Op, cU.,p. 221. Italics mine. * Bosanquet: "Realism and Metaphysic," Philosophical Review, Vol. XXVI (1917)1 P- 9. KANT AND THE ABSOLUTE n?> which is the world. The result of this view is that self-study, the biography of the inner life, is thought to have a certain metaphysical validity, as a microcosmic or small-scale representation of the Absolute. It is this aspect of the matter which Mr. Santayana has most prominently in mind, when he speaks of this transcendental idealism as a form of egotism : *'It studies the perspectives of knowledge as they radiate from the self; it is a plan of those avenues of inference by which our ideas of things must be reached, if they are to afiford any systematic or distant vistas. . . . Knowledge, it says, has a station, as in a watch tower; [it is'^always seated here and now, in the self of the moment. The past and the future, things inferred and things conceived, lie around it, painted as upon a panorama. They cannot be lighted up save by some centrifugal ray of attention and present interest, by some active operation of the mind." ^ This account of the matter is correct in that it suggests that in absolute idealism the world is conceived to develop outward from a self — to be literally self -centered. It fails, however, sufficiently to emphasize the thesis that the cosmic self is an activity governed by its own peculiar motives, the supreme motives of spirit; and that the panoramic world is therefore a work of art to be understood as the outward expression of these motives. This thesis appears most clearly in the Fichtean version, where the world is generated by a Dutiful Will, and therefore the complete and inevitable rendering of the moral motive. In this case, too, whenever a finite mortal does his duty, he may feel that he is enacting in his own person the very deed that creates the world. As he acknowledges nature in his moral dealings with it, he is reaffirming the Absolute's "Let there be Nature"; as he acknowledges his neighbor for the sake of justice, he coin- cides with the Will which forms society as the sphere of virtue. So there springs from idealism man's romantic belief in himself; the pride that claims the world in the name of those spiritual powers which are man's prerogatives. It is a short * Winds of Doctrine, p. 194. 234 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS step from believing that you are like the Absolute, or a part of the Absolute, to believing that you are the Absolute. Then looking upon nature and history as yours, you may be raised to a new level of faith and a new ecstacy of inspiration. Contemplating your work you may say, to use the words which Santayana has put into the mouth of the romantic hero: " What a genius I am ! such stuff in me ?" ^ Who would have thought there was * Op. cit., p. 199. CHAPTER XVII ABSOLUTE OPTIMISM By ''absolute optimism " I mean the view which would affirm that degrees of reaUty coincide with degrees of good- ness, that the more real a thing is the better it is, and that therefore the ultimate and all-comprehending reality is at the same time the summit of perfection. This thesis, as we have already seen, is affirmed by absolute idealism. Such a view is bound to find a value, however humble, in every- thing. It is the all-saving, all-admiring, or at least all- condoning view, most tersely expressed in Pope's familiar line, ''Whatever is, is best." Whatever is, is at any rate more or less good; or good so far as it goes. The facts which are commonly judged to be evil, must either be denied to be facts, or some sense must be contrived in which they may be said to have at least some little good in them. With the moral and religious implications of this view, and with the peculiar difficulties that beset it, we shall deal in the present chapter. In the interests of simplicity and of emphasis I shall deal mainly with what happens in such a view to moral values. And to that end I shall first summarize the two conceptions of moral value that are most prominently identi- fied with moral idealism. I. ETHICAL IDEALS I. Duty and Freedom. The Fichtean influence in ideal- ism emphasizes, as we have seen, the Kantian conception of duty. Right conduct is conduct that is actuated by moral conviction. What a moral agent judges that he ought to do, is what it is right to do. Doing what one judges that one ought to do, is according to Fichte the supreme thing in life; and as the supreme thing in life therefore the supreme thing in the universe. The object of nature is to provide the crude •23s 236 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS material and the external resistance which duty needs; and the object of society is to provide the necessary persons in whom justice, or the mutual respect of autonomous moral agents, may be dramatized. All of the activities of a com- munity, such as industry and education, must be subordi- nated to the end of cultivating the moral consciousness, so that all of humanity may be brought to the level of conscious participation in this moral drama. In so far as this is the case individuals lose their isolation and become actuated by one moral will; which may be the will of a morally self- conscious state, or that underlying moral will of the universe, that Absolute Moral Ego, which is the ground of nature and history as a whole. This ethical ideal is very commonly spoken of as the ideal of ''freedom"; but in this case the term ''freedom'' is used in a very special sense which we must take pains to under- stand. It may strike us as paradoxical or as hypocritical that a people so rigidly organized, so thoroughly disciplined, and so respectful of authority, as the Germans, should pro- claim themselves the devotees of freedom. But this is because we are accustomed to use the term in wholly different senses. Thus, for example, freedom doubtless suggests to some of us doing as one pleases, following the momentary impulse or incHnation. But the Fichtean thinks of impulse as the tyranny of nature, as when one speaks of being enslaved by appetite. In this view true freedom means mastery of appetite by reason, and the consequent power to do as one judges best, even with the strongest natural in- clination to the contrary. Freedom, in this Fichtean sense, means doing what one soberly decides to do, in the light of reason. It means making up one^s mind for oneself. Another source of misunderstanding is the habit of asso- ciating freedom with detachment or isolation. The free man is thought of as the individual out of relation, standing by himself, belonging to nothing. But the Fichtean would argue that isolation implies helplessness and degradation. He thinks of freedom as a definite sphere or opportunity such as can only belong to members of a system, under the rule of ABSOLUTE OPTIMISM 237 law. And he thinks, furthermore, that true individuality consists not in separation, but in playing a part in a whole which is more worthy than anything which one could possibly be by oneself. Being included in a whole does not impair one's freedom provided one adopts that whole as one's end. In other words one may freely subordinate oneself. De- liberate submission to general laws or larger corporate purposes is not contrary to freedom, but is the very act of freedom. For to act from reason rather than impulse, means to act from principle; and a principle will have an authority beyond oneself and will unite one with all other rational beings within the same jurisdiction. Thus freedom in this teaching is not lax, but rigorous; not easy, but hard; not disintegrating, but unifying. This, I take it, is what Professor Troeltsch means by "German freedom," when he says: " German freedom came into being, according to Kant's conception of it, as the freedom of spontaneous recognition of duty and right, and in the romantic conception of an infinite wealth of culture, individual, but in all cases mutually complementary." ^ 2. Self-realization. For two reasons the Fichtean con- ception of moral value has not proved wholly satisfactory to idealists. In spite of what has just been said it possesses a certain harshness. Although both Kant and Fichte insist that the moral agent is his own master, in that he is himself the authority that imposes the categorical imperative, nevertheless moral value is made to consist essentially in obedience. Furthermore, the view is too narrow. If moral value is conceived exclusively in terms of duty, and then set up as the supreme value, it becomes necessary to deny or disparage other values, such as aesthetic value. The genius who, following the promptings of inspiration, or of taste, creates an immortal work of art, the great man who from love of power creates a new epoch in history — these would have to be condemned because they were a bit inattentive to the categorical imperative. A new formula is needed which shall save the Kantian idea of duty, but shall be flexible * In The Ideals of Modern Germany , p. 87. 238 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS enough to provide for other praiseworthy things as well. This new and superbly ambiguous formula is self-realization. Self-realization in the idealistic sense has, like freedom, to be discriminated from other familiar meanings. There is a naturalistic sense of self-realization, common, for example, among the Greek moralists. In this sense self-realization means being the finest possible individual instance of the animal species man. The human species has its own characteristic points. To realize oneself means, then, to excel in these points, to be superlatively human. To be a good man, in this sense, would mean that one might be chosen as a good specimen by which to demonstrate terres- trial life at its best to some visitor from Mars. But this is not idealism ; because in idealism man is construed not as an animal species, a type of creature, but as a vehicle of the spiritual principle in the world. In another sense, which appears, for example, in the philosophy of Spinoza and in an aspect of Christianity, to realize oneself means to merge one's meagre individuahty in the fuller being of God. He who thus loses his little self, shall save his greater self or live more abundantly. This motive of universalism and mystical union is a factor in the ideaHstic view. But it is still not the heart of the matter. To reach that, one must recall that according to absolute idealism the human individual is a microcosm. When he does his duty, or exercises his reason he is acting in unison with the creative spirit. Just in proportion as one acts from within, just in proportion as one acts freely, dutifully or rationally, without being constrained either by external force or by natural impulse, just in that proportion is one's act an act of spirit, and therefore an act of that one spirit which is absolutely authoritative. Pure spirit can do no evil, and neither can a man who acts according to the spirit- ual principle, that is, self-consciously and autonomously. The result of this teaching is a formalism even more barren and more dangerous than that of Kant. Kant said : Do what you judge to be your duty. But though in principle this form may be attached to any kind of conduct, as a matter of ABSOLUTE OPTIMISM 239 j fact it is associated in most human minds with certain tradi- tional moral precepts which safeguard the well-being of society. The form of self-reaUzation has no such fixed association with any body of precepts. If anything it is associated with the code of selfishness and privilege. In any case there is nothing which one may not do in the name of self. The mandates: "Do what your very innermost self wills to do,'' ''Let your act express your whole or deeper self," may justify any kind of action whatever. There is nothing, however hurtful to others or at variance with tra- ditional morality, that some moral agent may not do with the most whole-hearted conviction. Indeed, one of the commonest pretexts for self-indulgence and the violation of the moral opinion of mankind, is the plea that one's precious self requires it. A man with a ''self " may easily become a common nuisance or even a dangerous paranoiac. The view obtains a specious plausibility from the supposed fact that all action is necessarily self-regarding. Thus Nietzsche, for example, argues that altruism is self-contra- dictory since the altruistic man professes to be bestowing good on the other party, while in fact he condemns the other party to be the ignominious recipient of benefaction and reserves for himself the loftier role of benefactor. If it is more blessed to give than to receive, then the truly generous man would devote himself altogether to receiving. The idealist Professor Pringle-Pattison , quoting Nietzsche with approval, adds that "in a sense, the moral centre and the moral motive must always ultimately be self, the perfection of the self." ^ The fallacy in this reasoning lies in begging the very question at issue, and supposing that the altruistic man is really moved by a fondness for altruism. The really altruistic man isn't concerned about himself at all, but is thinking of the other person's good. And the altruistic receiver of benefits is not thinking of his pious and humble role, but is filled with gratitude. The viciousness of this ethical theory lies in the fact that the moral agent is encouraged to ignore every form of ex- * Cf. Nietzsche: Human, All too Human, I, 137-138. I 240 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS ternal check. It is a sort of ethics of inspiration. No one else can be a judge of one's action, even the injured party. For all that is asked is that the action should be deemed by the agent himself to spring from his deeper spiritual being. Whether it does or not, only he, within the secrecy of his own self -consciousness, can know. There can be absolutely no guarantee that action so motivated and so justified shall agree with the safety and well-being of those who happen to be affected by it. As Professor Dewey has said apropos of Eucken's self-realizationist version of justice: ''A justice which, irrespective of the determination of social well-being, proclaims itself as an irresistible spiritual impulsion possessed of the force of a primitive passion, is nothing but a primi- tive passion clothed with a spiritual title so that it is protected from having to render an account of itself." ^ II. VALUE FITTED TO FACT We have already observed that absolute idealism asserts the coincidence of reality and value. That whole-of-things which is called the Absolute is fully real, the only instance of unqualified reality, and is also utterly perfect, the only instance of impeccable value. This conjunction of ideals, the most-real and the most-good, is effected through suppos- ing that the real world is the consummate product of the good-pursuing activity of spirit. Such a conclusion has a very comforting and inspiring ring. To be assured that reality as it is, is not only good, but the very maximum of goodness — to be assured that nothing is too good to be true — should be sufficiently optimistic to suit anybody. But before congratulating ourselves prematurely let us analyze the returns a little more closely. When one is promised the realization of one's ideals, it is ordinarily understood that the ideals shall remain unaltered while the reaUty is brought up abreast of them. It is not supposed that the ideals will meet the reaUty half way. It is easy to give a man all that he wants if you can control his wants. * German Philosophy and Politics, p. 56. The reference is to Eucken's Meaning and Value of Life^ trans, by Gibson, p. 104. ABSOLUTE OPTIMISM 24T In other words, there are two ways of having ideals realized, one is by squaring reality with the ideals, and the other is by squaring the ideals with reality. And it makes a great deal of difference, in the case before us, which of these methods has been employed. Let us see. The idealistic starts out with some notion of value, such for example as the doing of one's duty. He then pro- poses to show that reality is the very incarnation and em- bodiment of dutifulness. Nature, he says, is there because a dutiful will needs something to act on. But why just this nature? Why, for example, just eighty-three elements and eight planets? It is dangerous to argue that precisely these numbers are required by duty, because science has a trouble- some way of every little while discovering that there are more. Why so much more of nature than is ever utilized for moral purposes? Why so much of nature that proves unyielding and unpropitious to duty? And similarly with history — why so much of it that is irrelevant or contrary to the interests of morality? Faced by such facts the Fich- tean moral idealism proceeds to revise its conception of duty, and even goes to the incredible length of afi&rming that there is a fundamental duty to will the laws of nature or to affirm whatever is so.^ It is not difficult to prove that the world as it is, is pre-eminently a place for the performance of the duty of agreeing with the world as it is! But this is cold comfort to the man who still cherishes the old-fashioned con- ception of duty and had hoped to be shown that the world was the incarnation of specific moral values such as justice or love. The other type of idealism conceives the world to be the realization of the ideals of reason, a perfection of thought. These ideals have gradually settled down to one, the ideal of coherence or systematic unity, and this looks suspiciously as though it were dictated by the facts of nature. Indeed this is virtually admitted in a recent idealistic book written by Professor Pringle-Pattison. This author first protests that » Cf. Munsterberg: Eiernal Values, p. 54, and Rickert: Der Gegenstand der Erkenntniss. 242 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS the only virtue in idealism lies in its explaining reality in terms of value. There is no virtue he says in mere ''mental- ism," in which the facts as they are given or described in science are merely rebaptized in the name of spirit. "What difference does it make/' he asks, "whether we regard nature as existing per se, or insist that all her processes are registered in a mind, if that mind is nothing but such a register or impartial reflection of the facts? " ^ We are thus encouraged to expect that idealism will set up the peculiar bias of mind and then show that reality is partial to it. But instead of that we find that mind is construed in terms of the most general and abstract features of the world, and then set up as the standard of value, with which, as is not surprising, reality may then be shown to conform. "The nature of reality," says our author, "can only mean the systematic structure discernible in its appearance, and . . . this must furnish us with our ultimate criterion of value." ^ Professor W. R. Sorley, whose sympathies are idealistic, nevertheless deprecates this tendency in idealism to retain only the names of spirit and value, while having abandoned the specific and distinctive things for which these names ordinarily stand. In particular he notes the tendency in idealism to get away altogether from persons and selves, while still professing to take a spiritual view of the world. He is "puzzled," by the "species of Idealism in which thought determinations are spoken of as if they were deter- minations neither of my thought nor of your thought nor of God's thought, but just of thought." ^ He finds that the terms "experience" and "idea" are especially popular among ideaUsts because they lend themselves to this im- personal use. But it is evident that if spirit be identified with the content of knowledge, with what we know about the world, then it is mere redundancy to say that the world is spiritual. So far as there is any victory, it is the world which has vanquished spirit; for while the world has assumed the 1 The Idea of God in the Light of Recent Philosophy, pp. i99» 200. 2 Op. cit., p. 225. » "The Two Idealisms," Hibbert Journal, 1904, p. 713. ABSOLUTE OPTIMISM 243 I I I name of spirit, spirit has taken on the nature of the world. Another example is afforded by Professor J. E. Creighton who is anxious to distinguish the true idealism from the mere mentaKsm or subjectivism of Berkeley. He defines the true or "speculative " idealism as follows: "Its primary insight ... is that the reality known in experience is not something that merely 'is' or possesses bare existence, but that, as existing concretely, it forms part of a permanent system of relation and values." ^ It then appears that Professor Creighton's favorite term, in whose name nature is identified with value, is the term "intelligence." Nature is reduced to "the order of the universe, or, what is the same thing, the order of intelli- gence." 2 This order of intelligence is not, of course, any- body's intelligence. It is just order. Sometimes Professor Creighton conjures with the term "rational," which turns out so far as I can see to get all of its meaning from the structure or form of sciencse. Professor Creighton "cannot help feeling that the view of nature as a uniform and per- manent system of natural laws is a necessary element in a rational experience." He is "unable to conceive how there could be a rational life without an apprehension of an objec- tive order." ^ Of course he cannot help feeling, of course he is unable to-conceive, for the very simple reason that whether consciously or not he has derived his notion of rationality from the system of natural laws and the objective order! When intelligence and rationality are thus defined in terms of the world as it is known to be, then there is nothing very glorious after all in the view that the world is perfectly intelligent or completely rational. The fact is that idealism of this type in arder to be able to assert the coincidence of the ideal and the real has had to redefine the ideal in terms of the real. It has yielded to this pressure only gradually, and has continued with sincerity and conviction to use the same terms which it employed at 1 "Two Types of Idealism," Philosophical Review, Vol. XXVI (iQi?). P- S16. * Op. cit., p. 527. * Op, ciU, p. 534. 244 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS the outset. But in effect idealism is very much like the recent Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Reality, like the Germans, has refused to budge. The idealists, like the Bolsheviki, have steadily lowered their demands unti finally they have simply endorsed the terms dictated to them. But while the Bol- sheviki admit their defeat and call it coercion, the idealists have so gradually and unconsciously reinterpreted their own demands that they experience the elation of victory. As I see it the evolution of idealism consists in reshaping ideals to fit the Procrustean bed of facts. The idealist has less humor than a lady of my acquaintance who taking her place in an automatic elevator found herself unable to control it, and was undecided whether to risk it or get out and walk. When the elevator suddenly began to go up, taking her with it, she folded her hands and said *'I've decided." I feel that the idealist's will is similarly ex post facto. He doesn't know what to will until he knows what the world is going to do to him; and then he wills that. In name the world then exe- cutes his will; but it would be more correct to say that he has no will, or at any rate has ceased to assert it. III. THE CONFUSION OF VALUES I have failed so far to allude to a more serious defect in this idealistic optimism. It is not only hollow, as I have already contended, but it is misleading and confusing. Through its eagerness to identify reahty and value it blurs and compromises human ideals. This effect is further aggravated by what I have termed its *' monism of values." There is to be only one type of perfection into which truth, goodness, beauty and every other good thing are all resolved. Now I should like to call attention to the fact that there are two ways of making things look alike. One way is by clear discrimination and segregation, classifying like with like. The other way is by turning down the lights. In the dark, it is said, all cats are gray. So in the twilight of ambiguity all ideals may look alike. But that is only because they have all lost their coloring. The idealist in striving to show that reality satisfies every human aspiration succeeds only by ABSOLUTE OPTIMISM 245 I I eliminating whatever is specific and peculiar in every human aspiration. The result is that you get a sort of conjunct perfection which is totally perfect because it is not perfect in respect of any one of the definite standards of life. In order, for example, that everything in the world shall appear to be morally good, it becomes necessary to regard moral goodness not as justice or happiness, but as struggle and the formation of character. It is evident that things are not universally just or conducive to happiness; but you can make out a fairly good case for the claim that all things are conducive to the chastening of the soul. But even this will not do, because it is too evident that much struggle leads to demoralization and bitterness. So one tries again, and contrues moral goodness as the interplay of spiritual forces, conducing to a dramatic richness and unity of Ufe. Here the moral ideal has gone by the board altogether and an aesthetic ideal is put in its place. But this will not do because there is too much of the world that is ugly and offensive to taste. So idealism is driven to substitute a logical for an aesthetic ideal, and to reduce both goodness and beauty to the ideal of systematic unity. This reduction we have already noted in the case of Bosanquet's conception of ''orderiy variety." ^ The diverse ideals of life are thus flattened down into the purely formal ideal of the intellect; and if one were Uterally to apply this theory one would judge conduct and art and every other thing by the bare standard of consistency. To carry out a monism of values consistently would mean that every good thing should be expected to satisfy every desire and aspiration. A good medicine ought to be pala- table; a good fuel ought to be beautiful; a good painting ought to be edifying; all true news ought to be agreeable news; and whatever is morally right ought to be true. If one were to try to live on this theory it is evident that one would never be cured, or warmed, or sensuously pleased, or informed, or improved. Through trying to get every ideal realized at once, one would be fairiy sure of getting none of them realized. ^ Cf. above, p. 230. 246 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS The reduction of other values to one value, such as formal unity, would not only emasculate and compromise practical, moral and aesthetic judgments, but it would have been in vain after all. For every new conception of good defines a new conception of evil. If injustice and ugliness have been in a manner explained away, it is only to leave in hand in their place the evil of disorder and error. For these are facts as unmistakable as the others. And when the idealist reaches this point he usually stops, and very commonly acknowledges that the problem of error is insoluble. But if so then since all evil has been converted into this form, idealism is as far as ever from having justified the contention that the world is superlatively good. Nothing remains but to fall back upon the dogma that somehow as Pope said: "All nature is but art, unknown to thee All chance, direction which thou canst not see; All discord harmony not understood; ' All partial evil, universal good." This IS at best a pious wish. Since it expresses itself with so positive and confident an air, and professes to enjoy the support of unanswerable reasons, one is tempted to call it a pious fraud. IV. THE TOLERANCE OF EVIL It should be quite apparent that an absolute optimism must view everything in the world with a sort of condoning tolerance. One may distinguish some things as better than others, but nothing, if it be real at all, can be unmitigatedly evil. One may seek to subordinate some things to other things, but one cannot consistently seek to eradicate or annihilate anything. Whatever it be, it somehow ^'be- longs," and we must endeavor to see how it fits in. I shall take as an illustration of this aspect of absolutism a writer whose personal and national bias is favorable to common sense moral idealism. Professor Bosanquet, just because he does instinctively share the repugnance of the normal conscience to the wickedness and misery of the world, serves peculiarly well to show the inward inconsistency ABSOLUTE OPTIMISM 247 between such a conscience and the logic of the idealistic optimism. There are, says this writer two moral motives: one, the motive of reform, prompting us to condemn evil utterly; the other, the motive of philosophy, prompting us to accept the evil as a necessary part of life. "Here," he says, "we confront the paradox of all ideals. Prima facie they present you with a dilemma. Either the ideal includes the imperfection which it hopes to transcend, or it omits it. If it includes it, sustains and maintains it, as active beneficence implies preserving such miserable objects as it needs, then the ideal seems no longer to be an ideal. For it includes its opposite with all its imperfections on its head. But if the ideal omits the evil which is its opposite, then again it seems to have dropped out one-half of its world, to be bankrupt and futile in dealing with its antagonist, to be irrelevant and superficial, and so once more to be no longer the ideal. ... We see, then, where the dilemma of the ideal has brought us, and always must bring us, in charity as in all goodness, in beauty as in truth. The ideal must not sustain the evil; but it must not ignore the evil. It must include it by transmutation. . . . We have no doubt that pain and badness are to be fought against and overcome so far as in any way possible. . . . And we must never let this go. But, second, along with this, we see that good and bad hardly seem to be meant (so to speak) to be separated." ^ In this passage it is virtually admitted that the idealistic belief in the integral perfection of things, contradicts an out and out hostility to evil. One may speak of ''overcoming " it but not of abolishing it. The good life is a wrestling with evil, not a killing of it. Without an adversary one cannot wrestle, so one must not be too rough with one's opponent. As long as the supply of evil is abundant one can be fairly careless; but if the supply were to run low, how could the life of struggle be maintained? According to this teaching even though one's treatment of evil be hostile, one's thought about it is kindly. Like a human enemy, if one only knew it better, one would arrive at a sympathetic understanding of it. Bosanquet does not propose the rough and ready method of calling evil unreal. 1 Social and International Ideals, pp. 98-99, 100. 248 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS No, it is real, and like everything real, it is necessary; like everything necessary, it is somehow good: "On the view here accepted, finiteness, pain, and evil are essential features of Reality, and belong to an aspect of it which leaves its marks even on perfection. The view that they are illusions says that if we knew everything and could feel everything we should see and feel that there was no pain or evil at all. The view that con- tradiction is actual, and, more than that, is an exaggeration of a feature truly fundamental in reality, says that if we knew every- thing and could feel everything we should see and feel what finite- ness, pain and evil mean, and how they play a part in perfection itself. The way of meeting them — though it is not our business to preach, yet we may permit ourselves to illustrate our view by its effect — the way of meeting them is different in principle for these two theories. It is absurd and insulting to tell a man in pain or in sin that there is no such thing as pain or sin; it is neither absurd nor insulting to try to let him feel that of each of them something great and precious can be made." ^ It is inevitable that such a fundamental belief should affect one's attitude in matters of practical reform. We are not to replace an evil state of things with a good state of things, we are to make evil good. If you destroy it, it remains as evil as ever, having merely become a non-existent evil. It still remains as a blot upon the past. Evil is not to be removed, but rather to remain as a seasoning in the dish of good. Thus in his attitude toward men, the idealist will tend on the whole not to think of their suffering and wickedness as some- thing that can be made away with, but rather as something that has its good side, its spiritual significance. One will think of the lot of the working classes, for example, as redeemed by endurance, self-denial, kindliness, cheerfulness and fortitude, '^ great qualities that seem only to be guaran- teed by hardship.'' Bosanquet adds, somewhat apologeti- cally, that * irrational hardship clamors to be abolished." ^ But such abolition is no solution of the problem. **Our main point," he continues, ^'is . . . that idealism is not an ^ Bosanquet: The Principle of Individuality and Value, p. 240, 241. * Social and International Ideals, p. 63, 52-53. ABSOLUTE OPTIMISM 249 escape from reality; but, first, a faith in the reality beneath appearances, which, secondly, works by 'comprehension,' and not by opposition, and confers, thirdly, a power of trans- forming the appearance in the direction of the real reality."^ This transforming of appearance, it is to be noted, is not a changing of its real nature, but a bringing out of its real nature — what Bosanquet elsewhere speaks of as a ''diving into the core of appearance until the real reality discloses itself." 2 In other words evil is to be thought good, rather than made good. What is needed is not destructive zeal, house-cleaning, the scotching of evil — but rather a deeper insight in which the round and perfect whole is revealed. Associated with this quietistic motive is a species of fatal- ism. The philosophical moralist instead of trying to remake this sorry scheme of things, instead of setting up an ideal and then moving reality to it, is to get his clue from reality. He is to get the sense and swing of things, the deeper under- tones of life, and put himself in unison with them. *'The social process is greater than anyone's formula; and what we have to think of is how causation is working, and how we can throw ourselves into it in union with the real forces of the day. . . . We shall, as a great writer has said, remember 'What the world is, and what we are.' We shall try to understand it, and co-operate with it, rather than to remould it. We shall seek for what is deepest in it, knowing we shall find there a power which will respond to what is deepest in ourselves. And by taking these things as our guide and criterion, we shall always be working in a direction which will at once be practicable and good." ^ Such is the idealistic faith in the goodness of things, a faith as it appears to me quite incompatible with the temper of a militant moralism. Idealism accepts the maxim, "Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner." And its philosophical emphasis inclines it to the view that it is better to be leniently understanding, than to be blindly zealous. It teaches a man to identify himself with the universe, rather than to be a par- 1 Ibid., p. 88. 2 Ibid., p. 90. ^ Ibid., pp. 244, 246. 2 so THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS tisan of any of its aspects, such as even justice and happiness must be deemed to be.^ As for an Absolute God in whom all evil is contained, and by whose Will or Purpose all things must be explained, I feel strongly attracted to the view of Francis Bacon, who said: "It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion as is unworthy of Him. For the one is unbelief, the other is contumely: and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose: Surely (saith he) / had rather a great deal men should say there was no such man at all as Plutarch, than that they should say that there was one Plutarch that would eat his children as soon a^ they were born; as the poets speak of Saturn." ^ 1 For a similar criticism of Bosanquet, cf. Hobson: The Crisis of Liberalism. * Fowler's Bacan, p. 187. CHAPTER XVIII THE ABSOLUTIST CONCEPTION OF THE STATE The problems and perplexities of the present age, of which the great war is the tragic expression, and of which we must hope that the great war will in some degree pro- vide a solution, fall into two great groups. On the one hand there are the problems of international conflict, and on the other hand the problems of inter-class conflict. Both groups of problems involve, as perhaps their chief question of principle, the question of the function of the state. The international problems turn on the extent to which a state may properly submit to laws and policies which define the interest of humanity as a whole. The inter-class problems turn on the extent to which a state may properly be sub- ordinated to the interests of its classes or members taken severally. It is evident that in so far as the state is regarded as a finality in questions of moraUty and well-being, it cannot properly submit to anything. It will not, strictly speaking, recognize obligations at all, save perhaps to God; and since God is not commonly at hand to make his will unmistakably known, those who act for the state find no difl&culty in interpreting that will in a manner agreeable to their own. If each state regards itself as a finality, and if there are, as is unfortunately the case, many states, then conflict is inevitable and irreconcilable. And each state will regard its corporate greatness as a consideration superior to the happiness of the mere individuals who are its members. Neither individuals nor alien states will have any rights or just claims against it. In the present chapter I propose to show that this con- ception of the state as a finality follows very consistently from that absolutist philosophy which we have just been 251 / 252 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS Studying. It would appear not to be an accident that Germany, where this conception of the state is most widely entertained, is also the home of Kant, Fichte and Hegel, and the land in which their philosophy has exercised the greatest influence upon historians, pubUcists, economists and men of affairs. , .. i ru i A recent German-American wnter of a relatively hberal persuasion, Professor Kuno Francke, has written as follows concerning the German conception of the state: "To the German, it is a spiritual collective personaUty, leading a life of its own, beyond and above the life of individuals and its aim is not the protection of the happiness of mdividuals, but their elevation to a nobler type of manhood and thdr training for the achievement of great common tasks in all the higher concerns of life - in popular education, in miHtary service, m communal and industrial education, in scientific inquiry, in artisUc culture. This conception ... is to-day perhaps the most powerful incentive for every kind of activity that agitates the Fatherland. "This conception of the state may seem mystic, fantastic, ex- travagant. . . . It may be something of an intoxication, a chimera, a frenzy If so, it is a stem and exalted frenzy, a frenzy which is constantly converting itself into tireless effort, unending devotion to duty, unbounded readiness for self-sacrifice, unceasmg work for self-improvement, patient self-discipline." ^ I cite this paragraph partly in order to present a concrete instance of the theory I propose to discuss; but also because the author forcibly reminds us that those who carry out this theory in practice take what is to them the highest moral ground. We should be far from the mark if ^ we thought that the Germans were any less morally conscious than other people. Probably just the contrary is true. Probably more of deliberate conscientiousness is put into conduct in Germany than anywhere else. If there is any- thing wrong with Germany, as we strongly suspect there is, it is not that they have no conscience, but rather that their conscience is mistaken. This is a much more serious and dangerous matter than mere primitive savagery or childish lawlessness. 1 A German- American's Confession of Faith, pp. 26-27. CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 253 To understand this seeming paradox, it is only necessary to bear in mind that what is virtue in a Umited view of life, may be vice in a more adequate view. Furthermore the very degree of its limited virtuousness may determine the degree of its ultimate viciousness. This is the ethics of fanaticism. Those who promoted the Inquisition, for ex- ample, were highly virtuous. I do not mean this in any ironical sense. They were the most severely and rigorously moral men of their age. They were the men of character and of principle, par excellence. They were prudent, in- dustrious, loyal, disinterested, enthusiastic. But unfortu- nately they lost sight of certain considerations. They did not take a wide enough view of the matter; and such being the case they were far more terribly destructive to those interests which they ignored than they would have been had they been less intensely in earnest. Or consider a man's loyalty to his wife. At first it may appear im- possible that a man should be too loyal to his wife. But suppose that his devotion carries him, for example, to the point of elbowing other women and trampling on children, in order to make his wife perfectly comfortable. When it gets to this we say that he is excessively uxorious; and we discover that he is a social menace from the very degree of his conjugal fidelity. The Spanish Inquisition and the zealous husband both mean well. But this does not prevent their being dangerous. On the contrary it makes them more dangerous because it makes them more enthusiastic and more persistent. This is my feeling about the Ger- mans. They mean well; like all fanatics they are terrify- ingly earnest. The problem of diagnosis is to find that wrong thing which they mean well; that narrow, perverted, or bigoted morality which so heartens and unites them that all the rest of the world is compelled in self-defense to re- gard them as the common enemy. I do not want to claim too much for any single formula, but I am convinced that present German policy has justified itself to many of the most sober and well-meaning Germans through this false conception of the state as a finality, as "a spiritual collective 254 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS personality " in whose greatness and glory the individual should find his highest end. I. THE NATURE OF THE STATE The idea of the state which we have here to consider must be distinguished from two older and more familiar ideas with which it has much in common. It is m the first place not the same thing as poUtical absolutism, the idea that the ruling class or dynasty possesses absolute au- thority by right of birth or by "divine right." This older and more famiUar idea is simply a theory of sovereignty, to the effect that it is vested irrevocably m certain pnvi- leged persons. The new idea of a state-personality does, as we shall see, provide a new argument for pohtical abso- lutism, but it is in this new argument, rather than in the inference from it, that its distinguishing charactenstics appear. This new argument is to the effect that the state is an indivisible spiritual entity whose will or purpose is infallibly expressed by its de facto rulers. Another older and more familiar idea is the idea that man cannot acknowledge more than one sovereign authority and that therefore all men must submit to one universal dominion. This idea found expression in ancient times m the world-wide rule of Rome, and, in the mediaeval period, in the rival claims of the Papacy and the Holy Roman Em- pire Here again the new idea has something in common with the old. It is contended that the state of which any individual is a member may properly overrule every other claim of allegiance. But since the state is here interpreted in the Ught of the idea of nationaUty, it is supposed to have a pecuUar individuality of its own, which gives it a umque value, but which at the same time distinguishes it from diverse individuaUties of the same type. If a state so in- terpreted is to claim universal dominion, it must be on the ground that its own pecuUar culture is at the time the richest and completest expression of the world-spirit. Thus in comparing the new conception of the state with other kindred views, it is distinguished by its emphasis CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 255 upon the spiritual solidarity of the state, as giving it su- preme value. The state in this view is the most complete, the most perfect, and hence the most authoritative thing by which human conduct may be regulated. It would be absurd to contend that the notion of state- personality was originated by Kantian idealism. This phil- osophy has served only to give articulate expression and greater plausibility to an idea that has a much simpler psychological explanation. In the Nineteenth Century, as is well-known, there was a great awakening of national self-consciousness. Cavour and Bismarck sought to realize this sentiment, to give to nationality the effectual unity and autonomy of statehood. But the sentiment itself is suffi- cient to account for the idea of the individuated state. Whatever we loyally love and serve we tend to personify. This can probably be explained in the last analysis by what is called **the pathetic fallacy,'* that is, the disposition of the human mind to attribute to any source of good or evil, a corresponding will or purpose. Gratitude and resentment usually impute motives to their objects — conceiving their objects as benevolent or maUcious. Gratitude to nature for benefits received readily takes the form of representing Nature as a kindly and gracious being, a person animated by good-will. Similarly patriotism personifies its object. A social group which one has learned to associate with what one loves, and which one has thus come in a way to love for itself, is regarded and referred to as though it had a will of its own. A further motive for the same personifying tendency is to be found in the economy of thought. History is greatly simplified if instead of speaking of men in the plural we can speak af groups in the singular. It is convenient to be able to treat a unit of discourse as though it were a unit of reality; or to speak of a group that participates as a whole in any particular event which we may happen to be describing, as though it were a whole in all respects. What is thus at first a convenient abbreviation, may become a fixed habit, and obtain acceptance as a true and adequate idea. It is also 256 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS natural to dramatize history, to attach a role or assign a part to a social group, and so to invest the group with a sort of individual identity. Such relatively simple psychological explanations underlie the common practice of speaking of John Bull and Uncle Sam, of Britannia and Columbia; the practice of saying that England did this and America that, as though referring to individuated characters appearing upon the stage of history, and having each a purpose, will. or passion of its own. But absolute ideaUsm offers a theoretical justification for the literal acceptance of what might otherwise be regarded as a trick of speech or a careless metaphor. This justification appeals fundamentally to the principle of organic unity. I. Organic Unity. No part of anything, according to this view, is in itself either real or good. To find what it really is, or to find its true value, you must proceed to the whole of it, and then from that vantage-point, see the part where it belongs. The human individual is thus neither real nor good in himself, because he is a part of something. The whole to which he primarily belongs, and in the light of which he must be understood and evaluated, is the state. Let us trace the argument as it is presented by Professor Bosanquet.^ This writer starts with the notion that the human indi- vidual is not complete in himself. *'The moment we enter upon the reflective study of man, we learn that his indi- viduality, his self-identity, lie outside him as he presents himself in time. His nature, according to Green's phrase, which goes to the root of the matter, is in process of being communicated to him.'' ^ The individual finds his reaUty beyond his private self in a larger ^^ complex of lives and activities." As private persons are related to their several states of consciousness, as integrating and possessing them, 1 In addition to the references below the reader may consult the same author's Philosophy of the StaU, and a symposium on the state in the Proceed- ings of the Aristotelian Society for 19 16, summarized in the Journal of Philos- ophy, VoL XIV, p. 83. ^^ ^^ ^^ ^. , . . 2 The Principle of Individuality and Value, p. 259. Cf. Nettleship s biog- raphy of Green, pp. 27, 114, 136. CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 257 SO persons, in turn, ''by forming an integral part of greater wholes, acquire a value completely other than that which they would prima facie possess." The perfection of the individual, "you could only obtain by first judging the perfection of a society as a unitary body of experience — because it is in this alone that the individual conscious being is all he can be — and then adjusting to this your estimate of individual perfection. "When you have admitted the unity of the person with him- self, it is impossible to stop short of his unity with others, with the world, and with the universe; and the perfection by which he is to be valued is his place in the perfection of these greater wholes." ^ In an essay written since the opening of the war. Professor Bosanquet defends, on the premises just formulated, the Hegelian view of the nation-state as the supreme instance of these ''greater wholes," saving only the ideal perfection of the Absolute. Man's relatedness to his fellows, and his dependence on the power of the state for security and order, are interpreted as implying that his existence and signifi- cance are both drawn from this complete social being. The peculiar culture, tradition and institutional forms of the state possess a substantial value, mean something that is permanent and universal; and only through identifying himself with this can the individual save himself from annihilation and ignominy. "The individual is supposed to see in it the form of life, and more than that, the particular form of sentiment and volition, which his nation has so far worked out for itself, and in which he, the private person, finds the substance of his own mind, and what unites him with others. It includes, of course, the ethical tradition of the society, with the observances and institutions in which it is embodied and preserved; and more especially it is identified with the general will as expressed in the laws and the political constitution. The state, in short, is the ark in which the whole treasure of the individual's head and heart is preserved and guarded within a world which may be disorderly and hostile. . . . 1 Op. cit., pp. 312, 313, 315. 258 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS Without the state we are nothing and nobody. It is for us the Se of the value of the world. It stands for our contnbut on lolLtgetrd sum of what humanity has achieved and what makes any Ufe worth Uving." ^ 2. The State and the Nation. It is a very important feature of this view that the nation should be identified with the state. It is not merely that the nation has a kind of individuaUty of its own, a characteristic physiognomy, and a more or less distinctive purpose and destiny. It is not merely that the members of a nation are aware of a certain community of ideas and sentiments, and that through their conscious adherence to these they umte ma collective will It is further contended that this collective will ex- presses itself in the acts of state, in the official policy of the political authorities. This is not the same as the truism that the state ought to express the collective will, in so far as there is one. That would be equivalent to admitting that the collective will has other ways of makmg itself known, which may operate as a check upon the state; and such an admission would at once raise questions as to where such a superior collective will is to be found. It would threaten to become a very fluctuating and ambiguous thing, like ^'pubUc opinion.'^ No, the view which we are consid- ering finds itself almost inevitably impelled to tdentify the collective will with the decisions and acts of government. The ruling authorities are its exponents ex officio. Ihe reasons for the acceptance of this view are plam. On the theory that there is a state-personality, with a will ot its own, it is necessary that some organ should be identified which may be said to speak for it authoritatively. What an individual wills can be found out by askmg him and he may be judged and held responsible accordmgly. But what does -America '' will? It cannot be what you or I will for our wills differ. It cannot be what is resolved in a mass-meeting of citizens, for this may be contradicted by the counter-resolutions of another mass-meeting. Indi- 1 "Patriotism in the Perfect State," The International Crisis, pp. i33-i3S. CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 259 viduals evidently do not will in unison, and yet they are all Americans. What is that American will that represents them all, whether they know it or agree with it or not? There would seem to be no other alternative but to accept as the American will, the official acts and utterances of the President, of Congress, and of the Supreme Court. The fact that an individual happened not to assent would, then, in this view not give that individual any right to pro- test. His will is overruled because it is merely individual, and as such must yield to the will of the higher corporate being of which he is a part. Official acts of the state are not to be judged by their agreement with the sentiments or opinions of its individual members. It was never intended to express these, and it is no reproach to it that it does not. It is intended to express the will of a superior spiritual being, to which the individual belongs, whether consciously or not, just as a cell belongs to a larger animal organism. It must be assumed that it does express this higher will, because there is no other way of knowing what this higher will is. In short this theory is in principle precisely like the theory of papal infallibility. The policy of the authorita- tive state, like that of the authoritative church, is self- validating. It is evident that this is the precise opposite of what we call popular government; and if it were true it would en- tirely justify the right of monarchs to speak in the name of God, and to regard parliaments as debating societies for the expression of opinions which the rulers may accept or disregard according to their own superior judgment. But as a matter of fact no state on earth has actually pro- ceeded on this theory. No government can afford to neg- lect the interests of the governed. Every government has secured its power, whether just or not, from the consent of the governed. I do not mean that it has enjoyed the approbation of all of the governed; no government has ever secured unanimity of support. But political author- ity has been based invariably upon the fact that the majority of the governed who have had minds of their own and the 26o THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS power to make their opinions tell, have deemed it expedient to assent to that authority.^ In other words, in point of fact the state like any other social agency has got to prove acceptable. It has got to secure the suffrage of those whose affairs it regulates, very much as any private institution or association must do. It is true that the state represents the interests of the group in a more comprehensive and far-reaching way than do other institutions, though even this might be challenged in behalf of the international SociaUst Party or the Roman Catholic Church. It is true, also, that the state exercises a coercive power that is not claimed by private institutions. But it uses force in so far as permitted to do so by those who create the force. Its power, even that overruling power which it employs in its police and miUtary functions, is derived from its support. If this be the case, it may be asked, how can any harm come to society from the idealistic theory of the state? How can it be harmful that men should believe in the in- fallibility of the state, if in fact the state possesses no sover- eignty save such as men delegate to it? The harm lies in the fact that the state may enjoy support on false pre- tences. In so far as men believe that the state has a higher concern than their own several interests, their obedience becomes a sort of idolatry. BeUeving that the state repre- sents some mysterious corporate Ufe, in which their deeper selves are somehow, they know not how, preserved and fulfilled, they become bUnd to their actual interests. They permit the officials of the state, acting in the name of an utterly fictitious sanction, to enrich and exalt themselves, and to exact sacrifices that would not otherwise be conceded for an instant. The victims of political superstition are like the victims of any superstition. They give their consent, it is true; but their ignorance and creduHty are exploited. They willingly surrender what they would not surrender if they knew better. 1 Cf. H. J. Laski: Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty, Chap. I. This writer says: "Where sovereignty prevails, where the State acts, it acts by the consent of men." (P. 13-) CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 261 II. THE FINALITY OF THE STATE ^ The state, according to the view which we are here discus- sing, is the supreme good, saving only that Absolute Good, which must be inferred, and which must be judged by the state as its most adequate embodiment. For practical pur- poses the state is a finality. I. Its Internal Finality. In the first place the state is the supreme good for its own members. It is the state as a whole which is good, rather than any individual. This con- ception of organic value appears to be innocuous enough in Kant's phrasing: ^'Each part is both a means and an end to the whole and to every other part.'' But if the whole is an end for the part, it makes a great difference how this whole is construed. In the Hegelian view this whole is an indivisible unity having its own peculiar goodness as a whole. Then to say that the whole is also a means to the part sig- nifies only that the true good of the parts is to be found not in their several interests, but in their incorporation into the whole. Thus Hegel says: "The State is the rational in itself and for itself. Its substantial unity is an absolute end in itself. To it belongs supreme right in respect to individuals whose first duty is — just to be members of the^ State.'' . . . (The State) "is the absolute reahty and the individual himself has objective existence, truth and morality only in his capacity as a member of the State.'' ^ This appears also to be Bosanquet's conception. He adopts Plato's view that human value lies in the beauty of the whole, and that such beauty implies that value in individuals shall be unequally distributed. "If you complain of this, he (Plato) says in a very famous passage, it is like complaining that in coloring a statue you paint the eyes, which are the most beautiful feature, not with purple, which is the most beautiful color, but with black. For you must not make them so beautiful that they are not like eyes at all. And so it is the whole system that dictates his functions to every individual: 1 Quoted from Philosophy of Law, by Dewey, German Philosophy and Politics^ p. no. 262 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS and the law of justice is that he should be what his special duty demands, however hard or humble may be the place so assigned ^'What we commonly mean by justice ... is destmed m the end to be transformed with the best of all possible reasons. This best of all possible reasons, if I am challenged to state it plainly is that in the end the individual's true nature Ues beyond his visible self — e.g., in religion the individual, as such, is absorbed. A 'claim' becomes blasphemy." ^ This is evidently flatly opposed to ^'what everyone wants," namely, ''to satisfy the demands of justice by mak- ing possible an impartial development of human capacity "; unless, indeed, we are to suppose that there is a sort of pre-established harmony by which each man's capacity cor- responds to just what society requires of him. This is sug- gested in the passage: "It is not merit but capacity for this or that function which determines on the whole the ap- paratus with which a man is equipped by the community. ... the tools go, on the whole, to him who can use them." ^ in any case Bosanquet admits that prestige must belong^ to the ruling and professional classes, while the productive classes must be satisfied to enjoy mere wealth; which is sharply opposed to the ideal of social democracy, according to which men should be made equal in dignity, and in the benefits which they individually derive from social organ- ization. No one would deny that the necessary activities of society, such as labor and industrial production, should be distributed so far as possible according to aptitude and competence. But it is inconsistent v^ith democracy that men should be permanently and arbitrarily condemned to ignoble or repugnant tasks, in order to contribute to the rounded perfection of the whole. If it should prove neces- sary in a more developed society that some men should perform baser and more distasteful tasks, then there is no solution of the problem save to assign such tasks by lot or rotation, as is done in voluntary organizations in which all members are accorded equal rank. 1 Social and International Ideals, pp. 209, 210. Cf. also IndividualUy and Value, p. 313. 2 Ibid. J p. 236. CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 263 The idea that the good of society appears in the whole rather than in the parts taken severally, is largely respon- sible for the fallacy of national ''greatness." It provides a justification for national wealth based on slavery, national glory based on militarism, or national brilliancy in art and letters based on the ignorance and prostration of the masses of the people. The incentive to reform lies in the protest of neglected individuals. This incentive is weakened the moment it is argued that the misery of individuals may be compensated by the high role played by the nation as a whole in history or in civilization. 2. Its External Finality. If the state be the supreme end which dictates the conduct of its members, then it is evident that there is no moral obligation to yield to the interest of an alien state. Patriotism becomes the highest motive of citizenship. And those who act for the state will be untrue to their trust unless they press its claim to the uttermost of their abilities. This accounts for the fact that those who accept this theory of the state usually find war inevitable, if not, indeed, desirable. We shall consider this aspect of the matter in the next chapter. Suffice it here to cite a single authority. Gustav Riimelin, formerly Chancellor of the University of Tubingen, wrote in 1875: "The State is self-sufficient. Self-regard is its appointed duty; the maintenance and development of its own power and well-being — egoism, if you like to call this egoism — is the supreme principle of politics." " The State can only have regard to the interest of any other State so far as this can be identified with its own interest." ^ 3. National Self-realization. This higher egoism is a con- sistent application of the principle of self-realization, whose danger we have already noted. If an individual is to act in the interest of his deeper self, then so much the more may that greater and more authoritative person, the state. Philosophers who are in principle committed to this stand- ard of self-realization have sought to avoid the consequence 1 Quoted by E. Sidgwick, The International Crisis, p. 15. The aim of such theory, says Henry Sidgwick, is "to emancipate the public action of statesmen from the restraints of private morality." {Practical Ethics, pp. 64, 65.) 264 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS of national egoism, by stipulating in advance that the best self of the state requires a regard for the moral character of its members, and for the rights of alien states. Thus Mr. A. C. Bradley, collaborating with others of the idealistic school in a volume entitled The International Crisis, tells us that "an action of the state . . . which increases its wealth or power to the detriment of the character of its citizens cannot be in its interest, but is, on the contrary, a violation of its duty to itself. And so is any breach of promise to another state, any intentional injury to another, or any war upon another, which is inconsistent with that best life of its own citizens which is their one and only absolute interest." ^ But why is it a violation of a state's duty to itself to in- jure the character of its citizens? How can any person know what its self requires, save that person itself, in this case the state? And why should the moral character or ''best life '' of a citizen require him to be humane and just to foreigners, if his inner self doesn't tell him so? The fact is that this writer like many of his school is better than his philosophical professions. Instead of accepting the inner sanction of self as final, he first defines a good self in terms of the happiness and interests of mankind, and in terms of the precepts of traditional moraUty, and then says that right conduct consists in reaHzing the good self. This cir- cular process saves such writers as Mr. Bradley from the necessity of personally approving the poHcy of their ene- mies, but it does not save the philosophy which they profess from justifying such a policy in principle. If a state is a person, if it is the highest of human historical persons, then in the theory of self-realization it need not regard anything but its own state self-consciousness. It must suppose that the absolute spirit is best served by the freest and fullest expression of such promptings as come from within the souls of such as are most state-minded. Such a theory is a threat against every interest that lies outside the circle of such a self -consciousness. It acknowl- ^ P. 55. CONCEPTION OF THE STATE 265 edges no obligation to take account of them. They are granted no title to limit or control it. Against a state- personality so impregnable to appeal from without, so pre- occupied with the surging of the great ego, there is only one possible course for them to pursue. They must take the necessary measures for their common safety. 4. The Responsibility of the State. It has been argued m favor of this absolute theory of the state that it provides the only possible ground for state responsibility. If the state is a mere aggregate it is not a moral being at all; if it be a person then like individuals it may be held and judged for its deeds. But let us consider the analogy of lesser corporations and associations. Through being recognized as a legal entity a corporation may, it is true, be made the defendant in a damage suit, or be fined. Similarly, by being regarded as a belligerent a nation may be penalized by indemnities or annexations. But there the matter ends, in the one case as in the other. Suppose an offense for which a mere property penalty is insufficient. It now be- comes apparent that incorporation means irresponsibility. You cannot inflict imprisonment or capital punishment upon a corporation. In order to discourage or repress corporate offences it becomes necessary to hold the officials of the cor- poration individually responsible. What is true of punish- ment is even more strikingly true of moral disapprobation. We speak of the soullessness of a corporation, meaning that the corporation as such is not sensitive to blame. In order to exercise this powerful deterrent it is again necessary to single out individuals and to hold them responsible in their own persons even for what they do in behalf of and in the name of the larger corporate entity. Apply this to the case of the state, and the moral is clear. You cannot convict a whole people, since it will always be the case that many individuals are innocent. On the other hand a state as a corporate entity is not sensitive or responsive to disappro- bation. If the officials of the state are permitted to impute their action to the greater state-personality, they may go unscathed. They may in the name of the state perform 266 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS deeds for which as individuals they would not dare to be judged. The state thus becomes a convenient scape-goat by which individual miscreants may obtain immunity. The present habit in allied countries of singling out the German Emperor as the object of disapproval, while it undoubtedly exaggerates his personal role in German policy, is a signifi- cant proof of the fact that the only kind of culprit that can be summoned before the bar of public opinion is an indi- vidual culprit, who is fear ul of reproach and capable of shame. We have here only a new application of the old truism that moral development has been marked by the fixing of responsibiUty upon individuals. No one would now think of holding a man's family responsible for his crimes, or of holding a whole community responsible for the sacrilege or impiety of one of its members. It is no less obsolete and reactionary to profess that the state, rather than the known human agents directly involved, should be held responsible for offenses against the peace of the world. CHAPTER XIX WAR AND PROGRESS ACCORDING TO ABSOLUTISM I. INTERNATIONALITY AND PEACE I. The Great Community. The drift of absolute ideal- ism as we have thus far interpreted it is unmistakably toward a condoning of war. This may seem at first glance to be contrary to the emphasis which this philosophy lays upon wholeness and universality. It might be thought that in such a philosophy harmony and interdependence would invariably be preferred to discord and self-assertion; and that a peaceful federation of the world or society of all man- kind would represent the nearest human approach to the Absolute. Such a philosophy of internationalism is offered by some absolutists, and most notably by the late Professor Royce, in his Hope of the Great Community. Let us consider this teaching before turning to the orthodox Hegelianism of Bosanquet. The most powerful moral sentiment which Professor Royce personally felt was the sentiment of humanity. That which most shocked him in the war was its pitiless- ness; and that which stirred his deepest resentment toward those whom he regarded as most guilty was their murderous cruelty. Never was there a more tender and kindly man, or one who longed more ardently to be surrounded by a world of affection and sympathy. A second motive, scarcely less strong, was his admiration for Belgium as the embodi- ment of heroic loyalty to a lost cause. He condemned Germany as not only cruel, but as harshly indifferent to the inward pride and aspiration of other nations. To be humane, to be loyal to one's own cause, and to respect a like loyalty in others as a precious and inviolable thing, — this was right conduct, according to Professor Royce. And I, for one, see no flaw in this ideal. 267 268 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS But we are interested here in the philosophy of the mat- ter. Professor Royce believed that he found a theoretical justification for his ideal in his view of the moral solidarity of the community. Our real selves emerge only in social relations; the best Hfe always springs from a felt interde- pendence. *^The detached individual is an essentially lost being." It is the essence of Christianity and of sound morals that a man can be saved only through loyalty — *' through the willing service of a community." **You can- not save masses of lost individuals through the triumph of mere democracy," because so long as men remain mere masses or aggregates of individuals they have not been regenerated. Their salvation requires their identifying themselves through loyalty, devotion and sacrifice with some higher life, such as that of the nation. Similarly *Hhe salvation of the world will be found, if at all, through uniting the already existing communities of mankind with higher communities, and not through merely freeing the peoples from their oppressors." In other words just as individuals are saved by loyalty to lesser communities, so nations may be saved only by identifying themselves with the Great Community, by serving *'the cause of the com- munity of mankind." ^ What shall we say of the consistency of this teaching with the earlier metaphysics of its author? The crux of the mat- ter, as I see it, lies in the fact that for Professor Royce the Great Community instead of being an established fact is the object of a somewhat doubtful hope. ** Every idealist," he says, *' believes himself to have rational grounds for the faith that somewhere, and in some world, and at some time, the ideal will triumph, so that a survey, a divine synopsis of all time, somehow reveals the lesson of all sorrow, the meaning of all tragedy, the triumph of the spirit." ^ Abso- lute optimism is here attenuated to a sweeping act of faith in the inscrutable. There are signs of promise in the interna- tional bonds forged by industry and science. But we can ^ The Hope of the Great Community y pp. 46, 48, 49. 2 Op. cil., p. 27. WAR AND PROGRESS 269 make no predictions. ''We do not know whether the sun, for which the genuine lover of mankind and of the ideal long, will ever rise in any future which we human beings can foresee for our own race." Meanwhile we must cling to the ideal, beheving that if its enemies triumph then ''there will be no further worth in the continued existence of human beings." ^ If such statements do not contradict the central thesis of absolute idealism it is at any rate clear that they are in no sense an expression of it. Absolute idealism is essen- tially the thesis that things as they are afford both the sanc- tion of right conduct and the clue to the ideal — not, of course, things in their multiplicity, but in their larger uni- ties. These larger unities afford the sanction of right con- duct, in the sense that it is one's duty to identify oneself with them, participate in their self-realization, or, as Pro- fessor Royce would say, be loyal to them. They afford the clue to the ideal, as suggesting that it is in wholeness, and in wholeness of the type which they represent, that the ulttmate perfection is to be found. Now it is evident that Professor Royce is quite prepared to take the side of international justice and humanity quite regardless of things as they are. When he speaks of loyalty to the Great Community, it is not loyalty to an actual cor- porate entity, but to an idea. There is a sense in which one might ask him, and I can readily conceive of Professor Bosanquet as asking the question, "How can one be loyal to the community of mankind? " One can be loyal to one's self, or to one's family, or to the state, because these are genuine entities having a self-consciousness and will of their own with which we can unite. But to speak of loyalty to the Great Community when one means merely loyalty to "the cause," 2 — merely the hope of bringing about such a community — is to use the term loyalty in an extended, if not, indeed, in an equivocal sense. In the original sense one's loyalty was claimed by the larger being to which one ^ Op. cit., pp. 26-27, 28. 2 Op. cit., p. 32. 270 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS belonged. The self can thus legitimately claim the alle- giance of the component impulse, or the state that of the component individual. But the community of mankind cannot in the same sense claim the allegiance of nations until there is such a community which has a self and a will of its own. If there were a Great Community it would be every man's duty to be loyal to it, as to his greater self. But it is evident that we would be arguing in a circle if we were to argue that loyalty to the Great Community requires that one exert oneself to bring about the existence of the Great Community. It is as though one were to argue the obligation to marry, from the principle of conjugal fidelity. I have said that according to absolute idealism the clue to the ultimate perfection of the absolute is to be found in the larger unities. The largest unity of human life is history. Hence absolute idealism has inevitably tended to a philosophy of history, in which the larger historical relations and forces were interpreted as revealing the life of the Absolute Spirit. Professor Royce follows this method in so far as he contends that the Great Community must be made up of various distinct nationalities,^ and in so far as he emphasizes the moral and cultural, as distinguished from the political role and influence of communities.^ But the larger aspect of history is the rivalry of races and states. Thus far at any rate, nations have not been united by a common loyalty, but have been divided by selfish ambition and pride. How, then, do states find a place in the Absolute Whole? By being har- monized and unified? If we are to judge by history, no. The broadest hint which history conveys is that self-deter- mining nations contribute to the whole, by contrast, balance and alternation. Higher or more adequate national types are forged in the heat of conflict and exalted by the subjuga- tion and assimilation of their rivals. They serve the whole by increasing its richness, diversity and movement. If the good is to be judged by the real, and the real by the larger totahties that fall within our knowledge, then something ^ Op. cit., pp. 50 fif. 2 Op. cil.y pp. 54 fif. WAR AND PROGRESS 271 like this, the Hegelian philosophy of history, would appear to be the best justified conclusion. That Professor Royce does not reach it proves, I think, both the soundness of his moral intuitions and the looseness of his adherence during his last years to the fundamental premises of his idealistic metaphysics. 2. Professor Bosanquet's Hegelianism. When we turn to Professor Bosanquet we find sound absolutist doctrine, courageously maintained despite the author's evident dis- position to align himself with the protagonists of humanity and peace. In so far as he speaks of communities he means communities that actually exist, not communities that sub- sist only in the hopes and aspirations of right-minded men. The state is such a community, because there is, in this case, a ** general will," based on a sense of spiritual community, and expressing itself in visible authorities and tangible powers. Founded on ^^a very high degree of common ex- perience, tradition and aspiration,'' the state has ''the dis- tinctive function of dictating the final adjustment in mat- ters of external action." ^ "The individual's private will ... is certainly and literally a part of the communal will. There is no other material of which his will can be made. If he rejects the communal will in part, he rejects it on the basis of what it is in him, not from any will of his own, which has a different source." "Plato shows the right line, surely. The group must have the same myth, i.e., the same consciousness of unity. It does not matter how they got it." "The body which is to be in sole or supreme command of force for the common good must possess a true general will, and for that reason must be a genuine community sharing a common sentiment and animated by a common tradition." ^ This general will or group will is "the central force and right of human nature," "alike in logic and in fact," which is Fichte's contention. ''It is a force primarily rational and moral, not militant at all. It is, in truth, the same thing * Social and International Ideals, pp. 294, 273. 2 Ibid.j pp. 272, 277, 292. 272 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS as conscience; it is the desire of social man to bring order into himself and his world. This is why it makes him fight so furiously, whether he is right or wrong. It is, in princi- ple, man seeking his birthright." ^ The state combines the prerogatives of maintaining for its members ^Hhe external conditions necessary to the best life " in general, and of securing in history at large its own * individual mission." ^ Internationalism is not to be counted on as a means of peace, nor can peace be enforced by any international league because ^' there is no organism of humanity," no '^communal consciousness " of all mankind.^ In other words the many nations do not in point of fact possess, as the individual state does, a general will. ** Their ^general wills' taken together are not one will, that is, they have not in common the same principal objects, or views of life, and therefore they are likely to diverge in their desire for peace, under different conditions." ^ The Great Community is not only not an actuality which may rightly command the allegiance of men, but it is doubt- ful whether such a community of mankind is desirable. " Many people are very good friends apart who would quarrel if they kept house together. Is not this likely to be true of nations? " he asks. Furthermore, even if they could be cured of quarrelling, humanity might be impoverished by an excessive sameness. The important thing in human life after all is not that individuals should be saved, but that certain highly developed and unique modes of life should be preserved. ''Our primary loyalty is to a quality, not to a crowd." There is something ''weak-kneed in humanitarian- ism." "It wants to set up against patriotism the common good of humanity. But there is not very much that it can set up on this basis. For the fact is, that the quality of humanity — whether culture or humaneness — is rather to be discovered in the Ufe of the great civilized nations, with all their faults, than in what is common to the life of all men." ^ 1 Ibid., pp. 317, 306. 2 Ibid., pp. 271, 275. » Ibid.y p. 291. 4 Ibid., pp. 314-315. ^ Ibid.f pp. 291, 14-15. WAR AND PROGRESS 273 Patriotism is thus a higher motive than humanity because it expresses one's identity with the higher moral being of the state,^ and because it is a loyalty to quaHty rather than to quantity, to civilization rather than to mankind. "A true patriotism is in the first place a daily and sober loyalty, which recognizes the root of our moral being in the citizen spirit and citizen duty; and in the second place is a love for our country as an instrument and embodiment of truth, beauty, and kindness, or, in the largest and profoundest sense of the word, of religion." ^ Human society at large, then, retains an aspect of plural- ism and externaHty. It is not itself a community, but is a more or less accidental and casual relation of communities. " A number of great systems, very profoundly differing in life, mind and institutions, existing side by side in peace and co-' operation, and each contributing to the worid an individual best, irreducible to terms of the others — this might be, I do not say must be, a finer and higher thing than a single body with a homogeneous civilization and a single communal will. " I am assuming that the experience and tradition of states re- main as they are to-day, too highly individual to permit of a thoroughly common mind and of a true general will, but that they remain peaceful neighbors with their full national differences, because they have every reason for friendship and none for enmity^ and are united in all sorts of common enterprises." It is to be noted that in this picture of a happy neighbor- hood, a sort of "Spotless Town " of nations, it is assumed that the neighbors live at peace. This Professor Bosan- quet thinks will take care of itseK, if only each nation will "do right at home, and banish sinister interests and class privileges." ^ '^A healthy state," we are told, "is non-mili- tant." It will be pre-occupied with the higher non-compe- titive interests. War is symptomatic of "internal disease." ^ Calamities like the present war are due not to "the communal * Ibid., p. 16. * Ibid., pp. 300, 297. ' Ibid., p. 309. * Ibid., pp. V, 278, 280. 274 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS sense of a function and a mission/^ nor to the *' belief that the community has a conscience," but to the fact that such consciences are not sufficiently enlightened.^ Now it is evident that such arguments as these would apply as well to the individual as to the state.^ Why should not individuals live as peaceful neighbors, each governed by his own will, thus avoiding the levelling mon- otony of a national communal will? Why may it not be said that since a healthy individual is non-militant murder and theft are symptoms of internal disease, and that there- fore the way to domestic security is by the moral reform of individuals? I suppose that Professor Bosanquet would be deterred from saying this by the very obvious fact that in order to carry on the activities of education you have first got to have domestic security. But precisely the same thing is true of the larger neighborhood of nations. The very possi- bility of cultivating the desirable non-militant temper predi- cates that one shall be let alone to cultivate it. International police, like domestic police, are a necessary means of improv- ing mankind to the point at which police shall be no longer necessary. Professor Bosanquet seems to ignore the real problem of peace, which is how mankind can reach that happy condition in which each nation can safely give itself over to *'the real and fundamental love for the things that are not diminished by being shared — such as kindness, beauty, truth"; and can afford to leave its neighbor to do the same, with the feeling that *'it is not courteous or in- deed possible to pass judgment on the patriotism of a great neighboring nation. ' ' ^ These last words were written in i g 1 1 of Germany, and events afford an ironical commentary on them. It is not for England or any of the democratic and peace-loving commonwealths, a question of what is courte- * Ihid., p. 279. * Professor Bosanquet expresses his agreement with Mr. Bertrand Russell so far as concerns the establishment of an international authority {op. ciL, p. 293); while Mr. Russell goes further and consistently uses the same argu- ment against the authority of the state. * Ibid., pp. II, 12. WAR AND PROGRESS 275 ous, but Of what IS ../.. So long as powers Uke Germany are at large it is a httle hard to be told that one should stay at home and reform oneself. Criminal insanity is doubtless a disease to be cured in the end by the advancement of science; but unless the criminally insane were restrained no agency of civihzation could pursue its beneficent way not even the laboratories of medical science But there is another theoretical and more fundamental defect m Professor Bosanquet's reasoning. How can one be assured that a healthy state, or an enlightened conscience, shall not be mihtant? Only by defining health and enlight- enment to start with in terms of tolerance and humanity JhZ:7.U'': '" ^r'^ v'^' '^ abandoning the fundamental thesis of this type of pohtical philosophy, the thesis that the state IS the inalhble moral authority. If you demand that the state shall conform to the dictates of humanity before you accept its poHcy as authoritative, then you set another authority above it. This higher authority to which you virtually appeal is the interest of humanity at large There is no escape, I think, from this dilemma. Either you argue right conduct from its effects upon all whom it touches reasomng from its consequences to its rectitude; or yoJ argue right conduct from its authoritative origin In the tirst case you abandon the doctrine of the finality of the state, as the highest spiritual entity on earth from which alone its members derive their being and their value. In the second case you must be prepared to disregard the happiness and well-being of alien humanity. AHen states acting upon a like mandate of national conscience will ex- hibit a like disregard; and war will be the natural by-product of morality itself. 3. The International ** State of Nature." That the sec- ond of these alternatives is the more consistent with Pro- fessor Bosanquet^s Hegelian premises, is unmistakably ap- parent m this author's acceptance of the formula that na- tions are to one another in a ^^ state of nature.'^ ' By this phrase is meant a state of anarchy, in which several units ' "Patriotism in the Perfect State," The International Crisis, p. 136. ! -■ ■ .. ' ■ ■".■■■■■:.■- ' ■■ ■, '■ - • '"■'.■■ : -- 276 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS of life, each a law unto itself, acknowledge no common law. Hobbes applied the phrase to the condition of individuals in an imaginary time prior to the institution of the state. There being no sovereign over all, each individual was justified in acting solely on the principle of private interest. Applied to the plurality of states, it means that inasmuch as there is no sovereign universal polity, each state is justified in acting solely on the principle of national interest. The difficulty with Hobbes's analysis lay in the fact that it failed to provide for any way of escape from the state of nature. Until the sovereign power was established there was no obligation to be just, and without such an obligation to be just there was no reason why any individual should consent to the establishment of the sovereign power. The idealist would avoid Hobbes's difficulty by insisting that the state of nature among private individuals never existed. There always was a corporate society wherever there were individuals; and there was always, therefore, such a corpo- rate sanction for right conduct. But in the case of the gen- eral aggregate of mankind, Professor Bosanquet regards the state of nature as an historical fact. Among states there is not even as yet a common norm of feeling and judg- ment on which a universal poUty could be based.^ Each state stands isolated as the sole guardian of the treasures under its charge. They would be ''nothing," they would not be ''in the world," without it. Hence the state needs "above all things to be strong." "Strength in war is the first condition of the state's fulfillment of its function." 2 Professor Bosanquet appears to beUeve that this doctrine is mitigated by the qualification that it applies to states "as now existing." But if, as he says, "a state is and can be determined only by its own good," if "states are the sole ultimate judges of their differences and their honor," ^ why should they acknowledge any obligation to cultivate a true general will of mankind, and to promote the institution of ^ Ihid.j p. 138. 2 This is Hegelianism approved by Bosanquet, ibid., pp. i35» 136, 141- » Ibid., pp. 151, 141, 143- WAR AND PROGRESS 277 a universal polity? Of course there can be no such obliga- tion. An international community may, as Professor Bosanquet says, some day grow up, but there is no moral reason why as an idealist and an Englishman he should speed the day.^ "People who are satisfied," he tells us, "do not want to make war; and in a well-organized community people are satisfied." ^ But let us suppose a community which is like the child who "won't be happy till he gets it," —gets, for example, a toothsome slice of territory. Such a supposition is not a great strain upon the imagination. If it is a ques- tion of organization within the sphere of that community's interests, then to be well-organized and satisfied would mean that the territory in question should be well-digested, or "consolidated." If it should happen that some other state wanted the same slice of territory, it would have to go hungry, or appeal to war, the ultimate arbiter. Professor Bosanquet and men of his type are not troubled with this particular sort of appetite. They may be more easily and innocently satisfied. But so long as they profess the phil- osophy we have been discussing they would have no ground whatsoever on which to challenge the tastes and ambitions of another nation, provided it was reasonably united and state-conscious in its policy. It is little wonder that Professor Bosanquet hesitates to condemn war: "For war, as for all other evils and accidents, there is a good deal to be said. Each of them by itself is clearly a thing to be fought against, but without any of them at all — well, life would very soon generate new ones." ^ Our author says that "the creed of violence and self- interest of which we hear to-day," results from ''the passage of a large and many-sided philosophical doctrine into the hands of ignorant and biased amateurs, soldiers, historians and politicians." ^ I am inclined on the contrary to believe 1 Ibid., p. 150. 2 Ibid., p. 145. ^ Ibid., p. 143. * Ibid., p. 140. 278 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS that *'the great German philosophy/' though it is by no means the dominant motive, affords the most logical justi- fication of the course pursued by the great German men of affairs. II. HISTORY AND PROGRESS I. The Drama of History. If the nation-state is regarded as the supreme human embodiment of wholeness and per- fection, there is nothing to mediate between the state and the Absolute, except the process of history. The Hegelian substitute for the international community is the interna- tional drama as this is unfolded in time. Just what the plot of the drama is, is not clear, but it is evidently a tale of tragic conflict. Each nation has its part to play, its entrance and its exit. To make the drama a success each must play its own appointed part, — - be true to its own character; and when it gets through, it should leave the stage. Some nations have small parts and some large. Germany, according to Fichte, Hegel and their present-day descendants, has a large part; and needs a little more room, — room that is usurped by players who have spoken their lines, but have not had the grace to retire. Under these conditions the player having the leading part in the present act of the drama of history, is justified in using his elbows to get the room he needs. The player having the leading part in the act now staged, is called by Hegel ''the present bearer of the world spirit.'' ''Against the absolute right of the present bearer of the world spirit, the spirit of other nations are absolutely without right. The latter just like the nations whose epochs have passed, count no longer in universal history." ^ Such a view leads to a kind of sanctified Darwinism. The success of a nation in war, its political and economic expan- sion, are taken as proof that it has more of "spirituality " in It. War gains for nations, "for the individualities thus engaged, the position of power corresponding to their in- terior significance.-' Citing the above from Troeltsch, ' Quoted by Dewey, German Philosophy and Politics, p. 119. WAR AND PROGRESS 279 von Hiigel goes on to say: "I take the error here to spring from a coalescence of the German intense longing for, and impressedness by, power — even by power of the physical kind — and the equally German desire to trace, beyond the possibility of cavil, the operation of spirit." ^ Carried out consistently, of course, this theory would mean that the Assyrian and Babylonian states were richer spiritually than the Jews; or Rome than Greece. It would mean that the Holy Alliance after the defeat of Napoleon or Imperial Germany after the crushing of France represented the redemption of Europe by a new burst of spirituality. But the worst of this doctrine lies not in its applica- tion to the past, but in its use as a working creed in the present. It conduces, as M. Chevrillon has expressed it, to a nation's "mistaking its appetite for a mission." It gives to the exercise of brute strength all the unction and inward ecstacy of religious inspiration. 2. Eternalism. The perfection of a drama is to be seen not in the end but in the whole. The first act is as proper a part of it as the last. It is implied in absolute idealism that the historical process in its entirety is taken up into the eternal whole; a whole which, while it contains all change, does not itself suffer change. It needs no philosophical subtlety to see that this view of history contradicts the common man's conception of prog- ress. ^ It is half of progress, according to the common view, to be able to leave something behind and get rid of it altogether. Progress is inspired both to achieve a better and to escape a worse. But according to idealism nothing is lost, nothing has been in vain. The future is not to wipe out the past, but is to round it out. The past is to be supple- mented and not superseded. The tendency of such a phil- osophy is to cultivate a sense for the values of the past, rather than a condemnation of its futility and backward- ^ Comment on, and citation from, E. Troeltsch, "Personality and State Morality," Neue Rundschau, p. 152, etc., in von Hugel, The German Soul, pp.- loi, 103. 2 I have dealt with this matter more fully in Present Philosophical Tenden- cies, pp. 188 fif. 28o THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS ness. The true expression of this faith is to see the good of history as a whole rather than that good which distinguishes the part preferred and aspired to. Idealism is contempla- tive and tolerant rather than active and partisan. Immortality, in this view, means not a life in the time to come, whether in another world, or in the memory of pos- terity; but a place in the eternal whole. Immortality of this type is not a distinction. There is nothing so humble, nor so detestable, as not to find its place. In the home of the Absolute there are indeed many mansions. Thus idealism is, again, essentially the all-conserving, the all-condoning philosophy. It assures us that every reality is of value, but first requires us so to conceive value that nothing real shall fail to qualify. \ , f 1 CHAPTER XX THE REVOLT AGAINST REASON In a letter to Leigh Hunt, Byron once wrote: " I have not had time to attack your system, which ought to be done, were it only because it is a system." ^ This expresses a very common human sentiment which ap- pears to have its regular periodic revivals wherever the in- tellect has been too extravagantly worshipped. The Sophists and Socrates were its exponents, after the confident ration- alism of the first Greek philosophers; Duns Scotus repre- sented it against the great system of Scholastic orthodoxy; and Rousseau was its protagonist after the ''Enlightenment " of the Eighteenth Century. In our own day it appears as the inevitable reaction against the pretensions of exact science and the a priori claims of absolute idealism. I. VARIETIES OF ANTI-INT ELLECTUALISM I. The Motives of Anti-intellectualism. The intellect is in our day reproached with failure in two respects, in respect of knowledge, and in respect of life. You cannot know with it, or live by it. I do not mean that every anti-intellectualist subscribes to such a wholesale indictment, but that this for- mula will cover the different motives which have impelled some one and some another of the anti-intellectualists. The opinion that the intellect is inadequate for knowledge may reflect, for example, a moody scepticism, a weariness or disillusionment of the human mind which compares the ''petty done " with the "undone vast," and especially with the vast promises of reason. Or it may be the outcome, as in the case of Mr. F. H. Bradley, of a sort of self-refutation of reason, a demonstration of the hopeless dialectical snarls 1 Letters, Prothero's edition, Vol. Ill, 248. 281 282 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS in which the intellect entangles itself.^ These would be motives prompting to a behef in the inherent weakness of reason. But it is more characteristic of our own day to charge the intellect with incapacity to know this or that feature of the real worid. Thus the empiricist says that the intellect cannot know particular facts, as sense does. The sentimentalist, the mystic, the voluntarist, all alike contend that the intellect with its abstraction and indirection can never reach the deeper reality; but must be superseded by feeling, ecstasy, intuition, or some other mode of immediate insight. So much for the alleged theoretic insufficiency of the intellect. The practical objection to the intellect may be a matter of taste. Some are repelled by the dead, cold, static, color- less aspect which the worid presents when the intellect gets through with it. Thus Hegel's intellectualistic account of the worid has been likened to ''a bloodless ballet of cate- gories." William James speaks with aversion of 'Hhe block universe.'' People who are not fond of mathematics and logic resent the idea of living in a world made of formulas and syllogisms. Or we may insist that the world which the in- tellect builds is not only repugnant but uninhabitable. Man cannot live by bread alone, especially if having asked for bread he receives a stone. Before the soul can live in the worid it must furnish and provision it with the congenial objects provided by revelation and authority, or by faith and hope. Then there is the further contention, to which we have devoted some attention in an eariier chapter, that men cannot act on a mere intellectual affirmation.^ The intellect, it is said, is impotent. Only convictions, passions, or instinctive impulses affect the conduct of men. But in the great majority of cases anti-intellectualism is only the negative implication of some positive cult, such as the cult of feeling or will. The intellect is most often dis- paraged in behalf of the cult of action, that gospel of Hfe and movement to which we shall turn in a later chapter. The * Cf. his Appearance and Reality, 2 Cf. above, p. lo ff. THE REVOLT AG.\INST REASON ^^Z commonest form of this cult is the vulgar worship of prac- dcality. The soliloquizing Hamlet and the lean and hungry Cassms are open to suspicion because they are not honestly busy. A washer-woman once told me, in the spirit of kind- hest indulgence, that it might be very nice to be a professor but her husband liked to work. Thinking, in this view, is not workmg. It is not even living. Of course, the and-intellec- tuahst, whether sophisticated or unsophisticated, recognizes a hmited practical role for the intellect. But the trouble with the intellect is that it will wander from home. Instead of doing the chores, it roams in the meadows and picks daisies. In other words it is doctrinaire and academic. It should be harnessed to the mill so that whenever it exerts itself it will grind corn. ^ 2. Degrees of Anti-intellectualism. It will shed a further light on the modves of and-intellectualism, if we disdnguish different degrees of it, differences in the extent of its claims. The most modest litde and-intellectualism is the protest against the universal dominion of the intellect, the protest of small cognitive nadonalides against intellectual imperial- ism. After naturahsm the most formidable philosophy of the last century was, as we have seen, absolute idealism. But absolute ideahsm inherits from Kant the thesis that there is no knowledge without judgment and hence without logic. All knowledge would on this basis have an intellectual form. Against this sweeping assertion various philosophies have made a stand, asking only that some place be made for non-intellectual knowledge. Pascal, the mathemadcian, had said that ^'the heart has its reasons which the intellect cannot penetrate." Similariy in our own day, the mathe- madcally minded Mr. Bertrand Russell while he is not the champion of the heart, enters a like protest against the ex- clusive pretensions of reason. Though he yields to none in his enthusiasm for logic, and proposes to make a religion of the cult of the intellect, nevertheless he contends that over and above that ''knowledge about" which is the province of the intellect, there is a knowledge of acquaintance supplied by sense or intuition. ) 284 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS A bolder form of anti-intellectualism is the contention that the non-intellectual kind of knowledge is more profound than the intellectual kind. The panpsychist and personal ideaUst, as we have seen, believe that by an immediate intui- tive awareness of ourselves we may dive into the very heart of things. The mystics and many idealists will say with Lotze that ''reaHty is richer than thought"; meaning that the great One in which all things have their place has to be seen in a vision, or ecstatically felt. The intellect with its ideas can only view it now in this aspect and now in that. Anti-intel- lectualism of this intermediate degree appears in the very common opinion that exact science with its concepts and for- mulas can only skim the surface of things. Nietzsche affords a good example. Logic and mechanics are only "an art of expression," not an understanding of things, since they never touch the real "causality." *'The demand that everything should be mechanically explained is the instinctive feeling that the most valuable and fundamental knowledge is to be reached first; which is a form of naivete. As a matter of fact nothing that can be counted and conceptualized has much value for us; the region which one cannot reach with concepts has a higher significance for us. Logic and mechanics are applic- able only to the surface of things." ^ Finally, the extremest form of anti-intellectualism will be that in which the intellect is positively incriminated. Here it is no longer a question of dividing the domain of knowledge. Intellect which once claimed the imperial title is now to be removed from office altogether. It is not to be expelled, but degraded. It remains as a practical faculty, a tool of action; but it is no longer to be looked to for knowledge in the sense of insight. So far as insight is concerned the intellect is not only inadequate, it is positively fallacious. It distorts, misrepre- sents and misleads. Indeed it creates an impression of reality that is the precise opposite of the truth. The intellect re- presents reality as made up of discrete elements externally related; but reality is in truth continuous and inter- penetrating. The intellect represents reality as extended * Nachgelassene Werke, Vol. XIII, § 214. THE REVOLT AGAINST REASON 285 or spacial, whereas reality is essentially temporal and flow- ing. The intellect represents reality as dead and passive, whereas it is in truth alive and creative. For the intellect reality is governed by necessity, but it is essentially free. Intellect is useful if it is used. It is for action. But to know what the world is like, to catch the real flavor of things, to apprehend the better and the more divine, throw aside the intellect and feel the Hfe that throbs within your breast. This is the out and out anti-intellectualism, of which the most distinguished living exponent is Henri Bergson. In what follows I shall not deal with these motives in iso- lation, but with certain more concrete types of anti-intel- lectualism that may be numbered among the important moral forces of our age. II. ROMANTICISM Romanticism is not new but it is persistent and perhaps perennial.^ It is the cult of the spontaneity of passion. In behalf of spontaneity, romanticism protests against every form of external restraint, against institutional authority, and conventional standards, but above all against the harsh restraint of fact. It opposes the intellect in so far as the intellect conforms itself to the external order of nature. It was in this sense that the romanticism of Rousseau protested against the intellectual disillusionment of the Eighteenth Century Enlightenment. The heart has its own rights; it must not be starved. Since the facts of nature clo not satisfy the heart, then the heart must be allowed to satisfy itself, by following promptings of its own, such as the moral and re- ligious sentiments. In so far as Kantian idealism emphasizes the spontaneity of the mind, as opposed to its mere receptivity, it may be said in this broad sense to be romantic. But there is evidently something in Kant that limits and thwarts his romanticism. This is his conception that mind has its own laws. The only spontaneity which he authorizes is a disciplined spontaneity. * Much the best account of romanticism of which I know is to be found in Royce's Spirit of Modern Philosophy , Lecture VI. 286 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDE.\LS But discipline, like external fact, exercises a kind of restraint, and is therefore antagonistic to the temper of romanticism. Moral spontaneity, according to Kant and Fichte, does, it is true, make its own world and lead its own life; but it is sub- ject to the principle of duty, which is a harsh task-master. Thus both intellectual and volitional spontaneity, accord- ing to Kant, have their own necessary ideals and their own fixed procedure. They, it is true, create the order of the world, but they are in a manner compelled to create it pre- cisely as they do. Against both of these varieties of deter- mined and disciplined spontaneity, the early philosophical romanticists of Germany, such as Schelling and the Schlegels, voiced an emphatic protest. They found the true exemplar of spontaneity, not in autonomous duty, or systematic reason, but in the inspiration of the genius. The genius acknowl- edges no articulate law, he yields to nothing, not even to an ideal. He simply expresses himself and creates^ from the very fullness of spirit within him. Moralism and intel- lectualism according to this higher romanticism are not only constraining, but they are partial and incomplete. The geistiges Leben is a richer thing than either duty or logic or both can possibly express. The appreciation of beauty and the creation of art are not only freer, but they are also less abstract. This is the case, if for no other reason, because they are not defining and analytical. They present the whole of things, not that mere skeleton of ideas which logic creates, but flesh and blood as well, with all its coloring and *' values." Feeling, owing to its very inarticulateness, is the most adequate medium for the infinite life of the spirit. But romanticism of this idealistic origin cannot rid itself wholly of restraint. It must still profess allegiance to one absolute spirit. If that spirit cannot be fully represented by any single faculty, by conscience, reason, or even by aesthetic appreciation, since after all taste is also discriminating and partial, then it must be identified with the totality of human spontaneities, that is with the history of culture. This is the view whose most notable representative to-day is Rudolph Eucken. THE REVOLT AGAINST REASON 287 1 But this view while it legitimates every spontaneity of the individual, construing it as an emanation of the universal spiritual life, at the same time constrains the individual to acknowledge a like spirituaHty in every other human creation and aspiration. It should if consistently held, conduce to a sympathetic tolerance, a healthy and undiscriminating spiritual appetite. But this again is contrary to the roman- tic temper, for passion takes sides for and against. And if the romanticist is to take his passions seriously he must go with their antipathies as well as their sympathies, he must hate as well as love. So in the end romanticism tends to be personal rather than philosophical. And since even self- consistency is a sort of thraldom, the full expression of the romantic motive is found only in the Byronic moodiness, which regards the passion of the moment as the measure of the universe or as sufficient warrant for making a new uni- verse in place of the one which is just now found intolerable. m. INSTRUMENTALISM Much the most sophisticated form of anti-intellectualism, and at the same time the form most characteristic of our age, is that form which has now come very generally to be called "instrumentaHsm,'' and '^hich is represented at present by the school of James and Dewey in America. This term ''instrumentaHsm" is better for our purpose than the more familiar term ''pragmatism " in that it is more limited and definite in its meaning. According to this view the intellect, instead of being an oracle, is a practical instrument to be judged by the success with which it does its work. I. Instrumentalism versus Kantian Idealism. It is well to distinguish this view from Kantian idealism, since they have something in common. For the idealist, too, the intel- lect is in a sense an instrument. But it has to be used in a certain way. The intellect has its own laws, and in ordering the world it puts these into effect. Knowing, in other words, is a matter of logical technique. By knowing what the laws of the intellect are, one can know in advance, or a priori^ what form its work will assume. InstrumentaHsm in the 288 THE PESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS THE REVOLT AGAINST REASON 289 present sense, on the other hand, aims to be purely experi- mental. The intellect is indeterminate in its nature, and will adopt any methods that prove suitable. One cannot predict what form its work will finally assume, because that will depend on certain ulterior satisfactions that may or may not accrue from it. The operations of the intellect are not accredited until after its work is done and tried out. Although this difference may seem slight and almost pe- dantic it is the starting-point for a very great divergence in moral and rehgious philosophy. Let us consider two in- stances in which ideaUsm might easily be confused with a genuinely experimental instrumentalism. ''That which we call the laws of nature," says Professor Bout- roux, *'is the sum total of the methods we have discovered for adapting things to the mind, and subjecting them to be moulded by the wUl." ^ A strain of Kantianism appears here in the suggestion that the "mind" has a constitution of its own, and that the scientific work of the intellect is an adaptation of things to this constitution; and in the further suggestion that ''the will " has also its peculiar and inherent needs which the mind serves by fashioning nature in a manner that is agreeable to them. In so far as such is the case, it is evident that by discovering in advance what this mental constitution and these needs of the will are, we ought to be able to deduce the order of nature. But in that case knowledge would be a priori as regards nature, and would rest fundamentally upon an analysis of the self. Or consider another statement of the matter, by Brune- tiere. According to this writer, "The absolute necessity of the laws of nature is after all only a postulate which we need in order to afford a sure basis for science, and does not at all prove that this postulate is anything more than the expression of a law wholly relative to our intelligence." ^ 1 ]£mile Boutroux: Natural Law in Science and Philosophy, English trans- lation, p. 217. 2 La Science et la Religion, p. 41, note. \ fl 8, S w. m In other words the descriptive formulas of the exact^sciences are the way in which the mind sets its contents in order in obedience to its own inner needs; the laws of nature can be deduced from the law of our intelligence. This being the case, there is no reason why the other needs of the mind should not also be met. Thpse needs science does not pro- vide for. ^ " What is the meaning of life? Why are we born? And why do we die? How ought we to live? As if we were destined to perish, or as if we were promised immortality? . . . Never, perhaps, have these mysterious questions pressed with greater force than since men have announced that 'they find nq, longer any mystery in them.' . . . Stillanother of positivism's mistakes; another battle, and another defeat! It has misconceived some of the essential needs of man; and failed to understand that we can very well live without being acquainted with the mountains of the moon or the properties of the ether, but not without the imagination's and the heart's demanding and obtaining certain satisfactions which science and reason are powerless to give them." ^ It is here affirmed that there is more to the mind than "in- telligence." There are other "needs of man," needs of "the imagination and the heart." These, too, our knowledge must satisfy, if not in the form of science, then in the form of philosophy. Again it would follow that since the inner needs of man are going in the end to dictate the form knowl- edge assumes, then this form might be predicted in advance from a study of these needs. Now I do not say that in any given case it is always possible to draw an absolute line between Kantian ideahsm, and the instrumentalism of James and Dewey. The two strands are often inextricably interwoven; and that they are so inter- woven is one of the characteristic features of present-day thought. But the difference in principle is unmistakable. The pragmatist and instrumentalist of the American school is always and everywhere unqualifiedly opposed to the a priori principle in knowledge. The workabiHty or satisfac- toriness of the constructions of the intellect is not determined * F. Brunetiere: La Renaissance de VIdealisme, pp. 35-36. 290 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS THE REVOLT AGAINST REASON 291 by their agreement with any preconceived end; but is always contingent on their actually facilitating Hfe when they are used. In other words this view is radically and consistently experimental. There follows from this a conclusion of the first importance. It is never legitimate, according to this view, to adopt a poUcy regardless of the way it affects the interests on which it impinges. The danger of ideaUsm Hes, as we have seen, in its justifying a man or a nation in laying down a course of action deduced from some theory as to what "spirit" requires, and then persisting in it with a ruthless disregard of the way actual sentient creatures happen to feel about it. Experimentalism never claims such an inner or "higher" mandate. It accepts any actual pain or misery which a poUcy may inflict, as just so much evidence that the policy in question was ill-advised. It has been claimed that anti-intellectuaUsm is one of the causes of the present world- disorder .^ Possibly this is in a measure true, in so far as anti- intellectuaUsm conduces to an emphasis on action for action's sake. This we shall consider presently .2 But in any case it cannot be convicted of ignoring the actual feelings and in- terests of mankind in the name of a preconceived idea of spirit drawn from the agent's own inner consciousness. In- strumentaHsm is a consistent expression of that emphasis on utility and humanitarianism which so many German thinkers have contemptuously ascribed to the Anglo-Saxons and the French. 2. Experimentalism. But having described instrumen- tahsm as experimental we must now distinguish it from experimentalism in the commoner scientific sense. When the scientist performs an experiment to test an hypothesis he appeals in the last analysis to sense-perception. He says, "If this hypothesis is true I ought to observe such and such at such and such a time and place." The hypothesis is proved by its success in fitting the facts given in experience. The instrumentahst includes this sort of test, but this is not the peculiar or distinguishing feature of his view. His » Cf. L. T. Hobhouse: The World in Conflict, p. 28 ff. 2 Cf. below, p. 342. originality lies in his emphasis on the practical test, on whether the hypothesis framed by the intellect enables the agent who employs it to succeed in his undertakings. If he happens to want to fit the facts, why then an hypothesis that fits the facts is a useful instrument. But fitting the facts is only one of many interests that govern him, and there are other ways of succeeding that are just as good proof of the success or "truth " of the idea he uses. One may, for ex- ample, be interested in recovering one's health, or in ruling a country. For such purposes one uses ideas, and in so far as by means of the ideas one's health is restored, or one's rule is stable, the ideas are said to have proved successful, and so to be proved true. In short an idea is true in so far as it proves a useful instrument for any purpose, whether one of the special purposes which we commonly suppose to actuate scientific research, or one of the purposes characteristic of what common-sense would distinguish as "practical life." Thus instrumentalism is not, like the more traditional type of experimentalism, a protest merely against verbalism, pedantry, scholasticism, or vague speculation — an insistence that only such hypotheses should be employed as can be tested and verified by experience. It is a protest against too narrow an interpretation of what may serve as a test. The older scientific positivist would say that only sense-perception may legitimately be so appealed to. He would set apart what he would call the strictly theoretical interest, with its own rigorous experimental technique. But the new instru- mentalist would say that every hypothesis is a kind of policy; and that every policy is a kind of hypothesis. He would admit no difference between the theoretical and the practical. He would say that in all cases in which the intellect is called into play it is at the behest of some felt interest. And how it eventually affects this interest together with the other interests with which it comes into contact, is going to de- termine its acceptabihty and its durability in the broad human sense. 3. Egoistic Instrumentalism. But, it may be asked, why should the truth of an idea be defined in terms of all of the ^ i 292 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS interests affected by it? Why may individuals or groups not regard the work of the intellect as successful and acceptable if it suits their limited purposes? This point is worth con- sidering, for it raises, I believe, the most formidable question which this philosophy has to face. I have insisted that this view is essentially experimental, and appeals to consequences. But even though it cannot be a priori, why can it not be egoistic? Why can it not be associated with the principle of exclusive self-interest? As a matter of fact it can; and Nietzsche affords an interesting example.^ According to this thinker, even language originates in the need of controlHng the flux. Logic and science are like the moral code, in being sheer affirmations calculated to enhance the power of those who believe them. Science gives a group power over nature, as its code gives it power over rival groups. ''To affirm life means to affirm lies. Man can live only by virtue of absolutely unmoral modes of thinking." - A lie in this sense is whatever is uttered regardless of fact; and the unmoral is whatever is done regardless of sympathy or pity. Now in so far as a lie so uttered and carried into effect actually enhances the agent's power, it is in the in- strumentalist sense ''true." It is a true, that is, an effective lie. "According to my way of thinking, 'truth' does not necessarily mean the opposite of error, but, in the most fundamental cases, merely the relation of different errors to each other ; thus one error might be older, deeper than another, perhaps altogether ineradi- cable, one without which organic creatures like ourselves could not exist; whereas other errors might not tyrannize over us to that extent as conditions of existence, but when measured according to the standard of those other 'tyrants,' could even be laid aside and 'refuted.' "3 According to this view the truth of an idea is proportional to the importance of the interest which it serves. Within » Cf. The Will to Power, and Vols. XIII, XIV of his collected works; in the Human, All too Human, he was as yet relatively scientific and intellectualistic. 2 Werke, XIII, 102, 239. Cf. Vernon Lee, Vital Lies, cit. infra, p. 145 fif. 3 The Will to Power, II, p. 49. J I THE REVOLT AGAINST REASON 293 the individual or group the truest ideas will be those which condition bare existence itself, and are therefore indis- pensably necessary. But what of the relative truth of the ideas held by conflicting groups, assuming that each con- tributes to the power of its possessor? It is evident that on Nietzsche's premises there can be but one answer to this question. That body of affirmations (or *'lies ") must be held most true which enables the group which makes them to acquire superior power and to lord it over rival groups. In other words we arrive at a Darwinian conception of truth, according to which the surviving convictions, the lasting and durable convictions are ipso facto the true convictions. Science would become a national or group advantage, proved by the test of struggle. Such a view would be consistent with the bare instrumentalist thesis that truth is to be judged by its success; and there would be no way of avoiding such an outcome, save by adopting a different ethical principle at the outset. To escape an egoistic instrumentalism it would be necessary to postulate a universalistic ethics. It would be necessary quite independently of the instrumen- talist theory itself, to insist that ideas should be judged in the light of all of the interests affected, the interests of other persons and of other groups to count equally with the in- terests of the person or group affirming the idea. Instru- mentalists of the American school have virtually accepted this larger human criterion of truth, but have failed, I think, to make it sufficiently explicit; and in so far as this is the case they may not unfairly be accused of having provided a dangerous weapon for the very policy of ruthless self- assertion to which they are by intent so unqualifiedly opposed. 4. The Instrumentalist Interpretation of Nature. It is perfectly evident that instrumentalism softens the harsh and forbidding aspect which nature wears for those who accept unqualifiedly the account rendered by the physical science. Nature is no longer an alien world. Its orderly arrangement is no longer conceived as a grim barrier to human aspirations. Its necessities are no longer inexorable, imposed externally 294 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS and unfeelingly. Nature's teeth are drawn; it is now tame and domesticated. Its order is to be accepted because it is useful; because it is better to live in a cosmos than in chaos. The living man is now regarded as the formative and con- structive agency by which the dead and passive world is created. If on a purely experimental basis life loses that definiteness of purpose which is attributed to it in the ideal- istic philosophy, nevertheless it may claim the future, as its own to make. Instrumentalism is a forward-looking and progressive philosophy, which, though it cannot formulate any final program, need acknowledge no absolute limit to the range of its achievement. Furthermore, as we shall see more clearly in the chapter that follows, instrumentalism lends itself readily to the rebuilding of those rehgious hopes which science appears dt^nitely to shatter. If the justifi- cation of the intellect lies not in its conformity with an order of things imposed from without, or from above, but in its fruitfulness for Ufe, then there is nothing to forbid the intel- lect from constructing such a supernatural or supermundane setting for Hfe as will give man the assurance and incentive he needs in order to Hve most abundantly. IV. IRRATIONALISM ' We have finally to recognize that from certain angles there is an immediate value in the disparagement of the in- tellect. There are many to whom the intellect is uncon- genial. It hampers or discredits them, and they rejoice in its downfall, as envious or rebelUous spirits will rejoice in the downfall of anything that claims superiority or au- thority. A philosophy which disparages the intellect will, for ex- ample, inevitably please those who find it impossible or dis- agreeable to think. The intellect is regarded by many as unpleasantly exclusive and undemocratic. It refuses to let everybody in. IntellectuaHsm reserves knowledge for cer- tain specially quaUfied persons. Anti-intellectualism, on the other hand, opens the doors wide. In the place of diffi- cult processes of reasoning which only a few can hope to THE REVOLT AGAINST REASON 295 master, it exalts instinct and passion which everybody has, or intuition which everybody readily thinks he has. It is pleasant to think that the highest truths are revealed unto babes, and that every intellectual babe may properly regard himself as a wise man. If knowledge is given in what is spontaneous and untechnical, there are no longer masters and pupils, but everybody is a master by virtue of his native innocence. Or if one prefers the sense of belonging to a^ limited cult, one can gratify this sense most easily by an anti-intellectual- istic metaphysics. Professor Lovejoy has pointed out the fact that the Bergsonian philosophy enjoys a certain popu- larity from its very inarticulateness. ^' There is" he says, "a. yery evident touch of mystification about this philosophy; and the craving to be mystified is a peren- nial human craving, which it has, in the more highly civilized ages, been one of the historic functions of philosophy to gratify.^ What the public wants most from its philosophers is an experience of initiation; what it is initiated into is often a matter of secondary importance. Men delight in being ushered past the guarded portal, in finding themselves in dim and awful precints of thought unknowTi to the natural man, in experiencing the hushed moment of revelation, and in gazing upon strange symbols — of which none can tell just what they symbolize." ^ ■ Those who have read Bergson will have been impressed by the frequency with which the author makes use of figures of speech. Figures of speech appeal to the imagination, which is a less laborious organ than the intellect. It is easier to apprehend a series of vivid pictures created by a Hterary master like Bergson than it is to follow a highly articulated train of inferences. I do not mean that Bergson does not think, and that his philosophy is not hard; but only that by the fundamental thesis of his philosophy he encourages the reader to take the pictures and let the thinking go. The philosophical neophyte is virtually told that the pictures, or some flash of insight that they may suggest, provide the deeper and more essential insight. 1 A O Lovejoy: " The Practical Tendencies of Bergsonism," p. 2. V Hi ■\ 296 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS A more dangerous motive for taking sides against the in- tellect is the motive of lawlessness. Anti-intellectualism is a convenient philosophy for impatient men of action. This is largely the reason why the revolutionary Syndicalists have shown so great a fondness for Bergson. They propose to do something, and do not want to be restrained by the necessity of giving reasons for it. They find that men can be got to act together when they will not think together. They will strike when they will not vote. Thus, according to Mr. Graham Wallas, ^'throughout the SyndicaKst literature, one continually comes upon denunciations of systematic constructive thought, and refer- ences to the elan vital and the other terms of Mr. Bergson's anti- intellectualist philosophy. 'If one reflects too much one never does anything,' one should trust the 'philosophic de Taction qui donne la premiere place a I'intuition.' . . . The Syndicalists insist that feelings and actions are more real than votes, and that feelings and actions are not equal. An energetic and passionate minority have, they say, both the power and the right to coerce by violence an inert and indifferent majority.'' ^ The Syndicalist appeals from discussion to intuition, from plans and programs to the impulsive love of struggle. "No more dogmas or formulas; no more vain discussions of the future society; no more comprehensive plans of social organiza- tion; but a feeling for the struggle, a feeling which vivifies itself by active participation, a philosophy of action which gives the first place to intuition, and which proclaims that the simplest laborer engaged in the combat understands it better than the most learned doctrinaire of all the schools." ^ Such a policy needs no refutation. Since it is not based on reasons it cannot be argued. Indeed the most vicious feature of deliberately unmeasured action is that it chooses the weapon of force rather than the weapon of discussion, and imposes the same weapon upon its opponent. It be- * Graham Wallas: The Great Society, p. 306. Quotations are from Grif- fuelhes, Bibliotheque du mouvement social, p. 57. Cf. Lagardelle, ibid., p. 8. 2 Syndicalisme et Socialisme, edited by Lagardelle, p. 8. Quoted by Bosan- quet, Social and International Ideals, p. 192. The translation is mine. THE REVOLT AGAINST REASON 297 hooves philosophers to remember that the discrediting of the intellect aids and abets not only lazy-mindedness and ob- scurantism, but the agencies of wilful destruction, which would impatiently override all the inhibitions, safeguards and organized purposefulness of civilization. JUSTIFICATION OF FAITH 299 CHAPTER XXI THE PRAGMATIC JUSTIFICATION OF FAITH I. THE VOLUNTARY CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS FAITH A recent writer on contemporary tendencies, M. Abel Rey, has expressed the fear that the growth of pragmatism might by disparaging science put fresh courage into the hearts of the reactionaries. "The pragmatic interpretation of science," he says, "makes it permissible to affirm that science has no connection with the truth, and so leave the field open to other sources of truth, such as the religious, the metaphysical and the moral." ^ This writer cites the case of the French Catholic philos- opher Le Roy, who having accepted the pragmatist teaching that science is a mere tool or convenience, then goes on to ascribe the higher function of revealing reality to the dog- mas of Christianity. In other words, it is possible to use pragmatism simply for the purpose of getting rid of the menace of science, and then to restore to the old authorities the claims which they enjoyed before the modern scientific movement discredited them. But although a little pragmatism may be in this respect a dangerous thing, the whole of pragmatism does not justify such fears. In principle pragmatism does not discriminate against science. Quite the contrary. For pragmatism teaches that the true is what is useful or fruitful; and science can certainly meet this test better than any other body of knowledge to which it could be appHed. Furthermore, pragmatism is opposed to the a priori method, and to the absolute temper of mind; and this opposition science has come more and more to share, as it has become increasingly experimental and tentative. Authority of any sort is re- * La Philosophie Moderne, p. 37. 298 pugnant to pragmatism, whether intellectual or institutional. So that the restoration of the old dogmatisms or tyrannies would in no sense be compatible with the wide acceptance of this philosophy. ^ It is true, on the other hand, that pragmatism does provide a new justification of faith. But this new justification is on the basis not of authority or intellectual proof, but of that same usefulness and fruitfulness which is also held to be the sole justification of science. Not only science, but religion, too, may be useful and fruitful, and in so far as it is so, its claims to acceptance are on a par with those of science. Every belief, according to pragmatism, is largely an act of will. This is neither accidental nor regrettable. It is an ancient error to suppose that beliefs are somehow imposed upon the mind by coercive logic. This is a form of preten- tiousness which distinguishes the intellectualists. They claim that their arguments leave the mind no other course but to accept their conclusions. If they were more candid, says the pragmatist, they would admit that they have con- sulted their hearts as well as their heads. Even their in- sistence on the methods of logic can be traced to a ''senti- ment of rationaUty.'' This fact should not be hidden as though there were something disgraceful about it. It should be openly recognized and developed into a method. If our beliefs are in any case responsive to our needs and wishes, then they should be made as perfectly so as possible. We should adopt a frank experimentaUsm, and judge our behefs by their value for Ufe. If we do so we shall find a new ground and a more appropriate test for religion. *'In a general way then, and on the whole," says William James, "our abandonment of theological criteria and our testing of reUgion by practical common sense and the empirical method leave it in possession of its towering place in history. Economically the saintly group of quaUties is indispensable to the world's welfare. But it is evident that religion cannot be submitted to quite the same experimental test that is applicable to our 1 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 377. 300 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS judgments regarding what is near at hand. If I judge that tomorrow is Sunday and arrange my engagements accord- ingly, my judgment matures, so to speak, within twenty-four hours, and I can soon determine whether experience is going to satisfy it or not. But if I judge that I am going to Hve after death, or that human society will some day be per- fected by the virtue of democracy, it is evident that the future contingency to which I refer is not going to confirm or discredit my beUef until long after I, as this mortal experi- mentalist, have ceased to exist. My behef will not be de- cisively tested until it is too late for me to profit by the result. Meanwhile, if I am not to hesitate and falter, and so forfeit whatever value the belief might contribute to my life, I shall need some other test to sustain me and dispel my doubts. Such an immediate test, that may be appUed here and now even in the case of beliefs that refer to the remote and in- accessible future, may be found, so the pragma tist tells us, in the effect which the beUef has upon the will. This, for example, is the sense in which, according to WiUiam James, theism is proved to be ^'practically rational." *' Theism always stands ready with the most practically rational solution it is possible to conceive. Not an energy of our active nature to which it does not authoritatively appeal, not an emotion of which it does not normally and naturally release the springs. At a single stroke, it changes the dead blank it of the world into a living thou, with whom the whole man may have dealings." ^ Ideas, in other words, are not only a means of fitting con- duct to future events, but are also a means of stimulating the emotions and the energy of our active nature. This is sometimes spoken of as the " dynamogenetic " power of ideas. When the future reference of ideas is too remote to try out, or even when there is no specific future reference at ail, ideas may still be judged by their power to supply in- centives to life. " ^ Reflex Action and Theism," Will to Believe, p. 127. Cf . also Pragmatism. Professor Lovejoy has fairly pointed out that this immediate effect upon the will may be felt even in the case of beliefs that have no future reference at all. Cf. his "Pragmatism and Theology," American Journal of Theology, Vol. Xn (1908). JUSTIFICATION OF FAITH 301 i We have repeatedly referred to the fact that the modern science of rehgion has emphasized the facts of reUgion. ^ De- tachment from the engrossing claims of any single religious creed has led the mind of to-day to a more comprehensive and adequate recognition of religion as a universal institu- tion. Conflict of creeds is thought of not as prejudicing the particular creed to which we may happen to adhere, but as testifying to the marvellous richness and vigor of the re- ligious life in humanity at large. It is natural that in an age when such an idea of religion is in vogue, men should be im- pressed with the power of religion; and that they should think of this power as moulding individuals and societies by biological and psychological causes quite independent of truth or falsity, in the older intellectual sense. Although such distinctions cannot be sharply drawn or strictiy ad- hered to, it will prove convenient to examine first the claim that faith supports the life-preservative impulse; second, the claim that it supports the moral aspirations; third, the claim that it provides certain peculiarly religious incentives and consolations. I shall speak of these as the biological, the moral, and the spiritual justifications of faith. II. THE BIOLOGICAL JUSTIFICATION OF FAITH The basal interest is the interest which the individual or the group has in life itself. Religious faith is regarded by some thinkers of our time as reinforcing this interest, and so actually conditioning survival. We have already met with an instance of this view in the social philosophy of Benjamin Kidd.^ According to this writer the perpetuation of the race, and the competitive selection which constitutes social evo- lution, require that each group shall act as a unit. The sur- viving group possesses a certain toughness of fibre, and soundness of health, comparable to animal vigor and quite other than the more showy and superficial attainments of science and art. The most important condition of this social vigor is religion. The intellect divides and disintegrates societies, while religion unites them, and renders individuals 1 Cf. above, pp. 141-142. 1 302 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS I wilUng to subordinate themselves to the group life and the group interest. Religion is a sort of social cement; a re- latively primitive manifestation of Ufe, but for that very reason basal and indispensable. ^ ^ But a more recent and more consciously pragmatistic view of this type, is the explanation of religion offered by Ernest Crawley in his Tree of Life} This writer tells us that *'what we term 'religion ' marks a psychical predisposition of a biological character, which is of supreme evolutionary importance." 2 The analogies which modern anthropology has shown to exist between Christian dogma and ritual, and those of primitive religion, have usually been supposed to discredit Christianity. But Mr. Crawley draws just the opposite inference. The analogy shows, he says, that Chris- tianity like all reUgion, is rooted in something fundamental and ineradicable, in a deep-seated ''bias " or "tendency." *'The analogies from savage culture show that religion is a direct outcome of elemental human nature, and that this elemental human nature remains practically unchanged. This it must continue to be so long as we are built up of flesh and blood. For instance, if a savage eats the flesh of a strong man or divine person, and a modem Christian partakes sacramentally of Christ's body and blood under the forms of bread and wine, there is evidently a human need behind both acts which prompts them and is respon- sible for their similarity." ' Mr. Crawley's account of this universal human religion can be reduced to three contentions: that religion deals only with what is " elemental " ; that the religious emotion is " that tone or quality of any feeling which results in making some- thing sacred"; and that this sacred elemental thing with which religion is concerned is life itself.* "Life," he says ... "is the key to our problem. The vital instinct, the feeling of life, the will to life, the instinct to preserve 1 For an entertaining critical account of this book, cf. Vernon Lee's Vital Lies, Vol. II, pp. 3-60. 2 Tree of Life, p. 3. ' Op. cit., pp. 261-262, 296. * Op. cit., p. 209. JUSTIFICATION OF FAITH 303 it is the source of, or rather is identical with, the religious impulse, and is the origin of reUgion. Amid the elemental sphere with which reUgion deals life is the central fact, the paramount concern; upon life is concentrated the best of that sacredness to which the sense of life gives rise. Sacredness is the result of the reUgious impulse; the feeling of Hfe is the cause." ^ In its more conscious and elaborate forms religion seeks to fortify this feeUng of Ufe, to protect and enhance life by making sacred everything connected with it, such as "birth, puberty, marriage, sickness and death." The conservatism of reUgion, its resistance to change, is due to the fact that "religion affirms not moraUty, nor altruism, nor science, but health and strength of body and character, physical and moral cleanUness and decency, deference to age, experience and position, principles which are bound up with the elemental view of Ufe." ^ A new method of defending Christianity is afforded by the recognition that Christianity "is rooted more firmly than other systems in the good ground of human nature, and that its vital principle is the instinct for life in its purest form." The decay of Christianity may then be regarded as a sign of the working of "influences which disintegrate vitaUty." ^ To affirm reUgion and to affirm life are one and the same thing.^ In order to account for the higher moraUzing and spir- ituaUzing powers of religion it is necessary for Mr. Crawley to exploit the ambiguity of the term "Ufe," an ambiguity to which he himself caUs attention. ReUgion expresses not only the purely biological instinct for bodily survival, but the reaching out after a "fuUer Ufe," the "aspiration toward a higher reaUty, both in the present and in the continued life hereafter." ^ If such an extension of the function of reUgion is scarcely consistent with this writer's contention that re- Ugion is preoccupied with what is elemental, it constitutes the central thesis of those moral and spiritual justifications of reUgion to which we shaU now turn. J Op. cit., p. 214. 2 Op. cit., pp. 267, 270. ' Op. cit., pp. 261, 296. < Op. cU.f pp. 270, 300, 301. I 304 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS III. THE MORAL JUSTIFICATION OF FAITH The idea that religion is needed to bolster up the moral life is so common an idea, and has appeared in so many forms, that it would be out of the question to give a comprehensive exposition of it here. I shall confine myself to a few m- stances which have a comparatively modern flavor. ^ We must in the first place distinguish the pragmatist idea from others with which it might easily be confused. The pragmatist does not propose to deduce right and wrong from a preconceived idea of God. It is not a matter of knowing the truth of reUgion first, and then applying it to the conduct of Ufe, as when one accepts the Bible as expressing the will of God, and then uses it as a practical guide. The thought of the pragmatist moves in just the reverse direction. He starts with the moral consciousness, and then finds a justifi- cation of religion in its power to stimulate the moral con- sciousness. Religion is thought of as an act of sheer faith, without intellectual proof, and freely adopted for the sake of the moral incentives it affords. Kant's conception of faith stands very close to this. In- deed the only difference is that which I pointed out in the last chapter, the difference between the a priori and the ex- perimental method. Kant would believe that it is possible from an analysis of the conception of duty, to see that it implies a belief in God, Freedom and Immortality. The pragmatist would say that it is proved by experience that religious faith enables one to do one's duty with greater earnestness or firmness. The pragmatist would not seek to attach this moral value exclusively to any one such creed as that which Kant proposes, but in the empirical and tenta- tive spirit which is so fundamentally characteristic of him, he would admit a variety of faiths, which prove morally stimulating to different individuals and groups, and in differ- ent ages. The pragmatist view is most closely approached by the older idea that the only way men can be got to do their duty is by the hope of Heaven or the fear of Hell. This idea was JUSTIFICATION OF FAITH 305 1 i I supposed to be based on the psychological fact that nothing moves a man but self-interest. He can be persuaded to act for the general happiness only when it is made worth his while. Such a defense of Christianity was equivalent to saying that even if the existence of a Divine Ruler of the world were not proved by reason or revelation,^ it would be necessary to invent such an idea as a bogie with which to terrify the naughty children of men into good behavior. This idea is still widely held both within and without the fold of Christianity. But it is no longer in favor, not only be- cause it degrades the conception of God, but because it is no longer in agreement with the teachings of psychology. Man is now conceived to be quite capable of love and generosity. What he wants is an object to love and a cause to serve. God is thought of, then, not as appealing to the baser mo- tives, but as confirming and guaranteeing the higher motives. The new and distinctively pragmatist defense of religion on moral grounds is most impressively set forth in the writings of WiUiam James. This philosopher's moral and religious beliefs are to be separately treated in a later chapter, and I shall here refer only to what bears directly upon the question of faith. James thought of the moral life as essen- tially taking sides with good against evil, volunteering for the great cosmic campaign against pain, unrighteousness and baseness. Now in a campaign you need a captain, you need to know your enemy, you need to believe in victory, and you need to feel a confidence in your own power to accelerate or retard that victory. God is the Captain of the forces of righteousness, giving a personal vividness to what would otherwise be a mere collective or an abstract prin- ciple; and through his might guaranteeing the eventual triumph of those whom he leads. Freedom delivers man from the incubus of mechanical nature, gives him a sense of direct responsibility, and above all acquits God of com- plicity with evil. Thus a belief in a finite God and in a world of many independent parts furnishes the best basis for that gospel of *' meliorism," or progressive betterment, which according to James is the true intent of the moral will. 3o6 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS James's ethics is, on the whole, of the traditional humani- tarian type. But the principle of pragmatism is also in- voked in our time by the exponents of a very different moral ideal, for that gospel of Ufe and movement, to which we shall turn in the next chapter. M. Georges Sorel, the leading philosophical exponent of syndicalism furnishes the most noteworthy example. This writer derived his pragmatism largely from Renan, who had said that in religion men draw from themselves whatever illusions they need for the fulfil- ment of their duties and the accomplishment of their des- tinies.^ In his Reflexions sur la Violence , M. Sorel shows that the great efforts and loyalties of mankind are always sustained by myths. Thus the early Christians expected the return of Christ, the end of the world, and the inauguration of the Kingdom of the saints. None of these expectations was fulfilled, but the having of such expectations was the great vitaUzing power of Christianity. Similarly the Refor- mation and the revolution of 1789 were the work of dreamers, who without their dreams would never have been capable of their sublime devotion. Such dreams or myths are to be regarded not as predictions of the future, but as symbols by which present action is brought to the highest pitch of in- tensity. The same is the case according to M. Sorel with the syndicahst's idea of a great social upheaval and his hope of a new social era. "We know," he says, "that the general strike is precisely as I have said, a myth in which socialism expresses itself as a whole, an organization of images capable of instinctively evoking all the sentiments appropriate to the diverse manifestations of the war waged by socialism against modern society. Strikes have en- gendered in the proletariat the noblest, the profoundest and the most dynamic sentiments of which it is capable; the general strike groups these all together in one tableau, and by connecting them gives to each its maximum of intensity; appealing to certain very lively memories of particular conflicts, it gives a color of living intensity to all the details of the composite presented to con- ^ Cf. Renan*s Dialogues Philosophiques', and the Preface to his Feuilles Detachees. For these references, as well as those below to Sorel, I am indebted to Vernon Lee, Vital Lies, Vol. II. JUSTIFICATION OF FAITH 307 sciousness. We thus obtain that immediate vision of socialism which language can never give us with perfect clearness, and we obtain it all at once in an instantaneous perception." ^ In other words, the syndicalist does not literally predict the general strike or the social revolution. He is not dis- turbed by the rational objections that may be urged against them. For they are essentially acts of passionate faith which are justified by their effect upon the emotions and will of those who adhere to them. Only such myths are capable of evoking enthusiasm, energy, endurance, socialized feeling, heroism and saintliness, which are to be regarded as the high- est values which life affords. IV. THE SPIRITUAL JUSTIFICATION OF FAITH I. The Religious Values. Religious faith may, as we have just seen, be justified by its reinforcing the moral will. But in the last instance of this which I have cited we have already reached that borderland between morality and re- ligion which is so difficult to define. The emotional exalta- tion by which M. Sorel justifies the program of social revo- lution would doubtless be regarded by many as already transcending morality. We have now to consider the view that the justification of faith lies not in its being auxiliary to the moral life, but in its lifting man above mere moraHty to those higher spiritual levels peculiar to religion. Thus it may be contended that the very virtue of religious faith lies in its transcending the limits of scientific knowledge, and in its impelling the soul to trust in the unknown, — to leave the safe ground of fact for a more doubtful but more glorious life of adventure and conquest. Faith becomes a sort of good in itself, the bolder and more creative attitude of mind. Thus we read in Paul Sabatier that "If one could picture the advent of a scientific philosophy which would suddenly make all dogmas clear and evident, Catholics would be heartbroken. . . . Not that religion is for them a cult of the absurd and anti-rational, but that it must exceed the content of * Reflexions sur la Violence, p. 95. 3o8 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS present consciousness, of what may be verified by reason or experi- ment, and must feel out toward the future in order to quicken it and bring it to birth. It is the heart setting forth as the herald of action."^ Or, religious forms may be conceived as the means by which men may be brought to feel a mystical sense of union with all their fellows past and present. So long as it can stir this emotion religion will live on, even though its dogmas were to be forgotten and its churches destroyed. Thus the writer whom I have just quoted says of the burial ritual, *'The Latin words, dropping upon the cofiin already at the bottom of the grave, do not merely envelop in piety the heavily falling earth; they mingle with the breeze in the cypresses and with the scent of the flowers, uniting the sorrow of unknown peasants with all the sorrows that the Church has chanted or will chant to the end of time." 2 Irreligion finds itself compelled to provide substitutes for these consolations of religion, ''somewhat as certain mothers give their children india-rubber teats to suck to elude their impatience." But such attempts show a failure to under- stand that symbols cannot be manufactured. Symbols derive their power from a slow seasoning in which they have formed a thousand threads of connection with the mind of the group. Hence the peculiar and indispensable value of the traditional religion, and the justification for preserving it as something which has acquired a virtue that cannot be replaced. A homelier, but essentially similar argument, is uncon- sciously employed by " Billy " Sunday in defending the wor- ship of Jesus. Men's hearts are touched and warmed, he says, not by abstract principles, however well-reasoned they may be, but by the image of a loving Saviour. The follow- ing is quoted from an account of a sermon on ''Feeding the Five Thousand," given in Boston on December 17, 1916: ^ "Christianity is the only sympathetic reUgion that ever came mto the worid. Let your scientific consolation enter a room where * France To-day, p. 81. * Ibid., pp. 75-76. JUSTIFICATION OF FAITH 309 the mother has lost her child. Try your doctrine of the survival of the fittest. Tell her that her child died because it was not worth as much as the other one. Go to that dying man. Tell him to pluck up courage for the future. Use your transcendental phraseology upon him. Tell him he ought to be confident in the great-to-be, the everlasting- now, and the eternal what-is-it and where-is-it. The world wants God. It wants Jesus. Is the church drawing the hungry world to its tables? . . . You are not saved by the principle, but by the Person! The reason Christianity stands head and shoulders above all other religions that have ever been offered to the human race is here: Other religions have preached good principles and good things, but they have no Saviour who can take those things and implant them in the human heart and make them grow! All other religions have been built around principles, but the Christian religion is built around a Saviour!" ^ The preacher is here frankly advocating Christianity, not on the score of the truth of its dogmas, as attested by the ordinary methods of science, but on the score of their power to console and to quicken the human heart. The idea of Jesus is justified as an emotional balm or stimulant, rather than as a record of historical or metaphysical fact. 2. Ritschlianism and Modernism. There are at least two important movements in recent religious philosophy in which the pragmatic principle of justification is consciously developed. I can give them only the scantiest and most inadequate treatment, but I must not omit them altogether. The movement in Protestant theology, inaugurated about 1870 by Albrecht Ritschl, rests upon the distinction between judgments of fact, such as concern science, and judgments of value. Judgments of value are such as affirm what satisfies the judge, whether it exists or not. To such judgments, in this view, religion should confine itself, and so avoid all con- flict with science. Let me quote from a recent historian of Christian thought: *^The basis of distinction between religious and scientific knowl- edge is not to be sought in its object. It is to be found in the ^ Reported in the Boston Evening Transcript, Dec. 20, 1916. 3IO THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS subject, in the difference of attitude of the subject toward the object. Religion is concerned with what he [Ritschl] calls Wer- thurtheile, judgments of value, considerations of our relation to the world, which are of moment solely in accordance with their value in awakening feelings of pleasure or of pain. The thought of God, for example, must be treated solely as a judgment of value. It is a conception which is of worth for the attainment of good, for our spiritual peace and victory over the world. What God is in himself we cannot know. . . . God is holy love. That is a religious value- judgment. But what sort of a being God must be in order that we may assign to him these attributes, we cannot say without leaving the basis of experience." ^ God, in other words, is not meant to be a representation of fact, but an expression of sentiment and aspiration. Any specific historical conception of God is not to be viewed in the light of its correctness, but in the light of its power to save. The science of theology will be a study of the religious ex- perience, and of the function of symbols, in order to learn what images of the divine may most effectively stimulate man's spiritual regeneration. The modernist movement in Catholic thought has been due to a desire to reconcile an acceptance of modern science with a retention of the organized and traditional Church as a means of sustaining the religious life. ^*A scrupulous honesty in admitting the probable facts of history," says Santayana, '^and a fresh up-welling of mystical experience, these are the motives, creditable to any spiritual man, that have made modernists of so many." ^ For English readers the best statement of modernism is to be found in George Tyrrell's Christianity at the Cross-Roads. ''Religion," according to this writer, ''cannot be the criterion of scientific truth, nor science of religious truth. Each must be criticised by its own principles." The criterion of religion is to be found in what the author terms "the truth value of vision." "The only remedy lies in a frank admission of the principle of symbolism." ^ We start with a specific religious 1 E. C. Moore, History of Christian Thought since Kant, pp. 90-91. 2 Winds of Doctrine y p. 41. ' Op. cit.y English translation (1910), pp. XV, 103, 105. JUSTIFICATION OF FAITH 3" t need and then judge religious ideas by their power of satisfying this need. In order to maintain this power, and to produce " the same level and degree of spiritual life and experi- ence," religious ideas will have to assume different forms appropriate to the different stages of human development, just as the individual's religious life has to be sustained by different symbols as he advances from childhood to maturity.^ This fundamental need is "union with the transcendent," or "harmony with the Divine." This is " the instinct of the Spirit," partially expressed in the moral, intellectual and sesthetic aspirations, but consisting essentially in a "mystical need of conscious union with the divine," which only religious worship with its apocalyptic vision and its sacraments can satisfy. There is a Spiritual Whole which lives in us, and which "moves us toward a universal End or Good." ^ "■ So far as we are freely to accept and co-operate with the instmct of the Spirit, we must have, at least, some symboUc notion of its nature and end; some fiction explanatory of the movements that we experience withm ourselves — a fiction suggested by them; verified and criticised by its success in intensifying and enriching our spirituaUty. Such visions and revelations command our faith by their liberating appeal to our spiritual need, spirit answering spirit. They explain us to ourselves; they set free the springs of life. Such was and such is the power of the gospel of Jesus. It was a vision of the transcendent that fixed a manner of feeling and living whose fruitfulness was simply a matter of experience." ^ V. FAITH AND TRUTH We have seen that according to the pragmatist view re- ligious faith may be justified by its immediate effect upon the will and emotions of the believer. But what is the relation of faith so justified to truth in the traditional sense? Does the pragmatic principle imply that one may ignore fact alto- gether, and please oneself in the matter of belief? The re- volt at such a view is well expressed by Jean-Christophe : 1 Ihid., p. 104- 2 Ihid., pp. 114. "S- ' Ihid., pp. 210-211. Cf. p. 112. i 312 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS **So then, God will exist because I will him to exist? . . . Alas! How easy life is to those who have no need to see the truth, to those who can see what they wish to see, and are forever forging pleasant dreams in which softly to sleep. In such a bed, Christophe knew well that he would never sleep/ ^ ^ A faith justified by the will may, it would seem, be justified by any will; so that there is some ground for Vernon Lee's rather cynical suggestion that Father Tyrrell's modernism is dictated by the " Will-no t-to-leave-the-church." ^ A fur- ther objection to pragmatic apologetics is voiced by Mr. Santayana. He calls attention to the fact that while the religious philosopher himself may understand that the dog- mas of religion are to be regarded merely as symbols, the devout believer will take them literally. This will be the case not only because the average believer is too unsophisti- cated to distinguish nicely between the literal and the sym- bolic, but also because if he did not take them literally they would not have the desired effect on his will and emotions. One who regards the loving Jesus as only an image invoked for the sake of the consolation it affords is not going to be consoled. He must believe in Jesus as a historical and living fact. The consequence is that there must in this view be two classes of believers, those who are disillusioned, and accept dogmas only pragmatically, and those who retain the old naive convictions. The latter will be those in whom the regenerative power of the dogmas actually works. But for such believers religion will be on a par with science, and will inevitably be affected by science. Let me cite Mr. Santa- yana's statement of the matter: " What would make the preaching of the gospel utterly impossible would be the admission that it had no authority to proclaim what has happened or what is going to happen, either in this world or in another. . . . Accordingly, while it is quite true that speculations about nature and history are not contained explicitly in the religion of the gospel, yet the message of this religion is one which specula- tions about nature and reconstructions of history may extend congruously, or may contradict and totally annul. . . Even the * Jean-Christophe, p. 237. 2 Vital Lies, Vol. I, p. 253. JUSTIFICATION OF FAITH 313 pagan poets, when they devised a myth, half believed in it for a fact. . . To divorce, then, as the modernists do, the history of the world from the story of salvation, and God's government and the sanctions of religion from the operation of matter, is a funda- mental apostasy from Christianity." ^ Now it is quite possible to contend in a limited and quali- fied way that some religious forms are freely imaginative, and are therefore on a par with such symbols as patriotism or the sentiment of humanity invoke. In order that the state or collective mankind may be objects of love and loyalty, it is necessary to picture them in images or embody them in emblems. This is quite consistent with a sober recognition of the facts. It would mean that certain facts, known to be such, can only grip the emotions when the imagination makes them concrete and vivid. In the case of religion this would mean that its dogmas must be substantially correct; but that they may be colored, enriched and vitalized in order that men may be moved by them. In this way a partial accept- ance of the pragmatic principle would be consistent with an entire avoidance of duplicity, and a full acceptance of the results of science. No man would be in the position of be- lieving anything which he would not believe if his eyes were open. But the most painstaking attempt to reconcile the prag- matist principle of faith with candor and enlightenment is that which was made by William James. He finds three situations in which faith may not only permit but actually promote the knowledge of fact. The first of these situations is that in which knowledge of fact is insufficient. Faith may here supplement knowledge without contradicting it, and without being confused with it. Religion in the main passes beyond the limits within which thoroughly accredited knowledge is possible. In the field of religion it is faith or nothing. If one supposes that the choice of the latter alternative would be more intellectually honest, James replies that such a choice is virtually im- possible. We are compelled to believe something. This is 1 Winds of Doctrine, pp. 32, 33, 34. 314 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS the second situation in which a candid and enlightened faith proves necessary, the situation in which if we do not beUeve as the will and emotions dictate, we find ourselves believing something else which is no better accredited to the intellect, and has not even the support of the will or emotions. In the field of religion there is a ''forced option," as James terms it. We are bound to believe something, because the very absence of belief turns out when it is applied to Ufe to be a sort of belief. The man who does not beUeve in God, and who pro- ceeds to live accordingly, is indistinguishable from the man who believes that there is no God, which is as positive a be- lief as the belief that there is a God. If both beUefs are equally unsupported by scientific evidence, then there is no injury or disloyalty to the intellect in choosing that belief which most fruitfully stimulates the will. Finally, there is a situation in which faith may create its own object, or in which pragmatic truth is the cause of truth of fact. This is the common situation in which the will finds itself as regards its own future achievements. The man who believes in his future success — that he can leap the chasm, reform society or make the world safe for democracy — gets from the belief an access of power that increases the measure of his achievement. To hesitate and calculate one's chances too nicely, to refuse to act until success is scientifically assured, to be unwilling to take the chance, is to be weak, impotent and unfit for the great things of Ufe. For the great things of life are doubtful causes, in which we must be guided by the proverb, ''nothing venture, nothing have." The supreme instance of this is religion. This is the Great Adventure. Religion will be made true by virtue of the greatness of our faith. The divine must be believed in in order that it may be achieved. Let me cite an eloquent ex- pression of this motive by a French Protestant minister:: "Definitively, if I dare so express myself, I would say that it is a mistake to put the Almightiness of God at the beginning instead of at the end of things. There is a God who shall be, but is not yet, manifested: there is a God 'who comes* according to the formula of the Apocalypse. ... To have faith in God is, then, to JUSTIFICATION OF FAITH 31S will God's full revelation in the future. God is not yet totally manifested. And that is why it is not strange that his^ existence can be doubted; that is why a modern thinker could write: 'God is the supreme decision of the soul.' That is to say, we must will that God be; we must affirm it with all the moral powers of our being; all our faculties must be accessory to his advent, allies in His cause. To have faith in God is no mere intellectual belief; it is an heroic deed, a personal enlisting in the service of truth, of justice, of beauty, of love; a free subordination- of the present to the future; a consecration of our body, soul and spirit to the ideal which God pursues in humanity, by the Son of Man. Definitively, faith in God veritably engages our faith, in the mystical and sublime sense of the term." ^ 1 W. Monod: Aux croyants et aux athees, Paris, 1916, p. 5. Quoted by Sabatier, Op. cit., pp. 212-214. CHAPTER XXII PLURALISM AND THE FINITE GOD The present vogue of the term ''pluralism " is due mainly to William Jaines. Philosophy has always emphasized the difference between the endless variety of the world as given to our senses or as reflected in our conflicting interests, and the unity of the world as revealed in the great laws of nature or in the common ideals of Ufe. But it has ordinarily been assumed that the variety or manyness of things was an evil to be remedied. Philosophy has commonly regarded itself as a means by which man might reahze his legitimate aspira- tion after unity. According to this view, things are many only in so far as they are unintelligible and unsatisfactory; while things are one in so far as they are intelligible and good. The originality of James lies in his accepting the manyness and differences of the world as final and irreducible; and his welcoming this manyness and diversity as the great redeem- ing feature of the world. To borrow the language of Shelley, James preferred the "dome of many colored glass '' to "the white radiance of eternity." A philosopher who thus pro- claims the plural character of the world now calls himself a "pluralist," while the opposite and older party receives the title of "monism." The two great representatives of monism in the last century were, as we have seen, the mate- rialists who reduced everything to a single physical principle, and the idealists who subsumed everything under the Abso- lute. Pluralism arose as a protest against both of these monisms, but it directed its attack mainly against the latter. The affinity between pluralism and the tendencies ex- amined in the last two chapters is clear. The intellect is the chief supporter of monism. The data of the senses and of the feelings are infinitely diverse and innumerably many. If the report of immediate experience were to be accepted as 316 THE FINITE GOD 317 I J final no one would ever dream of attributing unity to the world. Even such identities and bonds as we now take to be matters of fact have been brought to light by the intellect; and have been found because the intellect insisted upon look- ing for them. But despite that aspect of order which, thanks to science, nature now presents to us, there still remains a vast and apparently inexhaustible residuum of disconnected and unique particulars. Taking the world as we find it, the most that could be claimed would be that there is a frame of order enfolded and surrounded by a variegated and nebulous disorder. If men incline to the belief that the world is abso- lutely orderly and unified, it is because they have adopted the bias of the intellect, and have allowed this faculty to con- ceive things in its own way, regardless of appearances. In other words monism is an intellectual ideal. Therefore a revolt against intellect is at the same time, whether con- sciously or not, a revolt against monism. If intellectualism is monistic, so voluntarism, the emphasis on will, tends to be pluralistic. This results from the well- known fact that in action a man asserts himself, his own desire or his own decision; while in thought a man merges himself with the impersonal principles or systems which he contem- plates. Thus pragmatism, both in its negative attack upon intellect, and in its positive affirmation of the rights of will or feeling, inclines to pluralism in its metaphysics. I. THE PRECIOUSNESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL The pluralist, as we have seen, does not merely accept manyness and diversity as a fact, but he glories in it. He looks to pluralism, in the first place, as a philosophy which preserves what is unique in the particular individual. He objects to monism because it seems to him to touch up the portrait of reality, and to remove all the moles, wrinkles and irregularities that give it character. Or he likens the monis- tic view of the world to an artificial cultivation which de- stroys the native wildness of things, by pruning them and arranging them in neat rows. Monism reduces the particu- lar to the type or class, the event to the law, the quality to 3i8 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS I THE FINITE GOD 319 the substance, the local and peculiar to the universal, the flesh and blood to the skeleton. By so doing, it over-simpli- fies, dulls and impoverishes the world. AppUed to the case of man, monism would reduce the in- finite variety of individuals either to the abstract generic principle of human nature, or to some single all-enveloping life like that of the absolute. In either case there is some- thing lost, namely, the peculiar and unique flavor of the individual life as the individual feels this himself. It is im- portant to note the profound difference between the sort of individualism that is associated with pluraHsm and that self- styled variety of individualism which is associated with monism. Thus Bosanquet, following Hegel, is fond of characterizing the fundamental being as ''the concrete in- dividual.'' But it is characteristic of this philosophy that there should in the end be only one individual, the Absolute. Practically and emotionally such a view is almost the exact opposite of pluralistic individualism. It encourages each individual to identify himself with a larger individual life into which both he and his fellows are absorbed. The "true " individuality of each is to be found, in this -view, in what each contributes to that larger life; not in what is out- standing, independent or irrelevant, but in what belongs to the common whole. According to monism there is no value in any individual except in so far as he sings his part in the chorus, or plays his instrument in the symphony. Unless one can by a comprehensive and synthetic apprehension catch the harmony of the whole, then one can find no value whatever in the activities of the individual. But for a pluralist, the value of the individual life is certain, while the value of the whole is at best doubtful. The value of an indi- vidual life needs no further guarantee than its own inward feeling. To apprehend that value, what is needed is not a distant view of collective mankind, but an intimate sym- pathy with the particular individual. In a most beautiful and characteristic essay entitled "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings " ^ James has appro- ^ Published in the volume entitled Talks on Psychology and Life's Ideals. I priately quoted from Stevenson's essay on "The Lantern Bearers," the school-boys who found their greatest pleasure in carrying bull's-eye lanterns buttoned secretly under their top-coats. ''The ground of a man's joy is often hard to hit. It may hinge at times upon a mere accessory, like the lantern; it may reside in the mysterious inwards of psychology. ... It has so little bond with externals . . . that it may even touch them not, and the man's true life, for which he consents to live, lie altogether in the field of fancy. ... In such a case the poetry runs underground. The observer (poor soul, with his documents) is all abroad. For to look at the man is but to court deception. . . . The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets; to find out where the joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing." ^ Pluralistic individualism like that of James is to be sharply distinguished also from the individuaUsm of self-assertion. It is an individualism that uses the pronouns "we'' and " thou " and " you " rather than the pronoun " I."^ It is not the individualism of one who arrogates to himself the authority of the Absolute, and "realizes " himself regardless of what is other than the self. Nothing could be more repug- nant to pluralistic individualism than that fanatical self-im- portance which inspires the exponents of a German " Kultur " or a German state-personaUty. Equally repugnant is the careless selfishness of the individual who is preoccupied by his own private impulses and desires. The fine quaUty of a pluralistic individualism expresses itself in that generosity of spirit which rejoices that there are more things in heaven and earth than one's personal philosophy had dreamed of. Such an individuaUsm, as James writes in concluding the essay, "absolutely forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own; and it commands us to tolerate, respect and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however unintelligible these may be to us. Hands off: neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer, I Quoted by James, Op. cit., pp. 239-240. 320 JHE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands. Even prisons and sick- rooms have their special revelations. It is enough to ask of each of us that he should be faithful to his own opportunities and make the most of his own blessings, without presuming to regulate the rest of the vast field." ^ In another essay James points to the moral and social im- plications of this individualism. *' There Ues more than a mere interest of curious speculation in understanding this. It has the most tremendous practical im- portance. ... It is the basis of all our tolerance, social, religious and political. The forgetting of it lies at the root of every stupid and sanguinary mistake that rulers over subject-peoples make. The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interfer- ence with their own pecuUar ways of being happy, provided these ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours. No one has insight into all ideals. No one should presume to judge them off-hand. The pretension to dogmatize about them in each other is the root of most human injustices and cruelties, and the trait in human character most likely to make the angels weep." ^ Nothing could be more characteristic of this generous wel- come of life in all its variety of manifestations than James's discussion of the topic of Human Immortality. In this essay the author answers those who object to immortality from the fear that such a future life might be too promiscuous. It is evident that James himself saw some force in the objection. That he should have taken the trouble to discuss it, when it is so rarely expressed, shows that he felt within himself a cer- tain conflict between his taste and his affections, between his discrimination and his humanity. That he should dismiss the objection and find room even in his conception of the ideal life for an innumerable aggregate of miscellaneous creatures, each with its own inward light and its own inalienable preciousness, is evidence of his possessing an aptitude for social democracy that is very unusual even where democracy is professed. * Op. cit., pp. 263-264. a "What Makes Life Significant?" Op. cit., pp. 265-266. THE FINITE GOD 321 In two of his earlier essays ^ James discussed the old ques- tion of the place of the individual in history. As might be expected he attacks the view represented by Spencer and his followers, according to which the great significant changes *'are irrespective of persons, and independent of individual control"; and he asserts as his own view that such changes are due ''to the accumulated influences of individuals, of their examples, their initiatives and their decisions." 2 This view, while characteristic, is not peculiar to James and his school. What is peculiar and distinctive is one of the argu- ments with which he supports the view. It is all a question, he says, of what changes are significant. And when it comes to that we have to appeal to the feelings of the individual. *'The preferences of sentient creatures are what create the importance of topics." The action of individuals may not appreciably affect the course of the planet in its orbit, or the condition of the crust of the earth, or the general properties of matter, or the constitution of human nature, or any of the common and normal things. But within the narrow field of human interests and affairs, the individual makes all the difference. James quotes a carpenter of his acquaintance as saying, ''There is very little difference between one man and another; but what little there is, is very important J' ^ Here again we have the pluraUst' s interest in the detail of human life, in what we have come latteriy to call "the values," as these are felt in all their wealth of variety by all the different interests from all their different angles. James's view of the world is the distributive view, dweUing caressingly now on this and now on that unique quaUty of it; as opposed to the generalizations, abstractions and syntheses which achieve unity only by leaving out all those dear and particu- lar things that most warm the hearts of men. * "Great Men and Their Environment" and "The Importance of the In- dividual," reprinted in The Will to Believe, 2 Op. cit., p. 218. ' Op. cit., p. 261. * Op. cit.f pp. 256-267. 322 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS THE FINITE GOD 323 II. PLURALISM AND FREEDOM "Freedom " is one of those eulogistic terms that in ordi- nary usage is hopelessly ambiguous. It does not describe anything, but expresses desire and hope. It is something that everybody wants, and to understand its meaning it is necessary to discover the motives which prompt men to want it. But these motives turn out to be diverse and even con- flicting. To some men freedom means deliverance from forcible restraint; to others it means deliverance from the restraint of unseen necessities. To some it is deliverance from authority and discipline; to others it is the acceptance of authority and discipline as a means of deliverance from their own passions and bUnd impulses. To some it means deUverance from the mechanical causes of nature by the con- trol of reason and purpose; but others find in such rational and purposive control the very restraint from which they seek to escape. To still others, such as Bergson, freedom means a more positive thing, the will's capacity of spon- taneous creation. In the case of William James, we shall find that there are two motives which impel him to advocate freedom, and that he finds both motives to be satisfied by a pluralistic view of the universe. I. Alternative Possibilities. In one of the most brilliant of his essays, entitled "The Dilemma of Determinism,'' James summarizes the sort of determinism against which he protests. **It professes," he says, ''that those parts of the universe already laid down absolutely appoint and decree what the other parts shall be. The future has no ambiguous possibilities hidden in its womb: the part we call the present is compatible with only one totality. Any other future complement than the one fixed from eternity is impossible. The whole is in each and every part, and welds it with the rest into an absolute imity, an iron block, in which there can be no equivocation or shadow of turning. 'With earth's first clay they did the last man knead, And there of the last harvest sowed the seed. And the first morning of creation wrote What the last dawn of reckoning shall read!'"^ ^ The Will to Believe, p. 150. i i Now it is clear that in this sense absolute idealism, for all its emphasis on purpose, reason and spirit, is precisely as deterministic as the most unblushing materialism, or the most uncompromising Calvinism. And as a matter of fact it was this "soft determinism " of the idealists rather than the old-fashioned "hard determinism" that James had primarily in mind when he wrote these words.^ The first motive which prompts James to reject this view of things is the desire that the present will of man may make a decisive difference to the subsequent course of events. It is morally imperative, he thinks, that man's sense of choice should be justified. When I choose I imagine that the world is awaiting my decision, that whether the world shall be this or that hangs in the balance. If the act is already inevitable, if, the past or the ruling purpose of things being what it is, only one act is here and now possible, then I am deceived. And once undeceived I shall in the future attach less im- portance to my act of choice. I am justified in regarding my choice as crucial and decisive only provided I so construe the world as to provide for genuine alternatives or possibiUties. I must suppose that the past and the given environment are equally compatible with any one of several deeds on my part. I must suppose that with all other circumstances remaining the same the present act of my will alone determines which of these deeds shall occur. It must be impossible that any act should be absolutely predictable. When it comes it must come as a genuine novelty, a contingency, a bolt from the blue, a chance happening. The only kind of world which permits this is a world in which "the parts have a certain amount of loose play on one another"; "a world which be- longs to a plurality of semi-independent forces, each one of which may help or hinder, and be helped or hindered by, the operations of the rest." ^ The author realizes that such a pluralistic world is repug- nant to the intellect, which would prefer to find a sufficient reason for everything in the causes and conditions which sur- ^ Ibid., p. 149. « Ibid., pp. 150, 175. 324 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS round it. But if it is repugnant to the intellect, it is the very breath of life for the will. It makes the moral agent an original cause. It justifies a sense of the gravity of his de- cision, as able to make or mar reality. It elevates him to the dignity of one who can himself in some measure finally determine what manner of world this world shall be. 2. Judgment of Regret. The second motive which actuates this writer's belief in freedom, is the desire to justify "judgments of regret'' without falling into pessimism. Select any occurrence that to your mind epitomizes what is most dastardly and contemptible, a brutal wife murder, the mutilation of young children, the rape of Belgium or the sinking of the Lusitania. If you accept the deterministic view that the world is all of one piece, then you are logically bound to say that the world as a whole is such as to render this hateful thing inevitable. Your healthy moral judgment prompts you to say that the world would have been im- measurably better without it; but your deterministic phil- osophy compels you to admit that no other alternative was possible. At the moment when it occurred the world was already irretrievably committed to it. If, then,^ you remain loyal to your regret and resentment, you must hate the world as you hate that loathsome thing that is a necessary part of it. This is pessimism. You may, it is , true, abandon your moral judgment and learn to see a higher value in the sinking of the Lusitania. You may say that without such deeds Hfe would lose the dramatic or spiritualizing value of tragic conflict. You may say, ''Not the saint, but the sinner that repenteth, is he to whom the full length and breadth, and height and depth, of life's meaning is revealed. Not the absence of vice, but vice there, and virtue holding her by the throat, seems the ideal human state." ^ This is what James calls "subjectivism." It means that one relents, and instead of hating vice with one's whole heart, welcomes it in order that the sinner may have something to repent and virtue something to hold by the throat. * James, Op. cit., p. 169. THE FINITE GOD 32s There are at least two objections to taking this view of the matter. For one thing, it sometimes happens that instead of repenting, the sinner honors his misdeeds by commemo- rative medals, and that vice holds virtue by the throat. But the deeper and more fatal objection lies in having honest resentment and uncompromising condemnation softened into moral complaisance, into a moral "neutrality of thought and deed." Were this to happen virtue would no longer take vice by the throat, except in the play where nobody is really hurt. Off the stage, in real life, virtue and vice would fraternize and greet one another as fellow-actors of equal importance and dignity. If then one is to avoid a hopeless pessimism, or a corrupting subjectivism, there is only one course to follow. That is to abandon utterly the deterministic premise. One must be- lieve that, the rest of the world remaining the same, the Lusitania might have been spared or the Belgian child pitied. Believing in this possibility there is now some sense in regret- ting that it was not realized. In this aspect the saddest word of tongue or pen is not "it might have been," but "it could not have been otherwise." If it might have been, then I may reasonably regret that it was not, and I may reason- ably resolve that it shall be. Furthermore, I may now con- demn what is damnable without indicting the whole world. I may now exonerate the innocent and unqualifiedly condemn the guilty. I may say "yes" to this, and "no" to that; instead of saying "yes and no" to everything. And I may take heart. For I may now believe in the possibility of uprooting evil without killing the good. That is the merit of a pluralistic philosophy which affirms that things are separately and independently rooted, and that their connections are accidental and not vital. I may now hope not only to prefer the good to the evil, but to preserve the good and banish the evil. Instead of being compelled either to reject or approve the mixed and doubtful world as it is, I may hope for the eventual achievement of a world in which there is nothing to explain away or apologize for. 326 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS THE FINITE GOD 327 » MeUorism. To this moral or qualified hope James gave the name of "meliorism." K we adhere to our moral judgments and sentiments, we cannot pronounce the world good as it is. We must renounce forever the optimistic be- Uef that " all is for the best." There remains the behef that suffices for the man of action, the belief that through his own and other like efforts the world may become a better world. Such a view is not only pluraUstic, but it is also temporahstic That is to say, it impUes the reaUty of time. It implies not that time falls within the world as one of the componente of an eternal and changeless whole, but that the world falls within time, and suffers radical change. The past insteado being taken up into eternity and preserved there as essential to its unitary meaning, is actually left behind. The evil and hateful may be undone, buried and anmhilated The world may be purged of it, and made as though it had never been A pluraUstic universe is a universe "with a chance m it of being altogether good." To the moral agent it offers an opportunity of conquering evil decisively, "by dropping it out altogether, throwing it overboard and getting beyond it helping to make a universe that shall forget its very place and name. yy 1 in. THE FINITE GOD That a pluralistic metaphysics will radically affect one^s conception of God is perfectly evident. We have already found among the personal ideaUsts a willingness to limit the power of God for the sake of preserving his goodness. ^ Only by supposing that things happen without or despite his will, is it possible to exonerate God of responsibility for evil, in the case of the personal idealists this view was with the greatest difficulty and with doubtful success reconciled with the monistic trend of their Kantian premises. But out and out pluraUsts like James, justified by their radically empirical professions in taking things to be as many and as diverse as they actually appear to be, are confronted with no logica^ diffiuclty. There is no theoretical reason why God should not be one of "the pluraUty of semi-independent forces" » Pragmatism, p. 297. ^ Cf. above, pp. among which the world is divided. There remains only the question whether a God so conceived can satisfy the religious consciousness. Without doubt one of the motives of re- ligious worship is the unstinted attribution to its object of every superlative which language affords. Thus Hobbes argues that to say of God that ''He is 'finite,' is not to honor Him; for it is not a sign of the will to honor God, to attribute to him less than we can; and finite, is less than we can; be- cause to finite, it is easy to add more." It is evident, then, that a finite God cannot possess every perfection at its maximum. It has often been objected with force that many perfections are incompatible; that it is im- possible, for example, that a being without limits, a being coinciding with the totality of things, should possess mental or moral perfections, since these seem to imply a relation of the subject to something beyond itself. But the modern pluralist does not argue from any such dialectical considera- tion. He simply points to the facts of evil in the world, and sets this question: "Would you rather have an infinite God who designed these evils, or a finite God who condemns and opposes them as you do?" In the last analysis there is un- • doubtedly a conflict between two religious motives. On the one hand there is the motive of dependence, which prompts man to exult in the immeasurable power of God and to take refuge in it. On the other hand there is the moral motive which prompts men to conceive God as the exponent of their moral ideals — incomparably greater in dignity, but governed by the same will which governs man in his best moments. James's philosophy of reUgion is the expression of the second of these motives, and implies a readiness to sacrifice the first. This is not a religion for the helpless who wish to recHne upon the bosom of an Almighty and leave it all to his higher and inscrutable wisdom. It is a religion for those in whom the fighting spirit is alive, and who are stout-hearted enough to respond to the challenge of evil as to an enemy to be attacked and overcome. It is a religion for those who are "willing to take the universe to be really dangerous and 1 Leviathany Chap. XXXI. 328 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS adventurous, without therefore backing out and crying 'no 1 > >> 1 ^ Even in those passages in which James inclines to the ^vsSal Jew of a union with God, reUgion is made to spnng S an irreconcilable moral duaUsm The worshipper dentifies himself with God, but it is the better part of him- ef and not the whole which is thus deified He feels hi rJorS will to be part of a greater will to goodness, a general force oTrighteouLss at large. This appears, for example, in the following description of conversion: "The individual, so far as he suffers from his wrongness and criticis^ i?, is to that extent consciously beyond it, and m at least S^to^ch with something higher, if anything higher exist . _ . When stage two (the stage of solution or salvation arrives, the !l idSes his real being with the germinal higher part of SmsdJ-a^d di so in the following way. He becomes conscrous tZms hkher part is conterminous and conttnuous mtha MORE Ttheamet<^iy, ^hich is operative in the universe outstde of hm, tJdMlTcanlep in working touch mth, and inafashron ge^ on t^arlTandsa^e himself when all his lower be^ng has gone to p^eces . in the wrecks ^ . • 4.t, The motive of individualism also finds expression m the conception of the finite God. Just as the hunian individual 1st possess a unique inner life of his own -^-ch jmast ^^J be something strange and new to every one but himself so God also, if he is to be an individual, must remain outside the circle of every other being. His privacy must be respected. The instinct that prompts an individuaUst to shrmk from intrusion upon another man's life, makes him shrink from too familiar an intimacy even with God. "In every being that is real there is something external to and sacred from, the Jasp of every other. God's being is sacred froni Zr To co-opemte with his creation by the best and nght^t ™e seems all he wants of us. In such co-operation with hi^ ™es not in any chimerical speculative conquest of him, not LTy theoretic driiking of him up, must he the real meanmg of our destiny." ^ 1 Pragmatism, p. 296. 2 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 508. 8 James: "Reflex Action and Theism," Will to Believe, p. 141. THE FINITE GOD 329 This conception of a finite God, who is the great Captain of the cause of righteousness has recently received a clear and impressive presentation by Mr. H. G. Wells in his widely read book God the Invisible King. This writer distinguishes "God the Creator" and ''God the Redeemer''; and pro- fesses "complete agnosticism " as regards the former, "entire faith " in the latter.^ True religion, he thinks, has nothing to do with the ultimate causes of things, but only with the living forces now at work in the world. Hence the bank- ruptcy of theistic metaphysics leaves this religion unim- paired. We may know nothing of the universal principle which underlies reality, but we can know of a particular principle that lives in us and is proved by its fruits. The adherent of this new faith "will admit that his God is neither all-wise, nor all-powerful, nor omnipresent." "On the other hand he will assert that his God is a god of salvation, that he is a spirit, a person, a strongly marked and knowable per- sonaHty, loving, inspiring and lovable, who exists or strives to exist in every human soul." ^ Wells's God like James's God, upon whom he is modelled, is composed of " the best of all of us," but is at the same time "a Being in himself, composed of that but more than that, as a temple is more than a gathering of stones, or a regiment is more than an accumulation of men."^ There is in Wells's view the same appeal to courage and action. "God is youth," and "looks not to our past but our future." He "faces the blackness of the Unknown and the blind joys and confusions and cruelties of Ufe, as one who leads mankind through a dark jungle to a great conquest." The beUeyer is "a knight in God's service," taking sides with his King against injustice and disorder, and uniting his efforts with those of all his fellows in behalf of "the great attainment," which is " the conquest of death." God fights against death in every form, against the great death of the race, against the petty death of indolence, insufficiency, baseness, mis- conception and perversion." ^ » Op. cit., p. xii. * Ibid., p. S- « Ibid., p. 62. * Ibid., pp. 63, 64, 96, 97, 99- 330 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS ■ The first to proclaim this gospel of the finite God was John Stuart MiU. His sober and restrained exposition of thedoc- Sne most perfectly reveals its underlying motives of mdi- SalTsm a^nd marUy courage. It is an unconscious protes Tga" double standards, a carrying over into rebgon of the code of daily life. Mill calls it the '-Religion of Duty Ind he thus describes it in the well-known passage with which he concludes his Three Essays on Religion: "One elevated feeling this form of religious idea admits of, whichl noToSn to tho'se who believe in the omnipotenceof the lod Drinciple in the universe, the feeling of helping God -of Stfng the good he has given by a voluntary c<>.operation which he ^ot being omnipotent, really needs, and by which a somewhat nearer approach may be made to the fum^ent of hi^ P^^^^^^ The conditions of human existence are highly favorable to tne groXotS a feeling inasmuch as a battle is consumty^oing on in which the humblest human creature is not incapab'e ot S^Z some part, between the powers of good and those of evil, and in wWch eve;y even the smallest help to the nght side has its vafu in promoting the very slow and often almost -sensibjeprog- Ls bv which good is gradually gammg ground from evU, yet ISiSit^visibly at considerable intervals as to promise the very Snf bu^not uncertain final victory of Good. To do something JuS Ufe on even the humblest scale if nothing more is withm S owards bringing this consummation ever so Uttle nearer, s tt molt Smatifg fnd invigorating thought which can mspire ah™ creature; and that it is destined, with or without super- nSsa^ction, to be the reUgion of the Future I cannot entertam a doubt." CHAPTER XXIII THE GOSPEL OF ACTION AND MOVEMENT Every man whose occupation condemns him to spend most of his hours thinking, talking and writing must have mo- ments when he heartily sympathizes with what a famous poet once set down in his journal: "I do think the preference of writers to agents — the mighty stir made about scribbling and scribes, by themselves and others — a sign of effeminacy, degeneracy and weakness. Who would write, who had anything better to do? 'Action — action — action' said Demosthenes." ^ This love of action is in our day more than an occasional mood. It has become a cult and a religion. In order to give it any distinctness it is necessary at the outset to introduce certain limiting ideas. It is evident that thinking, and even scribbling is in some sense a kind of action, and it would be fooHsh to preach action if it includes everything. Although what we feel when we crave action cannot be clearly defined, it includes, I think, one or more of these three things: bodily exertion, social enterprise and visible creation. We crave the kind of action that involves the expenditure of energy, and brings with it intentness of interest, fatigue and a kind of purge from subjectivity and brooding doubts. We crave participation in the joint affairs of mankind, an activity that takes us from studies and cells out into the world of business, politics and war. Or we long to leave our imprint on the world, to fashion something that shall express us and hve after us. But it may be justly argued that action in all of these senses includes static as well as dynamic phases. That which is singled out for emphasis by the cult we are here dis- cussing is not merely action of a certain kind, but it is the * Byron, Journal, Nov. 24, 1813. 331 332 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS genuinely active element of action. To understand this better, let us see what different phases or elements are in- volved in a complete action. There is in the first place, the phase of desire, a felt lack, the sting of present dissatisfac- tion. This is what Schopenhauer beUeved to be the essence of action, and this belief was the ground of his pessimism. There is, in the second place, the vision of the ideal. In so far as this is emphasized, as it is by the intellectualists, it leads to the cult of contemplation or quietism. There is, in the third place, the outcome of action, the satisfaction, the achievement, the thing done. In so far as this is emphasized we have the common-sense practical or utilitarian view. There remains a fourth factor which our present cult regards as the supreme value of Ufe. This fourth factor is movement from desire to attainment, the effort, the change, the deed, the performing of the act. The fine thing in action, which makes it worth while and which should be heightened and intensified, is not the uneasiness of desire, or the vision of the ideal, or the finished product, but the activity which unites them. We should learn to see in desire only the germ of activity, in the ideal only the guide of activity, and in the attainment only the relic of an act that is past. All of these derive what value they have from the act itself, of which they are only the necessary conditions and effects. I. VITALISM This activist philosophy of Hfe is associated with the present day emphasis on the science of biology, and is com- monly alhed with the biological school that is known as '' vitalism." ^ According to this school the behavior of living organisms can be explained only by assuming a unique prin- ciple of purposive spontaneity. According to the orthodox teaching represented by the majority of biologists, hfe is to be regarded as only a highly complex mechanism, to be accounted for entirely in terms of simpler physical and chemi- cal forces. This view represents the ascendancy of the ideal *■ The most prominent representative of this school is Hans Driesch. Cf. his Science and Philosophy of the Organism. I [D GOSPEL OF ACTION 333 of ''exact science." The only perfected part of science is said to be that part which has succeeded in formulating mathematical laws, by which natural events are reduced to quantitative variations of matter and energy, and may be predicted with measurable exactness. The vitaHst, on the other hand, refuses to accept the hegemony of mathematical physics. He insists that in growth and adaptation there is an irreducible factor which will not yield to mechanical for- mulation, and which has to be accepted as an ultimate datum. In other words, vitaUsm will at the very least insist upon a duahsm of the sciences, an abrupt discontinuity between those which deal with inorganic phenomena and those which deal with organic phenomena. The philosophical vitalist will commonly go further, and assert not only the autonomy of biology, but the supremacy of biology. He will find his justification for this in the idea that the vital factor is the only real agent in nature, mechanism being passive and inert and therefore requiring some extra impetus to make it go. The gospel of action and movement contains, then, as a part of its creed, the vitalistic contention that life cannot be ex- plained in terms of anything else, but rather on the contrary itself suppUes the deeper explanation of the other parts of nature. There is another reason for referring here to contemporary biological tendencies. When we think of the pragmatist or Bergsonian philosophy as centering in the conception of ''Hfe," we must be careful to avoid the eulogistic association of this term. Otherwise we shall confuse this philosophy with idealism. Here again we can find our way only by re- membering that the pragmatist tendency is empirical, while idealism is a priori. When the pragmatist, or instrumenta- list, or activist, the follower of James, Dewey or Bergson, speaks of " life " he means to refer to an observable or felt fact of nature and history. He means the attribute of animal organisms. But when an ideaUst uses the term, he is likely to mean some ideal or perfected activity which he has defined or reached by inference, and which he is disposed to spell with a capital letter, as when one speaks of ''The Higher Life " or I 334 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS **The Life Everlasting." In other words, the gospel which we are here discussing has closer affiliations with biological science than it has with spiritualistic metaphysics. It does promise to deUver living creatures from the yoke of mecha- nism, but it does not mean the emancipation of the spiritual life from its bodily forms and manifestations, nor does it in the least imply that the world is grounded in any perfected spiritual Being. n. PRACTICALISM Although in contrast with absolute idealism there is a naturalistic and matter of fact flavor to this philosophy, we must not fall into the vulgar error of supposing that it is a mere echo of the sordid and mercenary spirit which is sup- posed to be a dominant characteristic of our age. This is the slurring, invidious view of pragmatism, which leads Englishmen to regard it as an American philosophy, French- men to regard it as an Anglo-Saxon philosophy, Germans to regard it as an Entente philosophy, and MediaevaHsts or Traditionalists to regard it as a modern philosophy. Thus a recent EngUsh writer, evidently referring to James, has said that "the pragmatical doctrine that judges of the truth of a theory by its results, demands a moral complacency perhaps more common in Boston than in England." ^ I think that anyone familiar with either the writings or the per- sonaHty of William James will agree that it takes a good deal of moral complacency to accuse him of having possessed even the least trace of it. Another writer, a French-speaking Swiss, has written a book entitled Anti-Pragmatisfne, in which he identifies the pragmatist philosophy with the com- mercialism and easy-going democracy of the Western world.^ But as a matter of fact the general contention that ideas are to be judged by their fruitfulness for life does not in the least determine one's scale of values. The most unwordly of all questions, the question in which the whole challenge of religion is epitomized, is the question: ''What does it profit a 1 P. Chalmers Mitchell: Evolution and the War, p. 2. 2 By Albert Schinz, Paris, 1909. GOSPEL OF ACTION 335 I man to have gained the whole world if he has lost his own soul? '' ^ One would scarcely deem this view of life sordid, and yet it is essentially pragmatic. It insists that the truths even of religion must be sought because they are profitable. But how profitable? Profitable for what? Evidently the question of sordidness or complacency depends not on the doctrine that truth must be auspicious to life, but on what is esteemed the best life. The pragmatist is just as free to define high standards of life as the intellectualist or the idealist or anybody else. But there is another consideration which makes this slurr- ing interpretation of pragmatism utterly absurd. The practical man of the world is accused, whether justly or not, of being too prudent and calculating. The mercenary man is the man who wants to be paid for everything he does. Instead of finding the activities of life glorious or beautiful in themselves, he cares only for the money or pleasure that is to result from them. Now this is not only different from that gospel of fife and movement which is proclaimed by the pragmatist school; it is the precise opposite. The practical man is interested in getting and having; but the devotee of action and movement is interested in Uving. Indeed, if he is open to any charge of moral error, it is the charge that he is entirely too bhnd to consequences; that he is too little con- cerned that hfe should be provident, too willing that it should be impulsive and blind. The real weakness in the gospel of action for action's sake is not that it is too much calculating, but that it is too Uttle purposive. III. ACTION FOR action's SAKE Even within the scope of the formula of "action for action's sake " there are still many different nuances and distribu- tions of emphasis, among which I shall distinguish four. I. Functional Exercise. The variety of this view that is closest to biological science is that which takes as its point of departure the native propensities of the organism. Our practical nature, it is said, consists essentially of various specific impulses to act. The organism is so constituted as 336 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS to function in this way and that. The value of life, it is said, lies not in what these functions may result in, not in any end in which they come to rest, but in their exercise. The good thing, for example, is not to get one's breath, but to breathe. Thus Professor E. B. Holt, following Freud, terms these dispositions ^^ wishes," and says that ethics or the art of life consists in obtaining their free and unhampered expression. ^ Left to themselves these wishes conflict with one another, and they are further *' suppressed '* by habit, tradition and other forces from the physical and social environment. It is the task of thought to find ways in which they may be reconciled and harmonized. Mainly owing to the teachings of Freud this view has exercised a profound influence upon present ideas of mental and moral hygiene. It has led men to re- gard human unhappiness and morbid depression as mainly due to buried and smothered complexes, which, having no proper vent, rankle within or express themselves indirectly in unnatural and distorted forms. Passages need to be opened outward, so that the organism may do the things it is made and predisposed to do. Education should seek to multiply new forms of expression, instead of adding to the already excessive weight of repression. Society should find for each individual that vocation in which his nature may find an outlet. An older and less original form of this view has termed itself ''energism."2 It arose as a natural sequel to the rejec- tion of psychological hedonism. It teaches that instead of being governed by the expectation of pleasure to come, human action is governed by the pressure of impulses that seek release. The good Hfe is the hfe in which these latent energies are called into play, as harmoniously and as abun- dantly as possible. It is to be noted that this view strongly resembles the old Greek view of the good hfe, as the normal and perfect func- tioning of the distinctively human capacities. There is a certain restraint in a Hfe so conceived, a restraint imposed by * Cf. his volume entitled, The Freudian Wish, 2 Cf . Paulsen's System of Ethics, GOSPEL OF ACTION 337 nature. The good hfe in this sense is the healthy life in which impulses are not only free but well-ordered E'ach impulse has its appointed sphere and its appointed limits It is the acceptance of this norm of general organic well-being that distinguishes the view from that which follows. 2. The Sense of Livmg. One may construe the* formula of action for action's sake,'' as a kind of reckless intensifi- cation of ife^ In this case, I think, it is not so much action that IS valued, as the sense of action. Certain feelings ordi- nanly accompanying action are to be brought to the hiijhest possible pitch. To this end one act will do as well as another provided It IS energetic enough. This exultation in sheer energy, regardless of consequences, is typically expressed by Peer Gynt who is pursued by the parish after having seduced and abandoned Ingrid: "This is Hfe! Every limb grows as strong as a bear's. {Strikes out with his arms and leaps in the air.) To crush, overturn, stem the rush of the foss' To strike! Wrench the fir-tree right up by the root! 1 his is Me ! This both hardens and lifts one high ! " i It is this same emphasis on the sense of life that has in- spired so much of recent art. According to Rodin hfe for the artist is^ an infimte enjoyment, a constant ecstasy, a dis- tracted mtoxication." It is the task of sculpture to convey this sense of movement. Many post-impressionist painters have sacrificed every value of color and form to this dynamic value seeking only to communicate that feeUng for the force and thrust of things which characterizes the painter's own enjoyment of nature. Indeed, there is a modern school of criticism which teaches that the central motive in all the plastic arts is to stimulate the motor-consciousness. Accord- mg to the new principle of empathy {^^ Einfuhlung ^ the value of the work of art Hes in its power of stirring in the observer certain incipient muscular adjustments which are so it'i^'r^"^/' ^? ^T^^'"" ^ ^'^''^^ ^^^^^ ^^ '' life-enhance- ment. The visual values are subordinated to ^^ tactile ArZ''"'' ^''' ^^"'' ^'' '^' ^^^^^ ^'^' Translation by WiUiam and Charles 338 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS values"; that is, the appeal to the eye is only a means of arousing kinaesthesia, or the sense of bodily contact and movement.^ 3. The Sense of Power. Between Peer Gynt^s mad im- pulse to crush and overturn, and the artist's interest in so attuning himself that he may vibrate in unison with the life about him, there is a wide difference; a difference so great, indeed, as to verge upon contradiction. In discussing Stev- enson's and James's feeUng for the preciousness of the in- dividual, we have already met with what may be called the sympathetic or receptive type of activism. Its moral ten- dency is social and tolerant. Of the opposite type, which is egoistic and self-assertive, the most impressive exponent is Nietzsche. According to this writer the sense of life is the sense of power, the cruel spirit of Dionysus, ^'the joy of pro- creative and destructive force, as unremitting creation." ^ Life is essentially aggressive and appropriative and the will to power is therefore its natural and proper expression. But this will to power is keenest only when there is resistance to be overcome. It is intensified by struggle. Hence, accord- ing to Nietzsche, the sense of external and ahen reality is the complement of the sense of power. "Thus it is the highest degrees of activity which awaken belief in regard to the object, in regard to its 'reality.' The sensations of strength, struggle and resistance convince the subject that there is something which is being resisted. . . . Life is based on the hypoth- esis of a belief in stable and regularly recurring things ; the mightier it is, the more vast must be the world of knowledge and the world called being." ^ In other words, whatever is outside the ego exists as some- thing by which the "will to power " or to "over-power " may be challenged, and the sense of mastery enhanced. 4. The Sense of Effort. Nietzsche's idea that the sense of power is intensified by resistance brings to hght another ^ Cf. B. Berenson: Florentine Painters. For a brief popular statement of the theory of "Empathy," cf. Veraon Lee's The Nature of the Beautiful. 2 The Will to Power y § 415. ^ The Will to Power, Vol. II, §§ 533, 552. GOSPEL OF ACTION 339 distinction, if indeed it is not a paradox, in this activistic cult. The sense of action appears to be inversely propor- tional to the amount of action that actually occurs. In other words, when one is acting easily and smoothly, in the absence of resistance, one is not keenly sensible of acting; one may even be quite unconscious that one is acting at all. On the other hand, when one is putting forth great effort against resistance, and is vividly aware of the exertion one is making, one's action is in part obstructed and thwarted. It is one thing to be thoroughly alive, but another and very different thing to feel very much aUve. This opposition has been brought out very effectively by WiUiam James in his essay on ''The Gospel of Relaxation." Applying his own theory of the emotions, he emphasizes the large extent to which the feeling of effort is composed of sensations of in- ternal strain and tension which are due to the fact that action finds no outlet. He advocates spontaneity, freedom, naturalness, against "the American over- tension and jerki- ness and breathlessness and intensity and agony of expres- sion "; which he thinks is more a bad habit than a proof of industry. *'I suspect that neither the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and severity of our breakdowns, but that their cause lies rather in those absurd feelings of hurry and having no time, in that breathlessness and tension, that anxiety of feature and that solicitude for results, that lack of inner harmony and ease, in short, by which with us the work is so apt to be accom- panied, and from which a European who should do the same work would nine times out of ten be free. . . . '' Unclamp, in a word, your intellectual and practical machinery, and let it run free; and the service it will do you will be twice as good. . . . Just as a bicycle chain may be too tight, so may one's carefulness and conscientiousness be so tense as to hinder the running of one's mind." ^ This is a criticism of the American idea of hustle and busy- ness; of the ''bottled-lightning" type of American girl. It affords one more conclusive proof of the profound ambiguity * Op. cit., in Talks on Psychology and Life's Ideals, pp. 212, 214, 221, 222. 340 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS which vitiates this ideal of action for action^s sake. This may mean the free and abundant exercise of natural func- tions, or a subjective sense of activity. It may mean the reverberation in ourselves of the life about us, or it may mean the conquering of resistance. And from these different interpretations spring radically different moral attitudes or philosophies of Ufe. IV. ULTIMATE IDEALS The obvious objection to this gospel of action for action's sake is that it affords Ufe no ultimate justification. It appears to make a virtue of that very purposelessness and wa>^vardntss that we ordinarily think needs to be corrected by ethics and reUgion. Let us ask, then, what ultimate ideals this gospel has to propose. I. Heroism. The ideal that is most closely connected with this gospel, which requires least in the way of meta- physical construction and support, is the ideal of heroism. The supreme value in Hfe, according to this view, is just to live greatly. According to Jean-Christophe, all that is \\ necessary is that a man should be healthy. He will then be quite content to play the man's part, and let eventuahties take care of themselves: ''Go on to Death, you who must die! Go and suffer, you who must suffer! You do not live to be happy. You live to fulfil my Law. Suffer; die. But be what you must be — a Man." In another passage the author says of his hero: "He was too fundamentally religious to think much about God. He lived in God; he had no need to believe in Him. That is well enough for the weak and worn, for those whose lives are anaemic. They aspire to God as a plant does to the sun. The dying cling to life. But he who bears in his soul the sun and life, what need has he to seek them outside himself?" ^ This is also Carlyle's idea, when he says, "The chief end of life is not thought but action. Up! Up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." It is also 1 Rolland's Jean-Christophe, Vol. I, pp. 211, 231. GOSPEL OF ACTION 341 Nietzsche's meaning, when he teaches men not to avoid suffer- ing, but rather to create it, both for themselves and for others, as a condition of ''the highest Hfe, that of the conqueror." ^ The most striking and powerful manifestation of this ideal of heroism is to be found in the SyndicaUst movement in France. It is this ideal which has come more and more to ft / distinguish the extremists such as the "I. W. W." and the i ^ Bolsheviki from the moderate sociaUsts and labor-unionists. I do not mean to deny that these extremists arc also actuated by baser motives such as revenge and plunder, by simpler motives such as fear and necessity, and by nobler motives such a*s humanity. But in so far as they idealize their cause, it tends to be less in terms of a social Utopia, and more in terms of the immediate values of action and struggle. This idealization of class war finds its most philosophical and con- scious expression in Mr. George Sorel's "Reflections on Violence." ^ The violence of the proletariat, according to this writer, is the only means by which "the European na- tions stupefied by humanitarianism can recover their ancient energy." ^ What is needed in order that men may live more heroically is a new soul-passion, a "sublime fanaticism." This Sorel proposes to obtain by emphasizing economic pro- duction, and by proclaiming that the only producers are those who participate directly by the work of their hands in agriculture or in industry. The workers who have hitherto been despised are now to be exalted; the poUticians, the merchants, the mihtary, the administrators and the bureau- crats are to be regarded as the parasites of society. The "manuals" are to supersede the "intellectuals," as the crown of the pyramid. But this social revolution is justified not for the sake of the new era that is to result from it, so much as for the sake of the new energy with which this dream is to revitalize a decadent race. 1 Nachgelassene Werke, Vol. XIII, § 226. 2 For an excellent discussion of the philosophical bearings of this view, and in particular of the similarity between Syndicalism and Nietzsche, of. G. Guy-Grand, La Philosophie Syridicaliste, especially Chap. IV. 3 Op. cit., p. 48. 342 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS *^The proletarian violence," says Sorel, ^' . . . carried on as a pure and simple manifestation of the sentiment of class war, ap- pears thus as a very fine and very heroic thing; it is at the service of the immemorial interests of civiHzation. . . . Let us salute the revolutionaries as the Greeks saluted the Spartan heroes who defended Thermopylae and helped to preserve the civiHzation of the ancient world. ... It is to violence that Socialism owes those high ethical values by means of which it brings salvation to the modern world." ^ It is customary to say of the syndicalist that they conceive production too narrowly, overlooking the importance of the directing mind of the manager, and that they fail to see that neither their interest nor any interest can be secured without the control and order provided by government. These criticisms are undoubtedly just. But I wish here rather to point out the conflict between the particular class-aspirations of the proletariat and the general ideal of the heroic life which they seek to promote. For if it is heroism that is wanted, that can be secured by one fanaticism as well as another, by the victory of their enemies as well as by their own victory. Indeed the supreme opportunity for heroism would seem to be afforded not by the more petty war of classes, but by the stupendous war of nations. The devotee of heroism ought logically to espouse not internationalism, but that state- fanaticism which hurls the entire manhood and resources of one society against those of another. The extreme advo- cates of class-struggle belong, then, beside those very na- tionalists whom they so hate. Both would abandon entirely the hope of peace, plenty and happiness, despising such a hope as sordid and unmanly. Both would have the world converted into a smoking battle-ground where courage, glory and great passions spring from the blood-stained ruins of the delicately woven fabric of civilization. That the cult of heroism must equally include all fanatic sectarians and partisans, and can afford no special justifica- tion to one above another, appears in this eloquent apos- trophe to syndicalism written by Romain Rolland. 1 Reflections on Violence, English translation by T. E. Hulme, pp. 99, 295. GOSPEL OF ACTION 343 ' *'Till now Christophe had only seen the lowest form of socialism, — that of the politicians who dangled in front of the eyes of their famished constituents the coarse and childish dreams of Happiness, or to be frank, of universal Pleasure, which Science in the hands of Power could, according to them, procure. Against such revoltmg optimism Christophe saw the furious mystic reaction of the elite arise to lead the Syndicates of the working- classes on to battle. It was a summons to 'war, which engenders the subHme,' to heroic war 'which alone can give the dying worlds a goal, an aim, an ideal.' These greal Revolutionaries, spitting out such 'bourgeois, peddling, peace-mongering, English' socialism, set up against it a tragic conception of the universe, 'whose law is antagonism,' since it lives by sacrifice, perpetual sacrifice, eternally renewed. . . . If there was reason to doubt that the army, which these leaders urged on to the assault upon the old world, could understand such warUke mysticism, which applied both Kant and Nietzsche to violent action, nevertheless it was a stirring sight to see the revolu- tionary aristocracy, whose bhnd pessimism, and furious desire for heroic Ufe, and exalted faith in war and sacrifice, were Hke the miUtant reUgious ideal of some Teutonic Order or the Japanese Samurai. . . . Calvinists, Jansenists, Jacobins, SyndicaUsts, in all there was the same spirit of pessimistic ideaHsm, struggling against nature, without illusions and without loss of courage: — the iron bands which uphold the nation." ^ 2. The Universal Life. The philosophy which we are here examining is as a rule pluralistic. It either encourages a defiant assertion of self or of one's own class or party against all-comers, or it recognizes the specific and irreducible value of each unit of life, the other life no less than one's own. But there are traces here and there of a monistic trend. For after all, life is life. If there is no single all-embracing unit of life, there is at any rate the common quality of life, which begets a sense of kinship in all living creatures. Thus, ac- cording to the French philosopher Guyau, life is essentially expansive, not in Nietzsche's sense of superseding or appro- priating, but in the sense of sympathetic accord. Life tends to be loyal to life, to live with rather than against. Accord- ing to Fouillee, Guyau's disciple and interpreter, 1 Jean-Christophe in Paris, pp. 331, 332. 344 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS *'The dominant idea developed by Guyau and followed in its main consequences is that of life, as the common principle of art, morality and religion. According to him — and this is the generative conception of his whole system — life rightly under- stood, involves, in its very intensity, a principle of natural expan- sion, fecundity and generosity. From this he draws the inference that normal Ufe naturally reconciles, in itself, the individual and the social points of view." ^ In the writings of Rolland, to whom I have already so fre- quently alluded, this sense of the common life reaches the level of religious rapture. He says of his hero, ^'The stoic principles of life, to w^hich he had hitherto delighted to bend his will, morality, duty, now seemed to him to have no truth nor reason. Their jealous despotism was smashed against Nature. Human nature, healthy, strong, free, that alone was virtue; to hell with all the rest J It provoked pitying laughter to see the little peddling rules of prudence and policy which the world adorns with the name of morahty, while it pretends to inclose all life within them. A preposterous mole-hill, an ant-like people! Life sees to it that they are brought to reason. Life does but pass, and all is swept away." ^ This sense of a great cosmic flood of life in which the in- dividual is engulfed, reaches its highest intensity in the mysti- cal experience. The following passage is one of the most remarkable descriptions of religious ecstasy which literature affords: ^'That evening, Jean-Christophe was sunk in an exhausted torpor. The whole house was asleep. His window was open. Not a breath came up from the yard. Thick clouds filled the sky. Christophe mechanically watched the candle burn away at the bottom of the candlestick. He could not go to bed. He had no thought of anything. He felt the void growing, growing from moment to moment. He tried not to see the abyss that drew him to its brink: and in spite of himself he leaned over and his eyes gazed into the depths of the night. In the void, chaos was stir- ring, and faint sounds came from the darkness. Agony filled him: a shiver ran down his spine: his skin tingled: he clutched the ^ Alfred Fouillee, Pages choisies de J . M. Guyau (1895), Introduction, p. vii. 2 Jean-Christophe, p. 256. \ GOSPEL OF ACTION 345 table so as not to fall. Convulsively he awaited nameless things, a miracle, a God. . . . ''Suddenly, like an opened sluice, in the yard behind him, a deluge of water, a heavy rain, large drops, down pouring, fell. The still air quivered. The dry, hard soil rang out Hke a bell. And the vast scent of the earth, burning, warm as that of an animal, the smell of the flowers, fruit and amorous flesh arose in a spasm of fury and pleasure. Christophe, under illusion, at fullest stretch, shook. He trembled. . . . The veil was rent. He was blinded. By a flash of lightning, he saw, in the depths of the night, he saw — he was God. God was in himself ; He burst the ceiling of the room, the walls of the house; He cracked the very bounds of existence. He filled the sky, the universe, space. The world coursed through Him, like a cataract. In the horror and ecstasy of that cataclysm, Christophe fell too, swept along by the whirlwind which brushed away and crushed like straw^s the laws of nature. He was breath- less: he was drunk with the swift hurtling down into God . . . God abyss! God-gulf! Fire of Being! Hurricane of life ! Madness of liv- ing — aimless, uncontrolled, beyond reason, for the fury of Uving!" ^ 3. Forward Movement. But the ultimate hope that is most characteristically associated with this gospel of action is the hope of progress. It is characteristic of life that it should go on and mount higher. To the sense of life is thus added the sense of a great onward march that is gathering volume and momentum as it goes. The value of religion, in this view, lies in its stimulating not contentiousness, but a militant devotion. *' Faith, rep- resentation of an ideal, and enthusiasm — these are the three conditions of human action," says Boutroux; ^'do not these three words express accurately the form that will, intellect and feeling take under religious influence? '^ ^ Guyau, who regards his view as irreligious, in the old sense, because he can no longer accept a personal God, nevertheless finds some- thing divine in life's reference to the future, its power to move forward under the light of its own ideals. "If the love of the personal God, mystically conceived, tends to be effaced in modem societies, it is not thus with the love of the 1 Ihid., pp. 252-253. 2 E. Boutroux: Science and Religion, p. 28. 346 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS God-ideal conceived as a practical type of action. The ideal does not indeed oppose the world, but simply surpasses it: it is at bottom identical with our thought itself which, while springing out of nature, goes before it, foreseeing and preparing perpetual progress. The real and ideal are reconciled in life; for life, as a whole, both is and becomes. Whoever says Ufe, says evolution.'' ^ Unquestionably this faith in progress is open to serious objection. There is no guarantee whatever that a perpetual movement, even if it be a continuous movement, and even a forward movement in the sense of prolonging a line already marked, shall be a movement from good to better. There is a story of a negro who had inadvertently broken into a wasp's nest. As he was rushing headlong down the road he was stopped by a white man, and asked where he was going. He replied, " I ain't goin' nowhere, boss. I'se just leavin' the place where I was at." It is doubtful if there is any differ- ence in principle between this explanation and such an ideal- ization of sheer movement as appears, for example, in the following creed, enunciated by Carriere, the religious painter: "I know now that Ufe is a succession of efforts continued, later on, by others. This idea gives me courage, since it leaves every- thing at work and in action; for only the thought of coming to an end is sad." ^ In a recent volume representing the instrumentalist school of Dewey, and significantly entitled Creative Intelligence, we are told that it is the function of intelligence not to measure and compose policies in terms of present human in- terests, but to construct new ideals to which life may per- petually redirect its energies. Life is not so much an ad- vance toward a goal already set as it is an achievement of new goals. Thus Professor Tufts tells us that: ''Moral progress involves both the formation of better ideals and the adoption of such ideals as actual standards and guides of life. If our view is correct we can construct better ideals neither by logical deduction nor solely by insight into the nature of things — ^ Guyau: Irreligion de Vavenir, p. 169 fif. 2 Eugene Carriere: Ecrits et lettres choisies d'E. Carriere, p. 30. Quoted by Sabatier, op. cii., p. 137. GOSPEL OF ACTION 347 if by this we mean things as they are. We must rather take as our starting-point the conviction that moral Hfe is a process involving physical hfe, social intercourse, measuring and constructive in- telligence. We shall endeavor to further each of these factors with the conviction that thus we are most Ukely to reconstruct our standards and find a fuller good." ^ But just what it means that one ideal should be ''better," or one good ''fuller" than another, we are not told. There appears to be no sense in which ideals or goods are commen- surable, save in the sense that some come later than others in time. There appears to be abundant justification even in the relatively sober and experimental view of these writers, for Mr. Bertrand Russell's general indictment of the new evolutionism : "An ideal to which the world continuously approaches is, to these minds, too dead and static to be inspiring. Not only the aspirations, but the ideal too, must change and develop with the course of evolution; there must be no fixed goal, but a continual fashioning of fresh needs by the impulse which is hfe and which alone gives unity to the process. . . . Somehow, without expUcit statement, the assurance is slipped in that the future, though we cannot foresee it, will be better than the past or the present; the reader is like the child who expects a sweet because it has been told to open its mouth and shut its eyes." - In short the gospel of action for action's sake, with its characteristic emphasis on novelty, change and creativeness, tends to view life as without destination, and without any fixed standards or orientation by which comparative attain- ment may be estimated. The instrumentalists, like many radical theorists, are protected against themselves by their adherence to the traditional ideal of collective human happi- ness, but in principle they are open to the same charge as that which may be brought against the more revolutionary exponents of irrationalism. They encourage the view that it does not make so much difference where man goes provided he is on his way. ^ Creative Intelligence, p. 404. 2 The Scientific Method in Philosophy, pp. 12, 14-15. PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 349 CHAPTER XXIV THE PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON The most extraordinary feature of the vogue of Bergson is the fact that he should have won so many disciples despite the fact that he has never explicitly and unqualifiedly avowed any moral or religious creed. He has said quite justly that it is inconsistent with his method that any such implications should be deduced from the philosophical principles he has already affirmed. He believes in taking up one problem at a time, and in refusing to anticipate the solution. Therefore since he has never taken up the problem of morals or the problem of rehgion, neither he nor anyone else can as yet know just what solution he will reach. Nevertheless the world abounds in syndicalists, futurists, Christians and other sectarians who own allegiance to him and invoke his au- thority. There are two reasons which go far toward explaining this paradox. In the first place, there is an elusiveness in his fundamental conceptions that makes it very easy for any man of faith to read his faith into them. Having rejected the reason as a means to metaphysical insight, Bergson has exposed himself to the discipleship of every man with an intuition or a cause for which he can assign no reason. A second, and doubtless a profounder, explanation is to be found in the fact that Bergson has claimed to refute mechanical science. Bergsonism, like idealism in the last century, has gained miscellaneous adherents who have been driven into its camp by the common fear of materialism. There is always an army of such refugees ready to accept the leader- ship of any champion who at the time promises to save them from this formidable menace. Bergson appears to be a more redoubtable champion even than the idealists, because he meets the scientists on their own ground. In each of his 348 major writings he has taken a scientific problem as his point of departure, a psychological problem in the Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness and in the Matter and Memory y a biological problem in the Creative Evolution. As a result he has enjoyed something of the prestige of science at the same time that he has attacked the orthodox theories of science. Bergson himself has gone so far as to claim that through his championship of 'liberty,'' ''spirit'' and ''creation," he has ahgned himself in the broad sense with the religious party against the naturaUstic party. In a letter written to the Belgian Jesuit, Father de Tonquedec, in reply to an attempt to draw him out on the subject of religion, Bergson wrote : "The considerations which I have set forth in my Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness culminated by bringing to light the fact of liberty; those in Matter and Memory made palpable, I trust, the reality of spirit (or mind); those in Creative Evolution presented creation as a fact. From all this there clearly emerges the idea of 'a God who is a creator and who is free; who generates at once matter and life; and whose creative effort continues, on the side of life, through the evolution of species and the formation of human personalities. From all this, consequently, there results the refutation of monism and of pantheism in general." ^ In other words, Bergson belongs to the biological or vitaHstic party in science at large, to the party which would insist that the organic is irreducible to the inorganic ; to the psychological party in biology, that is to the party that would insist upon the essentially spiritual character of Ufe; and to the libertarian party in psychology, which would / / / dehver the will from dependence on physiological conditions. In so far as these doctrines exalt the Uving above the dead, and the spiritual above the material, Bergson legitimately fur- nishes aid and comfort to the party of faith in their struggle against the disillusionment of modern science. At the 1 I owe this citation to A. O. Lovejoy's "Bergson and Romantic Evolu- I I I \ tionism," University of California Chronicle, Vol. XV, pp. 54-56. This is I ' ' I much the best account of Bergson's practical philosophy of which I know. 350 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 351 same time it is important to note that in all these doctrines Bergson never abandons the method of observation or the field of nature. So far there is no reference to an ultimate cause or an ultimate destiny, no provision either for the God of religion or for man's immortal soul. Let us now turn to the more pecuHar teachings of this philosopher, and glean what we can that is of practical import from his general doctrines as well as from his own scattered and inconclusive observations on practical topics. I. QUIETISM We shall find, I think, that there is one very fundamental ambiguity in Bergson's practical philosophy, which affects not only the moral ideal, but the religious emotions as well. In ideahzing Hfe are we to look forward and outward, as one does in practical affairs, or are we to look backward and inward, as one does in mystical insight? Psychologically these two attitudes inhibit one another. It is similar to the opposition that we have already noted between being alive and feeling ahve. But in Bergson's philosophy the opposi- tion is explicitly affirmed and receives a new emphasis. When we are in action we invoke the intellect to guide us; and in so far as our consciousness assumes the form of inteUi- gence, it externalizes objects and externalizes ourselves in relation to objects. We also tend to become preoccupied with the goal, and relatively insensible of the action itself. "The function of the intellect is to preside over actions. Now, in action, it is the result that interests us; the means matter little provided the end is attained. Thence it comes that we are alto- gether bent on the end to be realized, generally trusting to it in order that the idea may become an act; and thence it comes also that only the goal where our activity will rest is pictured explicitly to our mind: the movements constituting the action itself either elude our consciousness or reach it only confusedly." ^ But in order, on the other hand, to be aware of life itself as the deeper reahty, consciousness must ''turn inwards on * Creative Evolution, pp. 182, 299. ii I f i itself, and awaken the potentialities of intuition that . . . slumber within it." *'Let us try to see, no longer with the eyes of the intellect alone, which grasps only the already made and which looks from the outside, but with the spirit. I mean with that faculty of seeing which is immanent in the faculty of acting and which springs up, somehow, by the twisting of the will on itself, when action is turned into knowledge, like heat, so to say, into light." ^ Even the most limber consciousness must find it difficult, if not impossible, at one and the same time to be ''altogether bent on the end to be realized," and to "twist on itself." The heat of action that generates the inward light cannot but be cooled at its source by the effort to witness the light. In any case, there is a clear duality between the life of action, and the quietistic sense of what it is to live. For the quietist, as Santayana puts it, "life, like the porcupine when not ruffled by practical alarms, can let its fretful quills subside. The mystic can live happy in the droning consciousness of his own heart-beats and those of the universe." ^ But then the very freedom from life's alarms tends to reduce life to such mere organic functioning as can dispense with conscious guidance — to digestion, respiration and circulation. Or a man may enter upon the affairs of life, involving inter- course with an external environment, objectified and ordered by the intellect; and then he loses the intuition of the elan vital, and dwells in the artificial world of spacial schema- tism. II. FREEDOM We shall return again, in considering religion, to the quietistic motive in Bergson. Meanwhile let us turn to the very different motive which evidently prompts what little he has to say about current moral issues. No one has insisted more positively than Bergson upon the prerogative of human freedom. I have already spoken of the complexity of motives * Ihid.y pp. 182, 250. * Winds of Doctrine, p. 13. I 352 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS underlying this conception.^ With Bergson, as with James, freedom signifies the absence not only of mechanical necessity, but the absence also of the control of rational purpose. To conceive the act as part of a system, whether a quantitative system such as is formulated by the exact sciences, or an ideal system such as is formulated by the moral sciences, is to fall into the error of intellectuaUsm. It is to view action externally as part of a dead and rigid scheme of spatial relations. But the way of escape for Bergson is not, as with James, to conceive the relations of the act more loosely, so as to admit of a certain free play and diversity of alternatives. Bergson would regard chance, or the^ mere absence of determination, as still a purely external view of the matter. An act which is disjoined from its surroundings is still an act viewed as part of a scheme which is essentially extended or spatial in its form. To apprehend freedom we must abandon schematism altogether, and view the act from within. We then find that freedom is not so much an attribute of action as it is the very essence of action. Action, real time, the elan vital, are all one thing which can be grasped only by an immediate, instinctive feeling for it. He who is alive, and is not misled by his own externalizing and schematizing intellect, knows that Ufe wells up from within, that it carries its own past history along with it, that its parts interpenetrate and infuse one another, and that it creates its future as it goes. Its past is a part of its nature, like maturity of character, or ripeness of fruit, or the sea- soned flavor of old wines; its future is its potentiaHty and promise, like the quality of youth. It has no past and no future in the sense of an external control lying beyond itself in the distance. All that it has, it has now within itself as the source of its spontaneous energy. I need scarcely say that to many minds this conception of the creative power of Ufe will at once supply a sufficient basis for moral and religious philosophy. It satisfies the moral demand that man shall be the responsible author of his own acts, and that he shall have an effective power over his own 1 Cf. above, pp. 235-237. PfflLOSOPHY OF BERGSON 353 destiny. *'The France of to-morrow," says Bergson, ''will be what we will it to be, for the future is dependent on us, and is that which free human wills make of it." ^ It satisfies the reUgious demand that the human prerogatives shall in the cosmos at large be pre-potent over the blind forces of physical nature. For according to this teaching mechanical necessity is a fabrication of the intellect, having the purely instrumental value of facilitating action, and affording no insight whatever into the original sources of things. Matter is impotent; in fact it is nothing at all but a sort of relic of a power that has run out, a sort of debris or precipitate which life leaves behind along the course which it pursues. The difference of temper between the activism of Bergson and the activism of Nietzsche is adequately conveyed by the contrast between the terms '' creation " and ''power." With Nietzsche life is essentially aggressive and miUtant. It must overcome and appropriate; it must achieve superiority and ascendancy. In other words, Ufe in Nietzsche's sense impHes inferiority and death as its converse. But for Bergson to live is to create, to fructify and to increase. Life in this sense does not flourish at the expense of Ufe, the strong at the expense of the weak; but it redeems the waste places, and fiUs only the vacancy of death and non-being. Further- more, there is in Bergson, as we shaU presently see, a sense of the soUdarity of all Uves, as parts of one great forward move- ment, springing from a common source and serving a common cause. m. LIFE VERSUS MECHANISM A somewhat more specific and expUcit theory of value appears in Bergson's preference of those forms of human Ufe which are relatively spontaneous and individual to those forms which are relatively automatic. This distinction Ues at the basis of his theory of the comic as developed in the book entitled Laughter, He interprets laughter as a sort of unconscious criticism. 1 From a speech delivered in 1915, quoted by A. Lalande, Philosophical Rmew, VoL XXV (1916), p. 535- 354 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS *'The rigid, the ready-made, the mechanical, in contrast with the supple, the ever-changing and the living, absent-mindedness in contrast with attention, in a word, automatism in contrast with free activity, such are the defects that laughter singles out and would fain correct.'* ^ Ordinarily a creation of art must be individual. But the comic character is too generalized and unsocial to arouse our sympathies. Since we do not feel with him, we can laugh at him. In other words, the comic character is a *^ character,'' wooden, abstract and typical. On the same principle, the foreigner is always a character, and funny, so long as his general racial or national characteristics are so prominent as to eclipse his individuality. When we know him better he is no longer a *' figure of a man," but an individual whom we must now take seriously. The utility of laughter in social life at large is as a means of penalizing those forms of life that are over-habituated and stilted, or lacking in responsiveness and spontaneity. This same principle underlies Mr. Bergson's most impor- tant public utterance since the opening of the war, his Discourse before the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences on December 12, 1914.^ He regards the present German Empire as the incarnation of mechanism and artificiality, and the present war as the supreme struggle between this degrading principle and the counter-principle of life and spontaneity. Since this address affords almost the only reliable evidence of the sort of moral Bergson would draw from his own philosophy I feel justified in quoting it at some length. In the most significant passage he represents some future philosopher, who is enabled to see things in the proper perspective, as commenting thus on the tragic events of the present war: *'He will say that the idea, peculiar to the nineteenth century, of employing science in the satisfaction of our material wants, . . . had equipped man in less than fifty years with more tools than he ^ Laughter, p. 130. ^ « Published in a pamphlet entitled Paroles Francaises, Second Series, Librai- ric MUitaire Berger-LevrauU. * PfflLOSOPHY OF BERGSON 355 had made during the thousands of years he had Hved on the earth. Each new machine being for man a new organ — an artificial organ which merely prolongs the natural organs — his body became suddenly and prodigiously increased in size, without his soul beinor able at the same time to dilate to the dimensions of his new body" From this disproportion there issued the problems, moral, social, mternational, which most of the nations endeavored to solve by fillmg up the soulless void in the body politic, by creating more hberty, more fraternity, more justice than the world had ever seen Now, while mankind labored at this task of spiritualization, infe- rior powers . . . plotted an inverse experience for mankind! . What kind of a world would it be if this mechanism should seize' the human race entire, and if the peoples, instead of raising themselves to a ncher and more harmonious diversity, as persons may do were to fall into the uniformity of things? . . . What would happen, in short, if the moral effort of humanity should turn in'^its tracks at the moment of attaining its goal, and if some diaboHcal contrivance should cause it to produce the materiaHzation of spirit, instead of the spiritualization of matter? There was a people predestined to try the experiment. Prussia had been militarized by her kings: Germany had been miHtarized by Prussia: a powerful nation was on the spot marching forward in mechanical order. Administra- tion and military mechanism were only waiting to make alHance with industrial mechanism. The combination once made, a for- midable machine would come into existence. A touch upon the starting-gear and the other nations would be dragged in the wake of Gerniany, subjects to the same movement, prisoners of the same mechanism. Such would be the meaning of the war on the day when Germany should decide upon its declaration. . . . That the powers of death might be matched against life in one supreme combat, destiny had gathered them all at a single point/' ^ The certain promise of victory for the Allies is to be found, according to this teaching, in the fact that their moral force is inexhaustible. '^On the one side, that which wears out; on the other side, that which never wears out. Machines do in fact wear out." 2 Despite their professions of philosophy, » Op. cit., pp. 20-24. This English rendering is to be found in a part of the address reprinted in the Hibbert Journal, 1915, pp. 473-475, under the title of "Life and Matter at War." ^ Op. cit., p. 23. 35^ THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS Bergson thinks the Germans are really sustained only by the strength of their machine. They exult in the pride of their power. When the machine becomes worn, and the power wanes, there will be nothing from which to renew them. The Allies, on the other hand, are alive; and living things, unlike machines, recover their strength and regenerate their injured tissues. They are, furthermore, Hnked with the great cosmic reservoir of Ufe and on this they may draw so long as may be necessary. Their eventual victory is as certain as it is certain that life will triumph over ^death m the world at large. IV. man's place in nature We must now turn to the more metaphysical aspects of Bergson's philosophy, and ask what assurance he gives us of the triumph of Ufe in general, and of human life in particular. I. Man as a Part of Nature. In the first place we have to observe that Bergson renounces both supernaturalism and duaUsm. We must not build our hopes on any divorce between the spiritual man and his natural body or environ- ment. Such philosophies merely make the spiritual man unreal. If science is to be disputed it must be within that very field of nature which science claims to rule. *Thilosophy introduces us into the spiritual life. And it shows us at the same time the relation of the Ufe of the spirit to the body. The great error of the doctrines on the spirit has been the idea that by isolating the spiritual Ufe from all the rest, by suspending it m space as high as possible above the earth, they were placmg it beyond attack, as if they were not thereby simply exposing it to be taken as an effect of mirage." Bergson goes on to say that it is well to cUng to the beUefs in freedom, in the superiority of spirit to matter, in the eminence of man over the animal, even in personal immor- taUty; but says that "all these questions will remam unanswered, a philosophy of intuition will be a negation of science, wUl be sooner or later swept PfflLOSOPHY OF BERGSON 357 away by science, if it does not resolve to see the Ufe of the body just where it reaUy is, on the road that leads to the Ufe of the spirit." 1 2. PluraUsm and the Triumph of Life. Furthermore we must not build our hopes on any monistic principle that would explain the world as tiie systematic realization of the spiritual ideals. In the widest view that one can take, the worid remains a vast chaotic manifold, with unbridged chasms, unredeemed failures and indefinite boundaries. There is, it is true, a certain consolation in this very lack of system and completeness. For it prevents science from drawing any final conclusions from that part of nature which we happen to know best. ''The universe is an assemblage of solar systems which we have every reason to believe analogous to our own. No doubt they are not absolutely independent of one another. Our sun radiates heat and light beyond the farthest planet, and, on the other hand, our entire solar system is moving in a definite direction as if it were drawn. There is, then, a bond between the worlds. But this bond may be regarded as infinitely loose in comparison with the mutual dependence which unites the parts of the same world among themselves; so that it is not artificially, for reasons of mere convenience, that we isolate our solar system: nature itself invites us to isolate it. As Uving beings, we depend on the planet on which we are, and on the sun which provides for it, but on nothing else. As thinking beings, we may apply the laws of our physics to our own worid, and extend them to each of the worids taken separately; but nothing tells us that they apply to the entire universe, nor even that such an affirmation has any meaning; for the universe is not made, but is being made continually. It is growing, perhaps indefinitely, by the addition of new worlds." ^ But if we may derive a vague hope from the pluralistic constitution of the world, we are at the same time prevented from claiming the worid as made for man. The very freedom that we prize forbids us to conceive that the worid is governed throughout by any purpose, even a beneficent purpose. 1 Creative Evolution, Mitchell's translation, p. 268. 2 Op, cit., p. 241. 358 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS ''Life . . . transcends finality as it transcends the other cate- gories. . . . There has not, therefore, properly speaking, been any project or plan. ... It is abundantly evident that the rest of na- ture is not for the sake of man: we struggle Hke the other species, we have struggled against other species. . . . It would be wrong to regard humanity, such as we have it before our eyes, as prefigured in the evolutionary movement. It cannot even be said to be the outcome of the whole of evolution, for evolution has been accom- plished on several divergent fines, and while the human species is at the end of one of them, other lines have been followed with other species at their end.'' There is only one sense in which man may be said to be supreme in nature. Though he in no sense represents the consummation of the whole natural process, nevertheless he surpasses the rest of nature in his power to cope with matter. Through his intellect man can escape the bond of habit, and continue to move forward to fresh creations, when the plants and lower animals have reached a stationary equilibrium. The pre-eminence of man lies in his capacity for growth and progress. ''From our point of view, life appears in its entirety as an im- mense wave which, starting from a centre, spreads outwards, and which on almost the whole of its circumference is stopped and converted into oscillation: at one smgle point the obstacle has been forced, the impulsion has passed freely. It is this freedom that the human form registers. Everywhere, but in man, consciousness has had to come to a stand; in man alone it has kept on its way. Man, then, continues the vital movement indefinitely, although he does not draw along with him all that life carries in itself . . . . On other lines of evolution there have travelled other tendencies which life impfied, and of which, since everything interpenetrates, man has, doubtless, kept something, but of which he has kept only very little. // is as if a vague and formless being, whom we may call as we will, man or superman, had sought to realize himself, and had succeeded only by abandoning a part of himself on the way.'' ^ It must be admitted that there is no guarantee even in the case of man that life will not eventually die down and expire, fatally obstructed by the inertia of its own material creations, 1 Op. ciL, pp. 265-266. Cf. also pp. 269-270. PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 359 by a sort of friction with its own vestiges. Life is at best a struggle in which inert matter is a most redoubtable adver- sary. "All our analyses show us, in life, an effort to remount the indine that matter descends. . . . The life that evolves on the surface of our planet is indeed attached to matter. . . . But everything hap- pens as if it were doing its utmost to set itself free from these laws (of inert matter). It has not the power to reverse the direction of physical changes. ... It does, however, behave absolutely as a force would behave which, left to itself, would work in the inverse direction. Incapable of stopping the course of material changes downwards, it succeeds in retarding it." ^ From this doubtful spectacle we can take refuge only in the more general fact that *' beside the worlds which are dying, there are without doubt worlds that are being born." ^ 3. The Human IndividuaL Even if we count life the victor in the struggle with inert matter, and man the most successful form of life, this does not imply the immortality of the human individual. It seems to be the broad stream of humanity rather than the little personal rills, to which the victory is given. Indeed the very categories of unity and multiplicity are appropriate to matter and not to life. It is matter which individuates. Just as life at its source is without individuals, so, it would appear, will life be in its triumphant conquest of matter. How this is to be reconciled with Bergson's regard for the individual as the centre and spring of human life does not appear. This is a favorite dilemma for voluntaristic philosophies, the central dilemma, for example, of Schopenhauer's philosophy. It is through matter that wills appear to be divided, so that the original will which creates matter must be a universal will. But on the other hand, the peculiar quality of will appears only where there is an individual that asserts himself. When dissolved into an impersonal or collective flow, will seems to lapse into acquiescence and passivity. Nevertheless, Berg- son expUcitly tells us that *^ souls are being continually * Op. cit., pp. 245-246. * Ibid., pp. 246-247 (note). 360 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS created, which nevertheless, in a certain sense, pre-existed. They are nothing else than the little rills into which the great river of Ufe divides itself, flowing through the body of hu- manity." ^ A further objection to personal immortality lies in the fact that it seems to be characteristic of Ufe to be careless of the individual. ''In the organized world, the death of individuals does not seem at all Uke the diminution of 'life in general,' or like a necessity which life submits to reluctantly. As has been more than once remarked, life has never made an effort to prolong indefinitely the existence of the individual, although on so many other points it has made so many successful efforts. Everything is as if this death had been willed, or at least accepted, for the greater progress of life in general." ^ V. THE CONCEPTION OF GOD I. God and Time.^ In most theologies it is thought that the exalted station of God requires him to be beyond time. He may, as the ideaUsts, for example, have taught us, include time within himself as a necessary part of his life, or he may reveal and unfold himself in time. But it has usually been supposed that his essential nature must be free from time's ravages, and Ufted above the plain of change. Among philosophies of the type we are now considering, however, the world is thought of as incurably temporal. If God is to find any place in such a world, he must belong to its past or to its future, or share in its changing vicissitudes. We have already met with one theology of this type, the finite theism of James, in which God is the champion of righteousness in its long-protracted struggle with evil. We have now to consider other possible temporalistic theologies, with a view to defining the theology of Bergson. Although Bergson, like James, is a pluralist and must therefore regard God as only one of many components of 1 Ibid., p. 270. « Ibid., pp. 246-247 (note). » For an excellent discussion of this subject, cf. A. O. Lovejoy, op. at. I I PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 361 reality, he is not like James primarily a moralist in his theol- ogy. God is identified not with the moral will, or with duty, but with life in the broader sense, in its lower and more instinctive forms as well as in its more human and conscious forms. But in which of its aspects is this cosmic life to be regarded as divine? There is one further alternative which is evidently inconsistent with the general spirit of Bergson's philosophy. It would be possible to think of God as the goal of life, as a condition of stable perfection, an eventual consummation which life is some day to attain. But since in this philosophy the living is the good, and the inert is evil, a static God coming after the movement of life is over would be less admirable, less divine, than the lowest of living crea- tures. If God is to be more and not less than animals and man, he must be more purely or more extensively alive. There remain two further alternatives, and which of these Bergson chooses it is impossible to say. Different as they are, he nevertheless appears, in so far as he can be said to have made any choice at all, to have chosen them both. 2. God as the Source. On the one hand, God may be thought of as the inexhaustible reservoir from which life springs. This is what Wells would call *' God the Creator.'^ Bergson is fond of metaphors and in this connection he is especially fond of pyrotechnic metaphors. *'Let us imagine," he says, "a vessel full of steam at a high pressure, and here and there in its sides a crack through which the steam is escaping in a jet. The steam thrown into the air is nearly all condensed into little drops which fall back, and this condensa- tion and this fall represent simply the loss of something, an inter- ruption, a deficit. But a small part of the jet of steam subsists uncondensed for some seconds; it is making an effort to raise the drops which are falling; it succeeds at most in retarding their fall. So, from an immense reservoir of life, jets must be gushing out unceasingly, of which each falling back, is a world. The evolution of living species within this world represents what subsists of the primitive direction of the original jet, and of an impulsion which continues itself in a direction the inverse of materiality." A little further on in this same context, Bergson explicitly 362 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS alludes to this reservoir, or central source, as God. The material ^world being only a sort of lapse or reversal of life, God as the source of life may be said to be the only positive and quickening source in the universe. "If I consider the world in which we live, I find that the auto- matic and strictly determined evolution of this well-knit whole is action which is unmaking itself, and that the unforeseen forms which life cuts out in it, forms capable of being themselves pro- longed into unforeseen movements, represent the action that is making itself. Now, I have every reason to believe that the other worlds are analogous to ours, that things happen there in the same way. And I know they were not all constructed at the same time, since observation shows me, even to-day, nebulae in course of con- centration. Now, if the same kind of action is going on every- where, whether it is that which is unmaking itself or whether it is that which is striving to remake itself, I simply express this probable similitude when I speak of a centre from which worlds shoot out like rockets in a fire-works display — provided, however, that I do not present this centre as a thing, but as a continuity of shooting out. God thus defined, has nothing of the already made: He is unceasing life, action, freedom. Creation, so conceived, is not a mystery; we experience it in ourselves when we act freely." ^ In this pyrotechnic theology, then, God is a "continuity of shooting out." In so far as such a God is worshipped, the worshipper tends to look back to the source of things. This is the religious sequel to that moral quietism which we have seen to be one of the legitimate interpretations of his teach- ing. This is Bergson's substitute for the religion of mystical union and dependence. By cultivating the sense of life in its purity, turning away from the divided and ordered world of the intelligence, one may feel the throbbing of the divine life within one's own pulses. And in the inexhaustibility of the divine life one may take courage despite the evidence of decay and death. 3. God as the Current. But there is another idea hinted at in the passages already quoted; the same idea in which, as we have seen in the last chapter, all activistic philosophies * Op. cU., pp. 247, 248. PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 363 tend to culminate. ^ God may be construed not as the source of life, but as its onward flow, its set and current. This would be similar to the religion professed by Bernard Shaw. ^ "The only faith," wrote Mr. Shaw, "which any reasonable disciple can gain from the Ring is not in love, but in life itself as a tireless power which is continually drawing onward and upward — not, please observe, being beckoned or drawn by Das Ewig-Weih- liche or any other external sentimentality, but growing from within by its own inexpKcable energy, into higher and ever higher forms of organization, the strengths and needs of which are continually superseding the institutions which were made to fit our former requirements." 2 ^ ^ ^ - But in Bergson there is no such clear recognition of a scale of life, of ''higher and ever higher forms of organization." There is a direction, yes; but not an ordered progression. Such direction as there is, is rather the effect of the original centrifugal movement of life prolonged by its own momentum. The inspiration which such a view affords is not the hope of mounting higher, but the sense of participating with all the lie of the world in an irresistible rush which shall sweep away every obstruction: "Such a doctrine . . . gives . . . more power to act and to live. For, with it, we feel ourselves no longer isolated in humanity, humanity no longer seems isolated in the nature that it dominates! As the smallest grain of dust is bound up with our entire solar sys^ tem, drawn along with it in that undivided movement of descent which is materiaHty itself, so all organized beings, from the hum- blest to the highest, from the first origins of life to the time in which we are, and in all places as in all rimes, do but evidence a single impulsion, the inverse of the movement of matter, and in itself indivisible. All the Hving hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death." ^ * Cf. above, p. 345 ff. 2 Quoted by A. O. Lovejoy, op. cit., p. 51. * Op. cit., pp. 270-271. CHAPTER XXV THE NEW REALISM I have been told that the population of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, is made up of ^'Canadian French, Belgian French and France French." Something like this is the case with realism. There are the Platonic reaUsts, the Scotch realists, the German realists and the ^^new" realists, or the real realists. You may infer the bias of the writer from the sort of realism in which this exposition culminates. I shall divide the topic so as to pass in order from the common thesis of all realists through a series of narrowing conceptions until we reach the pecuUar conception which distinguishes the band of choice spirits represented by the authorl We may conceive these conceptions to form a sort of pyramid. The broad base of the pyramid is the conception of independence on which all reaUsts take their stand. The pyranud is narrowed, or the company of adherents is successively re- duced, as we pass on to Platonic realism and the theory of the externality of relations, until we reach the summit composed of the relatively small group of survivors who accept the doctrines aforesaid and add to these the distinguishing con- ception of the immanence of consciousness. On this summit stand the most advanced and the most recent realists, who, for the most part, own the EngUsh language as their mother tongue. I. THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE FACT It has been said that philosophy is finding bad reasons for what men, if only let alone, would believe anyway. This might be urged with special force against the thesis that the object of knowledge is always some fact that stands there 364 THE NEW REALISM 365 independently of the knowing of it. It is quite true that this is the common-sense view of the matter. But in this par- ticular case common-sense has already been undermined by a powerful anti-realistic philosophy, and has needed to be re- established by reasons, even if they are bad ones. Philoso- phy has to be invoked to undo what philosophy has done. To feel the importance of realism's defense of independent facts, it is necessary to recognize the sway exercised a genera- tion ago over sophisticated minds by the counter-thesfs of idealism. Thus Professor Howison spoke of realism very much as we might now speak of fetichism or astrology, as that *' antiquated metaphysics, which talks about existence per se, out of all relation to minds, and which, at any rate in respect to the nature of Time, received its quietus in Kant's Transcendental Esthetic:' ^ It was Kant's view, as we have seen, that the known world, the world of space, time, matter and causality, was a mind-made world, brought into being by the very act of knowing it. What vestiges of external fact remained in Kant's philosophy were speedily removed by his successors, and the world was brought into complete subjection to the creative intellect, with its a priori forms and its guiding ideals. The world being so conceived as the creation of mind, it is no longer necessary for the mind to observe it after the fact; the mind can now forecast its product by studying its own constitution and consulting its own intentions. The world is going to be what the mind needs and aspires to, and can thus be inferred at once from an examination of the mind's needs and aspirations. If such a view has profound moral and religious implications, as will scarcely be denied, then the refutation of the view will be equally fateful. But no philosophy is governed by purely contentious or destructive motives. Let us look for some- thing more positive. I. The Attitude of Science. First, in advancing the thesis of the independence of facts, realism desires to justify and to transpose to philosophy, the attitude of science. This atti- tude, as we have seen, consists essentially in a renouncing of * Limits of Evolution, second edition, p. 21. 366 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS subjective preference, and a willingness to judge the world as one finds it. I do not ignore the scientist's use of hypoth- eses, but insist only that the scientist submits his hypothe- sis in the end to the decree of facts. I reahze that those who are most likely to find a thing are those who look for it, and that discovery is thus facihtated by prior hopes and expectations. But it is absolutely indispensable to the scientist that he should accept the defeat of his expectations as readily as their fulfilment, and that he should never confuse his hopes with the facts. I do not ignore the scientist's desire to be useful, but would point out that the scientist has come by the gradual purification of his method to see that he can be useful only by rendering a faithful report of things as they are. Science, in other words, is unmistakably based upon the assumption that there is an order of things, — a collection of existences, a set of proper- ties, a nexus of causes, — which is and which is what it is, whether the mind recognizes it or not. The mind can no more affect it by ignoring it than the ostrich by sticking his head in the sand can annihilate the danger that threatens him. Nor is this order of things affected merely by wishing it as it is or desiring it to be otherwise. It is under no bonds to agree even with our intellectual aspirations. As it may be painful or injurious, so it may even be disorderly, acci- dental or unsystematic. If nature already agrees with our likings, that is presumably because we and our likings have sprung from nature, or because we have learned to like what is familiar and inevitable. But nature is very largely con- trary to our likings. In so far as this is the case our only solution is to change nature through the action of our bodies, which fortunately enable us to enter the field of physical causes. Such is, very briefly, the attitude of science. What is called realism in art, is simply to transpose this attitude to sensuous and imaginative representation. The reaUst in art tries like the scientist to forget his own prejudices and preferences, to look steadily even on that which repels him; and be tries, by the representations he creates, to open the THE NEW REALISM 367 eyes of other men and to give them a like courage to face the facts. Now the realist, as I have said, would like to have the same attitude in philosophy. This is quite contrary to a traditional view that philosophy is an indulgent grandparent to whom one may turn with confident assurance from the hard and cruel world. To quote Mr. Russell: "Men have remembered their wishes, and have judged philoso- phies in relation to their wishes. Driven from the particular sciences, the belief that the notions of good and evil must afford a key to the understanding of the world has sought a refuge in philosophy. But even from this last refuge, if philosophy is not to remain a set of pleasing dreams, this belief must be driven forth. It is a commonplace that happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly; and it would seem that the same is true of the good. In thought, at any rate, those who forget the good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires." ^ The realist, then, would seek in behalf of philosophy the same renunciation, the same rigor of procedure, that has been achieved in science. This does not mean that he would reduce^ philosophy to natural or physical science. He recognizes that the philosopher has undertaken certain pecu- liar problems, and that he must apply himself to these, with whatever method he may find it necessary to employ. It remains the business of the philosopher to attempt a wide synoptic survey of the world, to raise underlying and ulterior questions, and in particular to examine the cognitive and moral processes. And it is quite true that for the present no technique at all comparable with that of the exact sciences is to be expected. But where such technique is attainable, as for example in symbolic logic, the reaHst welcomes it. And for the rest he limits himself to a more modest aspira- tion. He hopes that philosophers may come like scientists to speak a common language, to formulate common problems and to appeal to a common realm of fact for their solution. * B. Russell: ScietUific Method in Philosophy^ p, 28. 368 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS Above all he desires to get rid of the philosophical monologue, and of the lyric and impressionistic mode of philosophizmg. And in all this he is prompted not by the will to destroy but by the hope that philosophy may become more genuinely useful as a source of enlightenment. The realist assumes that philosophy is a kind of knowledge, and neither a song nor a prayer nor a dream. He proposes, therefore, to rely less on inspiration and more on observation and analysis. He conceives his function to be in the last analysis the same as that of the scientist. There is a world out yonder more or less shrouded in darkness, and it is important, if possible, to light it up. But instead of, like the scientist, focussing the mind's rays and throwing this or that portion of the world into brilhant relief, he attempts to bring to light the outlines and contour of the whole, realizing too well that in diffusing so widely what Uttle Hght he has, he will provide only a very dim illumination. 2. Values as Facts. It is commonly objected that if the world is all reduced to the dead level of fact, there can no longer be any values. I confess that this sounds plausible, though I am not at all sure that I know what it means. There seems to be a sort of dilemma here. We want values to be substantial and enduring things, but when they are called facts we at once recoil because that appears to make them too gross. We don't want our ideals to be mere ideals, nor on the other hand are we willing that they should be ''reduced," as we say, to mere reaUties. Let us see what realism has to contribute to the solution of this difficulty. In discussing this problem I shall find it necessary to assert quite dogmatically what I take values to be, and I shall adopt a view which many realists, notably Mr. Bertrand Russell and Mr. G. E. Moore, would be unwilling to accept.^ In the elementary sense value consists, I think, in interest. If it so happens that a miser likes gold, then gold is valuable; I do not say how valuable, but only that in some degree, great or 1 For a further discussion of these conflicting realistic views, cf . my Present Philosophical Tendencies, Chap. XIV, § 2, and "The Definition of Value," Journal of Philosophy, Vol. IX (1914). THE NEW REALISM 369 little, high or low, gold possesses value. But interests, such as the miser's interest in gold, or the Christian's love of God, or the American's aspiration for liberty, are facts. They are just as solid and just as indispensable facts as the fact that the Pacific Ocean washes the shores of California. If one wishes to know what is valuable one must discover these facts-of -interest, and acknowledge them just as disinterestedly as the geographer acknowledges the distribution of sea and land. It is not in the least inconsistent with the professions of realism that value-facts should happen to be facts regard- ing the emotions or desires of men. But it would be incon- sistent with these professions if one were to assert that there are no value-facts except what one judges so to be. Instead of leaving it to the knowing mind to create values regardless of what is presented in the world about, realism insists that if it is to be honest and enlightened, the mind must accept the interests of other sentient creatures as it finds them and allow them full weight in the formulation of standards and policies. But, one may ask, what of the object of interest? What of the liberty to which Belgium now aspires? What of the lasting peace for which the world now longs? Are not these values? And can they be said to be facts? They are certainly values; and they are facts, as parts of interests which are directed toward them. It is a fact that Belgians aspire to liberty; and this actual aspiration must somehow be distinguished from other actual aspirations by the specific direction which it takes. It is an inalienable feature of it that it should move toward its own proper object. But though Belgian liberty is already a part of the psychological fact of Belgian aspiration, it is not as yet a political fact on its own account. This is what we mean when we say that the aspiration is not yet fulfilled. No realist would propose to deny unfulfilled aspirations. On the contrary he would wish carefully to distinguish the sense in which they are facts and the sense in which they are not. The importance of this appears when we consider the third sense in which the actuality of values may be regarded. As 370 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS we all confidently believe, the day will come when what the Belgians now aspire to will have been attained. Then what was only part of the fact of aspiration will become an in- dependent fact, freed from dependence on aspiration, and requiring to be taken account of as a new political force. But in order to pass from the first stage to the second, from aspiration to attainment, it is of the greatest importance that the two stages should be rigorously distinguished. The man who mistakes the one for the other, who allows the ardor or vividness of his aspiration to invest its object with the dignity of accomplished fact, will be the last person in the world to realize his aspiration. This is only a painstaking, and I fear, obscure, restatement of the popular conviction that an efficient idealism needs a good dash of wholesome reaHsm. In order to get a thing which you want, it is highly important to know when in point of fact you have it, and when in point of fact you have it not. Now I suspect that at the back of the objection to the emphasis on facts there lies the vicious impulse to allow our interests to interfere with our judgment. There is a philoso- phy, whose acquaintance we have already made, that pro- poses to define the real world as the already consummated fulfilment of human aspirations. The world is conceived as the ideal-real, being at one and the same time what we want it to be and what we judge it to be. But this error is just as flagrant and just as fatal on the grand cosmic scale as on the smaller personal or poUtical scale. He who judges the world to be what he aspires to have it become, is the last man in the world to act effectively for the world's betterment. A sound religious idealism, Uke a sound personal or poHtical idealism, must be associated with disillusionment — with a realistic acknowledgment of things as they are. Such a disillusion- ment in no way forbids the hope that they may be otherwise, and is indispensable to the firm and patient adoption of the means by which they may become otherwise. i THE NEW REALISM n. PLATONIC REALISM 371 Many realists who would acknowledge the independence of the particular facts of nature or history would decline to go further and attribute, as Plato did, a like independence to the abstract objects of the thinking and idealizing facul- ties. Most modern realists, however, would go with Plato a part of the way. They would not agree that such abstract objects are the only ultimate facts, nor would they include among such facts the objects of cognitive, moral or aesthetic aspiration. They would accept, in other words, only the mathematical and logical part of Platonic realism. Thus Plato would say that there is an absolute truth, an absolute good and an absolute beauty, because we conceive these ds ideals; and he would say that these absolutes or perfections have a clearer title to being than the particular and limited values of this world. Both of these contentions the modern realist would reject. But Plato would also say that the properties of the mathematical triangle, or the necessities of logical implication, are actual ; and in so far as this does not prejudice the equal actuality of particular physical or social systems, the modern realist would agree with him. This modern and more limited version of Platonic realism rests on the following simple consideration. The mathe- matician and the logician both discover that certain implica- tions or conclusions follow necessarily from certain premises. Thus if X is greater than y, and y is greater than 2, then x is greater than 2. It is an abstract or universal truth, because it holds for all particular cases of x, y, and 2; and would hold even if there were no particular cases at all. It is really a truth not about any individual existent thing, but about the general relation " greater than." This is sometimes expressed by saying that ''greater than," is a transitive relation. Furthermore, this property of the relation is quite independ- ent of what we may think or will it to be. It is just as stubborn a fact, just as free from subjection to human caprice or opinion, as the particular fact that the sun is greater than the earth. It is a fact that, like physical facts, 372 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS has to be taken account of and accepted as it is by anyone who wishes to be well-adapted to this universe. Now this strain of Platonic realism has several implica- tions of emotional and practical significance. In the first place it contradicts the materiaUstic metaphysics. If the mathematical and logical forms are genuine properties of the real world, then it becomes impossible to claim that the real world is composed exclusively of matter or any purely cor- poreal substance. Indeed it is equally contradictory to the alternative type of monism which affirms that the real world is composed exclusively of spiritual or mental substance; or to a dualism which would propose to divide the world between corporeal and mental substance. It means that at least a part of the world is neither corporeal nor mental, but "neu- tral" in substance. In the second place, this strain of Platonism acknowledges the rights of the intellect. This faculty cannot now be thought of as purely instrumental. Conception, according to realism, is, Uke perception, a mode of apprehending the inherent nature of things. The intellect has its own field, which it may explore in precisely the same spirit of discovery as that which actuates the geographer or the astronomer. This has led some realists, like Mr. Russell, to the view that in the intellectual contemplation of the realm of logic and mathematics, man may find his highest, his most tranquil and self-sufficient life. ^ For this realm lies beyond the flight of time and the tumult of discordant passions. The truths of reason are the truths that endure, unaffected by the inci- dents of nature and history. He who by his reason dwells in this realm can never know defeat or disappointment. Even if he does not adopt this extremer form of the intel- leetualistic cult, the realist will in any case escape that sense of dissolution and perpetual flux which must haunt the philosopher who identifies reality exclusively with the passing events of the temporal process. 1 Cf. above, pp. 41-42. ( THE NEW REALISM in. THE EXTERNALITY OF RELATIONS 373 The new realist, like the voluntarists and pragmatists, accepts the manyness or plurality of things as an ultimate fact: ultimate, that is, not in the sense that it is desirable, but rather in the sense that it describes the world as we now find it. The realist accepts the practical implications of pluralism, but these practical implications are not as with the voluntarists and pragmatists the motive which prompts him to adopt the view. He is a pluralist for theoretical reasons, and reasons of a peculiarly technical sort that we cannot in this context properly justify. I can do no more than state them in the briefest possible manner. The realist believes that relations are external to the terms which they unite. He believes that only such a view of the matter is consistent with the results of analysis, which is only another name for a careful and discriminating examination of things. A fact, he believes, is built up out of parts, each of which has a specific character of its own which it could retain if transposed to another fact. Thus the fact that the sun is greater than the earth contains the relation ^'greater than," which has, as we have seen, its own peculiar proper- ties, and which retains these same properties in other facts such as the fact that the earth is greater than the moon. The fact that the sun is greater than the earth also contains the term *^sun," with its own peculiar properties, which it retains in the further fact that the sun was visible at twelve o'clock yesterday. In other words diverse facts contain common constituents. To say that these constituents are external to one another means simply that they are not so bound up with one another in any one fact, that they cannot be transposed without being destroyed. They do not belong exclusively to one fact, but are interchangeable. The realist does not, of course, deny that facts may be causally connected. Thus the fact that the earth revolves about the sun is causally connected with the fact that the sun is greater than the earth. These two facts are as it happens constituents of a more complex causal fact. But 374 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS each of the constituent facts is capable of appearing also in other complex facts. Even the causal relation cannot be said to merge into or possess the terms which it unites, and the other complex relations in which these terms may also appear may be relatively disjunctive, non-causal relations, such as difference or simultaneity. Now I know that all this will strike you as an elaboration of the obvious. But like the more general reaUstic thesis of factual independence, it derives importance from its denial of a contrary view, which although it cannot be said to have any popular vogue has been used as a premise from which to argue very far-reaching principles of political policy and religious faith. I refer to the view with which we have already met in our study of absolute ideaHsm, the view that all relations are internal or vital relations, and that all elements, therefore, derive their nature from the organic whole which they compose. That view impUes that in understanding and evaluating the world we must work from the whole to the part. The counter-thesis of realism impHes that we must work rather from the part to the whole; that wholes are to be regarded not as indivisible unities, but rather as collections or sums of the natures and values possessed by their parts. We have already alluded to one -"nciportant consequence of this view. It makes it possible to regard the evil in the world as a separable component, which may be isolated both in our judgment of it and in our action on it. We may condemn it without condemning the world as a whole, and we may destroy it without destroying the world as a whole. Another consequence to which I shall make only a passing allusion is this. If the world were an organic whole we could not know anything of it without knowing all of it. Short of a grasp of the indivisible totality, we should lack the key to the understanding of any of its parts. The actual advance- meiit^f knowledge, however, beUes this; for in science we advance from part to part, knowing as we go. In so far, then, as philosophy adopts the principle of organic unity, it will always tend to discredit science. But since what we THE NEW REALISM 375 do profess to know must be condemned as fragmentary, and since we cannot leap at once to omniscience, we are left without any accredited knowledge at all, except the barren assertion that the world is an organic whole. The perpetual reiteration of this principle of *' coherence," *^ synthetic unity," ''concrete universaUty," etc., is as every reader knows the most characteristic feature of the literature of idealism. But there is a further consequence of pluralism to which I wish to give special emphasis. I have expressed the opinion that the elementary value-fact is the actual interest of a sentient being. Adopting the pluralistic principle we may now pass on to the thesis that these elementary interests enter into complex aggregates in which they retain their identity, and in which they combine to form a sum of value. The realist is not prevented from admitting the existence of larger corporate interests where he finds them, but he is under no logical compulsion to affirm them where he does not find them; and when he does find them he sees them to be made up of many component interests, each being a value- fact in its own right quite independent of the whole into which it enters. But we have now already reached familiar practical issues. The absolutist will say that the individual man with his individual needs and desires has no value save what he derives from the whole. If he is valuable at all it is because he plays a part in the state or in the Absolute Life. This is his only excuse for being. But the pluralist, on the other hand, will say that there is an inherent and ultimate value in the individual which is in no way derived from either the state or the Absolute or any other corporate entity, and which has to be taken account of in any estimate of such a corporate entity. Indeed the pluralist will ordinarily go further. He will contend that the state or the larger totaHty of life is not, properly speaking, an interest at all, but a collec- tion of interests. In that case it will have no value save such as it derives from the interests which compose it. The state and even God, if by God we mean the totality of life, will then be judged by the degree to which the whole provides for the interests of the members. 376 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS This I take it, is the unconscious philosophy which under- lies individualism, social democracy and humanitanamsm. No one would be more surprised than the average exponent of these creeds to learn that they had anything to do with so recondite a technicaUty as the theory of the externahty of relations But such is in fact the case. A logical difference is a profound difference, and the profounder the difference the greater the divergence when one reaches the apphcation. The view that wholes own and condition their parts is the logical premise of pantheism or of the doctrine of the mf alhble state-personaUty. On the other hand, the view that parts make up and condition the whole is the logical premise of the view which refuses to be diverted by doubtful or fictitious corporate entities from the particular man with his actually felt interests. IV. THE IMMANENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS That which pecuUarly distinguishes the narrower group of American reaUsts is the view that consciousness is homo- geneous and interactive with its environment. This view is to be distinguished from two other views which are commonly thought to afford a better basis for the moral and religious Ufe. We have already met with both of these opposing views, but I shaU restate them briefly in order to bring the opposition into clearer reUef . According to one of these views, which we have designated as the spiritual philosophy, consciousness is coextensive with the totaUty of things: everything is consciousness. Reahsm, on the other hand, asserts with mundane common-sense that conscious- ness is only one kind of thing among many. It is homo- geneous with the remainder of the world, in the sense that it is composed ultimately of the same elements. But the particular combination of elements which distinguishes con- sciousness differs from other forms of combination, such as bodies or mathematical systems. According to the second of the opposing views, which is commonly called ^'duahsm, consciousness is a peculiar substance, absolutely distinct, for example, from corporeal substance, and incapable of entenng THE NEW REALISM 377 into any commerce with it. Realism, on the other hand, asserts that consciousness differs from bodies very much as one bodily system differs from another. It has its own modus operandij^ which distinguishes it from the merely mechanical, but it exists upon the same plane with bodies and is therefore capable both of affecting and of being affected by them. Before pursuing these comparisons further, let me elaborate this realistic view. Consciousness is a two-sided affair. On the one hand there is what is commonly called the content or the object, such as percepts, ideas or memories. The theory of the immanence of consciousness means that these contents or objects are parts of the environment, borrowed by the mind, but not exclusively appropriated and owned by it. Thus according to realism my present perceptions are parts of this room, united with my mind in so far as I look at them, touch them or Usten to them, but without prejudice to their other relations. Thus this desk, in so far as I grasp it, is brought within the circle of my mind's contents; but it does not on that account cease to be on the platform, or to be attracted toward the centre of the earth, any more than one of you by becoming a university student ceases to be a Californian, or to weigh one hundred and fifty pounds. Mind and the sur- rounding world interpenetrate and overlap as the university interpenetrates and overlaps the other systems and groupings from which its components are drawn. The other side of consciousness is what is commonly called '^subject'* or activity of mind. It consists of the acts of perceiving, thinking, remembering, etc. The realistic theory of immanence would regard this too as homogeneous with its surroundings. Spirit, if we wish to retain the term, is not a discontinuous substance, which can be discovered only by the unique method of introspection — by the inward aware- ness which each spiritual being has exclusively of himself. Spirit is one of the many kinds of things that may be found 1 The author has attempted to describe this in an article entitled " Docility and Purpose," Psychological Review, January, 1918. Cf. E. B. Holt: The Freudian Wish, Chap. II and Appendix. 378 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS by any observer in the same field of observable experience with mountains, rivers and stars. It is a peculiar combina- tion of elements with a peculiar set of properties. Some of you will have heard of what is called *' behaviorism '' in psychology. This movement, with which American realists are in accord, would go back to the old Aristotelian view that we mean by mind only the peculiar way in which a living organism endowed with a central nervous system behaves. To study mind, according to this view, we ought to watch such an organism and observe or measure what it does when it is confronted now with this and now with that set of external stimuli. This is the way, as a matter of fact, in which the minds of animals, or of children, or of primitive races, or of the abnormal, have always been studied. Be- haviorism would simply favor this method for general psychological purposes, including the study of the mind of the normal human adult. Now put these two sides of mind together. There results the view that consciousness is a mode of interaction within one homogeneous world — an excerpt of things, which a cerebrally equipped organism selects for its special purposes from its surrounding environment. Let us compare the prac- tical consequences of such a view with those which follow from duaUsm or spirituaUsm. Dualism professes to deliver consciousness from the taint of materiaUty, but only at the cost of its impotence. Consciousness remains in the world, but is entirely out of touch with it. Its objects are its own states, and its activity being of a purely spiritual kind, cannot have the slightest effect on the physical forces which govern nature. The consistent outcome of dualism is a moral subjectivism, in which a man confines his efforts to arranging his own ideas in his own mind; and gets what comfort he can from the belief that thinking, even if it makes no differ- ence to the course of events, is the most exalted and dignified of vocations. SpirituaUsm, like realism, proclaims the homogeneity of mind with its surroundings, and therefore delivers it from this impotence. In their common rejection of dualism THE NEW REALISM 379 spiritualism and realism have a common bond. * But spirit- uaHsm introduces new practical difficulties. If the attempt is made, as by Bergson, the panpsychists and the personal idealists, to reduce the world to forms of consciousness such as mortals feel within themselves, then there is nothing left to act on. In order to provide for the natural environment it is necessary to introduce a miracle by which spirit is ** objectified '* or '^materialized." If, on the other hand, as with the absolute idealists, the universal spirit is identified with the objective order of things, then the terms "spirit," '^ consciousness," "mind" and the rest cease to have any distinctive meaning. There is little comfort in the assurance that "all is spirit," provided "spirit " has come to mean that very external order which we had formerly regarded as the antithesis of spirit. In short what is needed for the justification of a resolute morality and the sober hopes of a religion of action, is a world in which consciousness in the specific and limited sense may operate effectively, and in which there is therefore a chance of its bringing the world into accord with its interests. Realism, so far as I know, is the only philosophy to provide such a world. For it recognizes the distinctness of con- sciousness, while at the same time admitting it into the natural world as a genuine dynamic agent. It is unnecessary for me further to elaborate the moral and religious consequences of realism ; for they do not differ mate- rially from the moral and religious consequences of pluralism, as these have already been expounded above. Realism is individualistic, democratic and humanitarian in its ethics. It is theistic and meUoristic in its religion. Realism is essen- tially a philosophy which refuses to deceive or console itself by comfortable illusions. It prefers to keep its eyes open. But it is neither cynical nor embittered. It distinguishes the good from the evil, and seeks to promote it, not with a sense of assured triumph, but rather with the confidence that * For an acknowledgment of this kinship on the part of absolute idealism, cf. Bosanquet, "Realism and Metaphysic," Philosophical Review^ Vol. XXVI (1917). 38o THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS springs from resolution. It is of this chivalrous spirit that Sabatier speaks when he says: *'The reUgious man not only affirms what is good, he becomes its soldier, and despite all defeats, he predicts its triumph In the midst of ruins he catches sight of the future city, which he bui ds in advance, ideally, before he has yet power to bmld it m reahty. The great moments of his life are not those in which he pauses to rest and enjoy the verities achieved, but those in which he anxiously sets out again on a new stage, because the mysterious voice has said, ' Get thee out of thy country and from thy kmdred, unto a land that I will show thee.' " ^ But realism, as I understand it, would prefer to be more articulate, somewhat closer to life than this. It would connect the ^'future city'' with the present hopes and struggles of mankind, as Mr. Wells does when he defines what he calls the ''world-kingdom of God." "This kingdom is to be a peaceful and co-ordinated activity of all mankmd upon certain divine ends. These, we conceive,^ are first, the maintenance of the racial life; secondly, the exploration of the external being of nature as it is and as it has been, that is to say history and science; thirdly, that exploration of inherent human possibiUty which is art; fourthly, that clarification of thought and knowledge which is pMlosophy; and finally, the progressive en- largement and development of the racial life under these hghts, so that God may work through a contmually better body of humamty and through better and better equipped minds, that he and our race may increase for ever, working unendingly upon the develop- ment of the powers of fife and the mastery of the bUnd forces of matter throughout the deeps of space." 2 1 Paul Sabatier: France To-day, Its Religious Orientation, p. 21. 2 God the Invisible King, pp. 107-108. CHAPTER XXVI THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATIONALITY It is a commonplace of history that the growth of na- tionalism is one of the great dominating features of the Nine- teenth Century. It began in the Napoleonic era with the Spanish and Prussian uprisings, received a fresh impetus in 1830 and again in 1848, and culminated after 1859 in the formation of the nationalized states of Italy and Germany. Since the opening of the new century there has been scarcely any abatement of this movement, despite the strong counter- movement of internationalism and cosmopolitanism. Be- fore the war there had already been great revivals of national feeling among the Slavic peoples and in France, and since the war this feeling has everywhere been intensified by the struggles, sufferings and efforts which the war has produced. A topic so vast and so intricately interwoven with every aspect of modern European history must in the main fall outside the scope of this study. But some brief considera- tion of it forms a necessary introduction to any such survey of national traits and ideals as that which I shall undertake in the chapters that follow.^ I. NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS It is now very generally recognized that nationality is essentially psychological. Nationality is a state of mind. But we shall understand it all the better if we consider it in the light of certain physical and institutional forces with which it is closely associated, and with which it may readily be confused. I. The Nation and the Race. It is perfectly obvious that nations cannot be identified with races, or defined ethnologi- 1 Cf. the author's discussion of "The Tolerant Nation," in The Free Man and the Soldier, Charies Scribner's Sons, iqi6. 381 382 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS cally. Perhaps the best proof of this is to be found in the fact that when new nations arise, this does not at all imply the birth of new races. That which happened in the Nine- teenth Century, and to which I have just referred, was not an ethnic event of breeding or migration. It was, as we say, the rise and diffusion of an idea. Societies where they had already long existed, and being of the same stock with no change of hereditary nature, began to feel themselves unified in a new way. The whole trend of thought in ethnology is against the idea of pure races; and even such racial divisions as are admitted fail utterly to coincide with national divisions. It is said that there are three racial types in Europe : the short and dark Mediterranean or Iberian race; the Teutonic or Nordic race which is long-headed, tall and blond; and the Celtic or Alpine race which is round-headed, stocky and in- termediate in coloration. ^ These racial types extend across Europe from East to West in horizontal zones, and there is none of the great nations that does not contain all three of them. A further proof that nationaUty is a non-racial unity is to be found in the fact that racial purity is a claim, a myth, in which a new national consciousness expresses itself. Thus pan-Germanists beginning with Fichte invented the idea of the aboriginal German stock, and resurrected the obscure and discredited opinions of the French ethnologist Gobineau to suit their purpose. The outstanding fact is that certain societies have come so to feel their soUdarity that they naturally think of themselves as one family with a common ancestry, and develop a nationaUzed ethnology to justify themselves. We in America have not yet had the hardiness to do this, though there are traces of it in our vague allusions to the Puritan stock which sprang from the freight borne to these shores by that national ark, the Mayflower, We are too vividly aware of our multi-racial composition to press the point. In the *'new nationalism'' which has been so 1 This appears to be the generally accepted view. Cf . P. Chahners Mitchell, Evolution and the War; W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, Chap. VI; J. Hol- land Rose, Nationality in Modern History, pp. 138 ff. THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATIONALITY 383 effectively cultivated in the last few years and months, it is clearly recognized that the great glory of American na- tionality lies in its power to bring men of every racial ex- traction into a unity of common ideas and sentiments. It is not to be denied that common descent provides one of the conditions most favorable to the development of a national consciousness. But even where there is a large amount of racial homogeneity, this in itself does not constitute nation- ality until it is recognized and felt; and if it is recognized and felt, then it is not at all necessary that it should be a fact. And this biological factor, even as a claim or myth, has come to play a smaller and smaller role as nations have risen in the scale of historical development. As a recent writer has expressed it, "Above ethnical nationalities there are political nationalities, formed by choice (one may say), rooted in love of liberty, in the cult of a glorious past, in accord of interests, in similarity of moral ideas and of all that forms the intellectual life." ^ 2. The Territorial Aspect. As the racial principle has declined in importance, the territorial principle has neces- sarily assumed a greater prominence. Without contiguity it is impossible that any society should come to be of one mind. A nation must undoubtedly be one neighborhood with interior lines of communication that unite its mem- bers more closely with one another than with outsiders. In times of peace nationality tends to shade off at the border. In so far, for example, as Americans living on the Eastern seaboard have been more intimately in contact ^ith Europe than with the Mississippi Valley they have tended to lose their nationality. A nation must form a more or less segre- gated group within which the same models are imitated. The national group, in other words, must be more inter- imitative than extra-imitative. Territorial unity brings with it also a moral unity. The moral problem is the conflict of interests. This is largely an effect of proximity. Individuals living together must ^ Laveleye: Le Gouvernement et la Democratie (1891), I, p. 58. 384 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS find a way of living together peacefully and co-operatively. Therefore they must live under one code, one law and set of institutions. While a man may, or could until yesterday, afford to live in a state of nature with a man across the sea, he must at once reach a settlement and a good understanding with the man across the street. Those who inhabit the same territory are also united by their common physical environment. They have the same hardships to fear, and the same resources to exploit. They are always in some degree in the position of fellow-pioneers or partners in a common struggle with nature. There are also the common scenes and the common landmarks, en- deared to all aUke by association and familiarity. But though a common territory conditions nationality, it is evidently not in itself a sufficient condition. A herd of buffalos grazing in the same prairie are not a nation unless we suppose them to be aware of what they have in common. So a man who is quite insensible to the common land which he shares with others is as much without a country as though he were in exile. Again it is clear that nationality is a mode of consciousness, favored it is true by a common heredity or a common physical environment, but not at all the same thing as these. Furthermore, it is to be observed that the territory of a great nation, such, for example, as our own, con- tains almost every variety of climate, soil, natural resources and landscape; and that the territory and neighborhood in which a man lives tends therefore to locaUze him even more perhaps than to nationalize him. Nationality requires that the individual shall overcome this narrowing influence of the immediate physical environment by his imagination and his ideas. The Maine lumberman can be united with the cattle- man of Texas or the orange-grower of California only by common interests, sentiments and institutions. Finally, if nationaUty were merely a matter of territory it would be impossible to explain the national aspiration for more territory or even for a new territory. A nation which demands a place in the sun is evidently conscious of having a soul too great for its body; and a nation which, like the Jewish THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATIONALITY 385 nation, wishes to move into a territory which it does not now occupy, is evidently conscious of having a soul without any body at all. ^ 3. NationaUty and Institutions. In speaking of the rela- tion of nationaUty to institutions, I shall use the latter term very broadly to mean any form of social life that is acquired and that is rooted and stable enough to exercise constraint on the individual. Of all such institutions that are more or less intimately connected with nationality that which is most indispensable is language. The importance of this is similar to the importance of physical proximity. Men can- not become like-minded unless they can communicate with one another. When the Germans attempt to suppress the Polish language in East Prussia, or the French language in Alsace-Lorraine, their policy is quite sound, once you con- cede the justice of nationalizing a state that has been largely built up by conquest. Neither the Poles nor the Alsatians can become good Germans so long as their chief instrument of self-expression and of human understanding connects them with non-German groups. If we object to the forcible suppression of native languages then we must urge this as an objection against the growth of large nation- alities by conquest and assimilation. For a common lan- guage is essential to a common nationality. The common language is, furthermore, in the form of Hterature an object of common interest, and the major factor in the common tradition. A common tradition cannot be said like language to be a necessary condition of nationality, though it may in any given case afford the chief object of the national sentiment. There is what may be called the retrospective type of na- tionalism, which lives in its own past, and in the sense of continuity. Such, for example, is the recent nationalistic cult in France represented by such Catholic and Medievalist writers as Barres and Peguy.i In any case it is again evident that the important thing is the present national conscious- ness. Every society has a past; and every society has a ^ Cf. e.g., Barres, Les Diracines, 386 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS tradition in the sense of an inheritance transmitted from earlier generations. But it is possible to be quite ignorant of one's past, or to be quite unconscious that one's ideas, sentiments or institutions are inherited. Retrospective nationalism requires that a present society shall know its past, and own it; valuing its present possessions because they are traditional. More important is the question regarding the relation of nationaUty to the state. The most nationalistic of all con- temporary thinkers, the German political philosophers,^ tend to merge the two in the name of the ''state-personality.^" But this view appears to be as contrary to fact as it is dangerous to mankind. The national consciousness un- doubtedly finds one of its most articulate forms of expression in the acts and policies of the state. Nationality inevitably aspires to political autonomy, is intensified in the struggle for it, and is rendered more permanent and vigorous by the achievement of it. But, on the other hand, the national consciousness acts as a check upon the state, and may even lead to a political revolution in which the existing state is disowned and overthrown. Nationality has many other forms of expression, such as art, law, religion, fashion, moral sentiment and philosophy. Furthermore if nationality and the state were one and the same thing, then it would mean nothing for a nationaUty to struggle for statehood; which is perhaps the most potent form in which nationality has mani- fested itself in modern history. I shall say nothing of the many other institutions in which nationaUty may express itself, or through which nationaUty may be confirmed and developed. What can be said of one of them can be said of aU. While some institutional unity is necessary, nationaUty cannot be identified with any single institution. They are one and aU conditions and evidences of nationaUty, but nationaUty itself consists in a common state of mind shared by the members of one social group. It is a psychological fact, and not either a biological, physiographic or institutional fact. 1 Cf. above, pp. 254-261; and below, pp. 421-423. THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATIONALITY 387 To put the matter now in more positive terms we may say that nationality consists in being of one mind, whatever the causes which underUe it, and whatever the forms and activi- ties in which it expresses itself. As a French writer has re- cently expressed it, ''a nation is neither a territory, nor a race, nor a language, nor a history; it is a will, a wiU to unite in the present, and to endure indefinitely in the future." A nation, in other words, is animated by a common purpose to be something distinct, and to preserve its identity. Hence its almost inexhaustible powers of endurance and resistance. As this same writer goes on to say: ^'One may formulate the principle of nationality as follows: when one is dealing with true nations, conquest is not only a crime, it is a mistake." ^ 4. The ModifiabUity of NationaUty. There is a very important coroUary of this view of nationality, to which I wish now to turn. If nationality is essentially a present state of mind, due to the co-working of many diverse and obscure causes, then it is modifiable by causes of the same type. A writer whom I have already quoted, expresses the general opinion of the ethnologist when he says, *^In my opinion the most important of the moulding forces that pro- duce the differences in nationality are epigenetic, that is to say, that they are imposed on the hereditary material and have to be re-imposed in each generation." ^ if national traits were hereditary, then we should be compelled to view them as incurable. We should be justified in saying, for example, that every German inherits a hereditary taint which he wiU transmit to his descendants. There would then be no way of ridding the world of the German idea save to exterminate the tribe, as one might exterminate some incorrigibly vicious pest or beast of prey. Or, on the other hand, we would be justified in trusting blindly to the Anglo- Saxon blood in our veins, confident that a race so favored by nature could do no wrong. We should abandon education and propaganda, and lapse into an irreconcilable struggle of racial types. That there are racial diifferences, notably such * Goblot: "Le Principe des Nationalit^s," Revue FhUosophique, June, 1916. ^ P. Chalmers Mitchell, op, cit., p. 84. 388 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS as distinguish the peoples of higher from those of lower lati- tudes, no one would wish to deny. But it does seem to be clearly established that the most important social traits, those which most vitally concern the safety and the moral order of mankind, are to be found not in a common heredi- tary constitution, but in a common social environment. There is to-day in Germany, for example, a mode of thought, feeling and conduct which is widely diffused and stable enough to have become typical. German babies are not born into the world with bacillae of militarism and autocracy in their blood, but as soon as they become impressionable and suggestible, it is this type to which they conform them- selves. Having been assimilated by it they add to its vogue, and so help to perpetuate it and to impose it on generations yet unborn. The typical has, as appears, a powerful and almost irre- sistible influence upon the individual. It has a weight of numbers, a prestige of position, a massiveness and inertia that I would not for a moment underestimate. Springing as it does from so many roots, it is not easily killed. Re- sulting from so many forces, it is difficult to control it by the voluntary manipulation of any one force. Nevertheless it is constantly changing. It is affected by the invention and independence of individuals in high places. It is affected by class movements, growing at first out of neglected needs and felt grievances, but finally acquiring a momentum that dis- turbs the whole national equiUbrium. It is affected by ex- ternal influences from across the borders. Above all it is affected by great emotional crises, as a man's habits or philosophy of Hfe may melt away in the heat of religious conversion. Furthermore, just as the causes which produce the national type are largely out of view, so the causes which destroy it may have brought it to the verge of collapse with- out having been observed. The French monarchy of 1789, and the Russian autocracy of 191 7, suddenly collapsed as though their foundations had long since been undermined without any visible effect upon the superstructure. After the event, such upheavals can be explained, and there are THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATIONALITY 389 always some belated prophets who rise to say that they had known it was coming. But in point of fact the greatest social changes are the least predictable. In the present era, then, with all human societies interacting upon one another, with human passions at white heat, and with many old barriers and landmarks already swept away, it is impossible to speak of any nationality as though its peculiar traits were a finality, inaccessible to change. In discussing national characteristics I shall therefore always think of them as modifiable for better or worse. I shall regard German characteristics as a curable disease, or American charac- teristics as precariously sound; both needing the light of wisdom, and both in the long run amenable to it. II. ABUSES OF NATIONALISM While we are discussing the principle of nationality I wish to call attention to certain tendencies both to abuse and to self-correction which it contains within itself. I. Confusion of Standards. In the first place there is a sense in which one may be too national in one's judgments, just as one may be too personal. Scientists are accustomed to subordinate personalities to method, evidence and truth. A scientific truth gets no enhancement of value from the person of its discoverer, and once discovered it is no person's private possession. In the same way science protests, or should protest, against a nationalizing of science. There is, strictly speaking, no German physics, or any French mathe- matics; there are just physics and mathematics, objective and universal systems of truth, unaffected by their social en- vironment, and in so far as known the common property of all who are capable of understanding and using them. This scientific prejudice against nationalizing science has a sound basis. In so far as national claims and credits are allowed to affect science they can only result in diverting it from its purely disinterested effort to understand and control nature. And what holds of science holds of many other forms of human attainment. The great standards of attainment are universal standards, such as truth, beauty and goodness; j 390 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS and the excessive admiration of a person or of a nation tends to compromise these standards. I have known this sort of thing to happen as a result of loyalty to an educational in- stitution. The love of it for its own sake, the habit of enthusiastic self-admiration, has obscured the ideals of edu- cation and scholarship by which its success in the long run is measured. The same thing commonly results from national loyalty or patriotism. Professor Dewey has remarked that ''while most nations are proud of their great men, Germany is proud of itself rather for producing Luther." ^ From this it is a short step to being proud of Luther because Germany produced him; and in this last attitude the distinctive merits of Luther himself are lost sight of. In other words, the cult of nationaUty tends to conflict with the cult of quality. It tends to complacency, vanity or self-assertion, without criti- cal judgment or the aspiration to be better than oneself. It tends to create an object of undiscriminating worship. Thus nationality, according to Santayana, is to-day ''the one eloquent, public, intrepid illusion." "Illusion, I mean, when it is taken for an intimate good or a mystical essence, for of course nationality is a fact. People speak some particular language and are very uncomfortable where another is spoken or where their own is spoken differently. They have habits, judgments, assumptions to which they are wedded, and a society where all this is unheard of shocks them and puts them at a galling disadvantage. ... It is natural for a man to like to live at home, and to Kve long elsewhere without a sense of exile is not good for his moral integrity. It is right to feel a greater kinship and affection for what lies nearest to oneself. But this necessary fact and even duty of nationality is accidental ... it can be made the basis of specific and comely virtues; but it is not an end to pursue or a flag to flaunt or a privilege not balanced by a thousand incapacities. Yet of this distinction our contemporaries tend to make an idol, perhaps because it is the only distinction they feel they have left." ^ 2. Fanaticism. A more dangerous, if not fatal abuse of nationality, is to allow the zeal which it begets to blind ^ German Philosophy and Politics, p. 17. 2 Winds of Doctrine, pp. 6-7. THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATIONALITY 391 one to other and different causes. It tends to become an absorbing and bUnding passion, and so to impel men to intolerance and aggression. Even a retrospective nation- alism has this element of fanaticism in it. A people that exaggerates its identity with the past will brood over old wrongs and revive old issues that have no proper place in the life of the present world. Nations project themselves into a past in which they were not as nations really concerned and try to write history over again in a manner satisfactory to their new conception of the national identity and the national role. This is one of the motives which threatens hopelessly to complicate the dispute over Alsace-Lorraine, which should be decided upon the basis exclusively of the interests and preferences of living men. The greatest instance which history affords of national fanaticism is the present German worship of Kultur. By Kultur is meant the particular system of life, scale of values and set of ideas that happen to be characteristic of modern Germany. The German not unnaturally admires them. But it is possible to admire one's own style of life with a saving sense of humor. One may be thoroughly loyal and devoted, and yet admit into a back corner of one's mind the idea that there are also other styles of life, equally well thought of by those who practice them, and perhaps, for all one knows, as good in their way as one's own. This idea may never find articulate expression; but its being there makes an enormous difference to one's manner and morals. It restrains one from excessive self-laudation, for fear of appearing absurd. It leaves one, in some small degree at least, open to conviction and to correction. It makes it possible for one to enter into courteous and temperate dis- cussion with self-respecting persons of an opposite persuasion. And in so far as it informs one that behind the alien modes of life there is the same loyalty and devotion that one feels for one's own, one is deterred from outrage and insult. In other words, one recognizes a pluraUty of moral forces, and con- ducts oneself among the nations as in a society of equals. Without this saving sense of fallibility, nationality de- 392 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS generates into a sectarian bigotry, into that Vaterldnderie, which even Nietzsche so much despised, that '* national heart-itch and blood-poisoning, on account of which the nations of Europe are at present bounded off and secluded from one another as if by quarantines." ^ 3. Nationalism and Humanity. But if intense nationality tends to blindness and fanaticism, there is also a more hope- ful side of the matter. The same causes which tend to pro- duce nationalities tend to reach further and produce broader and more inclusive unities of life. If it is possible for men of different racial extraction to acquire a national conscious- ness, then racial heterogeneity need not stand in the way of the development of an international consciousness. If it is possible for a society which lacks political autonomy to be united by the aspiration for such autonomy, then there is no reason why mankind at large, despite the absence of any common political authority or system of law, should not be united by the will to achieve such international institutions. All that is necessary is that the forces which beget such a sense of solidarity within narrower limits should operate over a wider area. And this is in fact precisely what has begun to happen. There are, for example, no longer any natural frontiers. The new facilities for communication and trans- portation, which have tunnelled mountains, and which have linked the most distant continents both by sea and by air, are rapidly developing a sense that there is but one country inhabited by one people. The citizens of the British Empire and the fellow-soldiers of the Allies are at this moment being so firmly cemented by the common cause which they are serving on the soil of France, that half the circumference of the earth can in the future no longer divide them. The war has furthermore brought men to feel as never before that the natural resources of the earth are a common possession on which they all depend, and which must be exchanged and distributed as human needs require. Nothing could be more significant than the present discussion of the world's food * The Joyful Wisdom, V, §§ 347, 377. THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATIONALITY 393 supply. It means a wholly new recognition of the common human problem of conservation. Most important of all is the growing sense of the moral solidarity of mankind. Men now live in one neighborhood, and find themselves compelled to work out their safety and well-being together. The basal moral problem of the con- flict of interests is now quite Hterally a world-problem. No man is now so far removed from any other man that he can afford to be indifferent to what that other man does. Before he can go about his own business with any sense of security, he must know how other men across the seas are going to conduct their affairs. It is imperative that there should be some general system of law, supported by collective human opinion, and enforced by collective human might, which will guarantee his rights and his sphere of action in the world at large. Because there is as yet no such guarantee it is neces- sary to resort to the crude and violent measure of war. It will undoubtedly cost mankind a long struggle and perhaps many wars to achieve such guarantees. But the important thing is that the need should be so keenly and so widely felt. The sense of a common problem is the beginning of a common purpose to solve it, and of a common will to enforce and maintain the new system of life once it is inaugurated. I need scarcely add that the common culture of civilized mankind, — the common science, the common heritage of antiquity, the common religion of Europe and America, the common cult of art, the common usage of fashion and cus- tom, and the common moral traditions, — all provide a fund of ideas and sentiments by which mankind of the modern time have come more and more to be of one mind. Nor is it in the least necessary that human life should therefore be reduced to one uniform and monotonous type. There will still be a plentiful opportunity for individual and local variations; and these variations will continue to be more interesting and in a sense more important than that which all mankind have in common. It has never been felt that human diversity is prevented by the fact that almost all men have two legs. We find a sufficient interest in noting I i ! 394 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS how many different ways there are of being a biped. An outsider might conceivably object to the monotonous recur- rence of the human features. Almost every human being has two ears, two eyes, one nose and one mouth. But we who know the human physiognomy intimately see the little differ- ences that escape the outsider. An American may feel that Eskimos are monotonously alike, but it is not reported that the Eskimo lover has any difficulty in identifying his sweet- heart. There are still enough differences even within the racial type to provide for as many distinguishable individuals as there is room for on this already crowded earth. And similarly if all men should learn to conform to one moral and legal system, there is no reason to fear that there would no longer be enough ways in which men might differ from one another in temperament, opinion and feeling. The fact is that it is not bare difference that interests us, but difference within narrow limits, or sHght variations of a common type. The marvel of physiognomy is that there should be so many differences of pattern, emphasis and ex- pression with so large a degree of sameness. If Polyphemus should reappear on earth with his one eye, we would not re- gard him as an interesting addition to the rich variety of human faces; we would hide him away as a monstrosity. We already have the same feeUng regarding certain forms of private iniquity. And I see no reason why we should not in time to come regard the international law-breaker, the traitor to mankind, simply as a monstrosity like the wife- beater or the parricide. We shall then be interested in the marvelous fact that there are so many different ways of being internationally minded, just as there are now so many ways of being decent to one's near of kin. The differences be- tween man and man may in future become finer and more subtle differences. But within the narrower limits, differ- ences will increase rather than decrease, as they always have in times of peace and security. And the fact that the differ- ences are finer and more subtle will not make them any less interesting, for we shall at the same time have sharpened our discrimination. THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATIONALITY 395 There is no reason why national differences should not remain within a united mankind, as local differences remain within the nation, and individual differences within the locality. But just as an excessive and fanatical individual- ism or localism is inconsistent with an orderly and co-opera- tive national life, so a fanatical nationalism is inconsistent with an orderly and co-operative fife of mankind. All that any nation need sacrifice is its right to disregard and despise every other nation. But this sacrifice will cost it nothing of value. On the contrary it will provide a guarantee of security that will permit it to live its own best life with the friendly consent or help of tolerant neighbors. III. LIMITS OF THE PRESENT STUDY I have spoken above of the modifiability of national traits. Nationality is not an ultimate or irretrievable fatality. And I am equally disposed to agree that nationality is never per- fectly distinct and separable. If one were representing it chromatically one would use tints and shades which blended at the borders, rather than solid colors or black and white. It is undoubtedly true that it would be possible to find many Frenchmen and Germans that resemble one another more closely than they resemble their fellow-countrymen. Our chromatic scheme would then represent only the relative distribution of certain types. It would mean that a certain way of thinking or feeling or acting is more common within the boundaries of France, for example, than anywhere else. It is not confined to France, but is sufficiently concentrated there to give a certain characteristic coloring to the whole when surveyed from a distance and compared with other localities. Unless one has an exaggerated idea of what is intended, I do not see how one can deny that there are national physiog- nomies, or national ^'reputations " that are more or less justi- fied. Take, for example, the following statement of what will be recognized as the commonplaces of national char- acterization, in Peer Gynt's acknowledgments of his in- debtedness: 396 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS " For fortune such as I've enjoyed I have to thank America. My amply-furnished library I owe to Germany's later school. From France, again, I get my waistcoats, My manners, and my spice of wit, — From England an industrious hand. And keen sense for my own advantage. The Jew has taught me how to wait. Some taste for dolce far niente I have received from Italy, — And one time, in a perilous pass, To eke the measure of my days, I had recourse to Swedish steel." ^ It would, I think, be blind to deny that, relatively and broadly speaking, America is the home of luck, France of fashion, Germany of learning, and England of industry and utility. Such characterizations must not be pressed too far, but that is no reason for rejecting their obvious truth. It should rather invite us to search further for more funda- mental and significant characteristics. In the chapters that follow I shall not attempt to deal with Russia and Italy, important as it is that we should just now come to a better understanding of these nations. The igno- rance which is the real cause of the omission, is perhaps in some degree palliated by the fact that in these cases nation- ality is newer and less well-marked than in the cases of Germany, France and England. Even America, perhaps from its youth, or perhaps from my own lack of sufficient detachment, appears to me to possess a much more ambigu- ous nationality than that of its major enemy or of its major allies. But in this case I feel entitled as an American to give expression to certain ideas and sentiments that I hope will some day be nationally American, if they are not so to-day. ^ In keeping with the general plan of the book I shall empha- size the fundamental thought of these four nations. The » Act IV, Scene I. THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATIONALIT\ 397 philosophy of a country, and especially its moral, political and religious philosophy, is perhaps the most articulate and self-conscious expression of its characteristic spirit. And it has the further importance of containing those ideals, stand- ards and policies by which we may best judge of it3 future. CHAPTER XXVII GERMAN NATIONAL TRAITS It may, I think, now be set down as an established fact that the German people as a whole, or those of them that are out of jail, are at this moment no better and no worse than their government. It is characteristic of Germany that what those in authority think, those in a more humble station should accept and believe. It may truthfully be said that we are warring primarily against German leaders and institutions, but this is because the masses of the people have for the moment whole-heartedly adopted what their leaders and institutions have authoritatively proclaimed. If it were not for this solidarity of conviction, sentiment and action Germany would not be that formidable menace against which the non-German world has found itself compelled to take up arms. In attempting to set forth that German idea of life which now threatens the world, I shall first describe certain more fundamental national traits which underly the external forces and the articulate reasonings that are a part of the record of history. In examining these national traits I shall make no attempt to distinguish between that which is racial and that which is due to the influence of tradition, education and cultural environment. I shall assume, in keeping with the general idea of nationahty which I have set forth in the last chapter, that national traits are in the main acquired traits, and capable, therefore, of being altered by the same complex and obscure agencies that have generated them. I. PROFUNDITY, It is characteristic of the German to do what he does for the deepest of reasons. It is a common mistake to regard the Germans as simple-minded barbarians. It is true that 398 GERMAN NATIONAL TRAITS 399 their deeds are often strikingly similar to the deeds of bar- barians; but the inner consciousness which accompanies them is strangely different. The barbarian is governed by primitive instincts and appetites. But while the German has strong instincts and appetites, and while these un- doubtedly supply much of his impelling force, that which is pecuHarly German is the profound reason by which they are justified, and by which the counter-impulses of pity and humanity are repressed. In so far as it is barbarism at all, it is what M. Cambon has called ''pedantic barbarism'' {la harharie pedante). When the German strangles his enemies with chlorine gas, he doesn't do it for fun or for pure deviltry or savage cruelty; he does it from a sense of duty, in order to carry out thoroughly and systematically what follows logi- cally from his first premises. , For these first premises he goes back even to metaphysics. No ruler but a German emperor would have proclaimed in a state document his nation's indebtedness to Immanuel Kant. In the case of no other nation is it so easy to express the national purpose in philosophical terms; for no other nation is so philosophically conscious. It is not as though the philosophers themselves had been men of affairs, or had been pecuHarly interested in social and poUtical problems. Quite the contrary. It is the boast of German philosophy to be peculiarly metaphysical, technical and erudite; and in its murky depth to surpass both the shallowness of the English and the clearness of the French. Nowhere else has philos- ophy been so professional and so speculative. The first premises to which the German appeals must be absolute and ultimate premises. ''Our sense of order," says Professor Troeltsch, ''is not founded on its usefulness for material and social ends, but emanates, to- gether with the sense of duty, from an ideal conception of the spirit which is the rule and law of human life and of the universe. . . . The German is by nature a metaphysician who ponders and strives, from the spiritual inwardness of the universe, to grasp the inner meaning of the world and of things, of man and destiny. It will always be idle to explain the origin and development of this 400 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS predominant, though by no means universal, characteristic. It remains the final German life secret." ^ This Grilndlichkeit of the German, his love of thoroughness and purposiveness, makes him grimly insensible to minor incongruities that provoke laughter or offend taste among less soberly earnest people. The immortal Kant himself is the supreme embodiment of humorless pedantry. In his lectures on education he gives his students instructions on the suckling, swathing, cradling and weaning of infants, be- cause they may some day become tutors in private families, and because, as he goes on to explain, *'it happens at times that further children are born in the house, and that a tactful tutor can aspire to be the confidant of the parents and to be consulted by them also with respect to the physical education (of such children), and this also because one is, often, the only Gelehrte in the house." ^ Such ''preparedness" as this must be the despair of less learned nations! Many will recognize a like thoroughness and foresight in less humorous applications such as the spy-system or the manufacture of munitions of war. This same trait is partly responsible for the readiness with which the Germans associate God with their enterprises. Boutroux tells us that at Heidelberg in 1869, Professor Zeller opened the lecture with the words, "To-day we will construct God." It might be said that God is not without honor save in his own home, which is metaphysics. Familiarity has much the same effect here as elsewhere. Other peoples hope for the favor of God, but usually feel some doubt about it. Having no prior understanding with God they can never be perfectly sure of the alliance. But when the Emperor tele- graphs, as he did to Prince Leopold on the occasion of the capture of Riga, ''Onward with God," he feels perfectly sure of the direction in which God is going to move. Indeed the more one reflects upon this favorite phrase, the more one gets 1 E. Troeltsch: "The Spirit of German Kultur," in Modern Germany in Re- lation to the Great War, by various German writers. '^ Quoted by von Hugel, in The German Soul, from Kant's Sdmrntliche Werke, Hartenstein, Vol. VIII, p. 472, GERMAN NATIONAL TRAITS 401 the feeling that God is only a passenger. And why, indeed, if it suits their purpose, should not the metaphysicians who constructed God take him with them? Other people have been unpleasantly affected by this proprietary theology. They are accustomed to associate God only with their best moments, and to approach him with bowed head and troubled conscience. Paul Sabatier tells us that before 1870 the French had much respect for the great German-Protestant virtues, sobriety, prudence, thrift and honesty, and acknowledged their deserved success. ^''The war of 1870 broke out, and brought in a few weeks a vast disillusionment. No one, indeed, dreamed of reproaching Ger- many for her victories; but when people saw the horrors of war and the conqueror intermingling the roar of the cannon with mystical effusions; when they learnt that he regarded himself as God's fellow-worker, and when Protestant voices were naive enough to exclaim that every Prussian soldier carried a Bible in his knapsack, and to add that if we had had a Luther we should have had no Sedan, the hearts of the conquered were wounded, and their conscience shocked. . . . Many experienced a supreme re- vulsion from religious sentiment, a sort of aversion for it." 1 But there is another aspect of this German profundity that is more terrifying, if not more offensive. I refer to the in- exorable consistency with which the German will carry out his first principles once he has adopted them. His is the a priori type of mind which, convinced by its own inner reasons becomes thereafter indifferent to what experience brings forth. Being convinced, for example, that the state has a divine mission and is entitled to a dominion proportional to its power, the German is not deterred by the protests of those who stand in the way. Or having once adopted a certain theory of warfare, and reconciled it with this higher law of the state, the German is not rendered in the least irresolute by the incidental sufferings which he inflicts. In carrying out his preconceived ideas, the German is also pecuharly able to harden himself against moral tradition and the opinion of mankind. There is an interesting passage in * Sabatier, France To-day, pp. 50-51. 402 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS Nietzsche in which this author attacks the English tendency to fall back upon the moral tradition, as illustrated by the case of George Eliot. ''They have got rid of the Christian God, and now think them- selves obliged to cling firmer than ever to Christian morality, that is English consistency; we shall not lay the blame of it on ethical girls a la Eliot. In England for every little emancipation from divinity, people have to reacquire respectability by becoming moral fanatics in an awe-inspiring manner. That is the penalty they have to pay there. With us it is different. When we give up religious behef , we thereby deprive ourselves of the right to main- tain a stand on Christian morality. This is not at all obvious of itself, we have again and again to make this point clear, in defiance of English shallow-pates. Christianity is a system, a view of things, consistently thought out and complete. If we break out of it a fundamental idea, the beUef in God, we thereby break the whole to pieces." ^ With the majority of the Germans of to-day the reason for rejecting moral conventions is not as with Nietzsche the abandonment of the premises of Christianity. It is rather the acceptance of a certain theory of the state according to which the conduct of the state lies upon a wholly different plane from that of the individual While the Allies are so dominated by moral conventions that they cannot meet the exigencies^of war or state-policy with resolution and a whole heart, but must introduce considerations of pity, charity, gentleness or moral rights where in principle they do not belong, the German prides himself on understanding the matter better. Thus Professor Troeltsch says that while there is in all countries a conflict between the code of the individual and that of the state, in Germany alone do they honestly accept the distinction. "On either side of this world-war, there is an inner conflict between different modes of ethical valuation, between Peace ethics and War ethics; Humanitarianism and National Egoism; Chris- tian Love and the Fight for Existence; Democratic Equity and the Aristocratic aim at the Highest; an ethics of self-limitation and an ^ Twilight of the Idols, 167. GERMAN NATIONAL TRAITS 403 ethics of unbounded will and exaltation of the self. . . Among the Allies this mode of valuation (the second in the above a2st IS confined to some leading pubKcists and influential groups wSe opinions are dehberately kept in the background; for the masses he Humamtarian-Democratic-Civilization Gospel is nut Tnthl forefront, whilst the Germans are denounced as stLSnVexdu sively for National Esoism t., n^ sianoing exciu- honesf pnH L ■ ■•■ . Germany people are more nonest, . . and, agam, a certam bent to doctrinarianism in the German character leads them to think out and to emphSze con tradictory theories even in the hour of greatest peril?f ' In other words, Troeltsch finds the dualism to be past reconahng; and regards the profession of the Allies only as a sort of shallowness, or as a deceit used deliberately for politi- ca purposes He does not see the real point, which ifthat the Alhes wil not accept the dualism as final, but strugrfe niorality. They are not as yet successful in doing it ; but the effort represents an honest aspiration, even if it is a pious one. lo the German mmd which, having once accepted the dif- ference of pnnciple, can thenceforth ignore ordinary moral considerations m matters of state, the Englishman appears faint-hearted or hypocritical. To the Englishman, on the other hand, the German seems incredibly hard. Even the Enghshman of the imperiaUstic type, like Lord Cromer, says of von Bulow s Imperial Germany, that no one but a North German could have written it, because it is so free even from the professton of regard for humanity. Germany will not take the east trouble to secure the amity of other races- whereas the British colonial official requires the satisfaction of at least beltemng that the native population is better for nis being there.^ In short, on the one hand we have a people who are ac- customed to compromise, anchored to the general moral tradition ofChristendom, accustomed to decide each question on its ments and m the light of experience, sensitive to T.,' "^^'^"^l Morality and State Morality," Neue Rundschau, Feb 1016 d 147- Quoted by von Hugel, op. cil., p. 88. ^ ' '^' ' a. Lord Cromer's Politicd and Literary Essays, II, 19x4, pp. 149-151. 404 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS criticism or protest; on the other we have a people who are accustomed to ask nothing more than the sanction of their own reasons, and who are ready, once this is obtained, to revolutionize morality and to defy the opinion of mankind. Nietzsche has referred to Germany as ^^the European nation which exhibits at this very day the maximum of reliability, seriousness, bad taste and positiveness, which has on the strength of these qualities a right to train every kind of European mandarin." ^ Another writer of German extrac- tion. Baron Friedrich von Hiigel, whose little book on The German Soul is a marvel of candor and sympathy, has said of this national aptitude for deducing action from first prin- ciples, *'It is this innate need of system that renders him steady, but also obstinate; virile and brutal; profound and pedantic; comprehensive and rich in outlook, and rationalist and doctrinaire." ^ II. EGOISM It is a commonplace that the German has a highly de- veloped self. Mr. Santayana has found "egotism" to be the central motive in German philosophy, and "national egoism" is as we have seen the political fault of which Ger- many is most commonly accused. But to state the matter fairly requires some nicety of analysis. Curiously enough the German finds the Englishman and even the American to be unpleasantly self-conscious, in a sense in which he is himself quite guiltless. When we come to inquire into this paradox we discover that "self -consciousness," as we are accustomed to use the term, means almost the precise oppo- site of being self -confident or self-satisfied. That self-con- sciousness of which we must candidly admit Anglo-Saxons to be characteristically guilty is an exaggerated regard for what other people think of us. It is an attempt to see our- selves in the mirror of society; or to get out of ourselves so that we can see what sort of an appearance we are making. The poseur looks at himself from the outside. That awk- * The Genealogy of Morals^ II, § 3. * Op, cU,y p, 128, GERMAN NATIONAL TRAITS 405 wardness or embarrassment which such "self-consciousness" begets is due to the difficulty of being in two places at the same time; the difficulty of acting and at the same seeing how it looks, or of talking and at the same time hearing how it sounds. For this mode of conduct the German, we are told, hasn't even any word. When he speaks of "Selbst- hewussf' he means something very different. He means being "well aware of his own merits or importance." ^ But the man who is thus confident of himself isn't troubled by the appearance he presents to others. Quite the contrary. Just as the Anglo-Saxon variety of self-consciousness implies an excessive awareness of the watchful eye of others, this German Selhsthewusstsein implies the disregard of others. In characterizing the German, then, as egoistic, I do not in the least mean that he has any desire to please, or even any desire to offend; but an honest indifference to both sorts of reaction. He is self -preoccupied. He acts upon his inner conviction, and finds here a quite sufficient sanction. It is this quality that accounts for the unrestrained heartiness of the German's manners.' RoUand tells us that " the pleasure of singing so potent in Germany was in some sort a pleasure of vocal gymnastics. It was just a matter of being inflated with air and then letting it go vigorously, powerfully, for a long time together and rhythmically." 2 In other words, the German is not troubled by the fear that some one will hear him. If he crowds his neighbor, this is not from any par- ticular interest in his neighbor, but from an inner impulse to move his elbows. It is to this quality that Germany owes the reputation of being less highly socialized than her western neighbors, and in particular France. And it is this quality which threatens to prevent Germany from learning anything. It is interest- ing to note that the term "character" as used outside of Germany has a social implication. It is, in part at least, made of reputation or the opinion of the world. But Fichte having explained that the original German language con- ^ Von Hiigel, op. cit., p. 149. 2 Jean-Chris top he, p. 419. 4o6 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS tained no equivalent of the neo-Latin words "humanity/' ''popularity'' and ''liberality/' "because Germans are too original and sincere for such clap-trap/' went on to say that "character has no particular German name, precisely be- cause, without any knowledge or reflection of our own, char- acter is expected to proceed from our very being" — ''to possess character and to be German, are without doubt synonymous." ^ Again we find here this same confidence, which is both sublime and naive, that all the German has to do is to be himself. Needless to say this attitude is not con- . ducive to learning better, least of all from the judgment or example of others. A contemporary writer tells us that it is not the mission of Germany to learn from the world but to be the teacher of the world {Welter zieher) . And this writer is not in the least dis- mayed by the unwillingness of the world to be taught. There is something almost pathetic in his eager insistence that the world and not Germany must be to blame. "The world-war has shown," he says, "how few friends we have in the world. . . . But the more enemies the more honor! (Those of them who have lived among us) have been aware that they have never compassed the depth and greatness of the German spirit. We have known them only too well. But they have never understood us, their soul tells them that." 2 This self-sufficiency inevitably assumes exaggerated and aggressive forms, and is the chief distinction of the heroes whom modern Germany most admires. Professor Kuno Francke, who will scarcely be suspected of overstating the matter, speaks of Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche and William II as "perhaps the three men whose influence has shaped the feelings and the ideals of the present generation of Germans most conspicuously." They represent "a highly sensitive, strained, feverishly active state of mind." "Richard Wagner's world is a world of reckless self-assertion, boundless appetite, mystic longing, incessant willing and striving! » Fichte: Werke, VIII, pp. 321, 446 Quoted by von Hugel, op. cit., p. 177. " J. A. Lux: Deutschland als Welterzieher, p. 4. GERMAN NATIONAL TRAITS 407 His heroes storm through life regardless of good and evil, impelled by the one desire of living themselves out to the full and of bringing out what is in them." Nietzsche's philosophy is "an ecstatic appeal to the selfish instinct" ; while WilHam II is "the most intense and the most ardent champion of personal rule that has arisen since Napoleon." "These three men are a new illustration of the old truth that in order to possess greatness you must be possessed by it; that there is no genius without a certain megalomania; and that the true genius makes this very self-overestimation an incentive for cease- less self-discipline and self-denying devotion to work, and thereby rises to his own true self." ^ It is evident that German egoism very naturally associates itself with that profundity and inner conviction of which I have spoken above. Baron von Hugel has described their united effect so vividly that I can do no better than to quote him at length: "The first stage of this study attempted to describe the funda- mental peculiarities of the German soul: an imperious need ... of theory, system, completeness, at every turn and in every subject- matter; an immense capacity for auto-suggestion and monoide- ism; and an ever proximate danger, as well as power, of becoming so dominated by such vivid projections of the racial imaginings and ideals, as to lose all compelling sense of the limits between such dreams and reality, and especially all awareness, or at least alert- ness, as to the competing rights and differing gifts, indeed as to the very existence, of other souls and other races, with their intrinsi- cally different civilizations, rights and ideals. . . . Thus this soul easily loses such initial sense as it may possess of its own abiding need of other races, other civilizations, not to conquer or to absorb, but to love and to learn from. . . . "We thus find a soul startlingly imlike, not the Scotch, but the English. The English faults are, upon the whole. Defects; the Germans' faults are, mostly. Excesses. The English are too loosely-knit, ^go-as-you-please,' fragmentary, inarticulate; a con- tinuous compromise and individual self-consciousness. The Ger- 1 A German- Americanos Confession of Faith, pp. 21-22, 25. 4o8 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS mans are too tightly buckled-up, too much planned and prepared, too deliberately ambitious and insatiable, too readily oblivious of others — especially of their own need of others, of esteeming others and being esteemed by them.'' ^ III. APTITUDE FOR ORGANIZATION It is often said that the German is peculiarly submissive and docile. Even the most German of thinkers, such men as Bismark and von Bulow have asserted that the Germans have no native capacity for self-government. But it is very doubtful if native capacity has anything to do with it. The German Empire is the result of the militarization of Prussia, and the Prussianization of Germany. It owes its being to a centralized and paternalistic system. In 1848 when politi- cal liberalism swept over Europe it was met and overwhelmed in Germany by the rising movement for national unity, and this counter-movement was, owing to historical exigencies and accidents, dominated by dynastic and military institu- tions. The result has been that Germans identify their nationality with discipline and obedience. That which stands in the way of liberty and political individualism is not, I think, any racial incapacity, but rather the strength and prestige of a brilliantly successful, and in the minds of most Germans, indispensably necessary system. Indeed to characterize the German as naturally submissive would be to contradict that self-sufficiency with which he appears so unmistakably to be endowed. The fact of the matter seems to be as follows. Being at least as fond of his own way as the rest of humanity, and finding himself com- pelled for what he deems imperative reasons of self-preserva- tion to submit to discipline, he looks for compensations. And these he finds in emphasizing his personal superiority to others within the system; and in participating in a collective superiority over other nations. He can always say "I am superior,'' to somebody; and if not, he can still say ''we are superior," to everybody. It is a mistake to suppose that the recognition of superior * Op, cU.y pp. 154-155- GERMAN NATIONAL TRAITS 409 rank is an attitude of humility. For there are evidently two sides to it. He to whom you look up may on the same prin- ciple look down upon you; and you may in turn be just as arrogant as you please toward those who are still further down in the scale. And the more harshly you are subordi- nated to your superiors the more likely you are to restore your self-respect at the expense of your inferiors; just as in the old days of college hazing in America, those who suffered most as Freshmen assumed the most lordly airs when they became Sophomores, or just as the sergeant who has to put up with the tyranny of a Prussian officer is all the more likely on that account to make the most of his authority over the poor private. Never in human history has the principle of gradation been carried out so elaborately as in modern Germany. In no other nation is there so nice a regard for distinction of rank. And no other feature of German Hfe strikes the average American as so alien and ridiculous. In his recent book, our former Ambassador to Germany, Mr. James W. Gerard, has given a description of some of the progressively ordered titles to which the German citizen may aspire. ''One of the most successful ways of disciplining the people is by the Rat system. Rat means councillor, and is a title of honor given to anyone who has attained a certain measure of success or standing in his chosen business or profession. For instance, a business man is made a commerce Rat; a lawyer, a justice Rat; a doctor, a sanitary Rat; an architect or builder, a building Rat; a keeper of the archives, an archive Rat; and so on. They are created in this way: first, a man becomes a plain Rat, then, later on, he becomes a secret Rat or privy councillor; still later, a court secret Rat, and later still, a wirklicher, or really and truly secret court Rat to which may be added the title of Excellency, which puts the man who has attained this absolutely at the head of the Rat ladder." 1 In addition to the Rat system there is the system of orders and decorations, such as the Order of the Black Eagle, the Order of the Red Eagle, the Prussian Order of the Crown, * My Four Years in Germany, pp. 114-115, and fif. 410 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS the Order of the House of HohenzoUern, with special orders for each of the twenty-five German States. These orders in turn are subdivided into classes, and even embellished by a laurel crown or a sword with stars. Once a year there is held in BerHn a great Ordensfest, or great banquet at which all who have received such distinction can meet together and become more vividly and more collectively aware of it. The system ramifies into every corner of society. There is a place in it for domestic servants and postmen as well as for those of great wealth or exalted birth. It is a system of merit, paternally administered from above; rewarding those who in the judgment of the state have been faithful and well- behaved, like good boys in a boarding-school. Wives share the dignity of their husbands. As Mr. Gerard says, "The wife of a successful builder is known as Mrs. Really Truly Secret Court Building Rat, and her social precedence over the other women depends entirely upon her husband's posi- tion in the Rat class." Appealing as it does to so many human motives, to vanity and jealousy as well as to am- bition and emulation, it places enormous power in the hands of those who administer it, and ''tends to induce the plain people to be satisfied with a piece of ribbon" instead of the more substantial benefits of political power or economic advancement. It is this habit of taking one's place in the system, of sub- mitting willingly to what the system as a whole requires and to what the superior authorities of the system command, that makes Germany so formidable in this modern warfare of nations. No American can help believing that such an orderly equilibrium is premature. Sooner or later'^the masses of mankind are going in Germany as they have elsewhere to insist upon the substance of power, and to resent arrogance from any quarter. Then Germany will for the first time face the real political problem, which is to reconcile order and discipline with a healthy and resentful sense of equality. But meanwhile the more primitive paternalism of Germany gives her an enormous advantage over her enemies. War finds her already on a war-footing; with every man in his GERMAN NATIONAL TRAITS 411 place and ready to go forward at the word of command. He asks only that the machine shall run smoothly and accom- plish its purpose. In a letter pubHshed in an American newspaper in December, 1914, Professor Paul Natorp of the University of Marburg describes a butcher's boy who had expressed regret at being too young to go to the front, be- cause ''whether one lives a few years more or less makes no difference. One would like really to have done something." That, Professor Natorp went on to explain, "that is the secret of the German: He wants to have done something; everything else is secondary. Truly, it is not simply that we must protect our skins; that was the first call; now we have a mission in the world to fulfil, which we have no right to go back on. And what is this mission? It is nothing secret, it is of the simplest sort; to do thorough work of whatever sort it may be, in science, in technical work, in industry — and so in war, if war must be. And for the sake of the common goal, each standing faithfully at his post, each willing to submit himself to iron disci- pline, though in no sense in a servile way." ^ The spirit of this reminds one of the so-called "Dutch first sergeant" who used to be proverbial in the American army for his steadiness and fidehty; and for the fact that he found his military duties quite satisfying and spent his leisure hours sitting in barracks smoking his pipe instead of seeking adventures in the adjoining city. It is in perfect keeping with the great German ethical symbol, the "categorical im- perative" of Kant. This ethics is essentially an ethics of disciplined submission, which teaches the individual to obey without expectation of reward and without discussion. The categorical imperative, like the superior miHtary or political authority, gives commands without offering inducements. Nothing could afford a more striking proof of the German's aptitude for organization than his introduction of this idea into the field of culture, where it is commonly supposed that things can safely and best be left to the vagaries of individual genius. Kultur means both the cult of organization and the organization of culture. It is this stress on organization * Springfield Republican, December 6, 1914, p. 6. 412 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS that creates the impression that, since the Empire, German culture has not grown but has been made. It has been well- made, no doubt, as are all things made in Germany; but it strongly suggests the chemical compositions which Germany is now so ingeniously substituting for the products of nature. German men of culture, theologians, painters, philosophers, historians, mathematicians, poets and all the rest cannot be weaned from the system, even as it appears, by the call of truth. Nothing has given greater offense, and in many cases occasioned a more genuine grief to those who were once their friends, than the promptness with which German schol- ars left their studies and class-rooms at the sound of their master's voice, and recited in chorus the Httle chant of national self-laudation which was expected of them. I have only recently read a volume of essays entitled Modern Ger- many in Relation to the Great War, written by a dozen learned German professors, and have again been astonished at its inhuman unanimity. There is never the least confession of a national fault or weakness. Bernhardi has, we are told, his own peculiar opinions on war, but they '^need not be taken amiss from a frank and straightforward soldier.'* *'It is mere pharisaism" to reproach Germany for marching into Belgium, since anyone would have done the same ''in our place," realizing ''what adversaries were about to attack us." But nothing, I think, testifies more eloquently to the splendid discipline of these professors than Professor Meinecke's refer- ence to the superior "earnestness and devotion" with which Germans "study the beauty of Greek and Florentine art," until their "reverential silence" is disturbed by "herds of English tourists." ^ The imagination which it requires to picture a band of German students sitting in an Italian gal- lery in reverential silence surpasses any feat of professional apologetics with which I am acquainted. The Germans, then, are the best disciplined people in the world. They have therefore a great power to do that which those in authority will that they shall do. They have a cor- respondingly small aptitude for doing that which as in- > Op. cU„ pp. 564, 565, 577. GERMAN NATIONAL TRAITS 413 dividuals they might prefer to do; that which universal standards of truth or beauty might dictate; or that which is required by the happiness and well-being of mankind. Dis- cipline in itself means nothing less and nothing more than power. It has nothing to do with the ends to which such power shall be impUed. On the contrary it tends to the suppression of the discussion and sensibiHty from which humane and sound policy are most likely to spring. IV. EMOTIONALITY It is a great mistake to suppose that the Germans are characteristically phlegmatic or unemotional. They are perhaps the most high-pitched and irascible people on earth. Baron von Hiigel suggests that this accounts for their im- pulse to become absorbed in something. "The German," he says, "is indeed considerably more nervous, sensitive, offendible, vindictive than is the Englishman; but this leads him to get away from this readily painful self into ideas and theory and into himself, as it is there projected and en- larged." ^ There is evidently a difficulty in reconciling this emotion- ality, and in particular the unparalleled development in Ger- many of musical creation and appreciation, with the extraor- dinary realism and hardness of German public policy. To the Frenchman the German seems to have eliminated feeling altogether, and to have reduced human nature to intellect and will. This, for example, is the central thesis which so astute an observer as Professor Boutroux has maintained in his book on Philosophy and the War. But on the other hand Germany is the home not only of music, but of Schwdrmereiy lyric tenderness and the sentimental enjoyment of nature. He who can get to the bottom of this paradox will have gone far toward understanding the German soul. I cannot pre- tend to see my way clear; but I think I see some gleams of light. That which the Frenchman like Boutroux discovers in the German is really not the absence of feeling, but rather the * Op. cit.j p. 148. 414 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS distrust of feeling. The Frenchman, hke Rousseau and Comte, for example, is accustomed in moral matters to appeal to the social feelings, to sympathy and humanity. He regards these as authoritative, as the Englishman tends to regard happiness or utility. The German, on the other hand, turns moral matters over altogether to reason, will, or authority. He does not deny feeling; but he disquahfies It from the direction of his affairs, perhaps because he is only too well acquainted with it. Feehng thus driven from the field of action has to create a world for itself, where it may secure expression without intruding where it does not belong. Some music, such as martial or drinking songs, shouted in exultant unison, or such as the self-enhancing and hero- praising romanticism of Wagner, will reinforce the national will.^ Music, furthermore, from its very inarticulateness, readily associates itself with the German's metaphysical sense of being inwardly in touch with ultimate reahty; as is not the case with '' the artistic conception of the Latin races, with their sense of clearness, form, grace and transparency,' which is inherited from the Renaissance," and which finds a more natural expression in the plastic arts.^ Music is also the most primitive of the arts. As Brunetiere has pointed out, ''it is of all the arts, the only one to which even animals are manifestly sensible.'' 2 It might, therefore, be thought to be pecuHarly consistent with the elemental racial vigor of the Germans. But these explanations are evidently in- sufficient. We have to suppose, I think, that German emotionality, naturally abundant and aggressive, and sup- pressed by duty or poHcy, elaborates a rich but isolated life of its own. Music would lend itself to this most readily be- cause of all the arts it is the most subjective and the most irrelevant to practice. This is Mr. Santayana's view of the matter: ''The real strength of the Germans," he says, "lies not in those external achievements of which at this moment they make so much ... it lies rather in what they have always prized, their * Cf. E. Troeltsch, op. cit., p. 79. * La Renaissance de Vldedisme, p. 40. GERMAN NATIONAL TRAITS 415 GemiUh and their music. Perhaps these two things have a common root. Emotion is inarticulate, yet there is a mighty movement in it, and a great complexity of transitions and shades. This intrinsic movement of the feelings is ordinarily little noticed because people are too wide awake, or too imaginative. . . . They roundly call things beautiful, painful, holy or ridiculous; but they do not speak of their Gemiith. . . . But when the occasions of our emotions, the objects that call them forth, are not so instantly focussed, when we know better what we feel than why we feel it, then we seem to have a richer and more massive sensibility. Our feelings absorb our attention because they remain a thing apart: they seem to us wonderfully deep because we do not ground them in things external. Now music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings without attaching them to events or objects in the world." ^ , It is this isolation of the emotional life from the world of affairs which has impressed some critics as insincerity. Romain Rolland, for example, says that German art is false, not in the sense of failing truly to represent feehng, but in the sense that the feeling itself is false. "Music," he says, "is an implacable mirror of the soul. The more a German musician is naive and in good faith, the more he displays the weaknesses of the German soul, its uncertain depths, its soft tenderness, its want of frankness, its rather sly idealism, its incapacity for seeing itself, for daring to come face to face with itself. That false idealism is the secret sore even of the greatest." ^ Whatever justice there is in this charge, and I do not pre- tend to say how much there is, is due, I think, to the fact that the emotions which the German feels most strongly in his moments of aesthetic exaltation are not those which govern his actions. They are emotions without being motives; which is perhaps what we mean by sentimentality. The four traits which I have marked in the German char- acter can now be fitted together to make a picture. The German is fond of having profound reasons for what he does; is given to aggressive and somewhat inconsiderate self- * Egotism in German Philosophy ^ pp. 1 60-161. 2 Jean-Christophe, p. 373. 4i6 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS expression; is wilHng to take his place in a system for the sake of the relative advantage and the collective strength it affords; and develops his emotional Hfe in a realm of its own where it cannot interfere with his profound reasons, his inner will or with the smooth-working of his system. CHAPTER XXVIII THE GERMAN PROFESSION OF FAITH Despite the very general agreement that Germany is suffer- ing from some grave moral disorder, the doctors do not agree in their diagnosis. Some think that Germany is suffering from too much philosophy of the type produced by Kant, Fichte and Hegel ; others think that she is suffering from too little of it, or from the perversion of it, or from too much of the contrary materialistic sort. Still others think that the fault lies in her commercialism, or in her poKtical system, or in a primitive greed for power. There is, I think, some ele- ment of truth in all of these explanations. I propose that we examine them in the following order: first, idealistic in- fluences; second, anti-idealistic influences; third, the recon- cihation of the two, or the way in which the idealistic philos- ophy has been used to afford a justification of anti-idealistic motives. I. IDEALISTIC INFLUENCES We have observed that it is characteristic of Germans to provide a philosophical justification for what they do. The philosophy to which they commonly appeal for this purpose is that philosophy which we have already examined under the head of ** Absolute IdeaHsm." English, French and American adherents of this philosophy now find themselves in a somewhat awkward predicament. The doctrines which they have for a generation proved and proclaimed are now used as the premises for policies which their moral enlighten- ment and national loyalty compels them to denounce. It is natural under such circumstances that some among them should have sought to show that the bad Germany of to-day is violating rather than fulfilling the precepts of the masters.^ * Cf. e.g., G. Dawes Hicks, "German Philosophy and the Present Crisis," Hibhert Journal, October, 1914. 417 f 4i8 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS GERMAN PROFESSION OF FAITH 419 The Germans themselves, however, think otherwise. Not only does the Kaiser quote Kant, but the Gelehrte, the learned men themselves, insist upon Unking present German policy with the teachings of their most exalted thinkers. They resent the idea that Germany should be thought to be acting on no higher principles than those of Bismark, Nietzsche, Treitschke or Bernhardi. Not that they repudiate these principles. So far as I know they never repudiate anything that a good German has said. But they insist that these principles can all be traced back to more august authorities, such as Luther, Kant, Fichte or Ranke. Thus Professor Friedrich Meinecke, speaking of the Congress of Vienna, tells us that *' precisely those Prussian statesmen who were most deeply imbued with the thoughts of Fichte and Kant de- manded most vigorously at this period the annexation of Saxony by Prussia, and Fichte himself, in 1813, wished the King of Prussia would become the enforcer of German nationalism." ^ I do not, of course, say that it is possible to deduce the annexation of Saxony from Kant's Transcendal Ego of Ap- perception, but it is clear that Professor Meinecke, at any rate, refuses to admit any inconsistency of spirit or principle between the Kantian idealism and the aggressively nation- alistic policy of Prussia. In the same apologetic handbook from which I have cited the above passage. Professor Troeltsch, who is himself a phil- osopher of religion, refers to German idealism as that ** which once more to-day, after many fluctuations, dominates Ger- man philosophy and has done more inwardly to form and strengthen the youth of Germany than anything else within the last twenty years." He goes on to say that, ^' "German idealism up to the present may be said to have set itself the task of combining with the mechanical concept of nature, the full appreciation of the moral, religious and artistic spirit, and the assertion of freedom with the mechanical principle. ... It is chiefly the spirit of Kant and Fichte which has inspired these investigations up to the present day. Their spirit, only calmer, 1 "Kultur Policy of Power and Militarism/' in Modern Germany, p. 569. more realistic and cosmopolitan, permeates the national uprising of 1914, as it permeated that of 1813." ^ Both writers, in other words, refer to idealism as not only the great quickening force in the best German thought of to-day, but as the philosophy by which the life of the spirit has been reconciled with public policy and the new interest in me- chanical science. In recapitulating the teachings of absolute idealism for our immediate purposes I shall confine myself to those two ideas which have the most evident and direct bearing on questions of policy. I. The Ethics of Self -Realization, The ethical teachings of Kant and his successors may be summed up in the prin- ciple of self-realization. That which all German idealists unite in condemning is utilitarianism. The distinguishing feature of utilitarianism is its judgment of conduct by its consequences for the happiness of mankind. The German idealist, condemning such standards as sordid and ignoble, insists that conduct shall be judged by some inner principle expressing itself in the consciousness of the agent himself. This teaching first appears in Luther^s emphasis on the priority of the individual conscience over ecclesiastical authority. Second it appears in Kant's teaching that duty shall take precedence of inclination. But the Kantian prin- ciple was, as we have seen, too abstract and formal either to satisfy the metaphysical craving for contact with ultimate re- aHty, or to afford a guide for action. The metaphysical de- mand is satisfied by the Fichtean idea that duty is the voice of the absolute; and thej)ractical demand is met by the Hegelian subordination of the individual to the State. The moral agent is now invested with a new dignity and authority as being the incarnation of the ultimate reality; and the mean- ing of duty is now more plainly interpreted as obedience to the imperative requirements of national policy. The essen- tial principle of self-realization remains. Action is not to be judged by its consequences, but by its conformity with an * Op, cU,, p. 81. 420 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS authority acknowledged in conscience. Having become state-conscious, one does what that state-consciousness prompts one to do, on the ground that in so doing one is en- acting in one's own person the very will of God. Fortified by this sense of inward authorization and infallibility, one may ignore with proud disdain the effects which one's action happens to have on mere feelings, whether one's own or those of one's fellow-creatures. Professor Troeltsch gives us an interesting comparison of French, English and German ideas of freedom. The French idea, he says rests upon the conception of equality; the English, on the conception of personal responsibility and self-government; the German, on the conception of a "spon- taneous recognition of duty and right," which as he goes on to say, ''has definitely subordinated itself to the strong feel- ing of political soUdarity." ^ In other words freedom in the German sense is not in the least a question of external rela- tions, whether to nature or to one's social environment. It is altogether a question of the spirit in which one views the situation. The prisoner who like Socrates conceives it to be his duty to remain in prison, is as free there as he could be anywhere else. The individual who is compactly united with his fellows or rigidly subordinated to authority within the organized state is perfectly ''free" if only he identifies his will with the state-will that puts him there. Hence political liberty, equality of rank or private privilege are not in this philosophy regarded as values of the highest order or as at all indispensable to human dignity. It was characteristic of the Kantian philosophy, as we have already seen, to divorce morality and nature; to pro- claim the uncompromising rule of duty in the one field, and the uncompromising rule of mechanical law in the other. Professor Dewey has pointed out that this dualism is the most evident feature of German life. "Surely," he says, "the chief mark of distinctively German civilization is its combination of self-conscious idealism with unsurpassed technical efficiency and organization in various fields of * Op. cit.j p. 87. GERMAN PROFESSION OF FAITH 421 action." ^ But, as this same writer has shown, the Kantian dualism is not left unbridged. The Fichtean and Hegelian developments of the principle of self-realization make it possible to regard mechanical science and technology as in some sort an appHcation of duty. The inner moral will is one with that Absolute Will which imposes the laws of nature, so that the dutiful consciousness recognizes them not as something externally imposed but as its own creation. Tech- nology and mechanical organization as the conditions of national existence and power become a part of the self- realization of that higher corporate entity with which the dutiful individual identifies himself. 2. The Philosophy of the State. I have already treated of the idealistic philosophy of the state in a separate chapter. I desire here only to emphasize the acceptance of that phil- osophy by present German apologists. Fundamentally, this philosophy consists in the view that the state has a spiritual individuality, a personality, which absorbs and exalts its members. Thus Professor Edward Meyer has recently said: "To us the state is the most indispensable as well as the highest requisite to our earthly existence. ... All individualistic endeavor . . . must be unreservedly subordinated to this lofty claim. . . . The state . . . eventually is of infinitely more value than the sum of all the individuals within its jurisdiction. "This conception of the state, which is as much a part of our life as is the blood of our veins, is nowhere to be found in the English Constitution, and is quite foreign to English thought, and to that of America as well." ^ This state-personality is not only superior to its members, but it is free from the ordinary moral restraints in its dealings with other states. Thus Professor Meinecke, having traced to "the fundamental ideas of German idealism" the view that states and nations are "great historical individualities," goes on to show that "conflicts between private morality and * German Philosophy and Politics, p. 28. 2 England, its Political Organization and Development and the War Against Germany, trans., by H. S. White, pp. 30-31. 422 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS the interest of the state are simply unavoidable," and that *'the policy of power and state egotism'' can be bounded only by the principle that ''a state must not seek to acquire more power than is necessary for its absolute security and the free development of Us national energies '' ^ In other words, the principle of self-reaUzation is here extended to the state, which may disregard all that is external to itself and consult only the demands of its own inner ''energy." It follows that international relations can submit to no higher law than that of struggle, in which now one and now another of these monsters gains the ascendancy. These ''spiritual, Hfe- giving, creative forces, moral units of energy," as Ranke calls them, "blossom forth, fill the world, . . . war with one an- other, restrict and over-power one another. In their mutual influence upon one another, in their sequence, in their existence, their disappearance, in their resuscitation to a continually increasing potency, higher significance and greater extent, Ues the secret of the history of the world." ^ In other words, such international law as there is is the Hege- lian logic of history; ideahsm culminates in poHtical reahsm. Professor Meinecke sums the matter up as follows : "It was Ranke who taught us to honor truth and to regard states as living personalities, animated by vital impulses and desire for power; they are all proud, covetous of honor, and egotistical, but no one of them is like the other. ... It is unavoidable, he teaches furthermore, that these individualities of exuberant strength should, when they move and stretch, come into conflict with each other, now in peaceful competition, now in trials of strength by war. That is the judgment of historical realism which accepts the policies of states as they are, not as they might be according to humanitarian ideals." ^ So much for the idealistic ethics, politics and philosophy of history, as construed by those who now appeal to it for the higher justification of German policy. , I shall not here discuss the more metaphysical aspect of 1 Op. cit., p. 568, 572, 573. The italics are mine. 2 Quoted by Meinecke, op. cii.j p. 578. » Op, cU., pp. 577-578. GERMAN PROFESSION OF FAITH 423 this philosophy. We have already seen that its tendency is to identify the ultimate reality with the process of history as this culminates in the political and cultural ascendancy of some "present bearer of the world-spirit"; and to identity the supreme value with the diversification and enrichment of human life as this is achieved through national self- assertion and international struggle. This deification of historical forces serves as the chief religious motive for those Germans who have abandoned Christian orthodoxy. Those who have not, find in the militant and tribal Christianity of the Old Testament the plain man's justification for this same motive of national self-assertion, and for those rugged vir- tues which effective national organization requires.^ Let us now turn to the more material and worldly motives that according to some judges have diverted modern Germany from these more exalted principles. II. ANTI-IDEALISTIC INFLUENCES I. Commercialism. Germany, like other European na- tions, was profoundly affected by the great modern industrial revolution; and of Germany's remarkable commercial expan- sion at the turning of the century, there is, of course, not the slightest doubt. We have to do, however, not with this un- disputed fact, but with the question of motives. Shall we say that Germany's remarkable commercial expansion is evidence of the peculiar strength in Germany of the commercial mo- tives; and shall we find in this fact the deeper explanation of the course of her national affairs? Certainly the German would be the first to deny it; and I think that on the whole he is justified in denying it. The commercial motives, I be- lieve, are much more fundamental both in England and in the United States. The British Empire, as has often been pointed out, is not the result of national ambition, but the accumulation of a series of accidents. The fundamental thing is the individual Englishman's proclivity for adventure and trade, combined with an insular people's dependence on the sea. Traderoutes having been established, the British government has undertaken to protect its people in their use. 424 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS Colonization has followed trade or travel, the subjection of native populations has followed colonization, and permanent imperial rule has followed the superior success of the English- man in dealing with the peculiar difficulties to which such ra- cial contacts have given rise. In other words, the Empire is the unexpected result of private and sporadic commercial en- terprise. In this country we still retain the pioneer's feeling that the principal occupation of man is to exploit nature; and that just as the least a man can do is "to make a living," so the best he can do is to make a good living. Nature having been bountiful, and a rapidly increasing population having been for some time very busy making as much of a living as possible, we presently find ourselves among the great nations of the earth, and seek to expand our national soul accordingly. Both these motives, the Englishman's interest in sea-faring trade, and the American's interest in exploiting the natural resources of his country, may be said in a sense to be com- mercial motives. But I do not believe that any observer would characterize German life in such terms. Just as in Great Britain the Empire seems to be a by-product, and in America the nation, so in Germany commercial expansion seems to be the by-product. There are two deeper motives to which it seems to be traceable. In the first place it is the outcome of scientific and technological advancement and of thorough and widespread technical education. In this sense commerce is intellectualized, and conceived both as a result and as a part of Kultur. In the second place German com- mercial expansion is the result of national organization and of national ambition. Germany is the home of national economics. In her colonial enterprises it seems as though the ambition, the imperial idea, were there first; and as though the colonies were made to suit, instead of growing up as a consequence of individual adventurousness or love of wealth. The first step in German African colonization, I am informed, is to amaze the aborigenes by the construction of a set of impressive public buildings; and the second step is to kill the aborigenes in the most approved modern manner. And it sometimes happens that the colony gets no further. GERMAN PROFESSION OF FAITH 425 Germany's demand for a place in the sun is not a silent re- lentless pressure of population on the means of subsistence; it is the very conscious and loudly proclaimed pressure of the German national soul on the German national body. There is room in the German home land for the German population, but not for the German idea. And it is certainly the German imperial idea rather than any sordid mercenary consideration that makes Germany unwilling that her former subjects who have settled in North and South America should ever be- come denationalized. In short, instead of explaining German nationalism in terms of German commercialism, we find it easier and more plausible to explain German commercialism in terms of German nationalism; and we are brought back to that na- tionalistic cult for which the idealistic philosophy appears to provide the only moral or religious justification. 2. Naturalism. Ever since the middle of the last century the naturalistic philosophy has flourished in Germany. Vogt, Moleschott, Lange, Feuerbach, Biichner and in our own day Ernst Mach, are great names in the history of Ger- man thought. The vogue of Haeckel, whose Riddle of the Universe is said to have reached a sale of 240,000 volumes, was one of the features of German intellectual life in the period just prior to the outbreak of the war. But naturalism has never been acknowledged as a characteristic German philosophy, as was the case in France in the Eighteenth Cen- tury, and in both France and England in the Nineteenth Century. Furthermore, and this is for our purposes the crux of the matter, there has never been any wide acceptance in Germany of the utilitarian ethics. The most obvious moral sequel to naturalism is, as we have seen, the empirical and experimental study of human pleasures and satisfactions. The primitive datum of value is individual feeling; and an ethics that is governed mainly by the motive of science will be an ethics which defines right and wrong in terms of the effect of action on the aggregate of such feelings. But such an ethics is in Germany conspicuous only by its absence. The Darwinian ethics on the other hand is much more highly 426 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS developed in Germany than in the home of Darwin himselL The most notorious present-day protagonist of this ethics is General von Bernhardi, who has recently expounded it as follows: "Wherever we look in nature we find that war is a fundamental law of development. This great verity, which has been recognized in past ages, has been convincingly demonstrated in modern times by Charles Darwin. He proved that nature is ruled by an unceas- ing struggle for existence, by the right of the stronger, and that this struggle in its apparent cruelty brings about a selection eUminating the weak and the unwholesome. . . . The natural law to which all the laws of nature can be reduced, is the law of struggle. . . . From the first beginning of life war has been the basis of all healthy development. Struggle is not merely the destructive, but the Ufe-giving principle. The law of the stronger holds good every- where. Those forms survive which are able to secure for them- selves the most favorable conditions of Ufe. The weaker succumb." ^ But this teaching is not in Germany confined to rude and simple-minded soldiers Hke Bernhardi. Baron von Hiigel cites the example of Friedrich Naumann, the former Lutheran pastor who founded the ''National Social" movement, and who attempted to reconcile Christianity with Bismarck by rendering unto Jesus the personal relations between in- dividuals, and rendering unto Darwin the policies and rela- tions of states. In his Brieje iiber Religion^ this writer tells us that, ^''The State rests upon entirely different impulses and instincts from those which are cultivated by Jesus. . . . The State grows up upon the will to make others subservient to oneself. . . . The State is not love but constraint. . . . And it found its pattern form in Rome, not in Nazareth. . . . Militarism is the foundation of all order in the State and of all prosperity in the society of Europe. . . . Hence, we either dare to aim at being without a State, and thus throw ourselves deliberately into the arms of anarchy: or we decide to possess, alongside of our religious creed, a political creed as well. . . . Hence we do not consult Jesus, when we are concerned 1 England as Germany's Vassal. Quoted by Mitchell, Evolution and the War^ PP- 3, 4. GERMAN PROFESSION OF FAITH 427 with things which belong to the domain of the construction of the State and of Political Economy.'' ^ Now it scarcely needs pointing out that such an applica- tion of naturalism does not differ in effect from the teachings of Hegelianism. Both give the state immunity from the principles of private moraUty, and both justify the gospel of national self-assertion and power. But while the one uses harsh terms, the other uses soft terms. The one conjures in the name of nature, the other in the name of spirit. And the latter has therefore proved much the more acceptable of the two as a means of providing a high and soul-compel- ling justification of national policy. 3. Nietzsche. A contemporary English writer has argued at length that Nietzsche is not to be held responsible for the ideals of Germany.^ He has cited the well-known facts that Nietzsche was outspoken in his condemnation both of Ger- man national characteristics and of the new cult of nation- worship; that he praised France and dreamed of a United States of Europe.3 All of this is beyond dispute. Never- theless there remains a profound moral agreement between the teachings of Nietzsche and the spirit of modern Germany. Nietzsche, like the other teachers honored in Germany, was a pronounced opponent of the French Revolution, and of the whole humanitarian-democratic movement that has followed in its wake. He despised pity and utiUty. He praised the strength that proves itself by struggle and ascendancy. And although Nietzsche was a bitter critic of Germany, it is im- portant to notice who were the Germans of his day whom Nietzsche most admired. His sister Frau Forster-Nietzsche is authority for his belief that the redeeming feature of this decadent democratic age, the happy exception, was to be found in the Prussian nobles and officer-caste, who held them- selves superior and cultivated the heroic virtues. The hope of Germany, he thought, lay in them and in their sons. * In 1 Briefe, sth edition, 1910, pp. 71, 72, 84, 86. Quoted by von Hiigel, op. ciU, pp. 54, 55, 58. 2 H. L. Stewart: Nietzsche and the Ideals of Modern Germany. 3 Cf. above, pp. 167-169. * Cf. Forster-Nietzsche, Leben, II, 617. 428 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS other words, the Junker in whom we are accustomed to find the epitome of all that is dangerous to the world's peace and happiness, was to Nietzsche the best living embodiment of his ideal of arrogance and power. But more important than what Nietzsche thought of Ger- many, is what Germans of the present generation have thought of Nietzsche. Here there seems to be no doubt. I have already quoted Professor Francke's judgment that Nietzsche has been one of the three great spiritual heroes to the youth of Germany. The vogue of Nietzsche has been enormous. It is not surprising that the pocket edition of Also sprach Zarathustra should have been a favorite source of inspiration, or that many a German who wished to be forti- fied in his aggressive self-reHance should have fancied him- self to be a Superman; or that Bernhardi should have headed a book "from the Master"; or that a recent writer should have justified the present war as affording an opportunity for the demonstration of the Superman-Hke qualities of Hindenburg.^ It is true that there is in this a certain injus- tice to Nietzsche. His Superman was an intellectual hero, rather than a hero of muscle or iron. And Nietzsche thought that the heroic life was redeemed by suffering, as it was in his own case. But the fact remains that he proclaimed the will to power to be the central motive in life; and that he encouraged men to acquire strength and to exercise it by the subordination of the weak. His readers are scarcely to be blamed for having interpreted power in terms of war, and the caste of Supermen in terms of a superior race or nation. 4. Political Opportunism. It is sometimes argued that present German ideals are the result of historical exigencies ; that their real source is Bismarck, and that Bismarck was an indispensable instrument of national existence and preser- vation. Professor Troeltsch, having said that the Germans are a monarchical and military people by ancient tradition, adds that they would in any case have had to become so. *'A11 this,'' he says, *'is forced upon us by fate, which has placed us in the centre of Europe ; of this necessity we have * Cf. Figgis: Will to Freedom, p. 214. GERMAN PROFESSION OF FAITH 429 made a virtue."^ The Germans had a long and bitter experience of helplessness and disunion. From this they were rescued by Prussian militarism and by the imperial poHcy and ruthless poUtical opportunism of Bismarck. Having so long suffered from weakness, they came to worship unity and force as the means of security. It is not surprising that they were dissatisfied with that empire of the air which Heine allotted to them. ^ ^'In the Eighteenth Century," says Treitschke, ^'Hterary and artistic preoccupations were uppermost, and not till then did our people gradually begin to descend from Heaven to Earth." ^ The unsympathetic observer is prompted to declare that they have been de- scending ever since and are on their way to an even ulterior destination! In our own day the same motive of political necessity has appeared in the widespread and genuine dread of Russia and of the pan-Slavic movement; and in the suspicious fear of the alliance of Russia with England and France. This motive was undoubtedly a powerful factor in inducing the German people to accede to the present war. The German has learned to think of himself as encircled by implacable foes, and as therefore justified in cultivating force and using it when he can. The method of militarism and unscrupulous statecraft, once accepted as the condition of national exist- ence, ceases to appear objectionable, and is easily converted into an instrument of aggrandizement and conquest. The German, vividly realizing that Germany as a political entity is the work of such shameless conquerors and intriguers as Frederick the Great and Bismarck, cannot condemn them as the French condemn Napoleon. He cannot condemn his country's makers without condemning his country. And in so far as he justifies them, he cannot easily condemn their modern imitators of the Pangerman League. * Modern Germany, pp. 70, 71. 8 " Franzosen und Russen gehort das Land Das Meer gehort den Britten; Wir aber besitzen im Luftreich des Traums Die Herrschaft unbeschritten." 8 Politics, Vol. I, p. 51. ". • 430 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS But in admitting the influence on the German mind of what he deems to be the lesson of history and the counsel of necessity, we do not in the least contradict the influence of the idealistic philosophy. No one argues from mere neces- sity if he can help it. Nor can one draw from the national exigencies of the past a principle sufficient to define the national hopes and ideals. The idealistic philosophy affords a principle that is both positive and for all time. It justifies Bismarck not as a mere creature of necessity or victim of circumstance; it justifies him as the creator of the supreme embodiment of the world-spirit, as one who understood in- stinctively the great law that the state is superior to the code of private morahty, and as one who expressed in his exclusive regard for German interests the great right of every nation to the unhampered expansion of its ^^ moral energies.'' III. THE RECONCILIATION It has already become apparent that the distinctive feature of German Ufe is not an idealistic disregard of nature or practical interests and exigencies, nor a materialistic in- difference to the call of the spirit, but the idealization of the very solid advantages of wealth and power. Bergson, while insisting that the fundamental motives of German policy are ambition and pride, concludes by saying that ''none the less is it true that perverse ambition, once erected into theory, feels more at ease in working itself out to the end."^ It is his idealistic philosophy that enables the German to feel at ease and to work his poUcy out to the end. In a passage on " the old problem: 'What is German?' " Nietzsche refers to in- stances in German history that he thinks are exceptions to the spirit of the race. These are "Goethe's Paganism with a good conscience" and "Bismarck's Macchiavelism . . . with a good conscience," as contrasted with the metaphysical profundities of Leibnitz, Kant and Hegel.^ In other words, the one thing that is not German is to be simply pagan or Macchiavelian. The German must fortify himself with 1 "Life and Matter at War," Hibbert Journal^ April, 1915, p. 471. * Joyful Wisdom, 357. GERMAN PROFESSION OF FAITH 431 metaphysics. And he has found in idealism a philosophy peculiarly apt for the purpose. This is the substance of Jean-Christophe's meditations on the evolution of Germany: " Especially since the German victories they had been striving to make a compromise, a revolting intrigue between their new power and their old principles. The old idealism had not been renounced. . . . They were content with a forgery. . . . When they were defeated, they said that Germany's ideal was humanity. Now that they had defeated others, they said that Germany was the ideal of humanity. When other countries were more powerful, they said, with Lessing, that ^patriotism is a heroic weakness which it is well to he without J and they called themselves ^citizens of the world* Now that they were in the ascendant, they could not enough despise the Utopias 'd la Francaise,* . . . Force had become holy now that it was on their side. ... In truth, Germany had suffered so much for centuries from having idealism and no fame that she had every excuse after so many trials for making the sorrowful confession that at all costs Force must be hers. . . 'The chief characteristic of Germany/ said Moser, more than a century ago, 'is obedience.' And Madame de Stael: 'They have submitted doughtily. They find philosophic reasons for explaining the least philosophic theory in the world : respect for power and the chastening emotion of fear which changes that respect into admiration.'' " ^ The readiness with which the traditional idealism lends itself to this use should now be apparent. The Kantian idea of duty is through its very formaUsm and barrenness convertible into a cult of miUtary discipline and political subserviency. "The sage of Konigsberg," says a writer already quoted, "has through the formula of the categorical imperative raised the conception of duty to the dignity of a guide of conduct; in Germany miUtary life, and in the Ger- man public and official system, with the Prussian official as the model, this idea has found its embodiment." ^ "The moral law of the categorical imperative, which the state sets up," says Professor Meinecke, "demanded action and work, and devotion to the common weal." ^ * Rolland: Jean-Christophe, pp. 565, 566. * J. A. Lux: Deutschland als Welterzieher, p. 13. ' Op. cit., p. 569. 432 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS Fichte's Reden an die Deutsche Nation, delivered in the Berlin Academy of Science on Sunday evenings from Dec.^ 13, 1807 to March 20, 1808, were an appeal to prostrate nation- ality. They were primarily a moral appeal, and not a call to arms. He pointed out what nationaUty could do as a moral force, and he not unnaturally used every means to lead the German to think of what distinguished him and set him apart. He strove to make Germany self-conscious. It is quite true that it was a noble appeal, and what every lover of his people would wish to do under like conditions. The sequel proves not that Fichte was ignoble, but that his phil- osophy contained seeds of error. It proves the danger of a philosophy which teaches the absolute uniqueness of one people, and bids a people think only of its own soHdarity and self-expression. Having reached that point, it is easy to pass on and to identify the national entity with the state or with the existing system of poUtical authorities. Hegel doubtless thought of the state as an order creating freedom, and con- ditioning the higher activities of art, religion and philosophy. But in elevating the state above the individual, and making it the subject of superior values, such a philosophy puts a premium on whatever magnifies the state. Bismarck and the cult of might readily turned this to their use. And it was Fichte who in this same noble appeal proclaimed Germany as the special representative of the absolute. Each nation is "the incorporation of a special ideal which could not be de- stroyed without loss to the Universe." But Germany is the nation. Nothing could afford a plainer warrant for the Pangermanists. As von Hligel says, "Thus did the Lion prepare a feast for all the beasts of the field, even the field-mice and the moles had their seat and share assigned, each strictly according to its intrinsic merits. But then at the feast the Lion took, in the most careful attention to his culturally graduated scheme, his 'true,' i.e., the Lion's share." ^ In keeping with this idea the successors of Fichte have proclaimed the superiority of European over Asiatic nations. 1 The German Soul, p. gS, GERMAN PROFESSION OF FAITH 433 The ** Occidental community of nations alone is our Reason, it alone forms a real historical complex of life possessing actual significance for us." ^ Hence in the Boxer campaign, after the Kaiser's exhorting his troops to rival the fright- fulness of the Huns, women and children looking on at the driU of German troops were deliberately shot down in order to induce them to bring pressure on their government.^ And why not? For in this teaching all that falls outside that unit of life which feels itself to be superior and is seeking an outlet for its moral energies, is mere hindrance to be swept away, or a mere thing to be used. To Germans who are exalted by this sense of a spiritual mission there is something petty and sordid in the Anglo- Saxon's calculations of utility and happiness; something soft and irresolute in the Frenchman's cultivation of the social sentiments. But we who are not Germans turn with joyous relief to these more homely and humane philosophies. What- ever a fellow- German may feel, no mere outsider can be expected to respond with cordiality or admiration to a national faith that can move one of its devotees to say: "Goethe's practical idealism and Nietzsche's spiritualism, mediated by the Leitmotiv of a well-equipped, brazen, inflexible Siegfried-will, as such I see the new German nationality and hear its cry of victory as it goes resounding through the peoples of the earth to meet the future." ^ * Troeltsch, "Personal Morality and State Morality," Neue Rundschau, Feb. 1916, p. 152. ^ Statement made to Baron von Hfigel by a Scotch oflScer who was a wit- ness. Cf. The German Soul, pp. 99-100. * Lux, op. cit., p. 43. CHAPTER XXIX FRENCH NATIONAL TRAITS The better understanding of France has for every Anieri- can become a sacred duty. While every American school boy thinks of France as our traditional ally and fellow- democracy, and while every high-spirited man American or otherwise, must have felt at least a sentimental interest m a country which has played so romantic a role m ]^story ^^^J^ neglect of French hterature and philosophy, and our blind- ness to the true spirit of France, is as striking as it is deplor- able It is partly the result of our racial composition. ^ Uur original stock came from Great Britain; and our later immi- grant population has come from Germany, Scandinavia Italy, Austria, Russia and the Balkan states - from almost even^here but France. It is partly a result of education, our universities and scholarly activities having been pro- foundly influenced by Germany. But the mam reason for the popular misconception of France, a misconcepUon which America shares with all the world, is the habit of judging France by what happens most to interest and amuse us. io the average tourist France is Paris, and Pans is the place where he buys his clothes and where, to borrow a phrase from a current "movie'' scenario, he "registers gayety verging on the loose." To the man who is tired of being busy, or ot being good, Paris suggests being off duty, or the charm of the forbidden indulgence. It suggests what James has called a "moral hoUday." To jaded and habit-ridden mankind Paris suggests the bizarre in art, the excesses of reahsm or impressionism, or the absurdities of post-impressiomsm and futurism. , ^ , - In part, then, the reputation of France has suffered from being associated with certain moods or passing phases m the experience of those who have been superficiaUy acquainted 434 FRENCH NATIONAL TRAITS 435 with'^her. We are apt to think France frivolous or decadent merely because so many Germans or Englishmen or Ameri- cans have gone to Paris to spend the more frivolous or de- cadent hours of their lives. In contrast with the sobriety which the traveller has left behind him at home, and in con- trast with her own glorious past, the Parisian France of to-day symbolizes the unhealthy brilliancy of an over-ripe culture, of what the world before the war had agreed to call ''that worn-out civilization, that perishing little Greece." The Frenchman's resentment of this judgment, and at the same time his feeling that in a sense France is herself re- sponsible for it, is eloquently expressed in the words with which RoUand's Oliver answers Jean-Christophe : "You see the shadow, the reflected light of day: you have never seen the inward day, our age-old immemorial spirit. . . . How dare you slander a people who for more than a thousand years have been living in action and creation, a people that has graven the world in its own image through Gothic art, and the seventeenth century, and the Revolution — a people that has twenty times passed through the ordeal of fire, and plunged into it again, and twenty times has come to life again and never yet has perished! . . . Not one of you has any idea of the real France living under oppression, or of the reserve of vitality in the French provinces, or of the great mass of the people who go on working heedless of the uproar and pother made by their masters of a day. . . . Ill-omened Paris! No doubt good also has come of it — by gathering together all the forces of the French mind and genius. But the evil it has done is at least equal to the good: and in a time like the present the good quickly turns to evil. A pseudo-elite fastens on Paris and blows the loud trumpet of publicity and the voices of all the rest of France are drowned. More than this: France herself is deceived by it: she is scared and silent and fearfully locks away her own ideas." ^ Now it has to be admitted that although Paris does not represent France, nevertheless it is characteristic of France that it should be misrepresented by a Paris. In no other modern society is life so focalized and centralized in its metropolis. Every intellectual activity and personal aspira- * Rolland, Jean-Christophe in Paris ^ pp. 323-324. 436 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS tion culminates in Paris. In no other modern society, there- fore, is it equally possible that the general Ufe should be so profoundly affected by the swift changes of feeling, thought, or even of authority that take place within one highly con- centrated community. French life is pecuUarly unified, and Paris is its central nervous organ, where this life is most consciously registered, and from which its dominant emo- tions and its crucial decisions emanate. Even so, we have not yet explained Paris. We have not explained why those who have gone to France for pleasure should have found it there; or why even those who have thought France to be decaying should have acknowledged her Athenian brilliancy. We have not explained the ex- traordinary power of recuperation by which this charge of decadence has again in the present war been proved a slander. On these and on other Uke questions I hope to throw some little ray of Ught, confident that whether we succeed or not, this is to-day one of the things with which you and I can most profitably occupy ourselves. I. HUMANISM The term "humanism'' is commonly applied to the civil- ization of ancient Athens and to that of the ItaUan Renais- sance. I propose to apply it in the same sense to the civil- ization of modern France. It means the cultivation of man's natural powers to the highest possible pitch of perfection. Humanism may develop under the control of some unifying ideal; as Athenian humanism grew up under the ideal of bodily and civic health, and Italian humanism under the ideal of the Christian Ufe. But the tendency of humanism is toward decentralization. Any unifying ideal must exer- cise restraint upon the several human capacities, and the interest in perfecting these, each in its own terms, begets an impulse to Hberate them from such restraint. Thus hu- manism if left to itself has tended to physical and political weakness. I. The Sensibilities and the Intellect. The most evident sign of French humanism is the love of art. In the Nine- FRENCH NATIONAL TRAITS 437 teenth Century France has led the way both in literature and in the plastic arts. And nowhere has there been so pro- nounced a tendency to refine the artistic sensibilities and to exploit creative genius without ulterior motive; to carry the cult of form to every length, to try out every untried possi- bility, to free each particular artistic interest from moral, political or reUgious control in order to see to what extremes it can reach if left entirely to itself. This, I take it, is the explanation both of the brilliancy of French culture, and also of its virtuosity, its extravagance and its irresponsi- bility. The sum of these excesses, a sort of looseness that comes from the over-intensive cultivation of special gifts and modes of taste, is what we so inaptly term "decadence." Where this humanistic impulse is strong it is not surprising that literature and the drama should fail to represent the normal life of the community. The life which is depicted on the French stage or in the French novel is not intended to reveal either French habits or French ideals. It is selected because it is interesting and because it lends itself to dramatic and literary effect. It proves not the French are immoral, but that French art is unmoral; that is, that it is pursued for its own sake and enjoyed in its own way. It is French humanism that has made France so peculiarly receptive to science, and to every form of iconoclasm. It is her humanism that constitutes her Latin quality, her heritage from antiquity and from the Renaissance. With her hu- manism is associated that quickness of perception, that rapid play of wit and imagination that the world calls volatile and fickle. It is French humanism that has made France the great source of change and novelty; and that has made her the great exponent of modernity in all the things of the spirit. The intellect, like the senses, may be thought of as a faculty of creation and appreciation; and with this faculty the modern French are perhaps more highly endowed than any other European people. ^ This faculty too is capable of its own intensive cultivation. It is possible to make a point, ^ Cf. Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution, p. ^07. 438 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS or even a fetish, of sharp definition, analysis and cogent reasoning. This is a French trait, as it was a Greek trait. It is commonly acknowledged in the judgment that the French excel in logic and in mathematics; or in the judgment that though they may over-simpUfy a problem, they are sur- passingly clear in their formulation and solution of it. When the French use the intellect they try to be true to the canons of the intellect, and to follow it uncompromisingly wherever it may lead. They do not isolate the intellect, in the sense of using it only in a realm of abstractions. On the contrary, they are peculiarly addicted to the application of logic to life. But when they do so they do not shrink from the argument because they fear the conclusion. In other words, the French are intellectually honest to an unusually high degree. Pro- fessor Barrett Wendell, whose France of To-day, is quite the best book by which an outsider may gain a sympathetic understanding of French Ufe, reminds us that the English and American ideal of candor is ''intimately personal." The candid man is the man who tells us all his troubles. We suspect the Frenchman of lacking candor because he ex- hibits reticence on this score. But the Frenchman has his own ideal of candor, which is "intellectual rather than per- sonal." ''It admits," this writer goes on to say, "a degree of personal reticence which by tempers like ours, might well be held to pass beyond the extreme of prudence; but when it confronts problems, whether of Hfe or of philosophy, it rigidly demands a degree of intellectual frankness which our less alert mental habit has hitherto allowed us cheerfully to neglect." ^ 2. Aptitude for Expression. Closely allied to this hu- manistic cult of the special human faculties, and perhaps springing from the same fundamental motive, is the French- man's emphasis on expression. Here also the trait is best known to outsiders through its excesses. The Frenchman is the man who cannot think without talking, and who cannot talk without gesticulating. Jean-Christophe refers to the "eternal loquacity" of the French, and says that they "have 1 Pp. 150, 151. FRENCH NATIONAL TRAITS 439 no more in their minds and hearts than they show, and often not even as much." ^ In so far as this is true it comes of regarding thought as a creative activity which like the imagination has its own proper modes of expression. One of these is literature. But oral speech as well as written speech has its felicities of form; and to a people of taste un- couth speech will be as offensive as slovenly writing. Just as you can be sure in advance that a French book will be well written, so you can be sure that whatever a Frenchman has to say, or however much he has to say, he will say it well. France is the place where conversation is practised as a fine art, and where even university lecturers and public speakers are not indifferent to the precision and beauty of their utter- ances. Manners, dress and all forms of social intercourse exhibit in France this same regard for comeliness and style. There is, in short, an art of life in all its varied activities. The sociality of the French, which is one of their great distinguish- ing traits, is, I think, in a large measure traceable to this sense that nothing is done until it has found a fitting and acceptable outward expression. When the Frenchman thinks, he conceives himself to be communicating something to somebody. It has been said that " a Frenchman needs to know what his neighbor thinks before he knows what he thinks, himself, so that he can think the same thing or the opposite." 2 This is not due either to subserviency or to contentiousness, but to the need of feeling his intellectual milieu. He wants to know what other people think, as the conversationalist wants to know what others have said, so that he may make himself intelligible and so that he may take part in the general interchange of ideas. Hence the urbanity of French literature and art, its tone of courtesy and its objectivity. It is not like a soliloquy, an exclama- tion or a gesture, a means of getting rid of something; it is rather a means of conveying something. And hence, I think, ^ Remain Rolland: Jean-Christophe, pp. 443-4; Jean-Christophe in Paris, p. 78. * Rolland, op, cit., p. 93. 440 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS the proverbial clearness of French thought. The Frenchman instead of saying, ''I have this idea but cannot express it/' would be inclined to feel that unless he could express it in- telligibly he had no idea at all. II. CHIVALRY We have seen that the Germans sought in the Nineteenth Century to overcome their excessive fondness for cosmopoli- tan culture, and to cultivate a wholesome respect for national force. This effort proved rather over-successful. The French have likewise suffered from an amiable fault, but they appear to have overcome the fault without ceasing to be amiable. Their traditional fault is a somewhat abstract and quixotic idealism. They have what Paul Sabatier describes as *'an instinctive enthusiasm ... for general ideas and generous causes." Their loyalty to general ideas has often led them, as in the case of the French Revolution, to pay too little attention to human nature and to the lessons of ex- perience and history. In the Nineteenth Century their con- sciousness of this fault led to the cultivation of a keener sense for facts; and to the attempt to associate their revolutionary zeal with a sober study of psychology and sociology. And in the present war they have learned to take a leaf from the book of their enemy. They have come to understand that neither enthusiasm nor even a good cause affords any guar- antee of victory unless combined with prudence, organization and mechanical skill. The war of 1870 and the persistently threatening attitude of Germany have begotten a sobering sense of danger which tends to repress all extravagances of gallantry. When early in the present war a class from the officer's school of Saint Cyr took a solemn oath to go into battle in dress uniform, with white gloves and with plumes in their hats, their gallant martyrdom was not applauded in France. It evoked the feeling that '' this is French, but it is not war.*' The fact remains, however, that such folly was character- istically French, and that the fine quality of it has been retained even when its suicidal and fratricidal forms have FRENCH NATIONAL TRAITS 441 been repressed. Consider, for instance, the example cited by Barres of the young officer who on leaving for the front made this last request of his mother: ^' When the troops come home victorious through the Arc de Triomphe, if I am no longer amongst them, put on your finest apparel and be there." ^ This is as much as to say, as an ancient Greek might have said, that a gallant death in a noble cause is not a calamity, nor even a deplorable necessity, but an occasion of rejoicing. The Frenchman is not only willing to suffer for his cause, but he feels that the suffering is needed to re- deem what would otherwise be mere violence and cruelty. The cause must be served not with the ambition that takes, but with the love that gives. Even in these soberer and more realistic times Barres can still say: "It is not in France that wars are entered upon for the sake of the spoils. Wars for the sake of honor and glory? Yes, at times. But to carry the nation with it the p)eople must feel itself a cham- pion in the cause of God, a knight upholding justice. . . . French- men fighting in defense of their country have believed almost always that they were suffering and enduring that all humanity might be the better. They fight for their territory filled with sepulchres and for Heaven where Christ reigns, and up to which at least our aspirations rise. They die for France, as far as the purposes of France may be identified with the purposes of God or indeed with those of humanity. Thus it is that they wage war in the spirit of martyrs." ^ That the spirit of chivalry is not dead in the land of Roland, Godfrey of Bouillon, St. Louis and Bayard is best proved, I think, by the Frenchman's feeling regarding Alsace-Lorraine. To the outside world it oftens appears to be no better than revenge and covetousness. But to the Frenchman it is largely a matter of being loyal to those who have been loyal, and who have suffered for their loyalty. In 187 1 the repre- sentatives of Alsace-Lorraine said to France: ''Your brothers in these two provinces, who, for the time being, are separated from the one common family, will ever retain a filial affection ^ Barres: The Undying Spirit of France, p. 55. * Ibid., pp. 47-48. 442 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS for absent France, until she comes to win back her former place." For forty years the loyalty and affection of these expatriated people has resisted every form of penalty and bribe. They have waited. Shall France, then, forget them? Before the outbreak of the present war had brought the op- portunity, the recovery of the lost provinces was thought of as a sacred duty for which Frenchmen ought to be prepared to suffer. Thus Paul Sabatier, writing in 191 1, said: ^ "What the French democracy desires ... is that . . . this gallant people, which has given contemporary Europe the spectacle of an idealism that might have been thought incredible, should become at last the arbiter of its own fate. . . . For what are we making these sacrifices? For a very simple matter: to prevent the proscription being established — to be faithful, undoubtedly, to Alsace; but fundamentally, what we desire above all is to be faithful to an idea, to be the knights of this idea, that it may make its definitive entry into the world through us and through our suffering." ^ m. FACTIONALISM That which the French have had most to fear is internal disunion due to their intensity of partisan convictions. *'In every Frenchman," says Jean-Chris tophe, *' there is a Robespierre. He must be forever chopping the head off something or somebody to purify it." ^ in other words, the Frenchman takes his rational and moral convictions very seriously; and as the unfortunate fallibility of mortal mind results in the formation of a number of such convictions, there results a whole-hearted and uncompromising dissension such as is not paralleled anywhere else in the world. This national trait is closely allied to those that we have already considered. The Frenchman thinks his premises through to the conclusion; and when he gets to the conclusion he holds it to be true, and honors it with the respect which he thinks the truth deserves. Furthermore, as we have seen, when he thinks about Hfe he conceives that the truth ought to be put into practice. So he proceeds to regulate his affairs by it, * France To-day, pp. 56, 57. * Jean-Christophe in PariSy p. 49. FRENCH NATIONAL TRAITS 443 and so far as possible, the affairs of the entire community. He does not propose to hide or compromise his convictions. On the contrary he would rather exaggerate them than be suspected of truckling to expediency. He is, as has been said, a ^^boin frondeur.^^ He will even go to the point of doing what is impolitic, simply because it is impolitic. It was said at a time when the government was strongly anti- clerical, that *' there are humble functionaries who make it their business to go ostentatiously to Mass in order to assert their independence, though they are not clericals at all." From this point of view one can understand that some Frenchmen should regard intellectual or moral tolerance not as a virtue but as a weakness. "Among a people for whom the demands of reason transcend all others the fight for reason dominated every other. ... If it is the fierceness of the fight that gives its worth to life, and uplifts all the living forces to the point of sacrifice to a superior Being, then there are few struggles that do more honor life than the eternal battle waged in France for or against reason. And for those who have tasted the bitter savor of it the much-vaunted apathetic tolerance of the Anglo-Saxons is dull and unmanly. The Anglo-Saxons paid for it by finding elsewhere an outlet for their energy. Their energy is not in their tolerance, which is only great when, between factions, it becomes heroism. In Europe of to-day it is most often indiffer- ence, want of faith, want of vitality. The English, adapting a saying of Voltaire, are fain to boast that 'diversity of belief has produced more tolerance in England' than the Revolution has done in France. The reason is that there is more faith in the France of the Revolution than in all the creeds of England." ^ The most striking example of French factionalism afforded by recent history is the Dreyfus affair. For all Frenchmen of the day it was a fundamental issue of principle, permitting of no compromise or leniency of judgment. The anti- Dreyfus party believed that the existing system of authority should be upheld at all costs, even at the cost of an isolated act of injustice. The Dreyfus party, on the other hand, took their stand on the broader principle of right. The former 1 Rolland, Jean-Christophe in Paris, pp. 332-333. 444 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS party believed that the individual should be sacrificed to the nation; the latter that the nation should be sacrificed to the ideal of justice. It was a conflict of ultimate standards. "Fundamentally/* Sabatier tells us, "it was a question of con- science, a religious resolution. Ought one to sacrifice everything in order to tell the truth as one sees it? Ought one to imperil the nation itself for a man who had only a shred of Hfe left in him? Those who asked themselves these questions felt indeed that every human power was confederated to counsel abstention, prudence, compromise; but a single voice that they would fain have silenced, said: 'You have no right to love your life, your family, your land more than the truth. You have one duty — to be a mart)rr, if that is called for.*''^ Not only is the bitterness of the conflict characteristic of France. It is equally characteristic of France that the Dreyfusards should have won the day. It is easy to name a place in Europe where the temporal interests of the nation would have been held to be of paramount importance. But in this great crisis France was true to her traditional un- willingness to count the cost in any baser coin when funda- mental moral issues were at stake. She was prepared to rend herself in pieces for a principle; not unaware, perhaps, that there is more glory and greatness in such a course, than in a power based on tyranny and secret injustice. The young poet Charles Peguy, who went to his death in the present war, has eloquently expressed the spirit that triumphed in that earlier crisis: "We said that a single injustice, a single crime, a single illegality, especially if it be ofiicially recorded and confirmed: a single injury to humanity, to justice and righteousness, especially if it be uni- versally, legally, nationally, comfortably accepted; — a single crime is enough to break the whole social pact, the whole social contract, a single prevarication, a single act of dishonor suffices to ruin honor, to dishonor a whole people. . . . The greater our past, the greater precisely is our obligation to keep it great, to keep it pure. / render hack my blood pure as I have received it. , . . Fimda- men tally, we were those who stood for eternal salvation, and our * Paul Sabatier, op. cit., pp. 29, 30. FRENCH NATIONAL TRAITS 445 adversaries for temporal salvation. That was the true, the real division in the Dreyfus affair." ^ IV. SOCIAL COHESIVENESS Each nation appears to exhibit in some striking way the possession of quite contradictory traits. I have suggested that the key to the understanding of the German may lie in the answer to the question, ''How can he be so subjective, so emotional, so sentimental in temperament, and at the same time be so relentless and unfeeling in his affairs and in his public policy?" Similarly we may ask of the French, "How can they be at one and the same time so divided and so united? " We have found two tendencies in French life that are centrifugal and disorganizing. In the first place there is that humanistic particularism, which leads to the intensive and immoderate cultivation of each of the human powers in turn. In the second place there is that factionalism, that passionate adherence to a party cause or principle for which the Frenchman is willing to sacrifice political solidarity or authority. Nevertheless it is perfectly evident that no modern nation possesses a greater love of system, or a higher degree of national unity. To reconcile a love of system with a tendency to disunion is comparatively easy. The Frenchman likes to think sys- tematically, but it is the most human thing in the world that systems should clash; and the more convinced each protag- onist is of his awn system, the more unsystematic the several systems will be in their relation to one another. In Germany this dissension among systems has been largely prevented by the more powerful force of political solidarity. Further- more, German thought is more metaphysical, French more social; and while metaphysical differences are profound they are less likely to lead to political disputes. Indeed, as we have seen, the Germans have deduced much the same politi- cal program from metaphysical premises so wide apart as those of Hegel, Darwin and Nietzsche. It is also to be noted that a love of systematic thinking, or even a desire to live / "Notre jetinesse," in Cahiers de la quinzaine, July 17, 1910, pp. 210-212, 446 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS consistently with one's ideas in no way implies a readiness to belong to a system, or to submit to the discipline which a stable political system requires. Nothing, indeed, could in effect be more anarchical than a society of social philosophers, each desiring to live and to reform the rest according to the precepts of his own system. We are still as far as ever, then, from understanding the actual solidarity of the French people. That the solidar- ity is there and that it goes deep, no observer of history or of present events will deny. No European people has passed through more abrupt changes, from social aristocracy to social democracy, from monarchical absolutism to commu- nism and anarchy, from orthodox Catholicism to extremes of atheism and blasphemy. French history is a prolonged series of revolutions and counter-revolutions. Nevertheless, all these violent changes have somehow been incidents in one continuous life. Through it all France has remained France. France is not merely the Republic, it is the Mon- archy and the Empire as well. Similarly in the days before the war one might have thought that there were no French- men, but only Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards, Mon- archists and Republicans, clericals and anti-clericals. But to-day the French stand revealed to the world as one and indivisible. I think that we can get some light on this paradox if we note one fundamental fact. French unity is largely un- conscious, a matter of instinct, habit, custom and tradition, rather than of deliberate interest and methodical organiza- tion. In the first place France is the oldest of the great nations of Europe. The French people are so imbued and saturated with nationality, that it has become a second nature, a common point of departure. The French mind instead of dwelling on this level of sameness occupies itself with the more interesting novelties and differences that spring from it. National unity has been achieved long since and is now taken for granted. It forms a sort of reserve which is drawn upon in great emergencies. In Germany, on the other hand, nationality is a more recent thing. The FRENCH NATIONAL TRAITS 447 aggressive and extravagant form which it there assumes is largely due to the fact that only yesterday it was something yet to be fought for and achieved. To-day it is somewhat ostentatious and over-emphatic like the wealth or social station of the parvenu. Much of what is unpleasant in modern Germany is the harshness of successful effort as contrasted with the mellowness oi old and secure attain- ment. A further corroboration of this view is to be found in the place which the family occupies in French life. The family is a natural and not an artificial unit. In that sense the family bond is a deeper bond than even the marital bond or the bond of romantic affection between the sexes. "In France," says Professor Wendell, "it seems the most spon- taneous of all impulses. . . . The ties it consecrates are evidently those of nature as distinguished from those of choice. We cannot help being the children of our parents; our children cannot help springing from us. . . On the other hand some of the closest actual human relations in the world are matters not of necessity but of choice. Nobody, however devoted, is compelled by any inexorable law of nature to be the husband or the wife of anybody else. Com- paratively accidental though marital relation may be, the while, there can be no doubt that the conventional ideals of America have always assumed, as a matter of course, that it ought to be the object of prime human affection. Among the French, on the other hand, though conjugal union seems generally full of cordial feeling, the intensity of prime affection seems more instinctively conse- crated to the unavoidable human relations of parents and children."^ We have a saying that "God gives us our relatives, but, thank God, we can choose our friends.'' The French, on the other hand, would feel that what God gives us should be more fundamentally dear to us than what we choose for ourselves. So the foyer or hearthstone, "the core of do- mestic life," is in France the great symbol of social cohesion.^ Now in a more extended sense the French people is a great family of families. To the officer his soldiers are his children, * Op. cit., pp. iio-iii. ' Cf. ibid,i PP« 120 ff. 448 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS the priest is the father of his parishioners. The Frenchman who dies for his country dies for his home, and that his children and their children may hve in a better world. And French quarrels are like family quarrels, both in their mo- mentary bitterness and in the certainty of eventual recon- cihation and of union against a common enemy. In spite of the strong impulse to equality the Frenchman is comparatively willing to accept social differences where they do not imply differencesof authorityand where they grow naturally out of the circumstances of life. The noble is a noble, the merchant a member of the bourgeoisie, and the artist a Bohemian, not by any artificially imposed system, but by birth or occupation. Such differences involve no question of principle, and must be acknowledged as facts. Again, in this case, it is the natural social organism rather than the artificial social organization which is characteristic- ally French. And it is perhaps this same motive which ac- counts for the fact that while Germany is the home of the idea of the state-personality, France is the home of the idea of the social mind. German unity is political and authoritative; French unity is social and instinctive. The French are at one and the same time the most highly civilized, intellectualized and emancipated of modern peoples, and the most socialized. These two traits are not wholly reconciled. It is the former trait which is largely responsible for their declining birth-rate. They desire that life should be perfected in quality and not merely multiplied in number and in force. There is a highly developed sense of the re- sponsibiUties which the family entails, and a reluctance to increase the family beyond the limits of competence. Here again the Frenchman now feels the need of facing the omi- nous facts, and of taking deliberate measures to safeguard the national existence. But fundamentally, it would appear, the unity of French Ufe springs from instinctive human affections. It is neither a partnership of utility, nor a union for power; but a sense of kinship. Here we reach the root of all French moral philosophy. A nationality which is so rooted cannot be harsh or exclusive. The family affections FRENCH NATIONAL TRAITS 449 may breed a certain home-loving self-sufficiency, such as deters the Frenchman from expatriating himself. But just as the man who loves his own children will tend to love all children, so the man who loves his family and his kin will easily recognize a wider kinship with the human family of all mankind. CHAPTER XXX CHARACTERISTICS OF FRENCH THOUGHT ^ There was in the last century, at the time of Cousin, what has sometimes been called an ^' official' ' French philosophy, and there has always been a French Catholic philosophy, but there has never been a French national philosophy. This is partly due to the universality of the French human- istic spirit and partly to the fact that the nation has never in France been regarded as a metaphysical entity, as^ it has in Germany. The German philosophers may be said in a sense to have invented the German nation. But in France, as we have seen, nationaUty is a matter of growth and of feeling rather than of doctrine and policy. Hence in France there is no philosophy which is identified with the national ideal as the philosophy of Kant, Fichte and Hegel is identified with the national ideal of Germany. But to an outsider who surveys French thought as a whole there seem to be two broad conflicting tendencies, almost equally persistent and perhaps equally characteristic. If we use the term ''intellectual" in the broad sense to include the cognitive faculties proper, and ''will" in an equally broad sense to include the active and affective factors of the mind, we may designate these tendencies as the intellectualistic and voluntarisHc. I. THE INTELLECTUALISTIC TENDENCY I. Cartesianism. The patron-saint of French philosophy is Descartes. He is conceived to represent the two things on which French philosophy particularly prides itself, namely, clearness and the scientific spirit. He wrote in his 1 For assistance in preparing this chapter I am greatly indebted to M. Ferdinand Buisson, to Professor C. Bougl6 of the Sorbonne, and to Professor E. Halfivy of the ifccole libre des Sciences politiques. 450 FRENCH THOUGHT 451 native tongue with beauty and lucidity of style. He was the great exponent of "clear and distinct ideas." He pro- posed, as is well-known, to filter the muddy water of schol- asticism by criticism and by the introduction into philosophy of the mathematical method. The truth, he said, must be perfectly intelligible; and either self-evident and axiomatic or else supported by deductive proof. And philosophy to be true must therefore emulate the example of exact science. It must be equally rigorous and equally dispassionate. But while Descartes was a modern philosopher, perhaps the first of modern philosophers, he was nevertheless a Catholic Christian and was largely dominated by the scholastic tradition. He used the method of mathematics but he used it to prove the Christian God and the Christian soul. Now the subsequent development of Cartesianism seems to follow two divergent paths. On the one hand there are those who adhere to the Cartesian doctrines, and aim to establish a spiritualistic metaphysics by the use of reason. After Malebranche this tendency finds no great representatives among French thinkers. Its main current flows elsewhere through Leibniz and Wolff to the later Kantian movement. On the other hand there are those who adhere more or less rigorously to the Cartesian method, but at the expense of his doctrines. This is the tendency which flourishes in France. We thus discover at a comparatively early date the broadest characteristic of French thought, its preference of methodology to metaphysics. I do not for a moment mean to say that the need of a spiritualistic faith is not felt in France, but only that the Frenchman does not hope to meet this need by the exercise of those rational faculties which he is so inclined to cultivate. He develops his spiritualistic philosophy, in so far as he develops it at all, from the will and the feelings; or frankly appeals to faith. This motive of French thought belongs, in other words, to the history of French voluntarism and not to the history of French Carte- sianism. Pascal at the beginning of the Seventeenth Cen- tury already points the way. Like Descartes he was a 452 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS mathematician, and believed that the only sure method of knowledge was analysis more geometnco . But he thought that for such a method both the human soul and the mfinite reality beyond must remain insoluble enigmas. Therefore he proposed to abandon science and to accept revelation. Now it is a long way from Pascal to Bergson. But although it does not occur to Bergson to resort to the authority of the Church, he exhibits the same scepticism with regard to reason, and feels the same need of looking elsewhere for metaphysical insight. The Cartesian inteUectualistic tendency in France, di- vorced from the spiritualistic metaphysics, has assumed a variety of forms. It appeared first in the development of materiaUsm. The mathematical method found its most successful application in mechanical or exact science. Des- cartes himself was more convincing in his physics than in his metaphysics; and among his very earUest disciples there were those who proposed to substitute the former for the latter. This movement culminated in the French matenahstic school of the Eighteenth Century, as represented by La Mettrie with his *' Eomme-MacUne;' and Holbach with his Systeme de la Nature, Synchronously with this development of the mechanistic strain in Descartes, and largely influenced by Locke and Hume, there emerged the so-called ^'ideologi- cal " tradition in French thought. This movement reflected the Eighteenth Century interest in the origin of the mmd s ideas but it exhibited at least two characteristics that were strikingly French and Cartesian. In the first place it was a study of method rather than of reality. And in the second place it showed in contrast to the more unsystematic and patient observation of the English thinkers, a disposition to deduce all of the mind^s contents from a single formula. Be- ginning with Condillac this tendency had a long history in France It grew more and more barren until m the Nine- teenth Century, with Cousin, it lost all originahty and lapsed into an eclectic and second-hand acceptance of the teachings of Kant, Schelling and Hegel. For the more powerful and original development ot Car- FRENCH THOUGHT 453 tesianism we must look elsewhere. First and foremost in its influence upon the world's history is the application of the logical method to social and political problems. The Car- tesian method of thinking things out de novo does not reveal its genuinely revolutionary tendency until in the Eighteenth Century it is brought to bear upon human institutions. Descartes had proposed to leave these dangerous matters to tradition and to authority. But it was an impossible com- prornise; and a compromise with which the French mind in particular could not rest content. Diverted from the field of metaphysics Cartesianism attacks the foundations of the state and of human society. In Rousseau's Contrat Social this results in an attempt to deduce institutions directly from first principles, in defiance of tradition, and even, it must be admitted, in defiance of human nature. The French Revolution represents the Frenchman's intellectual audacity. He proposes nothing less than to reconstruct human life in conformity with the dictates of logic. The second of these major developments of Cartesianism is the philosophy of Auguste Comte. In this development society remains the principal subject-matter of philosophy, but with significant changes. In the first place Cartesianism has grown empirical and experimental. Comte represents the triumph of the descriptive, rather than the deductive, method in science. Mathematics remains with Comte the fundamental science; but it is at the same time the most abstract science. In the field of more concrete phenomena it is necessary to supplement deduction by observation; in other words, to formulate verifiable laws. These laws form a hierarchy, so that it is impossible to understand the more complex phenomena without an understanding of the less complex. Human society is the most complex phenomenon of all; and its laws, therefore, must be superimposed not only on those of mathematics, but on those of physics and biology as well. What is needed, therefore, as the only sound basis for social and political reconstruction is a science of sociology. Thus does Comte seek to correct that Eighteenth Century abstractionism which would attempt to apply logic directly 454 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS to life. In the second place, Comte recognizes the rights of history and of development. Human society is not made; it grows. And those who would perfect it must respect the laws of its growth. To take society to pieces and then put it together again, is equivalent to substituting surgery for education. The history of Cartesianism in the Nineteenth Century is thus marked by two dominant characteristics. In the first place it appUes itself to the study of society, with the result that France becomes the home of a new science, the science of sociology. And, secondly, in this application Cartesianism finds itself making greater and greater concessions to empiri- cal facts and to the lessons of history. Society is no longer geometrized. People who, like the French, are given to carrying their social theories into effect pay heavily for their errors. Hence the most recent phase of the scientific phil- osophy in France, the sociological school of Tarde and of Durkheim, is marked by the sobriety and patience with which it studies the varied forms and developing phases of the social complex. But it still remains true that the French mind loves the clear light of reason; and that the Frenchman is more disposed than most mankind, to look to that light for the regulation of his affairs. II. THE VOLUNTARISTIC TENDENCY It will, I think, be generally agreed that the intellectualistic tendency, in the broad sense in which I have construed it, as the application of scientific method to the conduct of Hfe, is the majority philosophy in France. Nevertheless it is not this tendency, but rather the voluntaristic tendency, which happens to be most conspicuously characteristic of the present phase of French thought. This is mainly due to the genius of Bergson and to the influence of this thinker in England and America. In France, while his genius is recog- nized, Bergson is the leader of a minority whose importance is largely due to their representing a reaction against the prevailing trend of opinion. Before emphasizing the difference between the volun- FRENCH THOUGHT 455 taristic and the intellectualistic tradition, I wish to call atten- tion to the fact that they have at least one point in common. They both satisfy, although in different ways, the French- man's demand for clearness. In a course of lectures begun at the Sorbonne in 1915-1916 and tragically interrupted by the lecturer's death, Victor Delbos undertook a survey of ''la Pensee Frangaise." After having called attention to the fact that French philosophers have never been nationally self-conscious but have sought to address themselves to the reason of mankind, he goes on to make the usual reference to the French cult of clearness. But he denies that clearness need be only of the logical-mathematical type. "Indeed clearness can be brought to bear on the things of ob- servation, and on their concrete relations as well as on abstract concepts and their concatenation; it can be united with a most subtle perception of the real as well as to a most finished system- atization of ideas; it can mean nicety of vision as well as rigor of reasoning. In other words, unless we construe clearness in a very special philosophical sense, we can say that all our faculties of cognition are more or less capable of intuitions and clear notions." ^ Another contemporary French writer has on similar grounds discovered a fundamental agreement between Bergson and Descartes: "The difference between Descartes and M. Bergson is only that M. Bergson looks for his intuition in expanded sensation and in sympathetic feeling, whereas Descartes looks for it in mathematics, that m to say J to he preckeyhi the mathemcUical imagination, ... A time will come, perhaps, if Bergsonism triumphs, when to conceive will signify to vibrate S)mipathetically, or to palpitate in one's depths. After the triumph of Cartesianism, to conceive a thing signified to decompose it into imagined elements, into mechanical parts, under the pretext of comprehending it exhaustively." ^ * This citation is from Delbos's introductory lecture, reproduced from his notes and published under the title of "Caract^res G6n6raux de la Philosophic Frangaise," in Revue de MHaphysique et de Morale, January, 191 7, pp. 4-5. * Jacques Maritain: "L'Esprit de la Philosophie Modeme," Revue de Philosophie, 14 Ann^e, No. 7 (Juillet, 1914), pp. 66, 67, 68. This writer pre- fers to either variety of intuitionism, that Thomist use of the "intelligence" which unites the sensible particular and the intellectual universal. 456 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS If, following this suggestion, we now generalize the French cult of clearness we may say that it rests at bottom upon two motives: first, the emphasis on intuition, whether this be intellectual apprehension, or sensuous perception, or that immediate awareness of the inward experience of life on which the voluntarists insist; second, the emphasis on expres- sion, which is equally represented by the clear formulations of mathematics, the apt descriptions and characterizations of the French moraUsts and psychologists, and by the bril- liant imagery of Bergson. We must then distinguish Carte- sianism not in terms of its emphasis on clearness, but in terms of its adherence to intellectual and perceptual intuition, rather than to the immediate self-awareness of the will. Or, Cartesianism is the scientific form of the cult of clearness; while voluntarism is its more spiritual and intimately per- sonal form. Although the prominence of the voluntaristic strain in French thought is at this moment chiefly due to the leader- ship of Bergson, this strain is nearly as old as the Cartesian strain. Indeed it would not be wholly mistaken to trace it to Descartes himself. For alongside of this philosopher's emphasis on the mathematical method of analysis and de- duction, there is his Cogito ergo sum, his acceptance of the self as an immediate datum. But the more important tenet of voluntarism is not its acceptance of the immediacy of self- knowledge, but rather its substitution of the will for the in- tellect. Already in the Eighteenth Century Maine de Biran proposed to substitute volo for cogito, and to find in the will the metaphysical reaUty which neither the intellect nor all its works can fathom. The same tendency appears in Rousseau's insistence that feeling rather than intellect is the source of moral and reUgious insight. It appears in the wide- spread influence in France of the German romanticist Schel- ling; and in the ''spiritualistic dynamism" of Ravaisson in the middle of the last century. And it has been the chief philo- sophical form assumed by the so-called "new philosophy," which arose at the close of the century as a protest against that reigning Cartesianism which we have already considered. FRENCH THOUGHT 457 Brunetiere wrote in 1896 that for thirty or forty years science had pretended to succeed religion, and had claimed all its honors and privileges. But now, he said, there was a reaction, manifested in the vogue of ''spiritism, occultism, magic, neo-buddhism, neo-christianism, ... an intimate protest of the contemporary soul against the brutal dominion of fact." He found further evidence of this in the Wag- nerian cult, in the later as compared with the earlier dramas of Dumas the younger, in the popularity of Puvis de Chavan- nes, and in the moral and idealistic motive in socialism. *'Now was the time," he said "to be idealistic, and, in every manner, in every direction, to react against that naturalism which we all have, so to say, in our blood." ^ Paul Sabatier, in 191 1, voices a similar conviction that the noon-day of naturalism is past: "Since the Eighteenth Century and the Encyclopaedists, there has been no other philosophy which has really penetrated the French soul; theirs still inspires all our political and social life. But the thought of to-day is ever striving to free itself from their methods — so seductive to the French by reason of their clear and logical appearance — which are, however, too brief and decidedly too simplistic, too merely negative." ^ The new idealism, according to this writer, is the philos- ophy of "Boutroux, Bergson, James, Eucken, Flournoy, Oliver Lodge, Poincare, Le Roy, . . . Tyrrell and Guyau," the philosophy which appeals "to life, to experience, to the will, against abstract reason." In philosophy proper, it is pragmatism, in place of intellectualism ; in the churches it is the "new apologetic" based on history and experience, in place of scholasticism and papal infallibility. What this new activistic and voluntaristic cult signifies I have already attempted to state more at length. But I wish especially to distinguish this new idealism from that German idealism whose consequences we have seen to be so fateful for the world. ^ The basal difference lies in the happy * La Renaissance de VId6alisme^ pp. 38, 86, 57. ^ Op. cit., p. 84. ' Cf. also above, p. 235 ff. 458 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS fact that in French idealism there is no Absolute. German idealism professes to be spiritualistic, and it has tended also in a limited sense to be voluntaristic. But in the practical and emotional aspect there is all the difference in the world between will, in the human and social sense, and an Absolute Will. The Absolute Will is in fact a creation of the intellect, and it may be as brutally opposed to human volition and sentiment as a blank wall of matter. The Absolute Will is more Absolute than it is will. It is defined in order to fit the role of the eternal and all-comprehensive Being, to which man and his merely human preferences are harshly subordi- nated. When the French idealist, on the other hand, speaks of will, he means your will and mine, with their warmth of immediacy, and with the specific ideals which they serve. Professor Boutroux has expressed this difference as follows: " France does not start with the idea of the infinite or the abso- lute as the norm of thought and the principle of the organization of the world. She has simply before her eyes the idea of humanity, and her first task is to conceive, as judiciously and nobly as possible, this idea which is familiar to all men, and afterwards to realize it ever more deeply in the various departments of human life. . . . Minds fed on classic tradition . . . rise from man to that which transcends man; they do not speak of the unknown or the unknow- able in order to define and organize the known." This writer further indicates that in French idealism an essential role is assigned to feeling, with the result that the spiritual reality is identified with the personal life of man. *^ Feeling," he says, *^is the very stuff composing our con- sciousness which would otherwise lose itself in the universal and the impersonal. . . . Feeling is more than something that belongs to us : it is our very self.'* ^ In other words, while the German metaphysics consists in converting a norm of life defined by the intellect into the all-real, this French metaphysics consists in identifying reality with the actually felt life that is one with human activity and aspiration. We have seen that in order to identify spirit with the all- * Philosophy and the War, pp. 155, 156, 207, 208. FRENCH THOUGHT 459 real, the absolutists have found it necessary to construe spirit in terms of nature and history. The thesis that spirit is the most objective and universal thing in the world has led them to select the most objective and universal things of experience, and then worship or at least condone them as spiritual. The most notorious instance of this is the view that the most spiritual aspect of society is the state, and that the most powerful and expansive state must be regarded as the most spiritual aspect of history. But French idealism, like all practical idealism, starts with human ideals, and never abandons them. When the world is affirmed to be spiritual, it is not meant that this character is to be inferred from the facts of nature and history. It is not meant that the world can be proved or known to be spiritual by the in- tellect. It is meant that the world can be felt to be spiritual by the inward sense; and that with this feeling is inevitably associated a faith in the eventual triumph of the spiritual ideals. The optimism of this philosophy consists not in the proof that things as they are known to be are good; but in the hope that what is felt to he the good life will win reality. III. FRENCH ETHICS It will be convenient to consider French ethics as it has been influenced by the two broader tendencies which we have distinguished above. The mainspring of French ethics is not a matter of theory at all. It consists in the appeal to man's instinctive humanity. Let us consider this motive as it appears first in the ethics of the Cartesian tradition, and second in the ethics of voluntarism. I. Scientific Ethics. We have seen that the Cartesian or intellectualistic tendency in France turned from metaphysics to physics, and eventually to the study of human society. It becomes the chief object of French ethics to understand and to justify the moral and political institutions in terms of human nature. The French feel, with nearly equal strength, the rights of the individual human nature and the need of a common social life. Their thought therefore avoids two extremes, the German legalism, which gives the state or the 460 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS abstract reason unlimited coercive power over personal in- clinations; and the Englishman's cult of^ individual self- sufiEciency, with his reduction of the social order to the status of a mere compromise or convenience. This characteristic of French thought is apparent even in what would seem to be exceptions. Voltaire beUeved in the finahty and infalHbility of conscience; but he did not argue moral self-sufhciency from this premise, because he found the whole body of common moral ideas to be essentially social in character. ^' We have/' he said, ''two feelings which are the basis of society: commiseration and justice.'' Helvetius is one of the few French thinkers who believed man to be by nature selfish. But as though to counteract the anti-social effect of this teaching he insisted upon the limitless educabil- ity of man— the possibiHty, by schooling and by legislation, of transforming man into a social being. Rousseau, owing to a one-sided interpretation of his teaching, is often supposed to have advocated a return to a primitive state of individual isolation. But in so far as Rousseau attacked society, he attacked what he believed to be harsh and coercive in in- stitutional authority. The core of Rousseau's philosophy was his belief in the original goodness of man, and hence his perfectibiUty by the release and cultivation of this original goodness. Man, according to Rousseau, is by nature fit for a harmonious and happy social life; that which debases him is not fellowship with his kind, but oppressive tyranny. No one has more emphatically proclaimed that the good life must be a Ufe under law and order, provided only that these shall be founded on the general will of mankind, and not on exploitation and artificial constraint. With Comte and the sociological school, French ethics is finally based on the principle of sympathy, or instinctive sociality. Society is a biological, psychological and pro- foundly human fact. The precepts of traditional morality are only the outward and formal recognition of this more primitive reality. And the whole system of authority, in- cluding the state, gets its justification from its expression of the social consciousness. The fact of social solidarity, which FRENCH THOUGHT 461 Durkheim and his followers have emphasized and even ex- aggerated, is represented not by the state or any form of external force, but by the common conscience. 2. Voluntaristic Ethics. Rousseau, as has been suggested, plays a double role in French philosophy. On the one hand he represents the premature attempt of the scientific method to develop a logic of social Ufe. On the other hand he is the first great exponent of the philosophy of feeling. And his expression of this motive at once reveals the essentially humane character of French voluntaristic ethics. The cult of feehng is not employed in French ethics to justify the ruthless self-reaHzation of the emotional subject. For the feeling which for Rousseau is the root of the moral and religious Ufe is not the feeling of self-importance, but the feeUng of tenderness and love. Similarly, as we have seen, those French voluntarists who, like Guyau, insist upon the expansiveness of Ufe, do not mean the expansiveness of con- quest and appropriation, but the expansiveness of sympathy. The wiU grows outward not by assimilating others to itself, but by assimilating itself to others. The same humanity distinguishes, as I have also sought to show, the volun- tarism of Bergson from the voluntarism of Nietzsche. Paul Sabatier provides us with a clear statement of the difference. Nietzsche and Bergson both encourage men to believe in themselves, and to identify reality with the will that is in them. But ''the latter, by fortifying his readers and giving them tone, prepares them for a Ufe which is association, understanding and love; the former makes his disciples powerful not because they are strong, but because they are formidable, which is quite another matter." ^ IV. THE FRENCH CONCEPTION OF THE STATE I. Fraternity. It is commonly supposed that the French democracy is founded upon purely decentraUzing and dis- integrating motives, such as the "abstract rights" of the individual, and the insistence, at any cost, on equal poUtical 1 Op. cit.j p. 95. 462 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS power. It is inevitable that the negative and destructive aspect of revolution should be more conspicuous than its positive motive. But it is important to observe that a nega- tive attitude never begets a revolution. The negative people are content to let things alone. While they may not think highly of the existing system, they do not think more highly of any other system that might conceivably be put in its place. The revolutionists are the ideaUsts who hope ar- dently for something better. I am incHned, therefore, in thinking of the French revolu- tion to put fraternity above liberty and equaHty. The ideal, in which the French have had a positive, sometimes an ex- travagant and too confident, faith, is that of a kindly brother- hood of men. They have believed in man. They have beHeved that in his reason each man possesses a capacity to judge for himself ; and that through their common possession of this supreme faculty men are equally entitled to political sovereignty. When confronted with the evident facts of inequality, when reminded that some men are more ignorant and blind than their fellows, they have set this down as the fault of institutions, and have sought to rectify it by diminish- ing repression and improving education. Even more pro- foundly they have believed in man's natural fitness for a cordial and united social life. The goal of French political reform is not the isolation of the individual, in order that he may live apart in proud self-sufficiency; for the Frenchman feels his dependence on social and poHtical relations, not only for security and order, but for all the more positive good things of Hfe, such as art and the forms of gracious and comely human intercourse. Hence he thinks of liberty and equaHty not as a mere rebellious or envious protest against the established system, but as the means of sweetening and invigorating that common life together, as conditions of that more positive and final thing which they call fraternity. 2. The Unity of the Nation. Some German writers have contended that the French community possesses no soul. In trying to be scientific, so it is argued, the French have killed the spirit of national Ufe. Thus Professor Troeltsch writes: FRENCH THOUGHT 463 "The French Republic is a democracy in the form of its con- stitution and parliament, a democracy of high-sounding phrases, but it is not a real democracy of feeling, spirit and Kultur. . . . The breach with the national religion and the national past, and the resulting adoption of science as the creator of the new, progressive and universally valid order of society, is the most characteristic trait of the French mind, which through all these breaks with the past, has maintained only the artistic spirit of the Renaissance." ^ But an observer like Professor Troeltsch has simply missed the soul of France. He has missed it because he is accus- tomed to a kind of national soul that manifests itself in ex- ternals. Nothing is more characteristic of German thought than the persistent attempt to find some absolute and objective principle of national unity that shall be quite inde- pendent of the willing consent of individuals. He has at- tempted to identify nationality with race, despite the plain teachings of history and ethnology. He has tried to identify nationality with language; and finding, curiously enough, that the German language contains foreign words, he has under- taken to penalize their use. But he adopted as the designa- tion of the boxes in which such fines were to be collected, the word ^'Fremdenworterstrafkasse,'' which is Germanic enough in its general effect, but unfortunately old French in its last two syllables! ^ The same motive has prompted the German to identify the soul of the nation with the state, or the will of the ruling authorities. This identification has, as we have seen, been widely accepted with the result that the national soul becomes something coercive upon the will and judgment of the people. With the French, on the other hand, the personality of the nation springs from popular unanimity. It is, as we have seen, largely unconscious, except in the stress of great emergencies. It is the instinctive family feeling, which lives on through sharp differences of opinion and violent changes of authority. It is not something defined and imposed, but something that springs from a *^will to live together and form a political community." ^ * "The Spirit of German Kultur," in Modern Germany ^ p. 64. * Cf. Boutroux, Philosophy and the War^ p. 172. ' Boutroux, op, cit., p. 162. 464 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS FRENCH THOUGHT 465 Compare, for example, the views of the Germans and of the French regarding Alsace-Lorraine. As long ago as August, 1870, even before Sedan, Treitschke wrote: "These provinces are ours by the right of the sword; and we will rule them in virtue of a higher right; in virtue of the right of the German nation to prevent the permanent estrangement of her lost children from the Germanic Empire. We Germans, who know both Germany and France, know better what is for the good of the Alsatians than do those unhappy people themselves, who in the perverse conditions of a French existence, have been denied any true knowledge of modem Germany, (They have since learned much!) We desire, even against their will, to restore them to themselves." To this Treitschke added: ^^ We are by no means rich enough to renounce so precious a possession'' ; and Bismarck (after a word about the vaporizings of the professors) went him one better and said: ^'It is the fortresses of Metz and Strass- burg which we want, and which we will take." ^ Or consider the profounder argument that since loyalty is a German trait, the very loyalty of the Alsatians to France proves that they are Germans! With such arguments as these we have to compare the utterances we have cited above, in which the French case is rested entirely upon the loyalty and affections of the Alsatian people. A forced or oppressive nationality would, in the French view, be a contradiction in terms. If the nation is not loved by its people, it is no nation at all. The French- man speaks of *'la douce France." But even the most loyal Pangermanist would scarcely refer to "sweet Prussia." French patriotism has in it an element of tenderness, spring- ing naturally from old associations, from common sacrifices and from their love of mutual intercourse. For the French- man, such as Professor Boutroux, "a nation is, above all, a group of men united by the desire to live together, by a sense ^ From H. W. C. Davis, The Political Thought of Treitschke, p. 112, and from Busch, Bismarck in the Franco-Prussian War; quoted by J. Holland Rose, Nationality in Modern History, pp. 131, 132. Busch points out that the an- nexation was deprecated by the progressive elements in Germany. (I, 147.) of solidarity, by community of joys and sorrows, by memories, aspirations and destinies. A nation is a friendship. ^^ ^ 3. The Nation and Humanity. Finally, we have to ob- serve that the French idea of the nation readily passes over into the broader ideas of internationality and humanity. In so far as nations are persons, then the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity are transferred to the relations of na- tions. A nation, like a person, must be free from oppression. Nations, like persons, are morally equal, whatever their size and station in the world. Nations, like persons, must aim to live in fraternal relations of sympathy and mutual respect. And finally, nations, like persons, are perfectible by education, and naturally fitted for a gracious and ennobling intercourse. If we pass from the French conception of the nation to the more fundamental national traits and traditions, we find the deeper reasons for French internationalism. A humanistic civilization is invariably cosmopolitan. Science is cosmo- politan; and the science of social life to which the French intellectualists have so assiduously devoted themselves, refers not to the exclusive life of the nation but to the ideal life of any human society. Finally, the tap-root of French ethics is to be found in the social instincts, in sympathy and human affection. But these are instincts that inevitably pass beyond the bounds of nationaUty. This is not a ques- tion of theory, but of historical fact. The French have less race prejudice than any other highly civilized nation. In their contact with inferior native peoples, as in the old days of the French and Indian wars in America, they have freely mingled and amalgamated. One may approve this or dis- approve it. I cite it here only to show that the Frenchman does not reserve his humanity for his own national kind. It is not a clannish and exclusive feeling, but a genuinely humane feeling. And this is the feeling which moves France at this time to align herself with those who will not rest con- tent until all of the human family have been brought into one community, within which it will be no longer necessary to hate or fear those whom nature intended to be one's brothers. * Op. cit., p. 210. CHAPTER XXXI ENGLISH NATIONAL TRAITS I. SAGACITY I have chosen the term "sagacity'' to characterize the mind of the Englishman, because sagacity suggests a mind that pulls well in harness — a workmanlike mind rather than a detached or soaring mind. The Englishman excels in what is sometimes called "practical logic." ^ He is sus- picious of sweeping generalizations, and has little aptitude for making them. When he has felt the need of metaphysics, he has imported it from Germany; and having imported it he has ordinarily clarified it and compromised it by an ad- mixture of more or less irrelevant common-sense. English thought is equally lacking in the power of moral generaliza- tion. He leaves it to the Frenchman to seize and fix in im- perishable form the universal truths of life. His own thought is anchored and limited by a set of homely beliefs and practi- cal interests that he never questions. The same idea may be expressed by saying that the English mind is intelligent rather than intellectual. The French are intellectual in the sense that the intellect is emancipated and left free to run its own course. French intellectualism is prone to extravagance, irresponsibility and virtuosity. By intelligence we mean the intellect acting in an auxiliary capacity, applied to some task which it does not itself select, and therefore getting its standards of success and failure from beyond itself. Intelligence is intellect under control. Even the EngUsh philosophers, instead of being seers or professors, have almost invariably been men of affairs, who are accustomed to thinking within limits prescribed by a vocation, such as politics. * Cf. Bosanquet's Social and International Ideals, p. i8. 466 ENGLISH NATIONAL TRAITS 467 The Englishman is perfectly willing to live without waiting to complete his philosophy of life. The British Empire, as we have already noted, is not the execution of a preconceived idea, but the unforeseen result of a thousand practical de- cisions, each determined by the precedents and results of previous decisions, and by the pressure of present circum- stances. It is a commonplace that in England institutions grow, and are not erected from the plans of a philosophical architect. It is significant that the greatest influence of English thought should have been in the field of politics. But even Locke is not like Rousseau, Fichte and Hegel, an innovating theorist, so much as a man of political experience and sense who reflected the spirit of a political reform already achieved. And if England has led the way in recent politi- cal evolution it has been by force of example rather than by force of logic. English statesmen have commonly acknowl- edged the precepts of conventional morality; but they have not felt the need of a rational and consistent policy, nor of a definite ideal of national destiny. Their Parliamentary standards have favored neither metaphysics nor perfervid eloquence, but rather a mastery of facts and figures, and a power of lucid presentation. They have regarded the politi- cal problem as essentially a problem of compromise. They have directed their attention to the next thing to be done, and have been satisfied to find a way out of a present predica- ment. English policy has suffered from short-sightedness; but it has gained by its sober recognition of existing facts, and its prudent regard for existing interests. And it has been saved from the fickleness of opportunism, by a characteristic patience and tenacity. The difference between the political temper of the English and that of the Germans has been well-expressed by a contemporary French writer. "In order to understand the German meaning of the war, books alone are almost sufficient. Everything was worked out, every- thing was written down beforehand: Treitschke, Bemhardi, von der Goltz, the publications of the Pan-Germans, the manual of the customs of war; state the reasons, the object, the methods. The whole idea is there, defined in every detail, from the enthusiastic 4 468 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS memories of the Holy Roman Empire down to the scheme of a future European Federation under the hegemony of Germany, from the argument of the superiority of race and its mystic influence down to the plan of attack with its flanking movement through western Flanders, and its pivot in Lorraine, from the thesis which declares morality and treaties subordinate to the absolute power of the State, to that which makes ^f rightfulness' a legitimate military principle. . . . No intellectual process could be more totally opposed to this than the one which is natural to Germany's English cousins. In England thought works on empirical and inductive lines: reality engenders and controls the ideal. . . . Thought repeats reahty bit by bit, with every feature of its visible and Uving nature, and with all its contingent and complex diversity. And similarly the English will is, above all, a power of adaptation to this reality: an adaptation which takes place only by degrees, which is modest because patient, often discontinuous, corrected gradually under the continual teaching of circumstances, and which is persistently pursued through all obstacles and in spite of all disappointments. This is the history of England's present effort, and it is the whole history of this nation, of its growth, of its extension over the planet, of its successes, of its miraculous Empire, which the Germans affect to despise as incoherent, decaying, incapable of survival, because so great a success has sprung from a principle which is the very opposite of their own, not from a central and creative a priori idea, but, according to them, from accident, from luck." ^ Just as the Englishman feels no need of a coherent and com- pletely reasoned political policy, so in his individual life he feels no need of an ultimate purpose. He can go on devoting himself to civilization, as Huxley did, even though he does not believe in the ultimate cosmic security of civilization. He can live by his code of personal honor, without requiring that the ultimate forces of history or reality shall be on his side. Ian Hay, having in mind the efficiency of the Indian Civil Service, tells us that "the British supreme talent" is *Hhe talent for efficient departmental work done in a subor- dinate position." 2 In other words it is characteristic of the Englishman to do a given job well, without troubling him- , * Chevrillon: England and the War, pp. 9-1 1. * * The Oppressed English, p. 34. ENGLISH NATIONAL TRAITS 469 self much about ulterior questions. Just as he does not press considerations of rational consistency, so he does not pride himself on intellectual attainment. There is no such cult of the intellect as there is among the French; and no such stimulating, critical and rewarding intellectual public as the Frenchman finds in Paris. The Englishman is not ashamed of ignorance; and counts health, sport and gentility as compensating values. When one turns to art and letters one cannot apply the term "sagacity" with the same assurance. England has probably produced more great poets than any other modern nation. There is no theory or formula, so far as I know, that accounts for genius, or that accounts for those splendid con- stellations of genius that from time to time appear, as in the Athens of ancient times, the Italy of the Renaissance and in Elizabethan England. But admitting the irreducibility of individual genius, and the sensitiveness of art to cosmopoli- tan influence, there does, even here, appear to be a general characteristic; a characteristic which makes Coleridge, for example, an almost unique figure in English letters. English poetry is as a rule neither fanciful, nor metaphysical, nor mystical. Nor does it deal, as does much French poetry, with the sophisticated world of social forms and manners. It is the poetry of the relatively simple things, of nature, of moods and of action. And its style is suitable to its subject- matter, plain-spoken, apt, often pungent and gritty; almost never opulent, elaborate, or darkly hinting what it does not say. In short, it is characteristic of English art to refine and beautify the things of daily life, rather than to create a world and a mode of its own. English science owes its greatness to the fact that it was free from metaphysical bias or speculativeness from a rel- atively early date. And in proportion as science has been identified with the experimental method, it has offered an opportunity peculiarly suitable to the genius of the English mind. For in science, no less than in politics, it is intelli- gence rather than intellect that is demanded. As the states- man adapts his policies to conditions, so the scientist adapts 470 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS his theory to facts. Both must combine powers of invention and straight thinking with a sense for what is relevant, a respect for the particular and the existent, and the patience to wait for the verdict of experience. The genius of Newton and of Darwin lay in their consummate faculty for verifying hypotheses, for converting old conjectures and fragmentary formulas into the form of tested and authentic scientific truth. But British sagacity is commonly thought of in less flat- tering terms, as utilitarianism and the love of wealth. Thus Emerson says that "the voice of their modern muse has a slight hint of the steam-whistle.'' These words were written, and this type of judgment was largely formed, in the middle of the last century, when the rest of the world had not yet overtaken England's lead in the new industrialism, and when Germany was still the seat of Emersonian romanticism. Nevertheless the judgment is in substance correct. The EngHshman does not try any harder to get wealth than those who profess to despise it; but he does, it is true, quite candidly value it. He sees the perfectly soHd and indubitable im- portance of it. How comes it, then, that the Englishman, in turn, accuses the American of a sordid commercialism? ^ The difference, I think, is this. Americans value the getting of money ; EngUshmen the having of it. America has magnified the activities of livelihood, the vocation of business; and has given to unsympathetic critics the impression of condoning or even of exalting certain traits of craft or avarice by which men may rise from penury to opulence. The Englishman in his matter of fact way sees that it is a good thing to have wealth and good credit. But he does not think money to be worth any more for having been earned. He is perfectly wiUing to marry it, or inherit it, or have it given to him. Its value Hes not in the getting of it, but in what you can do with it. The things he loves best, such as landed estates, sports, travel and above all personal independence, are founded on it. As to utihtarianism, if I were an Englishman, I should simply plead guilty. Utilitarianism is not quixotic and it is ENGLISH NATIONAL TRAITS 471 not heroic. But it is wholesome and provident. If it does not excite admiration, like the chivalry and enthusiasm of the French, at any rate it need not excite fear Uke the Ger- man cult of power. For utihtarianism means only that the good shall be measured in terms of the interests and desires of men. It takes these as it finds them and seeks a poUcy by which they may be satisfied. If this is not the end of morality, it is at least the beginning. If there is anything better than prudence, as I think there is, then it must be at least as good as prudence; and must not ignore and override it in behalf of a vague sentiment or tyrannical formula. II. SELF-RELIANCE As long ago as the Fourteenth Century Froissart spoke of "the great haughtiness of the English who are affable to no other nation than their own," and dubbed the English "the worst people in the world, the most obstinate and pre- sumptuous." ^ In the centuries that have followed they cannot be said to have lived this reputation down. The Englishman is still proverbially the man who has superb and somewhat disagreeable confidence in his own latent powers. If you are an outsider he does not flatter you by admitting that you are at all essential either to his security or to his happiness. In discussing the several forms of the modern conscience, we have already distinguished, as peculiarly characteristic of England, the idea of individual moral self-sufficiency. That liberty of conscience which the Englishman demands, is the privilege of making up his mind for himself .^ He forti- fies himself within his own "unconquerable soul," and is a stickler for his own individual prerogatives. This is the result not of any theory of human equality but of his habitual self-reliance. The Englishman is prejudiced in favor of taking care of himself, and would rather be his own master in hardship and danger than to receive ease and security from the indulgence of another. * Quoted by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Horae Sabbaticae, Vol. I, p. 49 ff. ^ Cf. above, Chap. XIII, H, 2. 172 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS This trait has manifested itself in England's reluctance until recently to ally herself with other European nations. She has preferred to keep her hands free, and to intervene from time to time in continental affairs, as her interest or opportunity seemed to require. Her distrust of others is the complementary negative aspect of her confidence in herself. She has been disinclined to depend on others. But she has not lived in fear. On the contrary, present events would seem to indicate that she has been led both by her oppor- tunism and her sense of inherent and indomitable strength to omit necessary precautions. Her confidence in her power to do at the time whatever the occasion may require, has enabled a more calculating and painstaking enemy to threaten her very national existence. The deeper cause of this English self-reliance is doubtless to be found in the geographical circumstance of insularity. But that in itself cannot directly account for the fact that this self-reliance appears not only in the relation of England to other nations, but also in the relations of one Englishman to another. It is not merely that the English nation lives on an island, but that in a sense each individual Englishman lives on an island. His life tends to be a thing apart, and to possess a certain roundness and completeness by itself. An individual Englishman is not a member or fragment which requires to be supported by something; he can stand alone on his own feet. M. Chevrillon has drawn a very illuminating antithesis between England and France, showing that despite the in- dustrial basis of her economic Hfe, England's social ideal is still the country gentleman: "It is one of the curious features of this strange country, that the moral principle of civilization and society is, to so great an extent, essentially aristocratic and rural, even though its activities are chiefly industrial and commercial, even though the immense majority of its people are crowded into huge brick cities under an everlasting pall of factory smoke — even though, politically, it is more and more tending toward social democracy. ... In our country the factors are reversed. France, in spite of the great ENGLISH NATIONAL TRAITS 473 development of her manufactures, still remains a community where life and activities are in the main rural. And yet the forms of civilization and of intellect, the conceptions of the ideal, have been, in France, for the last three centuries, of urban type and origin, the country being but a holiday place and the home of peasants. . . . From the Eighteenth Century onward, the town has been the magnet in France, and the manor house in England; this is made clear by the paintings of the period. Nearly all English portraits are of squires and their families; untroubled faces used to the open air, with the usual background of leafy park. The French por- traits, on the contrary — witty features, sparkling eyes, waggish lips in a setting of panelling and curtains — reveal the refinements, the pleasures and vivacity of drawing-room life. The same differ- ence is apparent between the types of our higher bourgeoisie and that of the English gentry (who can show enthusiasm for golf) ; and the contrast of the two principles is still more striking if, for in- stance, our lycees be compared with the public schools of Eng- land. . . . Such schools are nearly always in the country, surrounded by fields and lawns; and the life the boys lead there, as later on at the old universities of Oxford and Cambridge, resembles in its games, its setting and manners, that of the manor house." ^ Thus the Englishman's insular character is further en- hanced by the rural pattern of his social life. The typical Englishman is relatively free from contact and from pressure. He takes part in the world's affairs as a free agent, seeing it from afar, and picking his opening. This has not made him irresponsible, or frivolous and pleasure-loving; he dislikes idleness, and is prompted to assume responsibihties even when they are not thrust upon him. But it is the chief cause of his independence, his ''character" and his individu- alism. And the peculiarly English form of education is devoted to the cultivation of this type — to the making of English individuals of this species, rather than to the manu- facture of cogs in a social mechanism. III. RESERVE The Englishman does not offer or invite confidence. Like his kindred in New England his is a freezing and blighting 1 England and the Waft pp. 71-73. i 474 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS presence to that American of the Middle West who un- bosoms himself to every stranger. I have in mind a casual acquaintance in a Pullman car, who told me that Omaha, Nebraska, was the finest town in the world, and Hartford, Connecticut, the worst. In the latter city, he said, if a man should slap you on the back or call you by your first name within the first year of your acquaintance, you would drop dead. The man who told me this was evidently quite ready to slap anybody on the back at a moment's notice! The Englishman is lacking in promiscuous social experience. Even the most intellectual Englishman is shy and awkward in an unfamiliar presence. And he has the taciturnity of the Northerner, in contrast to the volubiHty and expressive- ness of the Latin. He does not tell you what is in his heart, and he evinces no strong interest in what may be in yours. Emerson writes of the English, that " they have no curiosity about foreigners, and answer any information you may volun- teer with ^ Oh, Oh! ' until the informant makes up his mind that they shall die in their ignorance, for any help he will offer." 1 This same observer has called attention to the unwilling- ness of the English to profess the motives that actuate them: "They hide virtues under vices, or the semblance of them. It is the misshapen hairy Scandinavian troll again, who lifts the cart out of the mire, or 'threshes the com that ten day-laborers could not end,' but it is done in the dark and with muttered maledictions. He is a churl with a soft place in his heart, whose speech is a brash of bitter waters, but who loves to help you at a pinch. He says no, and serves you, and your thanks disgust him." 2 According to Ian Hay the two things that the Englishman most abhors are ^^side" and "shop.'' He does not tell you his principles or his ruling purpose. He lives by the maxim, "Thou shalt not speak aught but flippantly of matters that concern thee deeply." ^ Early in the war Earl Grey felt compelled to profess the creed of the Liberal Party in matters * English Traits, p. 145. * Ibid., p. 131. ' Op. cit., pp. 17, 21. ENGLISH NATIONAL TRAITS 475 of foreign policy. But many EngHshmen, even those whose creed was more benevolent even than Earl Grey's, evidently felt uncomfortable. They would have preferred to let the world think the worst, rather than to be caught uttering heroics. The effect, of course, is not one of humility. I have heard an English aviator describe his exploits on the Western front, and whenever the audience exhibited a dis- position to applaud him, he would shrug his shoulders and say that "it was nothing" — which only served to double the applause. It is not that the Englishman is averse to heroism, or is lacking in profound emotions. But he does not wish to seem to ask credit for his heroism, and he pre- fers to understate his emotions. There is an anecdote of two young EngUshmen who were climbing a mountain in Switzerland. When they came out on the top and the view was spread before them, the first exclaimed, "Well, well! Not half badl" "Yes," answered his companion, "but don't rave Hke a bally poet about it." There is nothing more characteristic of English humor than the puncturing of inflated humanity. Man is never so ridiculous as when he thinks himself most sublime. You will find this feeling in Mr. Winkle on skates, in Punch's German family enjoying its morning hours of hate, and in the Tommies who replied to the German ''Gott mit uns," with their " We've got mittens too." The German with his unself- consciousness furnishes a fair mark for such humor. In France where everything tends to express itself, and to ex- press itself adequately, this English repression is equally unknown. But in England a man lives in the constant fear of being caught declaiming, and of making himself ridiculous. So he plays safe and keeps his august and solemn things to himself with an air of outward indifference or flippancy. The English quality of reserve is, I am convinced, closely connected with the English virtue and cult of tolerance. The Englishman does not wish to be intruded upon, nor does he have any desire to intrude upon anybody else, whether man or God. He is not a mystic or a pantheist in his re- ligion, because he thinks God entitled to have his privacy 476 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS respected. This probably has something to do with the fact that Deism, or the philosophy of the absentee God, was invented in England. The Englishman regards the attempt to force your own sentiments and opinions upon others as claiming too much for them. And he is not deeply concerned with what other people think and feel, provided they will behave themselves. When other people make themselves obnoxious, they have to be taken in hand; but then if they have learned their lesson, the thing is to let them go. *' When we've pounded these Johnnies," said a British regular in the present war, ''I suppose we'll give 'em 'Ome Rule, same as we did the Boers." ^ This attitude may imply pride and narrowness, or even a certain lack of the generous enthusiasm that marks the French. But from it has sprung most of the orderly liberty of the world. Wherever the Englishman has gone he has taught men to respect themselves, and en- couraged them under law to grow strong in their own way. rV. MORAL CONSERVATISM How does it happen that the Englishman's individualism has not resulted in disintegration, frivolity and weakness? I know of only one answer to this question. The English- man is restrained by his own tradition and moral code, and by the strength of his habits. He is essentially sober and business-like, too much impregnated with the spirit of affairs to allow himself to go to excess in the exercise of his Hberties. It is a well-known fact that social and poUtical progress have in England been continuous rather than revolutionary. He puts in a patch, or builds an addition here and there; but never attempts to rebuild the whole structure. He is steadied by his very anachronisms. His rural aristocracy, and his hereditary monarchy, live on in the midst of an in- dustrial democracy. He retains his classical tradition in the age of science. He applies to the conditions and problems of the present, the old maxims of the inherited morality. Compelled by the exigencies of war to conscript the manhood and resources of the nation, he does it by appealing to the ^ Quoted by Chevrillon, op. cit., p. 184. ENGLISH NATIONAL TRAITS 477 judgment of individuals. The effect is full of incongruities and contradictions, but not being peculiarly sensitive to logic, these do not disturb him. The process of change is the re-adjustment and re-adaptation of a living substance. The Englishman carries his morals into his poHtics. Unlike the German, he refuses to admit that what is base in private life can be justified in the state. He also refuses, like the mystic or the casuist, to believe that what is iniquitous in the secular world can be excused or transmuted in religion. It is the morals of Christianity rather than its metaphysics that have appealed to him. He acknowledges but one code, and carries it with him wherever he goes. The English nobility and rural gentry, who have doubtless seen their day, have nevertheless served their day. Their stability in the midst of the rising tide of liberalism and de- mocracy has been due to their usefulness. Having under- taken the job of ruUng England they have done it well. To do the thing well, whether it be ruling England, or India or Egypt, or performing the humbler duties of a local magis- trate, has been a matter of noblesse oblige. The English aristocracy has emphasized its responsibilities more than its privileges. The English have served the world not from any grandilo- quent sense of a divine mission, but as the largely unconscious and uncalculated effect of their sturdy virtues. They have not invented the great ideals of modem democracy, nor have they been the most enthusiastic and self-forgetful champions of these ideals. But they have made them work. Parlia- mentary government, reUgious toleration, personal liberty, popular suffrage, and, in our own day, international federal- ism, have through the English become estabUshed historical facts, so that it is unnecessary to argue their practicability. In writing of England one cannot but be deeply conscious that no modern nation, saving possibly our own, is being so profoundly altered by the present war. Perhaps little that I have said (and I have only restated the commonplaces of opinion) will be applicable to the England of to-morrow. It is difficult to see how the insular aloofness of England can 478 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS persist when even the continental aloofness of America is a thing of the past. By the routes of the air Berlin is as near to London as it is to Paris. The submarine has made the British Channel a source of weakness rather than of strength. The EngUsh have entered into a brotherhood of war which they will scarcely abandon in the time of peace. All that is insular, the pride of self-sufficiency and the reserve of isola- tion, will tend to disappear. The successes of methodical Germany will scarcely encourage a return to the old im- promptu and piece-meal ways that were once sufficient. And the rapid advance of social democracy will discredit tradition and establish privilege. But it is to the interest of all man- kind that the substance of English individualism shall re- main: her sturdy simplicity, her tenacious moralism, and above all her political genius for finding the necessary way between anarchy and tyranny. CHAPTER XXXII GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF BRITISH THOUGHT I. FUNDAMENTAL EMPIRICISM The term "empiricism'' has gradually come to acquire a meaning that coincides almost exactly with the spirit and the method that distinguish the thought of Great Britain from that of the Continent. Empiricism means reliance on experience or on first-hand acquaintance with the facts, British philosophers, as we have seen, have ordinarily been men of affairs, or men "of experience." They have brought even into philosophy that quality of sagacity which has led to the somewhat unsympathetic judgment, voiced by Carlyle and Taine among others, that the English are stupid in discourse, but wise in action. I suppose that it would be generally agreed that the most eminent British philosophers are Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Spencer and;John Stuart Mill. All of these men save Berke- ley and Spencer were intimately associated with the politi- cal events of their day; Berkeley was a Bishop of the Established Church, and Spencer, who was an engineer in his early years, was afterwards almost wholly preoccupied with the subject-matter of the physical and social sciences. None of these men was steeped in a purely philosophical tradition, nor wholly absorbed in the philosophical activities. In nearly every case they found their livelihood and " career '' elsewhere, and displayed in their philosophizing an interest and cast of mind more common in the market-place or forum than in the hermit's cell or the professor's study. Whatever their faults they were not those of formalism, mysticism or pedantry. The empirical mind which these thinkers represent, is the mind which refuses to commit itself irrevocably in advance 479 48o THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS of the evidence of fact. Though it employs the reason, it does not altogether trust it; and is more prone to go to excess in the other direction, as when Hume dissolved knowledge into the flux of sense-impressions. Such a mind, even when it invokes the aid of reason, prefers to amend its judgments in the light of new facts even at the cost of logical coherence. Since facts cannot be controlled, but have to be accepted as they come and when they come, the empirical mind is in- clined to be provisional and cautious in its temper, and does not speak with the accent of finality. Though its results may lack systematic coherence, they are almost invariably correct in matters of detail. Since an initial error is not consistently carried through, the whole may lack absolute truth, but it will not be absolutely false. The empirical mind will be as disinclined to accept authority as it is disinclined to accept the conclusions of pure reason. It will have more confidence in its own experience than in the infallibility of the wise or the prestige of the powerful. It will be suspicious of inspiration, ecstasy and enthusiasm, as tending to blind the eyes and prevent sobriety of judgment. It regards mysticism as a kind of mystification. It is to be noted that empiricism has its own characteristic mode of conservatism. It implies a respect for past experi- ence, or for what has already proved itself by trial and use. It is this, for example, that accounts for the fact that the French Revolution did not kindle a flame of enthusiasm in England, but was for many decades regarded as a horrible example of the effects of a headlong and reckless idealism. The English mind is not conservative in the sense of adhering to preconceived formulas, or in the sense of submitting to established authorities merely because they are established; but tends to rely on what has been tested in practice, and to prefer the imperfect good that is already in hand to the ideal perfection that is promised by the speculative reason. Such a mind moves forward, but it does not leap forward. It makes haste slowly, without risking what it has already gained. It does not put all its eggs in one basket; but tries out its new policies before it embarks upon them and com- BRITISH THOUGHT 481 mits itself to them. The result is that England is often behind the world in matters that require bold and sweeping change, as, for example, in popular education. English social reform is not preventive but remedial; and the remedy does not come until the evil is vividly felt, often until it is seriously aggravated. But though the reform may be tardy, it is usually sure, and needs neither to be undone nor to be done over again. There is one further feature of British empiricism which must be included in this brief summary. The late Mr. A. W. Benn refers to the *^fact of free exchange, reciprocity, correlation and circulation,'' which is *^so characteristic of English habits, and indeed the fundamental form of English life." ^ English philosophy, like common-sense, recognizes only the one world of common experience, and feels no need of using any language but the everyday language of litera- ture or of colloquial discourse. The layman needs no initiation into British philosophy nor any glossary of tech- nical terms. It has for the most part been written by lay- men, and in the same terms which these laymen have used elsewhere in politics or history or science. The typical English thinker is an amateur rather than a professional. This is sometimes thought to result in shallowness and dilettantism. But what is lost in profundity is gained in breadth. The English mind is widely informed, liberal and well- ventilated ; it is not divided into sealed compartments. English thought may lack organization and specialization, but what is done in one field is always illuminated and en- riched by what is done in others. In a sense Hume and Mill were dilettante, since they were almost equally proficient in philosophy, history and economics. But their philos- ophy has a quality of directness and pertinence that re- flects a mind that is accustomed to grapple with social life; and their history and economics has not suffered from their familiarity with logic and ethics. The British philosopher is governed by the instinctive feeling that what is true anywhere is true everywhere, and that it ought to be intel- ^ History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. II, p. 147. 482 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS ligible to a human mind regardless of the peculiar habits or occupation of its possessor. n. BRITISH IDEALISM It will readily be understood that the English mind is not peculiarly inclined to metaphysics. The metaphysical in- quiry leads beyond the limits of experience, and must stake its conclusions either on a priori reasoning, or on a bold act of speculative faith. The kind of proofs that the British mind craves, those of sense-perception or experimentation, are not possible in this field. The great system-builders in philosophy have required a sense of the absolute finality of some set of first principles, or of some deeper vision; and this the Englishman rarely feels. It was this shrinking from the unfathomable that led the greatest British philosophers, Locke and Hume, to the study of the mind by *Hhe plain historical method.'^ Needless to say the British have not escaped metaphysics altogether. But as a rule their metaphysics has been neither bold nor constructive. There has always been in Great Britain as elsewhere an apologetic metaphysics which has sought to justify the beliefs of Christianity. The English- man being disincUned to accept authority, such secular support has been more eagerly sought in Great Britain than elsewhere in Christendom; and the aUiance between Chris- tianity and philosophy led to the various compromises of liberal belief which were so notably characteristic of Great Britain in the Eighteenth Century. Deism, Unitarianism, Latitudinarianism and all the rest resulted from an eager desire to be Christian without being superstitious. Much of British metaphysics may be said to have existed by default, that is by virtue of leaving undisturbed the meta- physics of religion or common sense. The metaphysics of Locke, for example, is mainly the body of inherited belief which he has not yet overhauled, and which with character- istic indifference to logical consistency, he incorporates with- out assimilating. Hume, who overhauls it, rejects it as incapable of empirical proof; and the Common Sense School BRITISH THOUGHT 483 of Reid, recoiling from such a radical step, proposes to swal- low anything rather than to depart from tried and familiar tenets of popular metaphysics. I. Empirical Idealism. The only bold metaphysical doctrine which originated in Great Britain and which has persisted there is the idealism of Bishop Berkeley. This philosophy has two parts. That which is most original is the thesis which we have discussed above under the name of phenomenalism. But this thesis is radically empirical. It consists of identifying nature with the ideas of the mind. It is the refusal to acknowledge an underlying substance that cannot be perceived; or the unwilUngness to subordinate the obvious to the doubtful, the given to the inferred. Idealism in this sense has lived on through Hume to Mill, and more recently to the positivists such as Huxley and Karl Pearson, and to the personal idealists such as Schiller. The other part of Berkeley's philosophy was his Christian theism, which led him despite his empirical professions to regard God as the author of nature and so of that order of perceptions to which nature had been reduced. This part of Berkeley's teaching is both less original and also less persistent, through being less congenial to the British mind. Since the importation into Great Britain of the Kantian or German type of idealism, the empirical tradition has shown itself in the tendency to compromise. Personal ideaUsm, as we have seen, is characterized by an unwilling- ness to accept the logic of Kantianism, where this conflicts with the moral experience. It is Kantianism balked by a British insistence upon the rights of the individual, the plain facts of evil, and the conventional moral code. Two books published since the opening of the war exhibit this com- promise quite unmistakably. One of these is entitled The Faith and the War, a " Series of Essays by members of the Churchmen's Union and others on the Religious Difficulties Aroused by the Present Condition of the World." The editor, Mr. F. J. Foakes- Jackson, says: *^ There is a con- sensus of opinion expressed in the first four essays, that to understand the significance of evil in the world, it is necessary 484 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS to recognize that, under the present disposition at any rate, there is a plurality of forces which God permits to exercise control over the course of events.'' ^ Pluralism, in other words, is extorted from these writers by the present course of events. The fact of evil, now freshly impressed upon the British mind by the mahce of the enemy and by the horrors of war, is accepted as a more certain thing than that unified perfection which is the logical conclusion from the premises of Kantian idealism. The second book, entitled The International Crisis, in its Ethical and Psychological Aspects, is chatty, fragmentary, empirical and inconclusive. ^ UnHke the similar volumes produced in Germany, there is no common doctrine or common formula. That which unifies it is never anywhere expKcitly stated, the disposition, namely, to judge in the Hght of the new experience, and to judge by the standards of human interest and traditional morality. Only one of the essays, Bosanquet's ''Patriotism in the Perfect State," can be said to be the carrying out of preconceived and funda- mental ideas, and this essay is in my judgment entirely out of touch with the spirit, institutions and poHcy of Great Britain. It is a striking anomaly both in its philosophical self-consistency and in its allegiance to an aHen creed. It represents the tendency which we have next to consider. In every nation there is a school of thought which appeals to rebellious spirits who dissent from what is broadly char- acteristic of their intellectual environment, and who are moved to dissent all the more emphatically because of the feel- ing that what they are denying is somehow in spite of them- selves in their very blood. In this way the Germans reacted against Hegel in the last century, and the French against Comte and the tradition of science. So at the very time when the Germans were importing English ideas to rid them * Pp. X, XI. The four authors in question are Percy Gardner, Alice Gard- ner, Hastings Rashdall and the Editor. » * The contributors "are Eleanor M. Sidgwick, Gilbert Murray, A. C. Brad- ley, L. P. Jacks, G. F. Stout and B. Bosanquet. . BRITISH THOUGHT 485 of Hegelian metaphysics, the English were importing Ger- man ideas to rid them of Hume and the tradition of in- dividuaKsm. In order to explain the great hold of German idealism upon the British mind in the Nineteenth Century, we have first to introduce a very broad consideration which affects all the thought of modern Christendom. Whatever we think of its merits, there cannot be the slightest doubt that the Kantian argument for the creative function of the mind in knowledge has proved the most successful weapon with which to save the spiritualistic metaphysics from the threat of science. Any philosophy which will serve this purpose and ally itself with the religious tradition is sure of a following. The reign of Sir William Hamilton, of Edward Caird and of T. H. Green, is in large part due, Uke the reign of Bergson to-day, to its anti-materialistic polemic. It was the rall3dng-point and for the time being the stoutest stronghold for those who sought to defend themselves against both the frontal attack of naturalism and the intrigue of scepticism. But we find a more adequate explanation of the trans- plantation of German ideahsm to British soil if we consider the matter more narrowly in relation to specifically British conditions. We find that the imported German idealism allies itself with two forms of domestic reaction against what is characteristically British — with the romantic reaction against utiUtarianism, and with the social, institutional and metaphysical reaction against individualism. Neither utili- tarianism nor individualism has ceased to be characteristic- ally British, but each has its own peculiar limitations or excesses; and when, in his moods of self-criticism, the Eng- lishman looks for an antidote he finds it necessary to import it from the continent. 2. The Reaction against Utilitarianism. The romantic reaction against utilitarianism is most perfectly represented by Thomas Carlyle. This thinker is unmistakably a Brit- isher criticising himself. He has the temperament of a Jeremiah, who rouses his people from complacency by pre- dicting calamity. He is divided against himself. On the 486 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS one hand he is an Old Testament Puritan, a scientific rationalist rejecting supernaturaUsm, mysticism and religious forms, a man of strong practical bias who beHeves in going to work without waiting to understand either yourself or God. All of these things may be said to be characteristically British, and to reflect what is deeper and more instinctive in Carlyle himself. But on the other hand he is the prophet of heroic inspiration, of idealistic faith, and even of a spiritu- aUstic view of nature. We can, I think, understand this revolutionary Carlyle who scandalized and invigorated his age if we consider him in the light of the hmitations to which the normal British view of Ufe is pecuHarly liable. In the first place, utiUtarianism is banal. It tends to a levelling down of values to mere creature comforts, which it is interested in distributing as widely as possible. Where these creature comforts are obtained it tends to be satisfied with them, and to lose the incentive to higher aspiration. It tends to overvalue what is commonplace; and its very humanity inclines it to tolerate inferiority merely because it is human. In the second place, utilitarianism is careful of the consequences. It is the morality of prudence, in which the moral agent drives a bargain and insists on being paid. The virtue of right action, according to the utiUtarian, lies in the pleasurable satisfactions to which it conduces. Such morahty is thrifty, provident and calculating. Carlyle's objection to such utiUtarianism is in part founded on his moral temper. He has the Scotch Calvinistic feeUng that the way of righteousness must be hard and narrow, the stern moraUst's suspicion of whatever is easy and natural. He speaks for the morality of duty, for that morality which is beyond price and will go to the stake for principle. ^ He sees that all sound virtue must be of this uncompromising mood; and that the greed for happiness leads to the softening of the moral fibre. Duty is not rewarded by happiness, nor does the motive of happiness incline a man to duty. ''What then?" he asks, ''Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some passion, some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction others profit by? I know not. Only this I know, BRITISH THOUGHT 487 if what thou namest Happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray." ^ Thus Carlyle is prompted even by his own native Scotch tradition to insist that virtue must be heroic; neither easy nor profitable, but hard and uncompromising. But begin- ning with this difference of emphasis, and having the zeal of the reformer and the imaginative power of creative genius, he proceeds to idealize heroism and erect it into an independ- ent and supreme value. Even a merciless and unscrupulous tyrant like Frederick the Great, for whom Carlyle feels a natural aversion, becomes a symbol of the hero's mighty resolution and personal elevation. The heroic quality is the great thing — a greater thing than either scruple or utility. Thus any man of spirit, feeling the flatness of humdrum existence, with its tedious monotony of commonplaceness and its timid calculation of little gains and losses will have his moments of revulsion and disgust when he would be thankful for greatness, even of the volcanic sort that leaves destruction in its path. And when a man is in this mood he is wilUng that Nietzsche or Carlyle should speak for him. For the moment he is like them sick to death of charity and benevolence. He is willing that the strong should crush the weak, if only he will bring into the world again the glory of strength. . But what has this to do with German idealism? The answer is not far to seek. When heroism justfies itself as a supreme standard of action it resorts to romantic ideaUsm. The hero who disregards consequences and cannot appeal to them for the justification of his acts, looks for a sanction within himself. He legitimates the act by the heroic self from which it proceeds. He values the act for the spirit of its performance. In place of the rational justification of the UtiUtarian, there is the faith that what is so mighty must be right. But this cannot be the case if the heroic spirit is no more than a product of nature and a creature of private whims and caprices. The hero must be thought to be the 1 Heroes and Hero Worship. 488 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS incarnation of something greater than himself. The heroic spirit is thus objectified. It is identified with a spirit in- forming nature, and eventually with a universal spirit that pervades and rules the world. The heroic spirit, having been idealized, is then idolized and deified; and what begins as an emphasis on moral courage ends with an ideahstic meta- physics. The revolt of the British moralist against the commonplaceness and providence of his own sturdy virtues thus enters into alliance with the speculative doctrines of an alien philosophy. 3. The Reaction against Individualism. The second British reaction against things characteristically British is the reaction against individualism. ^ During the first half of the last century the trend of economic and political thought had been in the direction of the emancipation of the individual from social control. According to the principle of laissez-faire all that was necessary for human well-being was to leave the individual to his own devices under the beneficent working of the principles of self-interest and competition. But by the middle of the century it had already become apparent that the effects of the let-alone poHcy were far from beneficent. The new industrialism had introduced evils which it was in itself incapable of remedying and it began to be apparent that the aid of the state must be invoked. This feeUng that there is a grave social problem which only society itself in its collective aspect can solve, furnishes the chief motive for the internal policy of Glad- stonian liberalism, and is one of the deeper motives of Vic- torian literature. It led even Mill, utilitarian though he was, to question his individualistic premises; and finally it led, in the idealism of T. H. Green, to the entire abandon- ment of these premises. *'The mereremovalof compulsion," says this writer, ''the mere enabling a man to do as he likes, is in itself no contribution to real freedom. ... It is the business of the state ... to maintain the conditions with- * For an excellent summary of this reaction with special reference to the influence of idealism, cf. G. H. Sabine, "The Social Origin of Absolute Ideal- ism," Journal of Philosophy ^ Vol. XII (191 5). BRITISH THOUGHT 489 out which a free exercise of the human faculties is im- possible. '^ ^ Here again the momentum of the reaction carries British thought to the opposite extreme, and paves the way for the widespread adoption of a philosophy that is in principle quite at variance with what is characteristic and persistent in British thought. The movement begins with the idea of human interdependence. This interdependence may at first be conceived in terms that are entirely consistent with the fundamental premises of individualism. It may mean only that one individual's happiness requires the co-operation of other individuals and the intervention of the state. A second step is taken when it is conceived that society is not merely a means to private ends already existing, a remedy for poverty and misery, but is also a source of new values. This step is due to the new psychology which reveals the essentially social character of human nature. If man naturally possesses sympathies and other-regarding impulses, then he will need society for its own sake; not because it provides him with security, order, justice and the material conditions of life, but because it provides hiin with the opportunity of fellowship and intercourse. So far the happiness of individuals remains the end of life; although this happiness is now conceived as reciprocal and collective, rather than as exclusive and private. This may be said to be the philosophy of Victorian liberalism. But it is now a short step to a radically different view, the view, namely that the happiness of the individual is not the end at all, but only a means to the end of society. And here we have reached the distinctively ideahstic doctrine. It is now no longer held that society is an attribute of the individual, but that the individual is a mode or aspect of society. The reaUty is the larger organic whole, ^thin which the individual man realizes himself. Instead of judging society by its contribution to the good of component individuals, these are to judge their good by their contribution to the social whole. And now the logic of the new premises begins to make * Quoted by Sabine, op. cit., p. 171. 490 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS itself felt. In what is the social good to consist? If we are to avoid a vicious circle we must suppose that society has an end of its own. But how is this end to be discovered? Not by consulting the desires or even the aspirations of individ- uals, for these are only partial, and must appeal to the higher social authority to justify themselves. The duty of the individual, as Mr. Bradley insists, is to do what his social station or function requires.^ If the social end is to regulate the conduct of individuals then it must have a way of mak- ing itself known independently of the will of the individual. This may be conceived as a higher will, immanent in the individual, but opposing its more rational or inspired man- dates to the individual's merely private inclination or caprice. This is the romantic solution, the more subjective and lawless version of the matter, which must after all leave it to the individual to determine whether his judgment in any given case is social or merely individual. But it is difl&cult to conduct the affairs of mankind upon such a basis. There are two other alternatives. One is to regard history as the unfolding of the social will; which points to the in- dividual's accepting of tradition and of ''destiny" without any attempt to interfere with them. The other is to regard the state as the organ of the social will, which implies that the individual shall prostrate himself before political authori- ties and accept their official decrees and poHcies as an in- fallible moral guide. Beyond the individual society as expressing itself in the state there lie the greater unities of human evolution and the absolute, each in turn superseding the lesser. But the verdict of history and the will of the Absolute are remoter and more obscure than the mandates of the state, which supplies that close supervision and definite guidance which the fragmentary individual requires from something completer and ''higher" than himself. These are the well-known doctrines which have served to justify the state-fanaticism of England's bitterest enemy. No British ideaUst has seen this sort of idealism through, 1 Cf. F. H. Bradley: Ethical Studies. BRITISH THOUGHT 491 and none has approved the policy which the German very consistently associates with it. Mr. Bosanquet, whose views we have considered at some length above, has come the closest to it; but even he finds himself, in his practical judg- ments, more embarrassed than fortified by such premises. And British social and political policy remains, so far as I can see, entirely unaffected by them. They have obtained a footing in British thought because they have served to correct the defects of the traditional individualism. They provide a means of amending individualism, but there is no widespread disposition to accept them in its place. When the utilitarian and individuaUstic tradition is modi- fied without being superseded by German idealism, the result is the new liberalism. The ultimate standard of judgment is still the happiness and well-being of individuals, severally regarded. But this in itself is a most exacting ideal, which requires the heroic spirit, a constructive imagination and the methods both of private co-operation and of state- intervention. Furthermore the good of the aggregate of individuals must be conceived not merely in terms of creature comforts, but in terms of the aesthetic, intellectual and social interests as well. It must be a civilized life and a life together. All of this is consistent with the ineradicable British conviction that evil is in fact evil; that the good is not guaranteed either by history or by authority, but must be achieved by the moral judgment and the moral will of censorious and resolute individuals. III. BRITISH ETHICS It is characteristic of British thought that the subject of ethics should have been independently pursued. In Ger- many and France ethics has as a rule been incidental to general philosophy. But ever since the beginning of the Eighteenth Century there has been a succession of British "moralists" who have made important contributions to ethics without showing either interest or aptitude for more fundamental problems. The history of English ethics 492 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS embraces three broad tendencies: the ethics of conscience, utilitarianism and the ethics of self-realization. I. The Ethics of Conscience. The interest of the British thinkers in the faculty of conscience may be traced to two underlying causes. It has been due, in the first place, to the British predilection for psychology, or for an examination of the mind's ideas as being open to direct empirical obser- vation. Even more fundamentally it is due to the British cult of moral self-reliance. None of us will soon forget the suspense of the opening days of the war, when British poHcy was waiting until the people of Great Britain should have made up their minds. When the decision came it was a moral decision and neither the execution of a preconceived plan nor the manifestation of a hasty impulse. The British recruiting campaign, as has been said by a French observer, was carried on by the same methods that are employed by the religious revivahst or the temperance agitator. It was necessary to persuade individuals that war was their duty. And never before in the world's history have three million men been recruited by such methods. The reforms of the Victorian era were unsystematic and often belated, but the abolition of slavery, the measures for poor relief, the electoral reform, the CathoHc emancipation, were all motivated by moral indignation. The individual man, then, is endowed with a capacity to find the right and the wrong for himself. This capacity has been so greatly emphasized as to lead to the view that it constitutes a separate organ or faculty. Some have con- ceived it as a sort of rational intuition, others as a sort of sense, or form of taste. But however constituted its pos- session renders the individual morally competent — not a creature of institutions, but the creator and remaker of institutions. That such a view has not led to a disintegrat- ing subjectivism is due to the fact that a stable and common content of conscience has been supplied by tradition. It is assumed that the staple virtues of Christendom are moral finaUties, which it is the function of conscience to reveal. Conscience is not a source of virtue, but rather an organ by BRITISH THOUGHT 493 which the individual may discover virtue independently of revelation or authority, and so be justified, if needs be, in taking a stand against both religion and the state. 2. Utilitarianism. Right and wrong being accepted as objective verities, they must either remain as axiomatic and irreducible, or they must be understood in the Ught of some good to which they conduce. We may construe utilitarian- ism in the broad sense to mean that right conduct is the means to human happiness. This view appears even among the most conservative and rationalistic of the British moral- ists; and even among the theological moralists, who insist that if the will of God is to be accepted as morally authorita- tive, it must be because God is somehow pledged to secure the happiness of mankind. But this tendency tends to divorce itself both from rationalism and from theology, and to assume an experimental and secular form. Human happi- ness must depend upon human needs and inclinations. If a man wants pleasure, then his happiness must consist in the getting of it. If he has various impulses, some self-seeking and some social, then his happiness must consist in getting these impulses satisfied. Morality then becomes a method or art, by which conduct is adjusted to human nature, and in which right action is judged by its effects. The final appeal must be to the individual's desires, which he himself understands better than any, even the most indulgent and well-meaning, authority. If this be the substance of utili- tarianism, then, as we have seen, it in no way conflicts with the acknowledgment of any higher aspirations that a man may feel, provided he actually feels them; or with an em- phasis on the common social life provided this is grounded in the dispositions and sentiments of individuals. It is opposed only to the imputing to men of ends that they do not actually seek, or to the invention of fictitious entities like the state- personality, which are argued from metaphysics. UtiU- tarianism in this sense means only that the good shall be judged to consist in the getting and having of what actual sentient creatures actually and sentiently desire. 494 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS 3. Self-realization. With the advent of German idealism there appeared the new formula of ''self-realization.'' In so far as this tends to an overriding of the individual human self in the name of a higher social or absolute self, it is, as we have seen, contrary to both the teachings we have just examined. If reahzing one's self means losing one's individual self, or disowning it, then one cannot expect this doctrine to find a permanent lodgment in the British mind. But there is room for its quaHfied acceptance. If self-realization means that the desires of selves are the source and criterion of all value, then this doctrine is in keeping with utiHtarianism. Or if it means that a man shall act on his own moral judgment or from his own conscience, then it is in keeping with the British cult of moral self-reHance. In spite of all that was alien to the British tradition and habit of mind, Carlyle made an appeal that could nowhere count upon a more certain response than in his own country. For he urged men to be personally invincible, and to dare to match their moral convictions against the threat of power or the seductions of corrupting indulgence. 4. Political Applications. There are two political corol- laries with which I propose to conclude this brief survey. In the first place, the Britisher proposes to use the state, and not be used by it. He values it, but he does not worship it. His fear that the state might take things into its own hands or become an object of superstitious veneration, has led him to undervalue it and to reduce its functions to a minimum. He tolerates his House of Lords and his heredi- tary monarchy, because he dislikes abrupt changes and is fond of the traditional and familiar. But he sees to it that hereditary privileges are not abused, and knows shrewdly how to unite titles with impotence. The Empire has proved a more tempting object of idolatry than the Kingdom; and there have been British thinkers such as Froude, Mommsen and even Carlyle, who have made a cult of the Empire and even sought to justify unscrupulousness by glory. But these counsels have not seriously counted. The Empire like the Kingdom has been built on utility, as providing protection BRITISH THOUGHT 49S for trade and security for colonial emigrants. Its organiza- tion has been elastic and adaptable; and it stands to-day as a monumental proof of the possibihty of reconciling local autonomy and local interests with a trans-oceanic and inter- continental co-operation and moral unity. In the second place, British foreign poHcy has to a con- stantly increasing degree reflected the standards of domestic moraUty. Its weakness and irresolution, as well as its greatest triumphs, have been due to this cause. Great Britain does not permit itself the short cuts of bold and unscrupulous aggrandizement. The builders of the Empire abroad have had to come to terms with the ''little Eng- enders" at home. These ''little Englanders," it will be remembered, spoke with open courage and with effect as long ago as the American War of Independence, when they befriended the cause of liberty against claims of imperial dominion. They were unable to prevent the subjugation of the Boers, but they were strong enough to secure them that self-government which has converted them to loyal alle- giance. If they have been less successful in solving the prob- lem of Irish autonomy, it is not for lack of good will. ^ This problem is gravely complicated by sharp racial, economic and religious differences in Ireland herself, by propinquity, and now by the great emergency of a war for national existence. History affords no parallel to the patience, good-temper and consistently liberal interest with which successive British governments have attempted to redress wrongs inherited from an age that is past. If we condemn British policy, it is because we are encouraged to expect so much from it; because we have been taught by British thinkers and British statesmen to insist that governments shall be as scrupulous as individuals. As a recent English writer has said: "The collective will of the mass of Christian citizens demands that their representatives shall act with the same fairness and firmness which anyone of them would show in his dealing on behalf of private friends." ^ 1 M. G. Glazebrook, "What is a Christian Nation?" in The Faith and the War, p. 231. 496 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS No state on earth is guiltless if judged by such standards. But what, then, shall we conclude? The German, judging by history, accepts the unscrupulousness of states as a final- ity, and proposes to persist in it. The rest olthe world is possessed with the idea of doing better, and in this new resolution is largely sustained by the healthy moral instinct which prompts the Anglo-Saxon to call things by their right names even when they come from on high. CHAPTER XXXIII THE AMERICAN IDEAL OF SOCIAL EQUALITY * Mr. Frederic Harrison opens a recent article with the following paragraph: t *'The war of Nations is being entangled with, is merging into, the war of Class: about sovereignty, ranks, upper and lower Orders; but essentially, between those who hold Capital and those who Work with their hands. National wars, as we see, unite men in nations: Class wars suppress the spirit of nationality, for they herald what Socialists promise as the grander form of Patriotism, the brotherhood of laborers. At the opening of the great European War Democracy was appealed to, and nobly it answered the call in the name of the Nation. But now, in this fourth year of war, we see all over Europe how democratic patriotism is expanding into the new Industrial Order which dreamers for two generations have imagined as the Social Revolution." ^ Whether we applaud or regret the change which Mr. Harrison describes, we cannot well dispute the fact. His account may be exaggerated, but beyond doubt the war, after its initial effect of solidifying nationalities, has come more and more to heighten class consciousness and inter- national fellow-feeling. The immensity of the war lies not only in its area and volume, but in the profoundness and complexity of its issues. It is not a mere struggle for power among rival nations, but a struggle for ascendancy among rival forms of government, economic policies and social philosophies. The outcome is going to determine not merely what nations shall survive, but what institutions and ideals shall survive. It is not merely a question of who shall prove strongest, but of what form of life shall prove strongest. * This chapter is reprinted with slight changes from The International Journal of Ethics, July, 1918, where it appears under the title "What Do We Mean by Democracy?" * "Obiter Scripta," Fortnightly Review, January, 1918. 497 498 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS Thu5 we, the people of the United States, are not fighting merely in order that we may continue to exist ; though this is a very genuine and very proper motive. We are also fighting in order that we may exist in a certain specific way; or in order that a certain specific form of Ufe may through us retain a place in the world. We usually call this specific form of Hfe by the name of ''democracy." If we are to be taken at our word, then, we not only intend to exist, and to exist with undiminished strength ; but we intend also to be democratic, and to be more fully and more consistently democratic than we have as yet grown to be. We have repeatedly professed this creed on many solemn and public occasions. Do we really mean it? And if so, what do we mean by it? If the average man were honestly to express his mind on democracy he would say, adapting Audrey's words to Touchstone, ''I do not know what democratic is. Is it honest in word and deed? Is it a true thing? " Of course, living in this time and place, he would be prejudiced in its favor. Democracy is a word to conjure with; and its meaning is so dim and so equivocal that almost anybody can conjure with it. Recent events have increased its vogue, but have at the same time led many persons to ask questions about it. Since its credentials are not clear, some sceptically minded persons are inclined to reject it as a superstition; while credulous persons, on the other hand, are inclined to cling to it all the more tenaciously by an act of bUnd faith. Many reject or accept it on account of what is supposed to be implied by it. Thus in so far as woman suffrage or the initiative and referendum are said to be democratic those who object to these policies are beginning to say that they never really believed in democracy anyway; while others are confirmed in their democracy from hope of the greater pohtical power that is promised in its name. But precisely what is implied by democracy is so doubtful that both the advocates and the opponents of compulsory military service have made it the fundamental premise of their arguments. Inasmuch as we are at present more than ever disposed THE AMERICAN IDEAL OF SOCIAL EQUALITY 499 to derive our policies from it, democracy should be more than a symbol like the flag or national anthem. It should have so far as possible an articulate meaning, and a meaning widely recognized and consciously adopted by all in whose decision the choice of poHcy Hes. ^^ There are two broadly different senses in which the term '^democracy'' is used. On the one hand, it refers to social equahty as a desirable form of Hfe; and, on the other hand, it refers to popular government as the only just and efficient form of pohtical organization. In the present chapter we shall deal with democracy in the first of these two senses We shall disregard the pohtical axiom that men are born with equal rights; or the pohtical precept that men should be accorded an equal share of sovereignty. We shall confine ourselves to the prior question whether it is good that the lot of men should so far as possible be equahzed. Equahty m this sense is a potent symbol, an emotional explosive, indispensable to the arsenal of any poet or orator who wishes to inflame an audience. Like every symbol it is somewhere connected with the hving interests and sentiments of men. What, then, are the values that "equahty" represents? When men applaud it, what good thing does it signify to them, that it should so warm their hearts? To what motives does it appeal? I. THE MOTIVE OF COMPASSION Equahty is rooted, first, in the motive of compassion. This motive, instinctive and inahenable, but pecuharly cultivated, intensified and extended by Christianity, prompts men^ to reheve the manifest distress of their feUows. Com- passion is felt for individuals. Compassion is excited by the aspect which life presents at the lower end of the scale of happiness. On the one hand, then, it regards Hfe concretely as an aggregate of suffering, struggHng, hoping men and women; with the result that it tends to the comparative neglect of institutions, laws and general principles. On the other hand, it is essentiaUy remedial rather than construc- tive. It applies itself to raising the minimum rather than 500 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS the maximum. It halts the vanguard of civilization in order that those who are dropping by the way or lagging in the rear may be brought abreast of the marching column. It is less interested in the perfection of the few, who demonstrate the heights to which human nature can attain under the most favorable conditions; it is more interested in providing the unfortunate man with the staple goods of health, food and protection. It is distributive and extensive in its effect, rather than quahtative and intensive. It is, then, clearly an equalizing motive. It is this motive which is stronger in women than in men; which is just now more alive to the suffering of individual soldiers and civiUans than to the larger issues of the war; which dwells upon famine, pestilence and cruelty, and is liable to ignore questions of poHtical or economic policy. The range and effect of this motive have been enormously extended by the recent increase of intercommunication between classes, nations, continents and hemispheres. The feeUng for all mankind as a vast aggregate of suffering in- dividuals is no longer a vague and pious sentiment, but a powerful spring of action which must be reckoned with as a force in human affairs. It is the link between democracy and humanity. The motive of compassion does, it is true, tend to the comparative neglect of the broader considerations of policy, and to the comparative neglect of the arts and sciences. In so far as this is the case it is open to criticism, and even defeats itself. Nevertheless it is essentially sound: not to be rejected, but to be supplemented and corrected. The essential truth which it bespeaks is this: that in the last analysis the units of life are individual, sentient beings. The merit of any social system is to be judged by the happi- ness which it creates. And a social system may as fairly be judged by the lot of men at the bottom as by the lot of men at the top. It is comparatively easy to devise a system that shall make some men happy, provided the majority may be sacrificed for the purpose. The great task of civiUzation is to achieve a happiness that may be generally shared, by THE AMERICAN IDEAL OF SOCIAL EQUALITY 50I which the good of one man shall also enhance the good of another. Until this is achieved civilization may fairly be regarded as on trial. So far, then, the idea of equality means this community and mutuality of life, in which all men shall achieve happiness and perfection together at a pace which requires neither the abandonment nor the exploitation of the unfortunate. II. THE MOTIVE OF EMULATION The second motive of equality is emulation. Men desire to overtake or surpass their fellows in the race of life. Every activity of life — art, science and public service, as well as money-getting, politics and ^'society" — matches one man against others, and distributes the competitors who are entered in a scale of comparative failure and success. The same motive of emulation which prompts a man to exceed the attainment of others makes him resent another's victory when it is not earned. Emulation begets the demand for fair-play, or for a *^ square deal.'' The race must be to the swift, not to those who from the start find themselves already at or near the goal through no efforts of their own, or to those who are assisted from the side-lines. The man who wins despite initial disadvantages, the "self-made man," is doubly honored ; but such initial disadvantages are none the less regarded as contrary to the code of sportsmanship. All competitors must be given an even start; or, as we say, opportunity must be equalized. A social hierarchy, in which the accident of birth or "connection" rigidly distinguishes the fortunate from the unfortunate, must, according to this code, give place to a more flexible system of interchangeable stations, in which success shall be determined by talent and energy. That this motive has powerfully affected modern social reconstruction, no one can deny. "Every great social and economical change in modern Europe," says Mr. Cliffe LesHe, "has helped to clear the passage through the crowd, and through the world, for the humblest man with any real 502 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS individuality." ^ The enormous extension in modern times of the opportunity for eminence is illustrated by the fact that from the arrival of the Saxons in Britain to the accession of Edward III, only seven great names are recorded in English history, Alfred, William the Conqueror, Henry II, Edward I, Anselm, Becket and Roger Bacon, of whom four were kings and two were priests. The history of Europe was once a record of lost opportunity; it is now a record of rise from obscurity. The extension of facilities for education, the increase of inter-communication, the abolition of special privilege, the wider and more equal distribution of wealth, — ■ these are some of the means by which this change has come about and is being accelerated. No one, I think, would propose to retard this change. Not only does it enrich the collective life by utilizing talents which would otherwise remain buried under superficial strata of mediocrity; but it is sound in principle, since it requires that every form of organized restraint shall have a Hberal and provident intent. A friend of mine has recently made a practice of asking the foreign-born Americans of his acquaintance what motive prompted them to come to this country. With very few exceptions they have answered that it was because they could **get on'' here; meaning that they could not only make a living, but always enjoyed at least the chance of prosperity and wealth. The fact that extreme revolutionary propaganda has made so little headway in this country, that labor as a class has not usually found it necessary to form a distinct political party, is due to the fact that the working classes do find a genuine opportunity in the existing system. They are as a whole successful and hopeful. They do not feel an irreconcilable bitterness toward the bourgeoisie, be- cause, as my friend has expressed it, the more energetic and intelligent among them hope some day to belong to the bourgeoisie themselves. They hesitate to destroy a station in life which they think they may some day themselves occupy. But this represents the attitude of skilled rather than of ^ Essays in Economic and Moral Philosophy. THE AMERICAN IDEAL OF SOCIAL EQUALITY 503 unskilled labor; and latterly with the larger immigration from southern Europe and the rapid growth of centralized industries, it has become less and less universal. Even if this were not so, we must recognize the fact that those who enjoy a chance of success are going to insist upon increasing that chance. Prosperity does not always beget contentment. It also increases ambition and sense of power. It was once customary to compare the relatively great opportunity afforded by American life with the relatively meagre oppor- tunity afforded by life at home, in '' the c4d country.'' But it is now customary to demand more, and to judge oppor- tunity by the standard of the more fortunate rather than by the standard of the less fortunate. We may reasonably expect that no man in the long run is going to be satisfied with anything short of the fullest opportunity that appears consistent with maintaining the total productivity and wealth of the country. There is a significant phrase in the report of a committee recently appointed by the British Labor Party to formulate a program of reconstruction after the war. I refer to the phrase ''effective personal freedom." This means freedom that can actually be used to advantage. It imphes that the opportunity which is wanted must be a positive and liberal opportunity, which is not to be obtained by merely letting things alone but only by contriving a more favorable situa- tion than that in which the working man now finds himself. If you drive a man up a tree and station a bear at the foot of it, it does not gratify him to be told that he is now free to do as he chooses. If you dismiss your son from your door without food, money or education, and tell him that the whole wide world is now open to him, you have not given him ''effective personal freedom." Circumstances may compel him to accept your terms, hard and dictatorial though they may be. Freedom in such a sense is a threat and not a promise. Similarly if you rear a man in a low social station, in the midst of poverty and ignorance, with the necessity of liveli- hood forced upon him from an early age, and then tell him 504 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS that he may rise even to be President of the United States, he is to be forgiven if he does not appear enthusiastic and grateful. If you throw a man into stormy waters far from land, and then tell him that there is nothing to prevent his swimming to shore and making a nice dry warm place for himself there, you do not confer a boon on him. For first he has got to keep his head above water. Even if by great and prolonged exertions he can do that, there is little chance of his living to achieve more. The man who demands "effec- tive personal freedom" wants to be put on shore to start with. He understands that there is a tyranny of circum- stance more fatal than that of man; that the worst of all tyrannies is the tyranny of existing things, of that estab- lished system which has grown out of human action, but for which no human individual now feels responsible. From men and institutions he demands more than passive per- mission to do what he can for himself. He knows that for him the chance of success is an off-chance. He demands that men and institutions shall annul the tyranny of circum- stance, and reconstruct the existing system so that the rich- ness of his opportunity shall be somewhere nearly commen- surate with his capacity and interests. We must not deceive ourselves by giving the name of opportunity to mere neglect. More often than not, equal opportunity has to be created by actively intervening against established injustice. And we must remember that for all alike to have some chance of the highest success does not at all imply that they have a like chance even of the smallest success. There is all the practical difference in the world between a fair chance and an off-chance. m. THE MOTIVE OF SELF-RESPECT A third motive to equality is self-respect^ or the resentment of arrogance. No high-spirited man can tolerate contempt. In proportion as a man is conscious of his natural powers and is ambitious to excel he must inevitably believe in himself and retahate upon those who habitually treat him as an in- ferior. This is a different thing, as we shall see, from the THE AMERICAN IDEAL OF SOCIAL EQUALITY 50$ dislike of superiority. It is dislike of conscious superiority, or of the airs of superiority: because, in the first place these aggravate accidental advantages and ignore merit; because, in the second place, they imply an attitude of disparagement toward oneself and force one to self-defense. But ''disUke" is too weak a word. Humiliation begets the most implacable hatred. The sting of humiUation was one of the most powerful motives of the French Revolution. Monsters of cruelty, such as Marat and Carrier, were seeking balm for the incurable wounds inflicted upon their self-love when they were despised subordinates in the establishments of great nobles. Even Mme. Roland, as Le Bon says, ''was never able to forget that when she and her mother were invited to the house of a great lady under the ancien regime they had been sent to dine in the servants' quarters.'' The same author points out that it was not those who had the most soUd grievances who led the Revolution, but the bour- geoisie, who despite their wealth or professional success, were contemptuously snubbed by the aristocracy. In a measure, then, Napoleon was justified when he said: ''Vanity made the Revolution; liberty was only the pretext." But this explanation ignores the deeper aspect of the motive. Vanity is accidental and temperamental. The main-spring of revolt was not vanity, but the self-confidence and self-respect which must necessarily accompany attain- ment. A man who succeeds, or even aspires to succeed, must beUeve in himself. A democracy of opportunity must be at the same time a democracy of personal esteem. In a society which enables the majority of its members to taste success, or to dream of it, the sentiments of pride, honor and dignity will be widely disseminated. They can no longer be re- garded as the exclusive prerogatives of a social caste. This fact is as pertinent to-day as ever. If a fashionable class, an employer class, a "respectable" class, a "high-brow" class, a Bostonian clan or a white race feel themselves to be superior, that feeling will infallibly be scented, and will arouse a resentful and rebellious spirit among those who have become conscious of their own worth. There is no escape So6 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS from this dilemma. Either the masses of mankind must be broken in spirit, and convinced by subjection of the utter helplessness of their lot; or, if they are once allowed to travel on the highroad to success, their pride must be respected. A man cannot be given opportunity without the acknowledg- ment of his worth. IV. THE MOTIVE OF FRATERNITY A further motive to equality is to be found in the senti- ment of fraternity. This is a feehng or attitude which naturally develops among men who recognize their common lot. It develops among lost souls who seek a common sal- vation, among fellow-adventurers who suffer common hard- ships, among competitors who acknowledge the same stand- ard of success or among partners who feel their mutual dependence. It is the converse of the motive which we have just considered. Self-respect demands the esteem of others and resents disparagement. Fraternity acknowledges the just pride of others, or accords that which self-respect demands. It is the only possible relation between two self-respecting persons. It does not imply intimacy or friendship, for these must depend upon the accidents of propinquity and temperament; but it implies courtesy, fair- mindedness and the admission of one's own limitations. It must underly the closer relations of family, neighborhood or vocation; but it must be extended to the broader and less personal relations of fellow-citizenship and fellow-humanity. It is the essential spirit of that finer companionship which even kings have coveted; but in a diffused and rarified form it is the atmosphere which is vital to a democratic community. It is the motive of fraternity which justifies that freedom of manners which we properly associate with a democracy. A fraternal democracy does not fail to acknowledge supe- riority; indeed democracies are proverbially given to an extravagance of hero-worship. But they do not like to have superiority too conscious of itself. They do not like to have superiority converted into an institution. Hence they THE AMERICAN IDEAL OF SOCIAL EQUALITY 507 attack every form of class-stratification and are suspicious of titles and decorations. The great man is always on trial and can never settle comfortably and permanently into the exalted position to which success and popular applause may have raised him. Furthermore his success is never confused with his person and is not recognized as an essential at- tribute. As a statesman, or captain of industry, or general or admiral he may have achieved glory and distinction, but as a man he still ranks with his fellows. When once this fraternal spirit is strong and widely diffused it has effective ways of protecting itself. In a thoroughly democratic community arrogance is not angrily denounced; it is blighted and withered before it has a chance to mature. If anyone were to set himself up in this country as a wirk- licher Hofgeheimrat, as a genuine court privy counsellor, after a fashion popular in Central Europe, he would not be execrated and mobbed. He would get no notice at all ex- cept in the funny columns of the newspapers. And he would soon learn to take the same attitude himself. The fact is that it is pretty hard to feel personally superior, if nobody agrees with you; or to look down on people, if you can't get anybody to look up to you. Those who care greatly for the external expression and recognition of superiority do not be- long in a democratic society. There is a place where they will feel quite at home. Only those will be happy in a democracy who prefer to be greeted neither by the upward slant of obsequiousness nor by the downward slant of con- descensi'on, but by the horizontal glance of fraternal self- respect. v. THE MOTIVE OF ENVY Finally, we must recognize the motive of envy. This motive prompts men to dislike, not the consciousness of superiority but the substance of superiority. It is doubly vicious. In the first place, it is negative and destructive. The motive of emulation prompts men to exert themselves, and to resent only that which prevents their earning their deserts. Envy on the other hand prompts men to retard 5o8 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS those who excel them; or to visit upon others those very dis- abihties which emulation seeks to escape. Envy is malicious. It derives satisfaction from defeat and failure. Whereas emulation seeks equality by clearing the course and speeding up the race, envy seeks equahty by slackening the pace and impeding the leaders. A true sportsman does not resent being fairly beaten, and admires those who achieve the suc- cess to which he aspires. He devotes himself to a cult of merit and aims to exalt the record of attainment by re- moving every artificial hindrance. But the envious man would rather win unfairly in a slow race than be surpassed by his fellows in a swift. The equality which emulation seeks is a levelling up; while that which envy seeks is a levelling down. Instead of seek- ing to rise, it seeks to destroy what is above. A wounded Russian sailor in a hospital in Helsingfors was asked by one of the surgeons why he sought to kill his officers, when by his own admission he admired and even loved them. He replied : ''Otherwise we shall never be on the same level. They may be ever so good and kind, but owing to their better education they are different from us. They must die to make us level. "^ In the second place, envy gives rise to a cult of vulgarity. In so far as this motive is widespread and powerful, it leads to a pretence of mediocrity for the sake of conciliating opinion. Men cultivate a sham colloquialism of speech or roughness of manners; they hide their knowledge or their wealth or their power behind an affectation of inferiority. But dissimulation and dishonesty is not the worst of it. It discourages every sort of eminence, and robs society of the services of the expert and the leader. It confuses and de- presses all standards of excellence. And it confirms the in- feriority of the inferior, removing the incentive to excel, and teaching him to be proud of that failure which should fill him with discontent and shame. TLere is a good deal of this envious democracy abroad in our land to-day. There is a dislike of '' experts," a prejudice to which our demagogues have so effectually appealed. In 1 Reported in the New York Tribune , in April, 1918. THE AMERICAN IDEAL OF SOCIAL EQUALITY 509 education we like to have everything made easy. We don't want to learn, we want to be taught; we don't want to find out, we prefer to be shown. In this, and in other fields of activity, instead of climbing the ladder we sit comfortably at the foot and wait for an elevator. If the higher things don't come easily, and they rarely do, then we behttle them; while for the same reason we over-rate the shallow and com- mon-place attainment on which we can .safely count. Now a democracy of classes and persons is something to aspire to, but a democracy of values is corruption and non- sense. The best things have got to be worked for, and be- long only to those who excel. *^Rome was not built in a day." Without patience and slow cumulative effort, the great things are not attainable, nor ever will be. To dis- parage or despise the best things and the great things is an offense to mankind. For what is the use of opportunity, if there is nothing worth gaining? It is better to admire even wealth or power than to admire nothing. There is this much of truth even in Nietzsche. In insisting upon the pnnciple of Rangordnung, or order of rank, he was in part protesting against the aboUtion of standards. If we condemn his de- mand for a gradation of persons and classes, we must echo and re-affirm his demand for a gradation of values. We must believe that nothing is too good for a democracy. Science, philosophy, art, virtue and saintUness must be as reverently regarded, as earnestly sought and cultivated as formeriy. Otherwise the much-prized opportunity which a democracy affords is an equal opportunity for nothing. These several motives which underly the love of equahty, are the motives which justify or discredit the ideal of social democracy In so far as social democracy means a com- passionate regard for all human beings as having feelings powers and capacities of the same generic type; m so far as it means the equalizing of opportunity, and a mutual respect, it rests upon sound and incontrovertible ethical grounds. But on the other hand, in so far as it exalts failure, inverts standards and acts as a drag upon the forward movement of life, it is reactionary and abhorrent. Sio THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS VI. DO WE REALLY MEAN IT? This, or something Hke this, is what we mean by democracy as a social ideal. Now, do we really mean it? The fact is that we have long since committed ourselves to it. We have encouraged the poor to aspire to wealth, the ignorant to seek light, and the weak to covet power. We have done more than this — we have shown them the way. For we have compelled every man to secure the rudiments of education and thus to become aware of the world about him. We permit the organization of the democratic propaganda, we supply the motive and we bring every man within the reach of it.^ Last and most important of all, we have distributed political power equally among men of every station and con- dition; with the result that the very few who are fortunate may at any time be out-voted by the overwhelming majority of those who are relatively unfortunate. Does any sane man suppose that what has been scattered broadcast can now be withdrawn? Or that those who possess the opportunity and know it are going to refrain from using it? But I do not beUeve that there are many Americans who would withdraw the pledge and profession of democracy if they could. We have not lost conviction. We need only the courage to see it through. First, our courage will be tried by the internal re-adjust- ments which will be necessary, which are already proving necessary, in so far as social democracy goes forward. It would be fatuous to shut our eyes to the fact that social democracy will have to be paid for. Are we prepared to pay by surrendering personal advantages that we now enjoy? We are aU Hke Artemus Ward ready to sacrifice our wife's relations on the altar of our country. But this sacrifice will touch our affections more nearly. Most of those who read these words would lose materially by a more equal distribu- tion of opportunity, wealth and power. Now if we enjoy more than the average good fortune, are we willing that it should be curtailed until such time as those who enjoy only the minimum shall be abreast of us? Are we wiUing to give THE AMERICAN IDEAL OF SOCIAL EQUALITY 511 up our own dear and familiar satisfactions? Or are we demo- cratic only in so far as we expect to gain by it? Are we democratic only in a rhetorical and vaguely sentimental sense, as many profess Christianity or mean to be "good'* ? If so, we are not ready for the future. This is a time to re- trench — not merely in the consumption of luxuries, but in the desire for them. The whole of democracy will be less in- dulgent to us than the half of it we have so far achieved. Without some previous self-discipline we shall many of us greet the dawn with a wry face. But in so far as we have learned to live more austerely, and to find our happiness in those things which are not diminished by being widely shared, we may, in the time to come, have the heart to be cheerful despite the realization of our ideals. Second, our courage will be tried by the exigencies of the present war. To have the courage of our democratic con- victions means a willingness to fight a long hard fight, to endure a wearing and galling strain, in order that we and other peoples like us may be permitted to proceed with democracy. If we are democrats, then Germany as at present governed, motivated and inspired is our irreconcil- able enemy. To have the courage of our democratic con- victions implies that we accept this challenge. We have first to win the privilege of being good democrats. As our brothers in Russia are learning to tl\eir cost, this privilege is not to be had for the asking. It is idle for peace-loving democracies merely to interchange their sentiments when they and their sentiments with them are in mortal peril. You remember the man who assured his anxious friend that his dog would not bite him. "You know it,'' said the friend, "and I know it, but does the dog know it?" We have recently been told that it is our duty to support the President's democratic and pacific professions "up to the hilt." I Hke the metaphor, and I subscribe to this opinion. I should like only to add that the men who are most un- qualifiedly supporting the President "up to the hilt" are the men who have their hands on the hilt. I count no man a resolute adherent of democracy, or of peace, or of any other 512 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS good thing, who will not if needs be fight for that good thing — and with the weapons which will most effectually meet the danger that menaces it. For that reason I salute as just now the best democrats among us all those fortunate men who are in France or on their way. CHAPTER XXXIV THE PRINCIPLES OF OUR POLITICAL DEMOCRACY That democracy whose safety in the world we are pledged to defend is both an equalized social life such as I have under- taken to define above, and also a form of government. The two conceptions are closely related. Political life is a part of social life, and a polity of caste and privilege is scarcely consistent with the spirit of social equality. Furthermore, it will, I believe, appear that only by the means of political democracy is it possible to realize the end of social democracy. Nevertheless it is theoretically possible that social equality should be the aim of a paternalistic autocracy; or that a popular government should seek to perfect a few at the ex- pense of the many. The two conceptions rest upon different and largely independent premises. I. THE MOTIVE OF NEGATIVE LIBERTY The most evident and characteristic feature of government is its claim of authority and its exercise of coercive power. Political democracy begins, then, with resistance and libera- tion. In our own American tradition the term 'liberty " is associated with the war for independence, with the determi- nation not to be governed by Great Britain. The fact that we won our political autonomy .by the overthrow of existing authority persists in our national memory. Just as there are said still to be Democrats who are voting for Andrew Jack- son, so in obscure comers of our land there are still rebellious colonists who are fighting the hated "red-coats" and their hired Hessians, or shaking their fists toward the Atlantic Ocean and defying anybody to come and conquer us. It is this memory which quickens our sympathy with oppressed nationalities and makes us their natural ally. But so far as 513 SM THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS our own liberty is concerned this sentiment has long since been an anachronism. We may now take our national independence for granted and expend our feeUngs more opportunely. ... . This deliverance of a people from a foreign yoke is one of the negative senses of the term ^^Hberty.'' It is only acci- dentally associated with democracy, since it is equally possible for a monarchical state like Germany to value its independence. But there is another negative sense of the term *' liberty " that is bound up with democracy in principle. This is the deUverance of an individual or class from govern- mental authority as such. The motive of national liberty is the desire to have one's own government; the motive of in- dividual liberty is to be freed from one's own government. It is this motive that I wish first to consider. The maximum of negative liberty is well expressed in BluntschU's phrase, *'to obey as Httle as possible." ^ This idea has a justification both in principle and in experience. In principle, the state exists for man, not man for the state. Coercion is at best a necessary evil. It must be the ultimate object of all institutions that the individuals who live under them should profit by them. The authority of the state is needed in order to protect individuals from one another, and from their own hasty impulses; but in the last analysis the state, Uke other institutions, exists in order that individuals may so far as possible do what they want to do and be what they want to be. Sheer coercion, the bare motive of obe- dience, has no justification at all. Even Treitschke, who holds that ''submission is what the State primarily requires,'' feels constrained to regard the state as springing from "the collective will of a people." And Burke, who holds that the king exists not to obey but to be obeyed, was compelled to acknowledge that "kings, in one sense, are undoubtedly the servants of the people, because their power has no other rational end than that of the general advantage." ^ To obey as little as possible means, then, to see to it that the state 1 Theory of the St€te, English translation, p. 431 • 2 "Reflections on the Revolution in France," Works, 1807, Vol. Ill, p. 40- POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 515 does express the collective will, or that its power is used to the general advantage; and it means that this censorship is being exercised by those whose will or advantage is in question. In an article written before our entrance into the war, on *'The American Democratic Ideal," Mr. Brooks Adams gave expression to the despondent view that "our 'democratic ideal ' is only a phrase to express our renunciation as a nation of all standards of duty, and the substitution therefore of a reference to private judgment." ^ He found evidence of this in the attempt of women to escape domestic duties, and in the attempt of men to escape military duties — both in the name of democracy. He was correct in saying that "no organized social system, such as we commonly call a national civilization, can cohere against those enemies which must certainly beset it, should it fail to recognize as its primary standard of duty, the obligation of the individual man and woman to sacrifice themselves for the community in time of need." Since Mr. Adams wrote the American community has most loyally recognized this obligation. But Mr. Adams did not do justice to the sound, motive which underlies such individualism as he deprecated. Neither the family nor the state possesses any justification save as it serves those of whom it demands sacrifice. To insist that the sacrifice be reduced to a minimum, and that it be fruitful, is evidence of a general awakening to what institutions are for. And it is both natural and proper that this insistence should come from those who are to make the sacrifice. The proper cor- rective is not an appeal to the blind motives of duty or obedience; but a clear proof of the benefits of family solidar- ity, or of national defense, or of legal authority, so that the necessary sacrifice may be made with conviction and without resentment. The idea of negative liberty is grounded in experience as well as in principle. It is unnecessary to prove that authori- ties have been arbitrary and irresponsible. It is even true that they tend so to be. For anything that is once estab- lished tends to acquire inertia, and a prestige that blinds men ^ Yale Review, January, 1916, p. 233. ri6 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 517 to its failures and its abuses. The most benevolent of governments, furthermore, has an interest of its own, and in some measure exploits the interests of which it is the trustee. If governments have grown less irresponsible, it is because the interests exploited have grown more quick to insist upon their own recognition. Refractory subjects have been the chief restraint upon the arbitrariness of rulers. Rebellious- ness has always been based upon genuine grievances, even when it has failed to correct them or has brought worse in their place. A certain sturdy independence or even trucu- lence is a sounder and more constructive political motive than a mere inert and docile submission. II. THE PRINCIPLE OF CIVIL LIBERTY But the principle of authority, dismissed at one door, comes in at another; and men overthrow their old and legiti- mate masters only to find themselves compelled to submit to new. "Natural rights '' to do as one pleases do not take care of themselves. Although nature may define them, nature does not create or maintain them. For this, combination and restraint prove necessary. The same motive which leads men to struggle for economic advantage leads both capital and labor to combine, and to hold the individual capitalist or laborer in check in order that the class as a whole may struggle more effectually. Free competition with its incidental advantages to the consumer appears to be then possible, if at all, only through the combination of con- sumers against both labor and capital. Similarly, the re- volutionist cannot make head alone against the existing authority. The voluntary association by which government is checked or overthrown, is transformed by the exigencies of the struggle into a new government. The present revo- lutionary government in Russia is enabled to secure the bene- fits of revolution only in so far as it suppresses lawlessness with a strong hand. The Bolsheviki leaders, having urged the people to end war by throwing down their arms, are now urging them to take them up again in order by their concerted strength to protect their new liberties. Even the anarchist finds it necessary to organize secret societies, within which he submits to the most oppressive discipline. And if the anarchist propaganda should succeed it would prove neces- sary to formulate and enforce the most severe laws, in order to maintain the happy condition of lawlessness. ^ The appeal from the state to the people in the name of liberty does not, then, deUver. the individual altogether from restraint. It results in new forms of authority which are more hastily improvised, less orderly, and at the same time often more harsh. Therefore it is quite possible to appeal from the people to the state in the name of this same prin- ciple of liberty. This is the motive underlying the idea of civil liberty. When the tri-color was worn in France as an emblem of political orthodoxy, Mivart tells us that a certain M. Brifont refused to wear it. *'A working-man meeting him in the street addressed him with, 'Citizen, why do you not wear the badge of freedom?' To which he promptly replied, 'Why, my friend, to show that I am free, to be sure.' '' ^ So readily does any popular propaganda, not excepting the propaganda of 'liberty" itself, assume the sinister aspect of an inquisition, that individuals desiring to be free may soon find themselves longing even for a Bourbon monarchy. It seems clear from the example of the French Revolution, that the most oppressive and terrible of all tyrannies is that exercised by the demagogue. A government like that of Robespierre is nominally a popular government, but actually a government by secret intrigue. The power is absolute because it is exercised in the name of all. The most ex- treme measures are possible because anyone who opposes himself to them must, for the moment at least, appear to oppose the popular will. It is inevitably an inquisitorial government because it depends upon the superficial una- nimity of opinion, and is thus led from the motive of self- preservation to suppress independence of judgment. Since the people have no clear idea of their interest nor any orderly constitutional means of expressing it, the power is given into the hands of those who bear the reputation of being the * Mivart: Essays and Criticisms , Vol. I, p. 138, note. 5i8 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS POLITICAL DEMOCRACY S19 friends of the people. Such a reputation is best acquired not by serving the public good, but by simulating popular manners or tricks of speech, by exciting popular hatred and then gratifying it by cruel vengeance, or by an affectation of the martyr's pose, exhibiting faithful wounds suffered in the people's behalf. Those who thus represent themselves as the people's servants are in fact their masters. Fear of popular wrath leads individuals to submit slavishly to popu- lar idols; and the ascendancy thus gained is used in turn to control that very opinion from which the ascendancy is de- rived. Since power depends upoji psychological forces that are essentially unstable, all men live from day to day, even from hour to hour, in the fear of death. The master motive in life is that of bare preservation; security is unknown. To save one's self it is necessary to be on the winning side, that is, on that side which for the time commands the popular passion, and to change enemies and friends as fast as this passion fluctuates. The only permanent attitude of man to man is that of suspicion; and fear, the most brutalizing of all emotions, undermines all principles and loyalties. The French Revolution simply illustrated to a superlative degree political truths that are as old as Plato and as new as to-day. It demonstrated with an epic grandeur that bad democracy which in practice coincides with the most in- tolerable despotism. It is such experience as this which has led men to prize the guarantees of stable government, and to prefer a rigorous but well-defined authority to the blind, uncertain and inquisitorial oppression of the unorganized social mass. This preference does not imply a selfish desire to profit from special privilege, or a timid docility; it pro- ceeds from just as genuine a love of liberty as that which prompts to popular revolutions. The more radical propa- ganda of natural liberty protests against the arbitrariness of authority in behalf of the right of every life to expand and to satisfy its wants. It breaks down the established barriers which restrain the will, promises a general license, and finally, since it is impossible to escape the preponderance of the social aggregate over the individual, substitutes a reign of caprice for a reign of law. The cult of civil liberty, on the other hand, protests against the tyranny of the social mass or its agents, in behalf of security; in behalf of an opportunity to breathe deep in some sure though narrow refuge. It pro- tests against the wanton and intrusive interference of one's neighbors and associates, preferring the more impersonal control of a remoter and more stable central authority. In short, the state is both a menace to liberty and also an indispensable means to liberty. The cause of liberty is served neither by those who break it down nor by those who exalt it, but by those who limit its action and use it well. Democracy, like any other form of government, must accord with these principles. On the one hand, the state must be responsive to the interests of the governed, and avoid im- posing an external and arbitrary restraint upon them. Every constituent interest within society possesses a natural right to be and to satisfy itself, except in so far as the very protection and generalization of this right require that it shall be curtailed. Every form of public authority must justify itself to those interests of which it demands obedience. Whatever nullifies the primary interest and expansiveness of life must assume the burden of proof. But, on the other hand, the state must protect the individual from the aggres- sion of his fellows, from partisan and sectarian tyranny, and from the blind and hasty oppression of the mass. It must supply those guarantees without which the spectres of fear and suspicion stalk abroad, and paralyze all forms of pur- poseful and consecutive living. III. THE PREMISE OF INNATE EQUALITY The idea of liberty requires that government shall be provident and liberal ; that in exercising restraint upon the individual the state shall be guided by the principle of guar- anteeing to the individual under the law the largest possible sphere within which he may act in accordance with his own ideas and judgment. But in whom shall the sovereignty be vested? From what source shall the coercive power of government be derived? According to the creed of political / 520 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS democracy government must be not only for the people but hy the people. In the last analysis government is to derive its power from the consent of the government. This does not necessarily imply the republican form of organization; but only that the popular will shall exercise control, and that this control shall be recognized by law and provided with the means for effective application. We are fighting in this war not to substitute presidents for kings, but to substitute elective legislative bodies and elective officials who are an- swerable to the people, for autocrats who are answerable only to God or to the conscience of their caste. Popular government means, then, that sovereignty is dis- tributed among those whose interests are at stake. It means that those who hold political office are not, strictly speaking, rulers; but agencies by which the people at large govern themselves. In such a poKty there are no longer any sub- jects, but only citizens, that is, individual units of political power. And the fundamental political act is the vote, by which in all developed democracies each of these units is recognized as the exact equivalent of every other. We thus find political democracy like social democracy to involve the principle of equality. But here equahty is commonly thought of not as something desirable, to be achieved by education or social reconstruction; but as something inborn and inalienable which gives men equal claims or *' rights'' in advance of their being recognized. The vote is thought of not merely as a means by which men may be perfected and brought into a finer social fellowship, but as something that IS no more than a man's due. Universal suffrage is regarded not as a matter of benevolence, but as a matter of justice. We must therefore consider equality in this new aspect, as something which a man possesses by a sort of birthright. Both the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of 1879 spoke of men as ''born" or ''created " equal, and thus argued for democracy as a means of conserving something that men in some sense already possessed. The opponents of democracy now dismiss these declarations with an off-hand reference to the obvious facts POLITICAL DEMOCRACY S2I of inequality. But in so far as these facts are obvious they have never been denied. The inequality of human capacity was as obvious to the political philosophers of the eighteenth century as it is to their critics of to-day. The unequal opportunity of improving natural capacities is also obvious. But this furnished the very point of the argument. In- equalities of opportunity develop under institutions, such as hereditary aristocracy and private property, and are legalized and perpetuated by such institutions. To say that men are born equal means simply that such unequal opportunities are institutional or artificial, and not inborn or natural. Strip men of the outward trappings of civiliza- tion, destroy the existing system^ and the original equality appears. You will find it in the more primitive stages of human evolution. You will find it in the simple life of frontiersmen. And you will find it to-day, when the com- mon emergency and the common hardships of war suddenly sweep away the differences of privilege, and emphasize the elemental needs and capacities which men have in common. In other words, organized society has simply obscured and hidden from view a more original and natural equality which men have received from nature. Democracy is a recognition that inequality is largely man-made; and that society owes it to men to restore an inheritance which it has taken away. The idea of a natural equality also means that all men are born similar. ^^ Men are unequal, hut they are all men,''^ ^ says Enrico Ferri. Although they differ in the degree of their capacity, they nevertheless possess capacity of the same type. What Shylock said of a Jew, can be said of any man. "Hath he not eyes? Hath he not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same Winter and Summer, as his fellow is? " This is a fundamental fact, — the possession by all men of like interests, and like capaci- ties for happiness or misery. This fact has to do with the ultimate standard by which public policy is to be justified. 1 Socialism and Positive Science, English trans. 5th edition, p. 9. 522 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS If we suppose the good to be something dictated to life from without, deduced from some a priori principle, or imposed by some higher will, then we may ignore this fact. But if we suppose, as I think we must, that the good consists in the happiness of mankind, then it follows that we must acknowl- edge the right of every man, so far as possible, to be happy. One man's happiness is just as genuine a case of good as another's; one man's misery is just as genuine a case of evil as the misery of any other man. If a man is unhappy, no matter who he is, then his unhappiness is evidence that the society in which he lives is imperfect. There is no other kind of evidence that can take precedence of this. The policy of the state is to be judged by such evidence; and the man, whatever his name or station, who asserts his interests or his grievances, is submitting evidence which no government can justify itself in ignoring. In other words, public policy must be judged equally by the condition of all men who are capable of suffering, or of being happy; which means all men without exception. EquaHty in this sense of similar capacity for happiness and misery requires that all men shall be allowed to state their wants and submit their grievances; but it does not imply that all men shall be equally entitled to judge and control public policy. It is quite consistent with this limited view of equality that the disposition of these wants and grievances should be left to the paternal indulgence of a superior. Polit- ical democracy, however, requires that the people should not only make their interests known, but that they should them- selves be in the last resort the judges of the wisdom or justice of the provision which is made for these interests. The argument here appeals to a different aspect of human equality, the possession by all normal human adults of a like capacity of reason. What, in the last analysis, is the source of wisdom in human affairs? There are but two possible answers. Ac- cording to one view wisdom is the exclusive prerogative of divinely delegated or hereditary authorities. According to the other view wisdom is the common possession of those who POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 523 have wits. The first view has long since been discarded everywhere but in politics and religion. In science and in the affairs of daily life it is assumed that the truth lies in the evidence, and that provided he can cite the evidence, one man's judgment is as good as another's. Political democ- racy appeals, then, to the notion that truth cannot be cor- nered and monopolized. The best way to achieve wisdom in a political matter, as in any other matter, is through the open forum of discussion. Every normal human adult is entitled to an opinion, for the reason that he has a mind. There is an additional reason for consulting every mind in the case of politics, because in this case each mind will be peculiarly well-informed about a part of the problem, namely, about its own interests. But apart from this special con- sideration, to which we shall return later, every rationally endowed human being possesses the basal qualification for participating in the choice of policy. Every man has a claim to be heard and to be respected as an organ of truth. IV. THE LOVE OF POWER Political democracy implies an equal regard for human interests, and an equal access to the public forum of discus- sion; but it also implies a wide distribution of power. And it is quite possible that this power, despite its distribution, should be used to abridge that negative liberty which we have seen to be the starting-point of political democracy. This is what Hobbes had in mind when he said: ^^ Subjects have no greater liberty in a popular than in a monarchical state. That which deceives them is the equal participation of com- mand." We have seen in our observations on the French Revolution that a popular government may exert more con- straint upon liberty than an autocratic government. This possibility arises from the fact that an independent motive is here at work. There is a love of power for its own sake. This may be a direct expression of what McDougall calls the instinct of '* self-assertion or self-display." But whether it be an elementary impulse or not, there is no doubt of its being a constant and universal force in political life. 524 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS Most men would rather rule than be ruled. They enjoy both the possession of authority and the prestige which accompanies it. Political power, like other power, is not easily withdrawn when it is once given; men cUng to it even when they have ceased to be useful either to others or to themselves. Without doubt a democracy so strengthens this motive by appealing to it and encouraging it, that it be- comes one of the master-motives of life. In other words, popular government tends to become not a means, but an end in itself. In so far, however, as the love of political power is an inde- pendent interest, it must be regarded as a special interest which like others requires regulation and control in the in- terest of the whole. It is no more a political finality than the love of money, or the love of poetry, or the love of pleasure, or the love of economic or military power. As a widely felt need, it must be taken account of, but it must take its place and its turn among the rest. It may consti- tute an incidental advantage to be derived from democratic institutions, and undoubtedly contributes greatly to their strength. But in itself it does not justify democratic insti- tutions any more than would their satisfaction of any other special interest. In principle it is quite conceivable that a just and provident regard for all the interests of the com- munity should require that this interest, like avarice or sensual indulgence, should be held in check. The love of power for its own sake tends to a kind of de- mocracy which is as vicious in principle as any sort of irre- sponsible despotism. I refer to the tyranny of a class majority. In any given historical situation the so-called "masses " may constitute a class just as truly as the so-called '^classes." When revolution results from class war, from a conflict between the class of labor and the class of capital, or between the class of the low-born and that of the high-born, we must not be misled by the fact that the former is numeri- cally greater than the latter. If a numerical majority covets the exclusive power enjoyed by a numerical minority, it does not act on any higher principle than that by which the estab- POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 525 lished powers seek to maintain themselves. A change of masters does not necessarily imply a change of heart. If we mean by democracy a state in which the power of numbers is for the moment greater than the power of wealth, birth or talent, then democracy possesses no peculiar ethical justifi- cation. No might, not even the might of numbers, makes right. And it is to this arbitrary and indefensible kind of democracy that the love of power for power^s sake tends to lead. v. THE PRINCIPLE OF REPRESENTATION The final justification of political democracy lies in the principle of representation. I do not refer to any special mechanism of government by which in a state too large to permit of direct popular government, the people may dele- gate their authority to elected officials. I refer to a more fundamental principle, of which such mechanisms are only the necessary instruments. I mean that the government shall recognize and take account of all the interests which its policy affects; and that these interests shall have facilities for making their claims effective. Popular government is thus the guarantee of Hberty and equaUty. PoUtical democracy in this sense is neither pious sentiment nor unruly wilfulness. It rests upon a solid fact which the race has learned in the school of experience. The fact is this: that the best assurance of having any given interest taken account of in public poUcy is afforded by giving that interest a share in the control of pubHc policy. Every now and then some one arises in our midst and solemnly an- nounces the discovery that the best form of government would be the absolute rule of a perfectly wise, perfectly benevolent and perfectly disinterested despot. Of course it would. For this means only the imaginary fulfilment of the political ideal. If God himself could be induced to take immediate charge of human affairs, man would do well to relinquish the task to him; because by definition God would be the perfect ruler. We simply define the true art of govern- ment, and then ascribe it to a hypothetical individual. But 526 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS this has nothing to do with the actual difficulties and the actual possibilities which confront mankind. Unfortu- nately the only course open to society is to have some men such as they are, rule other men such as they are. The ruler must be taken from among the interested parties, from among the beneficiaries of rule. There is no such thing, and there cannot be any such thing, as a perfectly disinterested ruler. If there were, there would be no infallible means of discovering him. Even a highly disinterested ruler is a happy accident with a low average of frequency. Men have not unnaturally come to the conclusion that they cannot afford to give authority irrevocably to any one man or to any class of men. Petition to the clemency or indulgence of irresponsible authority is too uncertain a means of getting one's claims recognized. In proportion as a man knows what he wants and is in earnest about getting it, he finds it expedient to possess some hold upon those who rule him. He regards himself as the client of the ruler, and looks upon public office as a trusteeship from which the incumbent is removable for cause. In this most general sense all govern- ments are democratic in which authority is effectively con- trolled by the aggregate of those whose interests are at stake. The directness of contact between the government and its cHents, the frequency with which the consent of the governed shall be obtained, the extent to which this consent shall be required in questions of poHcy, or confined to broader ques- tions of principle and personal competence — these are prob- lems of organization with which democracies must for some time continue to experiment. When poUtical power is construed in this sense, it is evi- dently not so independent of the question of liberty as is sometimes supposed. It is true that a democratic govern- ment may go to great lengths in the direction of paternaUstic legislation. But it makes all the difference in the world that such legislation should be the result of free discussion, and that the power which enforces it should spring from the very interests which it regulates and restrains. Although there may be no interest with which such legislation entirely coin- POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 527 cides, every interest will nevertheless have counted in deter- mining the resultant. Democracy does not require that any individual's will shall have been the sole cause in deter- mining policy, but that it shall have been actually potent. It follows that any single individual must both assert himself and submit himself: assert himself in the making of policy, and submit himself to the policy once made. His right to participate with the rest in the act of government commits him to accept the result which is in part of his own making. The justification of majority rule lies in the fact that no man is permanently in the minority. Though he be outvoted to-day, his turn will come. Majorities are not tyrannical when they are temporary, and are composed of interchange- able units. It is not essential to poUtical democracy that every in- terest should actively participate in every poUtical decision. Consent may be passive. PoUtical power is not less effective for being held in reserve. There is a great deal of difference between being silent and being gagged. The one thing that is intolerable is that any class of interests, such as those of women or of wage-earners, should be dependent upon the gratuity of others. The sound motive of poUtical revolution is the poUtical disqualification of groups who are conscious of a special interest, but have no legal power to make it effec- tive. The important thing is that such groups should have the power, whether they exert it or not. ^ In pointing out the consistency of poUtical democracy with that stabiUty and order which condition civil Uberty, I do not mean to deprecate change. It should not J^e necessary to insist that law and order do not mean the same thing as the existing law and order. But there are many well-meamng persons who confuse them. Such persons feel, for example, that chaos is at hand because it is no longer possible to obtain '^the good old-fashioned servant." Or they think an inno- vator is the same thing as an anarchist. As a matter of fact poUtical and legal institutions exist largely in order to facili- tate change. The democratic form of government finds its chief justification in enabling fundamental and far-reaching 528 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS change to take place in an orderly and lawful fashion. It makes disorder and lawlessness unnecessary either for self- respect or for social reconstruction. By its great flexibility it renders readjustments easy; and by its wide representation it makes it to everyone's interest to preserve the general con- stitutional forms that permit such flexibility. There was never a more spectacular proof of this than is being witnessed at present, when the whole social structure is being renovated without the least weakening of political and legal authority. The justification of poUtical democracy Hes, then, first in the requirement that government shall both avoid oppression, and at the same time secure Hberty under an orderly system of law; second, in the natural right of every interest to be taken account of; third, in the general capacity of every individual to know his own interest best, and to judge of the bearing of public policy on that interest; fourth, in the fact that the surest way of getting each interest taken account of, is to associate power with interest, so that the inevitable one-sidedness of one man's judgment may in the long run be corrected by that of others. Democracy in the broadest sense means many things, some good and some bad. The same is true of the catch-words which democrats most frequently employ. Liberty may be only a name for license. Equality may be a cloak for maHce and vulgarity. Popular rule may be a means for gratifying the greed for power. Democracy in any of these senses is, like tyranny and despotism, a name for bad government. But, on the other hand, liberty may mean a just regard for natural and civil rights. Equality may mean the open door of opportunity, charitable fellow feehng and the spirit of co-operation. Popular government may mean self-govern- ment, the guarantee through the wide distribution of power that the benefits of social order shall also be widely dis- tributed. Democracy in these senses is a name for that form of social organization that is both sound in principle and proved by experience. It is the substance of Ameri- canism. CHAPTER XXXV THE AMERICAN TRADITION AND THE AMERICAN IDEAL I. AMERICAN TRAITS There have been three major influences which have moulded the American national character: the racial, social and political inheritance from Great Britain; the creation of a new society in a new continent abounding in natural re- sources; and the later flow of immigration from all quarters of the globe. The third of these influences I shall allude to presently in connection with the problem of American na- tional unity. The first and second in their reciprocal modi- fication and joint action are primarily responsible for what is traditionally and proverbially American. The early settlers brought here from Great Britain the qualities that brought them here; and these same qualities enabled them to outstay their French rivals and to fix the dominant moral tradition. What these qualities were is well-known to all Americans: the Puritan sobriety, inde- pendence and self-reliance; the habit of possessing one's in- stitutions instead of being possessed by them, combined with sagacity and political genius; the fear of God together with a keen eye for the main chance. But these hereditary traits have from the beginning been subjected to modifying in- fluences. They have provided the ballast rather than the moving power of American life. Their limitations have nowhere been more clearly recognized and vigorously cen- sured than in America. It was some anonymous American who having been reminded that the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock, said he wished that Plymouth Rock had landed on the Puritans! The great counter-influence to the Puritan tradition and the positive impulse of American life has come from oppor- 529 530 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS tunity. In a letter addressed to the Governors of the thirteen states on June i8, 1783, General Washington wrote as follows: *'The citizens of America, placed in the most enviable condition, as the sole lords and proprietors of a vast tract of continent, com- prehending all the soils and climates of the world, and abounding with all the necessaries and conveniencies of hfe, and now, by the late satisfactory pacification, acknowledged to be possessed of absolute freedom and independency; they are, from this period, to be considered as the actors on a most conspicuous theatre, which seems to be peculiarly designed by Providence for the display of human greatness and felicity; here they are not only surrounded with everything that can contribute to the completion of private and domestic enjoyment, but Heaven has crowned all its other blessings by giving a surer opportunity for political happiness than any other nation has been favored with." From its birth this Republic has enjoyed a buoyant and sanguine temper. Delivered from the oppression of the past, and conscious of its present possession of inexhaustible re- sources, it has looked forward with confidence to a future of its own making. From this temper have sprung the most evident American characteristics, some good and some bad. From this has sprung the American's belief in his fortunate destiny, a belief that has often taken the form of carelessness, prodigality and bumptiousness. It accounts for the easy temper, the lack of bitterness that Mr. Gerard alludes to in the following paragraph. "In a conversation with (Ferrero) ... I reminded him of the fact that both he and a Frenchman, named Huret . . . had stated in their books that the thing which struck them most in the study of the American people was the absence of hate. Ferrero recalled this, and in the discussion which followed and in which the French novelist. Marcel Prevost, took part, all agreed that there was more hate in Europe than in America: first, because the peoples of Europe were confined in small space and secondly, because the European, whatever his rank or station, lacked the opportunity for advancement and consequently the eagerness to press on ahead, and that fixing of thought on the future, instead of the past, which formed part of the American character." ^ * My Four Years in Germany ^ p. 306. AMERICAN TRADITION AND IDEAL 531 Finding himself in possession of vast natural resources, the American has from the beginning interested himself in their exploitation, and in the productive use of his ample supply of raw materials. Through the wide distribution of land and other economic opportunities these agricultural and industrial interests have been popularized. The opportunity has been an individual and not merely a national oppor- tunity. The virtues of the settler, of independent livelihood and of business management have ranked high, and some- what to the disparagement of intellectual and cultural pur- suits. American manners are free and lacking in a nice regard for form. There is a spirit of equality, such as obtains among frontiersmen who have left their privileges behind, and find themselves on a common footing in the presence of hardship and adventure. It is this spirit that has caused the ideal of social democracy, in the sense of equal opportunity, to take such deep root among us. We are accustomed to regard ourselves as individualists, but this judgment requires qualification. It is true that we do cultivate and respect individual self-reliance. The self- made man, the man who "works his way," is perhaps the most characteristically American form of heroism. But except in certain corners of the country which are elsewhere suspected of Anglo-mania, there is little respect for in- dividual eccentricities, or for individual privacy. We are accustomed to the social group in which all live together in a promiscuous and boisterous good fellowship. We like to have every man lay his cards on the table. We suspect the man who keeps his own council ; we laugh at the man who is queer and out of the ordinary. The mockery of the crowd is a very potent instrument of repression. The individual is very defiant toward outsiders if he has his crowd with him, but he falters when he is called upon to think or act alone. We must in the light of recent events admit that the Ameri- can public is not especially interested in the grievances of individuals or small minorities, or especially solicitous re- garding personal liberty. We shrink from deliberate perse- cution, and we dislike bloodshed in the abstract. But we 532 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS feel that the man who differs from the majority had better *^shut up''; and that if he chooses not to, the consequences are his own fault. The main thing, which we insist on at any price, is that the majority should have its way. This may perhaps be explained by the fact that while we have had to fight for national independence, and for national unity, we have never had to fight for individual liberty, for liberty of speech or the liberty of the press. We have enjoyed these liberties from the beginning and we too readily take them for granted. We do not realize how infinitely precious they are; and perhaps shall never come to that realization until some- body seeks to rob us of them. Another and a more positive explanation is to be found in the fact that our political stability depends on a temporary submission to majorities. Our political code requires us to play together; to join in when once the procession is clearly headed in a certain direction. But here, in our excessive regard for the opinion of our fellows, and in our comparative indifference to what is original and distinctive in the individual, is a symptom of imperfect health. American humor tends to have this inquisitorial character; to be too easily excited by incongruities, which are after all only differences from the normal and commonplace. We have perhaps an excessive sense of humor, which sometimes leads us to overlook the important thing which is serious for the sake of the trifling thing that is amusing. Our humor is somewhat cruel, too likely to take the form of the "practical joke." And it is a bit noisy and crude. Its most distinctive characteristic is perhaps its shamelessness. It is a form of candor, in which we expose our defects to view, and enjoy the surprise created by their revelation; which implies, of course, that we are not really ashamed of them. But our humor is equally an index of what is perhaps the best thing in us: our disinclination to pretend to be any better than we are. If a man shows any signs of thinking well of himself, everybody else at once begins to think less well of him. We detest the airs and outward show of superiority. We would rather find it out for ourselves, than have it thrust upon us. AMERICAN TRADITION AND IDEAL 533 t f » We think that we are remarkably energetic. That there is a great din of industry and a huge material achievement is of course not to be denied. On the other hand, it cannot be said that we have made much of little; that we are pecu- liarly gifted in thrift, close application and tenacity. William James has reminded us that feeling busy may be merely a matter of nerves and bodily tension, and that it does not necessarily imply efficiency or rapidity of achievement. It is safer, perhaps, to say that we are active, restless and in- ventive. In an essay entitled ''The Fallacy of the Young Nation," ^ Mr. Chesterton reminds us that we must not count too complacently upon possessing the vigor of youth. There are two senses of youth; one is recency, and the other is potentiality of growth. Now without doubt we are recent, but it does not follow that we are immature. The hopeful quality of youth shows itself in the heroic spirit. But some nations are born without it, and so are moribund from the beginning. Mr. Chesterton suggests that our bustle, ex- citability, and love of novelty may be symptoms of prema- ture decay. Our artists and men of letters are not notable for the quality of vitality. ''Is the art of Mr. Whistler," he asks, "a brave barbaric art, happy and headlong? Does Mr. Henry James infect us with the spirit of the school boy? " I cite this because, whether it is true or not, we must not be too comfortable about our destiny. In any case one can- not always be young. If we go on to greater achievements in the future, it will not be because we began as recently as the^Eighteenth Century, or because we began with a rich patrimony, but because we have developed character and learned wisdom. II. PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES American philosophy,^ especially in its earlier stages, was largely formed by influences that cannot be said to reflect anything peculiady American. During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries most of the various phases of British ^ In the volume entitled Heretics. 2 Cf. Woodbridge RUey's American Philosophy, the Early Schools, 534 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS AMERICAN TRADITION AND IDEAL 535 and French thought had their representatives on this side of the Atlantic. Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards ex- pounded the philosophy of Puritan Calvinism; Samuel Johnson, a disciple of Berkeley and the first President of King's College in New York, developed an empirical idealism; Joseph Priestley represented the materialism, and Thomas Paine the deism and revolutionary social philosophy that flourished in Great Britain and France at the close of the Eighteenth Century. The Scotish realism of Reid and Sir William Hamilton was transplanted to America by Wither- spoon and McCosh, and at Princeton it became both the academic philosophy and also the recognized basis of ortho- dox Presbyterianism. This movement was paralleled and gradually superseded by the influence of the Kantian philos- ophy; which was first manifested in the romantic movement known as **TranscendentaHsm," and afterwards, largely through the leadership of W. T. Harris, was promoted by a more scholarly study of Hegel. When in the latter half of the last century it became the practice of American students to learn their philosophy in German Universities, Kantian idealism became the established academic philosophy, and in America as elsewhere the main defense of the spiritualistic metaphysics. Although transcendentalism borrowed its inspiration from abroad it touched an answering chord in American Hfe, and was the first philosophy to stir the American mind to original self-expression. This alliance of transcendentalism and Americanism is represented by Emerson. Santayana has given an excellent statement of Emerson's historical sig- nificance: "The transcendental method, in its way, was . . . sympathetic to the American mind. It embodied, in a radical form, the spirit of Protestantism as distinguished from its inherited doctrines; it was autonomous, undismayed, calmly revolutionary; it felt that Will was deeper than Intellect; it focussed everything here and now, and asked all things to show their credentials at the bar of the young self, and to prove their value for this latest born moment. These things are truly American; they would be characteristic of f any young society with a keen and discursive intelligence, and they are strikingly exemplified in the thought and in the person of Emerson. They constitute what he called self-trust. . . . Self- trust, like other transcendental attitudes, may be expressed in metaphysical fables. The romantic spirit may imagine itself to be an absolute force, evoking and moulding the plastic world to express its varying moods. But for a pioneer who is actually a world-builder this metaphysical illusion has a partial warrant in historical fact; far more warrant than it could boast of in the fixed and articulated society of Europe, among the moonstruck rebels and sulking poets of the romantic era. Emerson was a shrewd Yankee, by instinct on the winning side; he was a cheery, childlike soul, impervious to the evidence of evil, as of everything that it did not suit his transcendental individuality to appreciate or notice. More, perhaps, than anybody that has ever lived, he practised the transcendental method in all its purity." ^ In other words, Emerson appealed in America as Carlyle did in Great Britain to the native spirit of self-reliance. And like Carlyle he represented the counter-movement against that utiUtarianism which in an Anglo-Saxon community and in an age of science must be the most powerful current of secular thought. In its later history American idealism like British idealism has been engaged in the attempt to employ the logic and metaphysics of Kantianism without paying the full price in the coin of absolutism. American idealists like their British contemporaries found in idealism an answer to materialism, utilitarianism and individualism. Idealism meant the prior- ity of spirit to matter, the acknowledgment of a higher and more universal good than private satisfaction, and the in- terdependence of individuals in the social whole. But no American thinker of repute has been wiUing to deny the fact of evil, to disregard the needs and prerogatives of the in- dividual, to acknowledge the spiritual authority of the state, to accept history as divine, or in the name of the Absolute to worship the totaHty of things as they are. The significance of Royce and of Howison lies in their struggle to reconcile the creed of freedom, progress and democracy with the * Santayana: Winds of Doctrine, 196-197. i 536 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS ^' AMERICAN TRADITION AND IDEAL 537 Kantian theory of knowledge, which by its own inherent logic presses the mind in the opposite direction. This re- mains to-day the central problem for those younger thinkers who have drawn their inspiration from the same source. Meanwhile American philosophy has been enriched by new and radical movements, which whatever one may judge of their merits and permanence are unquestionably more indigenous. William James and John Dewey were both educated in the tradition and under the high prestige of Anglo-British idealism. But they cast it out of their minds, root, stem and branch. They rediscovered British empiri- cism and French voluntarism; they learned from the method and results of the natural sciences; and above all they ac- cepted individualism, experimentalism, meliorism, democracy and other tenets of the popular creed, not as quaUfying and corrective influences, but as points of departure. They have not compromised with the Absolute; they have disowned it altogether. And they have bequeathed to their disciples / y the priceless boon of an Absolute-less world. Making every concession to the idealistic tradition that the sentiments of reverence, humihty and courtesy can possibly require, we may recapitulate the present temper of American philosophy as follows. First, the world we live in is more certainly many than it is one. Though the specula- tive reason may prompt us to conceive an organic whole in which all things are inevitable and for the best, we cannot blind our eyes to the evident fact that there are irrelevant tand evil things whose irrelevance and evil we do not know how to explain away. This is what is meant by pluralism, f Second, the surest guide of conduct is the happiness and well-^ being of sentient humanity. | It is a more certain thing that the murder of the innocent is atrocious, \jthan that the self- realization of a state-personality or the great drama of history is sublime. Though no man is entitled to judge events by his own happiness alone, ^he cannot ignore his happiness, and still less the happiness of others Jike himself, in the name of some unfelt perfection which his philosophy invents. He must start with the fact that men are without what they want, that men are hungry, sick, poor, ignorant, and in- 7 secure, and he cannot acknowledge any ultimate perfection \ that does ^ot remedy these evilsj This is what is meant by J democracy and humanity. Finally, the goal of hfe lies neither behind nor above, but ahead. The proper ground of hope is effort and resolve. There is no assurance that the outcome of the moral conflict is prearranged ; that the moral struggle is a sort of setting-up exercise by which the soul keeps itself in spiritual health, or that it is a play within a play, which contributes a spiritual thrill or points a spiritual truth. Life is no riddle to guess. It is good with its back to the wall, fighting a real fight to keep and strengthen its hold upon existence. The contest between good and evil is an irrecon- cilable conflict, not a happy equilibrium of counter-balanci^g^ forces. To enter this struggle on the side of the good, to" believe in one's cause as a good fighting man beheves in what he fights for, this is what is meant hy 0th. Such is the general spirit in which Americans of this day are moved to undertake their duties. III. THE PERFECTING OF DEMOCRACY What Americans have been is less important at this junc- ture than what Americans mean to become. Indeed it may be said to be traditionally American to be less interested in tradition and more interested in the live possibihties of the present and future. Furthermore, we are happily less pre- occupied than other peoples with the bare conditions of existence. We have independence, free institutions and material wealth. These things have come to us more easily than to other peoples. It is therefore a point of honor with us to make the best use of our good fortune, and to lead the way to something better. Our first duty is to perfect that democracy to which we are committed and which we have as yet so imperfectly realized. We can start, I think, with two leading ideas that are generally accepted, one an ethical idea that sets the end, the other a political idea that prescribes the means. The ethical idea I have defined in the name of social democracy. We 538 i THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS AMERICAN TRADITION AND IDEAL 539 are generally agreed that the sound motives that underly the aspiration to social equality must be acknowledged and sat- isfied. Compassion, emulation, self-respect and fraternity require that evils shall be remedied, opportunity extended and liberalized, and that both the arrogance of superiority and the bitterness of inferiority shall be replaced by good- fellowship and brotherly esteem. At the same time we must recognize and disown the motive of envy that would rob life of excellence and of eminence. We want the kind of frater- nity that values the best things of the mind and of the spirit, without personal pride or humiliation. We all agree that : this is the better s(5rt of community that we want to live in; and we know that it is humanly possible, because we have experienced it in the bq^t human relations and in the best human beings with whom we are acquainted.\ We all reaHze furthermore that in the community at large we have not yet attained to this form of life. The political idea, which we have been more slow to accept, but which is to-day the premise of all our policy, is the idea that we must hope to attain this better life mainly through the agency of the democratic state. We need a greater national unity, and a more constructive central government which shall call to its aid that American administrative genius that has hitherto been exercised almost exclusively in the field of private enterprise. It is not with us a question of popularizing a government established upon the principle of class or dynastic supremacy, but of making more use of a government which already derives its power from the consent of the governed and is pledged to the ideal of social democ- racy. To enlarge and perfect the functions of such a govern- ment is only to carry through the basal principle of our poHtical philosophy, which is that society shall create the institutions which it needs, and then demand that they shall serve the society which creates them. t There are two great differences that divide us and mar bur democracy, the economic and the racial. Of these the economic difference is the more threatening. The extreme parties in this conflict are the party of possession, which proposes to keep, and the party of dispossession which pro- poses to get. Both of these parties are selfish, and in prin- ciple lawless and violent. The one has everything to lose by change, and resists it to the uttermost; the other has every- thing to gain by change, and is reckless and destructive. Each of these parties regards the other as its natural and irreconcilable enemy. Each suspects the state of siding with the other party. The lawless capitalist accuses the state of yielding to popular clamor; the lawless laborer accuses the state of yielding to mercenary intrigue. Be- tween these extremes lies the great mass of men who recog- nize the interdependence of capital and labor, who want a fair distribution of happiness and opportunity, and who are looking for an enlightened and humane solution of the prob- lem. The state on the whole possesses the confidence of this public and must retain and improve it by adopting a just and constructive social policy. There is reason to believe that extremists of both factions may be brought into this same state of mind. The extreme party of capitalism is more accessible to the influence of persuasion, being made up of men who are accustomed by education and training to take a wider and more dispassionate view of things. The ex- treme party of labor is less amenable to such influence. Its governing passions, rooted in hardship, are more bitter and tenacious, and its grievances more just. The quickest remedy for such an attitude is prosperity. Give them an opportunity to prize and property to protect, and they will soon acquire loyalty to a social order in which they have a stake. I, for one, while I foresee far-reaching changes, do not foresee revolution or even grave disorder. Our present form of government has already stood the test of civil and foreign war, and of great social changes. It is at present one of the oldest governments on earth. The success of the present administration in vastly extending governmental control over economic agencies is, it is true, due to the emergency of But this means that we tolerate or even request the war. intervention of the state when we see clearly that conditions S40 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS require it.^ The government has not simply accumulated powers at its own discretion; it has explained why, and the American people, seeing why, have been willing that these powers should be granted. Furthermore there is a very vigilant and exacting demand that these powers shall be used and used effectively toward the ends for which they were obtained. But if the external war is an emergency, so is the internal war of capital and labor. Perhaps we shall learn before we get through to regard them as parts of one war. But in any case it is entirely possible, indeed it is already a present fact, that the American people should demand the intervention of the state in the permanent reorganization of agriculture, industry, transportation and perhaps education. If the government can succeed in making it perfectly plain why it does what it does, and can succeed in doing well what is known to be needed, then there is no reason why it should not be both trusted and guided by an intelligent and watch- ful public opinion. A government is paternalistic and un- democratic in so far as it treats the people as its wards and claims to know what is good for them better than they know it themselves. Hobhouse tells us that "the principal sphere of the state . . . appears to be in securing those common ends in which uniformity or, more generally, concerted action is necessary." ^ In a democracy the common end and the common necessity must be commonly recognized, and the \ state must be asked to serve them. The second difference that divides us is the racial differ- ce. To cure this we need, and are already obtaining, a heightened sense of national unit^ We cannot hope for, and we do not want, racial purity. ' There is no stock among us that can claim ascendancy. Such an ascendancy, even if it were possible, would impoverish us. We want every immigrant who comes among us to bring from his home land the best things that he has known and valued there. We do not want him to empty himself and then fill himself instead with the commonplaces and vulgarities of the streets. We want him to keep what he brings and to share it with the * Social Evolution and Political Theory, p. 195. AMERICAN TRADITION AND IDEAL ence. 541 { rest of us. We want him to cherish the tradition of the old country, and to contribute that tradition to the making of the new.^ But for the present and future we want him to be an American without any reservations. We cannot tolerate an alliance secret or open between those who live among us and any foreign political entity. To this end it is necessary that every immigrant should at once learn the English lan- guage and that this should be the mother tongue of his children. Americans must speak and read and think in the common and communicable terms, and so become genuine parts of the one spiritual community. Nationality does not contradict the purpose of American Hfe; on the contrary, in nationalism Hes the hope of American Hfe. For, as we have seen, nationahty is a conscious bond, a moral unity, that can niake one people out of different localities, different races and different economic interests. There is no other bond that is capable of uniting the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Missis- sippi Valley, white men and blacks, North Europeans and South Europeans, farmers and industrial workers, laborers and capitalists. It is true that nationality has its abuses; but every useful thing has its abuses. It is possible to drink too much water, or breathe too much fresh air, or devote oneself excessively to the enjoyment of literature and fine art. If we were to abandon every form of Hfe that is capable of abuse or excess, we should have to give up living altogether. The only possible course of action is to use the necessary and good things wisely and well. The abuse of nationalism is state- fanaticism. It springs from the blind worship of symbols and figures of speech. In a sense the American nation is one and indivisible, one will, one purpose, one object of loyalty. The sentiment of patriotism symbolizes this unity by the flag or by the authoritative acts of state. It is natural and easy for the weak and headlong mind to conceive this unity as something apart from the will and judgment of individ- uals, as something of a superior order that may property dis- regard individuals for higher reasons of its own. This is a sort of glorious nonsense; and it is important that most of us 542 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS most of the time should resist the glory and be shrewdly aware of the nonsense. The simple truth is this: that there is a national will when and in so far as individuals happen to agree on something. The national will is the same sort of thing, except in extent, as the Mormon will or the will of the Daughters of the American Revolution. A national will that coerces the wills of the individuals who compose the nation, is a contradiction in terms; or it is a nonentity coercing a reality. And the same is true with a national will that claims the submission and allegiance of individuals; if there were not already such submission and allegiance there would be no national will to claim them. Any individual can in some measure make or unmake the national will by his consent or his dissent. The nation is not then made of a superior substance. It is just you and I and others of our fellows agreeing on some- thing. First of all we agree to support and use a common government and system of laws and to amend these by methods which they themselves provide for. Beyond that we agree that we need one another in all human ways, from ^ providing for our material wants and physical security, to K the saving of our souls. And we resolve to work out a com-"' i mon life together: accepting the decision of^the majority in a loyal and sportsmanlike manner while the game is on, and then, if we so wish,, endeavoring to amend the rules at duly appointed times. Stich a nationality, while it limits every man, need n^t in principle oppress any man. It is consistent with self-respect; and provides that orderly and mutual mode of life without which it is impossible thatjnore than one man should^be hee in the world at the same time. rV. NATIONALITY AND WORLD-PEACE There is a second abuse of nationality which is responsible for the present predicament of mankind. Patriotism may reach a pitch of infatuation that blinds its devotees to the humanity that lies beyond, and breeds a bigoted and ruthless determination to impose the national will on alien nations. I have recently been told the story of a Buddhist monk who V. AMERICAN TRADITION AND IDEAL i 543 was discovered by a follower in the act of eating fish. As eating fish was contrary to the established code, the follower expressed his surprise and asked for an explanation. Where- upon something like the following colloquy occurred: Monk: "You believe that I am a saintly man, and that I shall become a Buddha?'* Follower: *'I have ever regarded you as a Buddha-to-be." Monk: "Well, then, smce what I eat enters into my blood arid becomes a part of me, this fish which would otherwise remain merely a fish, will by my eating it some day become Buddha." It is from similariy high motives that Germany proposes to consume Couriand, Livonia, Lithuania and Esthonia at one gulp. To be sure such wholesale carniverousness is contrary to the accepted code. But that is only because most people are blind to the higher reason. These petty states which would otherwise be no better than themselves, may by assimilation become part of the flesh and blood of the holy nation, of the "present bearer of the worid-spirit." If nations knew what was really good for them, instead of look- ing for the exit, they would crowd around and ask to be eaten. Now this diseased nationality which has broken the peace and threatens the safety of the worid, is no more necessary than fanaticism or paranoia is necessary. If it is possible to unite a nation in an insane purpose, it is certainly no less possible to unite a nation in a sane purpose. If a people can be united by the idea of imposing itself on humanity, it can be united by the idea of serving humanity. This idea has become and must remain a part of our national will. The continental isolation of America, like the insular isolation of England, is a thing of the past. America remains a land of opportunity, but it is now no longer merely the opportunity of developing wealth and free institutions for ourselves. We still enjoy a certain detachment from the political affairs of Europe, in the sense that we have no axe to grind, no old scores to pay. We are free from the embarrassments and suspicions of intriguing diplomacy. But it is a freedom to J 544 THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS use, not a freedom to enjoy. We are free to select the part we are to play, and to lead the way toward the establishment of a new order in which by the united force of all nations each nation shall be guaranteed the opportunity of living its own life. Our President has proclaimed to the world that the first step in this crusade is the decisive defeat of ''this intolerable Thing of which the masters of Germany have shown us the ugly face, this menace of combined intrigue and force, which we now see so clearly as the German power, a Thing without conscience or honor or capacity for covenanted peace/' You and I and all of us agree with him; and through our united wills this purpose has become our present national purpose. In adopting this purpose we retract no tenet whatsoever of our democratic creed. There are those who declare that war is inconsistent with democracy. But what kind of a democratic faith is that? It is as much as to say that de- mocracies cannot be chivalrous or strong; that they cannot use power for good, or exert themselves to live. It is equiv- alent to saying that democracies cannot exist. If I were called upon to choose between an autocracy that could bravely serve mankind in its hour of need, or defend itself against its enemies, and a democracy that must stand idly i by while the wicked triumph, or beg its life at the indulgence of the strong, I, for one, would prefer to live in an autocracy. But I do not believe that democracy is so poor and helpless a thing. When the first drafted men were received into the army on September 3, 191 7, President Wilson addressed them as ''soldiers of freedom," and said: "Let it be your pride ... to show all men everywhere not only what good soldiers you are, but also what good men you are, keep- ing yourselves fit and straight in everything and pure and clean through and through. Let us set for ourselves a standard so high that it will be a glory to live up to it and then let us live up to it and add a new laurel to the crown of America." Let us, then, ask and expect this great thing of ourselves: to be good soldiers and at the same time to be both the embodi- AMERICAN TRADITION AND IDEAL ( f 545 /■/ ment and the champions of our democratic creed. Nothing short of this will prove democracy. We cannot alter this fundamental fact of life, that in the great crises he who is not for the good is against it. This, according to William James, is the substance of religion. "Where our relations to an alternative are practical and vital," if we do not affirm and act, we virtually deny and fail. "There are . . . inevitable occasions in life when inaction is a kind of action, and must count as action, and when not to be for is to be practically against; and in all such cases strict and consistent neutrality is an unattainable thing." ^ The present is such an occasion. Democracy and the future peace of the world are at stake. For all we know this is the crucial struggle in which their fate is to be decided. Let no man beguile you into thinking that they can be had by spon- taneous good will or gentle persuasion. They are going to be won or lost according as their friends or their enemies are the stronger. And their friends are not those who merely profess them or sigh for them, but those who take into their hands the necessary weapons and go forth to fight for them. * Wm to Bdieve, and Other Essays, pp. 54, 55. Si INDEX 'I ! J i; it Activism, 207, 331-347 Adams, Brooks, 515 Agnosticism, 54-57, 190-192 Alsace-Lorraine, 391, 441-442, 464 Altruism, 179-180 American Ideals, 497-545 American Thought, 533-537 American Traits, 529-533 Aristocracy, 165-167, 169-172, 261- 263 Art, 50-51, 337, 414 Bacon, Francis, 58-59 Balfour, Arthur, 25 Barr^s, 441 Behaviorism, 378 Benn, a. W., 481 Bergson, 295, 348-363, 455 Bernhardi, von, 426 Biology, 301-303, 332-334; see also Evolution, Darwin Bosanquet, Bernard, 227-228, 231, 232, 246-250, 256-258, 261-262, 484 BouTROUX, fimile, 288, 345, 458, 464- 465 Bradley, A. C, 264 Bradley, F. H., 490 British Thought, 479-496 Brunetiere, 149, 288-289, 457 BuissoN, Ferd., 12 BussELL, F. W., 203, 213-214 Byron, 52 Carlyle, 340, 485-488 Carri^re, 346 Carver, T. N., 136, 139-140, 141, 143 Chesterton, 221, 533 Chevrillon, 467-468, 472-473 Christl\nity, 8, 75, 89, 158-160, 180, 224, 302-303, 402, 499 Clifford, W. K., 39, 48-49, 114 CoMTE, 111-112, 453-454, 460-461 Conrad, Joseph, 11, 33 Conscience, 176-178, 492-493 Consciousness, 376-380 Cosmopolitanism, 106-111, 167-169 Crawley, Ernest, 302-303 Creighton, J. E., 243 Darwin, 24, 127-128, 132-149, 151- 154, 425-426 Davidson, Thomas, 205 Decadence, 51-52, 132-135 Deism, 175 Delbos, Victor, 455 Democracy, 101-106, 461-462, 497- 528, 537-542 Descartes, 450-454, 455, 45^ Dewey, John, 390, 420-421 Dreyfus Case, 444-445 Dualism, 221-225 Durkheim, 82-86, 114 Economics, 90-93, 95-99, 107-109, 135 Egoism, 77, 291-293, 404-408 Emerson, 33, 534-535 Empiricism, 46, 63-^7, 479-482 Energism, 334 English Thought, see British Thought English Traits, 423, 466-478 Ethics, 63-67, 122-124, 132-149, 154- 158, 175-183, 195-196, 202-204, 221-225, 235-240, 379, 419-421, 459-461, 476-478, 491-496 Eugenics, 134 Evil, Problem of, 214-216, 246-250, 326-330 Evolution, 116-131, 357-359 Faith, 183, 298-315 Fatalism, 97, 98, 249 Fechner, 195, 196-197 Ferri, Enrico, 97-98, 99-100, 147-148 Fichte, 226, 231, 235, 405-406, 432 547 t 548 INDEX INDEX 549 FoAKEs- Jackson, F. J., 483-484 France, Anatole, 35-36 Francke, Kuno, 150, 252, 406-407 Freedom, 183, 213-214, 236-237, 322-326, 351-353, 503 French Revolution, 505, 517-518 French Thought, 450-465 French Traits, 434-449 Gardner, Percy, 216 Gerard, James W., 409-410, 530 German Traits, 391, 398-416, 543 Germany, 168, 1 71-172, 252-253 GoBLOT, 387 God, Conceptions of , 56, 176-177, 183, 201, 214-218, 304-305, 313-315, 326-330, 360-363 Green, T. H., 488-489 GuYAu, 343-344, 345-346 Haeckel, Ernst, 38-39, 146-147, 194 Hardy, Thomas, 220 Harrison, Frederic, 11 2-1 13, 497 Hay, Ian, 468, 474 Hegel, 93, 96, 226, 261, 278 History, 78-79, 95-99, 278-280, 321 HOBBES, 27, 76 Hobhouse, L. T., 61-62 Holt, E. B., 336 Howison, G. H., 198, 203-205, 211- 213, 214, 216, 2x8, 365 Humanism, 436-440 Humanity, 106-115, 392-395, 465, 542-545 HUNEKER, J. G., 22 Huxley, 23, 29-30, 1 29-131 Ibsen, 337 Idealism, 8, 197-200, 287-290, 457- 458, 482-491, 535-536 Idealism, Absolute, 200, 218-219, 220-280, 375, 417-423, 490-491 Idealism, British, 484-491 Idealism, Personal, 200, 201-219 Imagination, 41-44 Imitation, 79-81 Immortality, 183, 196-197, 211-213, 280, 320, 359-360 Imperialism, 495 Individualism, 124-126, 21 1-2 14, 317-322, 488-491 Instrumentalism, 287-294 Intellectualism, 205-210, 243, 281- 297, 450-454 Internationalism, 107-109, 267-278 James, William, 185-186, 299, 300, 313-315, 316, 318-328, 334, 339, 360, 533, 545 jASRkSf 93 Kant, 180-183, 191, 201-202, 208, 219, 220-234, 237, 285, 287-290, 304, 400, 419, 420, 431 Keyser, C. J., 38, 57 KiDD, Benjamin, 134, 136-137, 140, 141-142, 147, 301 KULTUR, 391, 411, 424 LaPlace, 23 Laveleye, 91, 383 Lee, Vemon, 312 Leslie, T. E. Cliffe, 78-79, 501-502 L6vy-Bruhl, 66 Liberty, 513-519 Love JOY, A. O., 295 Lux, J. A., 406, 431, 433 Macdonald, J. Ramsay, 92, 107-108 Maeterlinck, 40-41, 185 Maritain, Jacques, 455 Marx, Kari, 93-100 Materialism, 23-26 Meinecke, Fr., 418, 421-422, 431 Meliorism, 326 Meyer, Ed., 421 Militarism, 64-65, 470-471, 485-488, 493 Mill, J. S., 114-115, 330 MrvART, 517 Modernism, 22, 310-313 Monism, 244, 227-229 Moore, George, 73-74 Moralism, 28-30 Nationalism, 7, 425-427 Nationality, 258-260, 263-265, 381- 397, 462-465, 541-545 Natorp, Paul, 411 Nature, 36-41, 129-131, 193-195, 208, 218-219, 221-225, 293-294 Naumann, Fr., 426-427 "i Nietzsche, 150-172, 239, 284, 292, 338, 340-341, 402, 427-428, 430 NoRDAu, Max, 51 Optimism, 179-180, 235-250 Panpsychism, 192-197, 198 Pearson, Kari, 139 P6guy, Charies, 444-445 Pessimism, 31-36 Phenomenalism, 188-192, 197 Philosophy, 3-4 Plato, 261, 371-372 Pluralism, 204-205, 316-330, 357- 359 Politics, 428-430, 494-496, 513-528, 538-542, see The State Positivism, 54 Pragmatism, 8, 186, 281-315, 334-335 Pringle-Pattison, a. Seth, 206, 239, 241-242 Progress, 57-62, 84-86, 132-140, 267-280, 345-347 Psychologism, 69-74 Puritanism, 529 Quietism, 350-351 Rashdall, Hastings, 207, 211 Realism, 50, 364-380 Reason, 10-20, 281-297 Religion, 67-69, 99-100, 111-115, 141, 158-160, 184-187, 196-197, 298-315, 345, 379-380 Rey, Abel, 298 RiTSCHL, Albrecht, 309-310 Rodin, 52-53, 337 RoLLAND, Romain, 52, 53, 311-312, 340, 342-343, 344-345, 405, 415, 431, 435, 438-439, 442, 443 Romanticism, 50, 233-234, 285-287 Rousseau, 179, 453, 460 Royce, Josiah, 267-271 RuMELiN, Gustav, 263 Russell, Bertrand, 25, 41-43, 229, 347, 367 Russia, 516 Sabatier, Paul, 307-308, 380, 401, 442, 444, 457 Salter, W. M., 151 Santayana, George, 37-38, 43-44, 49, 199, 233, 312-313, 390, 404, 414- 415, 534-535 Schopenhauer, 32 Science, 22, 45-62, 101-106, iio-iii, 365-368 Self-realization, 237-240, 263-265, 419-421, 494 Simmel, 169 Socialism, 87-100, 146-149 Society, 75-86, 122-124, 138-140, 165-167, 445-449, 460-461 SoREL, Georges, 306-307, 341-342 Sorley, W. R., 242 Spencer, Herbert, 55-56, 1 21-126 State, The, 86, 182, 251-266, 386, 421-423, 461-465 Strindberg, 21, 70, 162 Sunday, "Billy," 308-309 Syndicalism, 296, 306-307, 341 Theism, 214-218 Thomson, James, 34, 37 Time, 360-361 Treitschke, 429, 464 Troeltsch, E., 237, 399-400, 402- 403, 418-419, 420, 428-429, 462-463 Tufts, J. H., 346-347 Tyndall, 56-57 Tyrrell, George, 3 10-3 11 Value, 230-232, 240-246, 307-309, 368-370 Veblen, Thorstein, 14 Vitalism, 332-334, 353-356 Voltaire, 175, 460 Voluntarism, 205-210, 454-459 Von Hugel, Fr., 404, 407-408, 413, 432 Wallas, Graham, 11, 296 War, 267-280 Ward, James, 204, 207, 208, 215, 217 Washington, 530 Wells, H. G., 329, 380 Wendell, B., 438, 447 Whitman, Walt, 40 Wilson, President, 15, 544 F. h. gilson company, boston, mass. 1 n !r f I COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES This book is due on the date indicated below, or at the expiration of a definite period after the date of borrowintr DATE BORROWED DATE DUE DATE BORROWED DATE DUE C28 (962) 50M •14 i COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIB^^^^^^^^ 0021096660 a09.3 433 THt { IF.' lOoOPHY — -- .o i-^423 i'Grr -^"--ent THE" cc * -»- -' . ' f-'t ,;.f iPHY ( \ J Jhu *- 7 1963